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[from Burlesques, Novels by Eminent Hands,
Jeames's Diary, Adventures of Major Gahagan, A Legend of the
Rhine, Rebecca and Rowena, The History of the Next French
Revolution, Cox's Diary,
New York: A.L. Burt, n.d.(19th century); originally published in
a series of parodies, "Punch's Prize
Novelists" in Punch, August, 7-12, 1847]
I.
THE gabion was ours. After two hours' fighting we were in possession of the first embrasure, and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat down under a pontoon, and our servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambacères had escaped me so provokingly after I cut him down, his spoils were mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna sausage were found in the Marshal's holsters; and in the haversack of a French private who lay a corpse on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread, his three days' ration. Instead of salt, we had gunpowder; and you may be sure, wherever the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy was behind him in his instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier's supper. The Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees growing near (and round which the Carabineers and the 24th Leger had made a desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Delamere's helmet.
"'Faith, it never had so much wit in it before," said the Doctor, as he ladled out the drink. We all roared with laughing, except the guardsman, who was as savage as a Turk at a christening.
"Buvez-en" said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; "ça vous fera du bien, mon vieux coq!" and the Colonel, whose wound had been just dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered cup, and drained it with a health to the donors.
How strange are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and I were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambacères, whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the next instant at my throat -- I was on the ground -- my prisoner had escaped, and a gigantic warrior in the uniform of a colonel of the regiment of Artois glaring over me with pointed sword.
"Rends-toi, coquin!" said he.
"Allez au Diable!" said I: "a Fogarty never surrenders."
I thought of my poor mother and my sisters, at the old house in Killaloo -- I felt the tip of his blade between my teeth -- I breathed a prayer, and shut my eyes -- when the tables were turned -- the butt-end of Lanty Clancy's musket knocked the sword up and broke the arm that held it.
"Thonamoundiaoul nabochlish," said the French officer, with a curse in the purist Irish. It was lucky I stopped laughing time enough to bid Lanty hold his hand, for the honest fellow would else have brained my gallant adversary. We were the better friends for our combat, as what gallant hearts are not?
The breach was to be stormed at sunset, and like true soldiers we sat down to make the most of our time. The rogue of a Doctor took the liver-wing for his share -- we gave the other to our guest, the prisoner; those scoundrels Jack Delamere and Tom Delancy took the legs -- and, 'faith, poor I was put off with the Pope's nose and a bit of the back.
"How d'ye like his Holiness's fayture?" said Jerry Blake.
"Anyhow you'll have a merry thought," cried the incorrigible Doctor, and all the party shrieked at the witticism.
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said Jack, holding up the drumstick clean.
"'Faith, there's not enough of it to make us chicken-hearted, anyhow," said I; "come, boys, let's have a song."
"Here goes," said Tom Delancy, and sung the following lyric, of his own composition: --
"Dear Jack, this white mug that with Guinness I fill,
And drink to the health of sweet Nan of the Hill,
Was once Tommy Tosspot's, as jovial a sot,
As e'er drew a spigot, or drain'd a full pot --
In drinking all round 'twas his joy to surpass,
And with all merry tipplers he swigg'd off his glass"One morning in summer, while seated so snug,
In the porch of his garden, discussing his jug,
Stern Death, on a sudden, to Tom did appear,
And said, 'Honest Thomas, come take your last bier;'
We kneaded his clay in the shape of this can,
From which let us drink to the health of my Nan."
"Psha!" said the Doctor, "I've heard that song before; here's a new one for you, boys!" and Sawbones began, in a rich Corkagian voice --
"You've all heard of Larry O'Toole,
Of the beautiful town of Drumgoole;
He had but one eye,
To ogle ye by --
Oh, murther, but that was a jew'l!
A fool
He made of de girls, dis O'Toole."'Twas he was the boy didn't fail,
That tuck down pataties and mail;
He never would shrink
From any sthrong dthrink,
Was it whisky or Drogheda ale;
I'm bail
This Larry would swallow a pail."Oh, many a night at the bowl,
With Larry I've sot cheek by jowl;
He's gone to his rest,
Where there's dthrink of the best,
And so let us give his old sowl
A howl,
For 'twas he made the noggin to rowl."
I observed the French Colonel's eye glistened as he heard these well-known accents of his country; but we were too well-bred to pretend to remark his emotion.
