Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
From none could I learn any intelligence of the cavalry quarter, nor had any of those I questioned seen horsemen pass near them. "The voltigeurs in the valley yonder may perhaps tell you something," said an officer to me, pointing to some fires in a deep glen beneath us. And thither I now bent my steps.
"The Fifth, mon officier," said he, "Voltigeurs of the Line." "Have you a certain François, a maître d'armes, still among you?" "Yes, that we have. There he is yonder, beating time to the roulade." I looked in the direction he pointed, and there stood my old friend. He was advanced in front of a company, and with the air of a tambour-major he seemed as if he was giving time to the melody.
There were the grenadiers of Oudinot, who carried the Russian centre; eleven wagons were filled with their wounded. Here come the voltigeurs of Bernadotte's brigade; see how the fellows preserve their ancient repute, cheering and laughing, ever the same, whether roistering at midnight in the Faubourg St. Antoine or rushing madly upon the ranks of the enemy!
An attack was made by this force on Major Lally at the pass of Ovejas, the engagement lasting an hour and a half. Captains James Nelson Caldwell, of the Voltigeurs, and Arthur C. Cummings, Eleventh Infantry, were severely wounded. Nine enlisted men were wounded, one mortally. The Mexican loss is not known.
At all events, it required caution; and, although the battle had already begun on the right as a loud cannonade and a heavy smoke told us he halted the brigade in the wood, and held a council of his officers to see what was to be done. The resolution come to was, that the voltigeurs should advance alone to explore the way, the rest of the force remaining in ambush.
With another officer and a howitzer, and men to work it, he reached the church, and, by dismounting the gun, carried it to the belfry, where it was mounted again but a few hundred yards from San Cosme, and did excellent service. The general complimented Lieutenant Grant on the execution his gun was doing, and ordered a captain of voltigeurs to report to him with another gun.
On the other hand, with the exception of a few veterans of Major de Salaberry's Voltigeurs, they were untrained in war; and their muskets and fowling-pieces were much inferior to the rifles of the regulars.
"My dear Jock, I have not been giving and taking wounds this fifteen years without knowing when one has come home. But it is as well, for I know that all is ended for my little man, and I had rather go with my Voltigeurs than remain to be an exile and a beggar. Besides, it is quite certain that the Allies would have shot me, so I have saved myself from that humiliation."
You have hunted up the remains of the Empire, as the Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis XIV. "Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for the manoeuvring of ability; but dangers will come, and the younger generation will rise as they did in 1790. They did grand things then.
The commands were given by signals; and so rapidly interchanged were they from party to party, that the different groups seemed to move forward by one impulse, though the officer who led them was full a mile distant from where we were. "Can you use a firelock, comrade?" said the major, as he placed in my hand a short musket, such as the voltigeurs carried.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking