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Updated: June 6, 2025
However, this object was not attained, for I recollect having heard Macdonald say that herthier's singular postscript, and the tone of indifference in which it was expressed, filled him with mingled surprise and alarm. Marshal Macdonald then commanded the rear-guard of the army which occupied the environs of Montereau.
He kept so aloof from Napoleon that when he appeared on the Champ de Mai the Emperor affected surprise, saying that he thought Ney had emigrated. At the last moment Marshal Mortier fell ill. Ney had already been sent for. It has been well remarked that the very qualities which made Ney invaluable for defence or for the service of a rear-guard weighed against him in such a combat as Quatre Bras.
Together with General Sullivan, who, as well as himself, commanded a brigade in Lee's division, he looked beyond the lines of the camp rear-guard, and spent extra hours in discipline and drill, to bring his own command up to the highest state of proficiency.
Still, the enemy kindly left us a good supply of forage for our horses, and meal, beans, etc., for our men. Pausing but a short while, we passed on, the road filled with broken wagons and abandoned caissons, till night. Just as the head of the column emerged from a dark, miry swamp, we encountered the rear-guard of the retreating enemy.
He will probably have enough to do in explaining his own connection with this uncommon way of amusing the rear-guard of a retreating enemy." A young officer approached from below, climbing breathless up the acclivity.
"These are but as a handful of dust amid the sands of the sea to the troops of the empire," said the prefect Anthemius, when the glittering rear-guard had passed from the Hippodrome. And the Princess Pulcheria added, "And these, O men from the north, are to help and succor the friends of the great emperor, even as they are for the terror and destruction of his foes.
Behind him an overwhelming force was crowding and threatening to crush his rear-guard; on either flank the blue-coated lines were edging closer and closer; but in front there appeared to be only a thin screen of cavalry which might be pierced; and beyond lay the mountains and safety.
As it was, when he crossed the Niemen on December 13th, himself the last man to leave Russian territory his rear-guard had vanished, and he had with him only his aides-de-camp, while of about five hundred thousand men who had crossed the river five months before scarcely fifty thousand returned.
Vandamme, continuing to fight the Russians of Ostermann in front of Teplice, turned round his rear-guard to face Kleist, whom he attacked furiously, but although the enemy was weakening, the huge reinforcements which they recieved, bringing their strength to around 100,000 men as opposed to Vandamme's remaining 15,000, made him think, in spite of his courage and tenacity, that he should retire towards the corps of Mortier and Saint-Cyr, whom he believed to be close at hand in accordance with what Prince Berthier had written to him on the Emperor's instructions.
He had been outfought, outmanoeuvred, outflanked, and outgeneralled! The disgusted British were sent back over the familiar road to Princeton, now in hotter haste than before. His rear-guard menaced, perhaps overwhelmed, his stores and supplies in danger, Cornwallis pushed on for life this time.
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