The sun was setting behind the mountains as our songs were finished, and each began to look out with some anxiety for the preconcerted signal, the rocket from Sir Hussey Vivian's quarters, which was to announce the recommencement of hostilities. It came just as the moon rose in her silver splendor, and ere the rocket-stick fell quivering to the earth at the feet of General Picton and Sir Lowry Cole, who were at their posts at the head of the storming-parties, nine hundred and ninety nine guns in position opened their fire from our batteries, which were answered by a tremendous canonnade from the fort.
"Who's going to dance?" said the Doctor: "the ball's begun. Ha! there goes poor Jack Delamere's head off! The ball chose a soft one, anyhow. Come here, Tim, till I mend your leg. Your wife has need only knit half as many stockings next year, Doolan my boy. Faix! there goes a big one had wellnigh stopped my talking: bedad! it has snuffed the feather off my cocked hat!"
In this way, with eighty-four-pounders roaring over us like hail, the undaunted little Doctor pursued his jokes and his duty. That he had a feeling heart, all who served with him knew, and none more so than Philip Fogarty, the humble writer of this tale of war.
Our embrasure was luckily bomb-proof, and the detachment of the Onety-Oneth under my orders suffered comparatively little. "Be cool, boys," I said; "it will be hot enough work for you ere long." The honest fellows answered with an Irish cheer. I saw that it affected our prisoner.
"Countryman," said I, "I know you; but an Irishman was never a traitor."
"Taisez-vous!" said he, putting his finger to his lip. "C'est la fortune da la guerre: if ever you come to Paris, ask for the Marquis d' O'Mahony, and I may render you the hospitality which your tyrannous laws prevent me from exercising in the ancestral halls of my own race."
I shook him warmly by the hand as a tear bedimmed his eye. It was, then, the celebrated colonel of the Irish Brigade, created a Marquis by Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz!
"Marquis," said I, "the country which disowns you is proud of you; but -- ha! here, if I mistake not, comes our signal to advance." And in fact, Captain Vandeleur, riding up through the shower of shot, asked for the commander of the detachment, and bade me hold myself in readiness to move as soon as the flank companies of the Ninety-ninth, and Sixty-sixth, and the Grenadier Brigade of the German Legion began to advance up the échelon. The devoted band soon arrived; Jack Bowser heading the Ninety-ninth (when was he away and a storming-party to the fore?), and the gallant Potztausend, with his Hanoverian veterans.
The second rocket flew up.
"Forward, Onety-oneth!" cried I, in a voice of thunder. "Killaloo boys, follow your captain!" and with a shrill hurray, that sounded above the tremendous fire from the fort, we sprung upon the steep; Bowser with the brave Ninety-ninth, and the bold Potztausend, keeping well up with us. We passed the demilune, we passed the culverin, bayoneting the artillerymen at their guns; we advanced across the two tremendous demilunes which flank the counterscarp, and prepared for the final spring upon the citadel. Soult I could see quite pale on the wall; and the scoundrel Cambacères, who had been so nearly my prisoner that day, trembled as he cheered his men. "On, boys, on!" I hoarsely exclaimed. "Hurroo!" said the fighting Onety-oneth.
But there was movement among the enemy. An officer, glittering with orders, and another in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to the wall, and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon and the famous Joachim Murat.
"We are hardly pressed, methinks," Napoleon said
sternly. "I must exercise my old trade as an artilleryman;" and
Murat loaded, and the Emperor pointed the only
hundred-and- "Hurray, Killaloo boys!" shouted I. The next
moment a sensation of numbness and death seized me, and I lay
like a corpse upon the rampart.
II.
"HUSH!" said a voice, which I recognized
to be that of the Marquis d' O'Mahony. "Heaven be praised,
reason has returned to you. For six weeks those are the only
sane words I have heard from you."
"Faix, and 'tis thrue for you, Colonel dear,"
cried another voice, with which I was even more familiar;
'twas that of my honest and gallant Lanty Clancy, who was
blubbering at my bedside overjoyed at his
master's recovery.
"O musha, Masther Phil agrah! but this will be the
great day intirely, when I send off the news, which I would,
barrin' I can't write, to the lady your mother and your sisters
at Castle Fogarty; and 'tis his Riv'rence Father Luke will jump
for joy thin, when he reads the letther! Six weeks ravin' and
roarin' as bould as a lion, and as mad as Mich Malony's pig, that
mistuck Mick's wig for a cabbage, and died of atin' it!"
"And have I then lost my senses?" I exclaimed
feebly.
"Sure, didn't ye call me your beautiful Donna Anna
only yesterday, and catch hould of me whiskers as if they were
the Signora's jet-black ringlets?" Lanty cried.
At this moment, and blushing deeply, the most
beautiful young creature I ever set my eyes upon, rose from a
chair at the foot of the bed, and sailed out of the room.
"Confusion, you blundering rogue," I cried; "who
is that lovely lady whom you frightened away by your
impertinence? Donna Anna? Where am I?"
"You are in good hands, Philip," said the Colonel;
"you are at my house in the Place Vendôme, at Paris, of
which I am the military Governor. You and Lanty were knocked
down by the wind of the cannon-ball at Burgos. Do not be
ashamed: 'twas the Emperor pointed the gun;" and the Colonel took
off his hat as he mentioned the name darling to France. "When
our troops returned from the sally in which your gallant storming
party was driven back, you were found on the glacis, and I had
you brought into the City. Your reason had left you, however,
when you returned to life; but, unwilling to desert the son of my
old friend, Philip Fogarty, who saved my life in '98, I brought
you in my carriage to Paris."
"And many's the time you tried to jump out of the
windy, Masther Phil," said Clancy.
"Brought you to Paris," resumed the Colonel,
smiling; "where, by the soins of my friends Broussais, Esquirol,
and Baron Larrey, you have been restored to health, thank
heaven!"
"And that lovely angel who quitted the apartment?"
I cried.
"That lovely angel is the Lady Blanche Sarsfield,
my ward, a descendant of the gallant Lucan, and who may be, when
she chooses, Madame la Maréchale de Cambacères,
Duchess of Illyria."
"Why did you deliver the ruffian when he was in my
grasp?" I cried.
"Why did Lanty deliver you when in mine?" the
Colonel replied. "C'est la fortune de la guerre, mon
garçon; but calm yourself, and take this potion which
Blanche has prepared for you."
I drank the tisane eagerly when I heard
whose fair hands had compounded it, and its effects were speedily
beneficial to me, for I sank into a cool and refreshing slumber.
From that day I began to mend rapidly, with all
the elasticity of youth's happy time. Blanche -- the
enchanting Blanche -- ministered henceforth to me, for I would
take no medicine but from her lily hand. And what were the
effects? 'Faith, ere a month was past, the patient was over head
and ears in love with the doctor; and as for Baron Larrey, and
Broussais, and Esquirol, they were sent to the right-about. In a
short time I was in a situation to do justice to the gigot aux
navets, the boeuf aux cornichons, and the other
delicious entremets of the Marquis's board, with an
appetite that astonished some of the Frenchmen who frequented it.
"Wait till he's quite well, Miss," said Lanty, who
waited always behind me. "'Faith! when he's in health, I'd back
him to ate a cow, barrin' the horns and teel." I sent a decanter
at the rogue's head, by way of answer to his impertinence.
Although the disgusting Cambacères did his
best to have my parole withdrawn from me, and to cause me to be
sent to the English depot of prisoners at Verdun, the Marquis's
interest with the Emperor prevailed, and I was allowed to remain
at Paris, the happiest of prisoners, at the Colonel's hotel at
the Place Vendôme. I here had the opportunity (an
opportunity not lost, I flatter myself, on a young fellow with
the accomplishments of Philip Fogarty, Esq.) of mixing with the
élite of French society, and meeting with many of
the great, the beautiful, and the brave. Talleyrand was a
frequent guest of the Marquis's. His bon-mots used to
keep the table in a roar. Ney frequently took his chop with us;
Murat, when in town, constantly dropt in for a cup of tea and
friendly round game. Alas! who would have thought those two
gallant heads would be so soon laid low? My wife has a pair of
earrings which the latter, who always wore them, presented to her
-- but we are advancing matters. Anybody could see, "avec un
demiœil," as the Prince of Benevento remarked, how
affairs went between me and Blanche; but though she loathed him
for his cruelties and the odiousness of his person, the brutal
Cambacères still pursued his designs upon her.
I recollect it was on St. Patrick's Day. My
lovely friend had procured, from the gardens of the Empress
Josephine, at Malmaison (whom we loved a thousand times more than
her Austrian successor, a sandy-haired woman, between ourselves,
with an odious squint), a quantity of shamrock wherewith to
garnish the hotel, and all the Irish in Paris were invited to the
national festival.
I and Prince Talleyrand danced a double hornpipe
with Pauline Bonaparte and Madame de Staël; Marshal Soult
went down a couple of sets with Madame Récamier; and
Robespierre's widow -- an excellent, gentle creature, quite
unlike her husband -- stood up with the Austrian ambassador.
Besides, the famous artists Baron Gros, David and Nicholas
Poussin, and Canova, who was in town making a statue of the
Emperor for Leo X., and, in a word, all the celebrities of Paris
-- as my gifted countrywoman, the wild Irish girl, calls them --
were assembled in the Marquis's elegant receiving-rooms.
At last a great outcry was raised for La Gigue
Irlandaise! La Gigue Irlandaise! a dance which had made a
fureur amongst the Parisians ever since the lovely Blanche
Sarsfield had danced it. She stepped forward and took me for a
partner, and amidst the bravoes of the crowd, in which stood Ney,
Murat, Lannes, the Prince of Wagram, and the Austrian ambassador,
we showed to the beau monde of the French capital, I
flatter myself, a not unfavorable specimen of the dance of our
country.
As I was cutting the double-shuffle, and
toe-and- "Cambacères is jealous," said I. "I have
it," says she; "I'll make him dance a turn with me." So,
presently, as the music was going like mad all this time, I
pretended fatigue from my late wounds, and sat down. The lovely
Blanche went up smiling, and brought out Cambacères as a
second partner.
The Marshal is a lusty man, who makes desperate
efforts to give himself a waist, and the effect of the
exercise upon him was speedily visible. He puffed and snorted
like a walrus, drops trickled down his purple face, while my
lovely mischief of a Blanche went on dancing at treble quick,
till she fairly danced him down.
"Who'll take the flure with me?" said the charming
girl, animated by the sport.
"Faix, den, 'tis I, Lanty Clancy!" cried my
rascal, who had been mad with excitement at the scene; and,
stepping in with a whoop and a hurroo, he began to dance with
such rapidity as made all present stare.
As the couple were footing it, there was a noise
as of a rapid cavalcade traversing the Place Vendôme,
and stopping at the Marquis's door. A crowd appeared to mount
the stair; the great doors of the reception-room were flung open,
and two pages announced their Majesties the Emperor and the
Empress. So engaged were Lanty and Blanche, that they never
heard the tumult occasioned by the august approach.
It was indeed the Emperor, who, returning from the
Théātre Français, and seeing the Marquis's
windows lighted up, proposed to the Empress to drop in on the
party. He made signs to the musicians to continue: and the
conqueror of Marengo and Friedland watched with interest the
simple evolutions of two happy Irish people. Even the Empress
smiled; and, seeing this, all the courtiers, including Naples
and Talleyrand, were delighted.
"Is not this a great day for Ireland?" said the
Marquis, with a tear trickling down his noble face. "O
Ireland! O my country! But no more of that. Go up, Phil, you
divvle, and offer her Majesty the choice of punch or negus."
Among the young fellows with whom I was most
intimate in Paris was Eugène Beauharnais, the son of
the ill-used and unhappy Josephine by her former marriage with a
French gentleman of good family. Having a smack of the old blood
in him, Eugène's manners were much more refined than those
of the new-fangled dignitaries of the Emperor's Court, where (for
my knife and fork were regularly laid at the Tuileries) I have
seen my poor friend Murat repeatedly mistake a fork for a
toothpick, and the gallant Massena devour pease by means of his
knife, in a way more innocent than graceful. Talleyrand,
Eugène, and I used often to laugh at these eccentricities
of our brave friends; who certainly did not shine in the
drawing-room, however brilliant they were in the field of battle.
The Emperor always asked me to take wine with him, and was full
of kindness and attention.
"I like Eugène," he would say, pinching my
ear confidentially, as his way was -- "I like Eugène to
keep company with such young fellows as you; you have manners;
you have principles; my rogues from the camp have none. And I
like you, Philip my boy," he added, "for being so attentive to my
poor wife -- the Empress Josephine, I mean." All these honors
made my friends at the Marquis's very proud, and my enemies at
Court crever with envy. Among these, the atrocious
Cambacères was not the least active and envenomed.
The cause of the many attentions which were paid
to me, and which, like a vain coxcomb, I had chosen to attribute
to my own personal amiability, soon was apparent. Having formed
a good opinion of my gallantry from my conduct in various actions
and forlorn hopes during the war, the Emperor was most anxious to
attach me to his service. The Grand Cross of St. Louis, the
title of Count, the command of a crack cavalry regiment, the
14me Chevaux Marins, were the bribes that were
actually offered to me; and must I say it? Blanche, the lovely,
the perfidious Blanche, was one of the agents employed to tempt
me to commit this act of treason.
"Object to enter a foreign service!" she said, in
reply to my refusal. "It is you, Philip, who are in a foreign
service. The Irish nation is in exile, and in the territories of
its French allies. Irish traitors are not here; they march alone
under the accursed flag of the Saxon, whom the great Napoleon
would have swept from the face of the earth, but for the fatal
valor of Irish mercenaries! Accept this offer, and my heart, my
hand, my all are yours. Refuse it, Philip, and we part."
"To wed the abominable Cambacères!" I
cried, stung with rage. "To wear a duchess's cornet, Blanch!
Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of strawberry-leaves, should
decorate the brows of the upstart French nobility. I shall
withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to prison -- to be
exchanged -- to die -- anything rather than be a traitor, and the
tool of a traitress!" Taking up my hat, I left the room in a
fury; and flinging open the door tumbled over Cambacères,
who was listening at the key-hole, and must have overheard every
word of our conversation.
We tumbled over each other, as Blanche was
shrieking with laughter at our mutual discomfiture. Her scorn
only made me more mad; and, having spurs on, I began digging them
into Cambacères' fat sides as we rolled on the carpet,
until the Marshal howled with rage and anger.
"This insult must be avenged with blood!" roared
the Duke of Illyria.
"I have already drawn it," says I, "with my
spurs."
"Malheur et malédiction!" roared the
Marshal.
"Hadn't you better settle your wig?" says I,
offering it to him on the tip of my cane, "and we'll arrange
time and place when you have put your jasey in order." I shall
never forget the look of revenge which he cast at me, as I was
thus turning him into ridicule before his mistress.
"Lady Blanche," I continued bitterly, "as you look
to share the Duke's coronet, hadn't you better see to his wig?"
and so saying, I cocked my hat, and walked out of the Marquis's
place, whistling, "Garryowen."
I knew my man would not be long in following me,
and waited for him in the Place Vendôme, where I luckily
met Eugène too, who was looking at the picture-shop in the
corner. I explained to him my affair in a twinkling. He at once
agreed to go with me to the ground, and commended me, rather than
otherwise, for refusing the offer which had been made to me. "I
knew it would be so," he said kindly; "I told my father you
wouldn't. A man with the blood of the Fogarties, Phil my boy,
doesn't wheel about like those fellows of yesterday." So, when
Cambacères came out, which he did presently, with a more
furious air than before, I handed him at once over to
Eugène, who begged him to name a friend, and an early hour
for the meeting to take place.
"Can you make it before eleven, Phil?" said
Beauharnais. "The Emperor reviews the troops in the Bois
de Boulogne at that hour, and we might fight there handy before
the review."
"Done!" said I. "I want of all things to see the
newly-arrived Saxon cavalry manœuvre:" on which
Cambacères, giving me a look, as much as to say, "See
sights! Watch cavalry manœuvres! Make your soul, and take
measure for a coffin, my boy!" walked away, naming our mutual
acquaintance, Marshal Ney, to Eugène, as his second in the
business.
I had purchased from Murat a very fine Irish
horse, Bugaboo, out of Smithereens, by Fadladeen, which ran into
the French ranks at Salamanca, with poor Jack Clonakilty, of the
13th, dead, on the top of him. Bugaboo was too much and too ugly
an animal for the King of Naples, who, though a showy horseman,
was a bad rider across country; and I got the horse for a song.
A wickeder and uglier brute never wore pig-skin; and I never put
my leg over such a timber-jumper in my life. I rode the horse
down to the Bois de Boulogne on the morning that the affair with
Cambacères was to come off, and Lanty held him as I went
in, "sure to win," as they say in the ring.
Cambacères was known to be the best shot in
the French army; but I, who am a pretty good hand at a snipe,
thought a man was bigger, and that I could wing him if I had a
mind. As soon as Ney gave the word, we both fired: I felt a whiz
past my left ear, and putting up my hand there, found a large
piece of my whiskers gone; whereas at the same moment, and
shrieking a horrible malediction, my adversary reeled and fell.
"Mon Dieu, il est mort!" cried Ney.
"Pas de tout," said Beauharnais. "Ecoute; il jure
toujours."
And such, indeed, was the fact: the supposed dead
man lay on the ground cursing most frightfully. We went up to
him: he was blind with the loss of blood, and my ball had carried
off the bridge of his nose. He recovered; but he was always
called the Prince of Ponterotto in the French army, afterwards.
The surgeon in attendance having taken charge of this unfortunate
warrior, we rode off to the review where Ney and Eugène
were on duty at the head of their respective divisions; and
where, by the way, Cambacères, as the French say, "se
faisait désirer."
It was arranged that Cambacères' division
of six battalions and nine-and-twenty squadrons should execute a
ricochet movement, supported by artillery in the
intervals, and converging by different épaulements
on the light infantry, that formed, as usual, the centre of the
line. It was by this famous manœuvre that at Arcola, at
Montenotte, at Friedland, and subsequently at Mazagran, Suwaroff,
Prince Charles, and General Castanos were defeated with such
victorious slaughter: but it is a movement which, I need not tell
every military man, required the greatest delicacy of execution,
and which, if it fails, plunges an army into confusion.
"Where is the Duke of Illyria?" Napoleon asked.
"At the head of his division, no doubt." said Murat: at which
Eugène, giving me an arch look, put his hand to his nose,
and caused me almost to fall off my horse with laughter.
Napoleon looked sternly at me; but at this moment the troops
getting in motion, the celebrated manœuvre began, and his
Majesty's attention was taken off from my impudence.
Milhaud's Dragoons, their bands playing "Vive
Henri Quatre," their cuirasses gleaming in the sunshine, moved
upon their own centre from the left flank in the most brilliant
order, while the Carbineers of Foy, and the Grenadiers of the
Guard under Drouet d'Erlon, executed a carambolade on the right,
with the precision which became those veteran troops; but the
Chasseurs of the young guard, marching by twos instead of threes,
bore consequently upon the Bavarian Uhlans (an ill-disciplined
and ill-affected body), and then, falling back in disorder,
became entangled with the artillery and the left centre of the
line, and in one instant thirty thousand men were in inextricable
confusion.
"Clubbed, by Jabers!" roared out Lanty Clancy. "I
wish we could show 'em the Fighting Onety-oneth, Captain
darling."
"Silence, fellow!" I exclaimed. I never saw the
face of man express passion so vividly as now did the livid
countenance of Napoleon. He tore off General Milhaud's
epaulettes, which he flung into Foy's face. He glared about him
wildly, like a demon, and shouted hoarsely for the Duke of
Illyria. "He is wounded, Sire," said General Foy, wiping a tear
from his eye, which was blackened by the force of the blow; "he
was wounded an hour since in a duel, Sire, by a young English
prisoner, Monsieur de Fogarty."
"Wounded! a marshal of France wounded! Where is
the Englishman? Bring him out, and let a file of grenadiers --"
"Sire!" interposed Eugène.
"Let him be shot!" shrieked the Emperor, shaking
his spyglass at me with the fury of a fiend.
This was too much. "Here goes!" said I, and rode
slap at him.
There was a shriek of terror from the whole of the
French army, and I should think at least forty thousand guns were
levelled at me in an instant. But as the muskets were not
loaded, and the cannon had only wadding in them, these facts, I
presume, saved the life of Phil Fogarty from this discharge.
Knowing my horse, I put him at the Emperor's head,
and Bugaboo went at it like a shot. He was riding his famous
white Arab, and turned quite pale as I came up and went over the
horse and the Emperor, scarcely brushing the cockade which he
wore.
"Bravo!" said Murat, bursting with enthusiasm at
the leap.
"Cut him down!" said Siéyès, once an
Abbé, but now a gigantic Cuirassier; and he made a pass at
me with his sword. But he little knew an Irishman on an Irish
horse. Bugaboo cleared Siéyès, and fetched the
monster a slap with his near hind hoof which sent him reeling
from his saddle, -- and away I went, with an army of a hundred
and seventy-three thousand eight hundred men at my heels. ****
(End.)
Prepared by Patricia Teter