And so’ saying, Berthier presented his arm to the lady, who swept proudly past without deigning to notice me. In a few minutes the tent was cleared of all, except the servants occupied in removing the remains of the dessert, and I fell back, unremarked and unobserved, to take my way homeward to the barracks, more indifferent to life than ever I had been afraid of death.
As I am not likely to recur at any length to the somewhat famous person to whom I owed my life, I may as well state that her name has since occupied no inconsiderable share of attention in France, and her history, under the title of Mémoires d’une Contemporaine, excited a degree of interest and anxiety in quarters which one might have fancied far above the reach of her revelations. At the time I speak of, I little knew the character of the age in which such influences were all powerful, nor how destinies very different from mine hung upon the favouritism of ‘La belle Nathalie.’ Had I known these things, and, still more, had I known the sad fate to which she brought my poor friend, Colonel Mahon, I might have scrupled to accept my life at such hands, or involved myself in a debt of gratitude to one for whom I was subsequently to feel nothing but hatred and aversion. It was indeed a terrible period, and in nothing more so than the fact that acts of benevolence and charity were blended up with features of falsehood, treachery, and baseness, which made one despair of humanity, and think the very worst of their species.
CHAPTER XV. SCRAPS OF HISTORY
Nothing displays more powerfully the force of egotism than the simple truth that, when any man sits himself down to write the events of his life, the really momentous occurrences in which he may have borne a part occupy a conspicuously small place, when each petty incident of a merely personal nature is dilated and extended beyond all bounds. In one sense, the reader benefits by this, since there are few impertinences less forgivable than the obtrusion of some insignificant name into the narrative of facts that are meet for history. I have made these remarks in a spirit of apology to my reader; not alone for the accuracy of my late detail, but also, if I should seem in future to dwell but passingly on the truly important facts of a great campaign, in which my own part was so humble.
I was a soldier in that glorious army which Moreau led into the heart of Germany, and whose victorious career would only have ceased when they entered the capital of the Empire, had it not been for the unhappy mistakes of Jourdan, who commanded the auxiliary forces in the north. For nigh three months we advanced steadily and successfully, superior in every engagement; we only waited for the moment of junction with Jourdan’s army, to declare the Empire our own; when at last came the terrible tidings that he had been beaten, and that Latour was advancing from Ulm to turn our left flank, and cut off our communications with France.
Two hundred miles from our own frontiers—separated from the Rhine by that terrible Black Forest whose defiles are mere gorges between vast mountains—with an army fifty thousand strong on one flank, and the Archduke Charles commanding a force of nigh thirty thousand on the other—such were the dreadful combinations which now threatened us with a defeat not less signal than Jourdan’s own. Our strength, however, lay in a superb army of seventy thousand unbeaten men, led on by one whose name alone was victory.
On the 24th of September the order for retreat was given; the army began to retire by slow marches, prepared to contest every inch of ground, and make every available spot a battlefield. The baggage and ammunition were sent on in front, and two days’ march in advance. Behind, a formidable rear-guard was ready to repulse every attack of the enemy. Before, however, entering those close défiles by which his retreat lay, Moreau determined to give one terrible lesson to his enemy, like the hunted tiger turning upon his pursuers, he suddenly halted at Biberach, and ere Latour, who commanded the Austrians, was aware of his purpose, assailed the Imperial forces with an attack on right, centre, and left together. Four thousand prisoners and eighteen pieces of cannon were the trophies of the victory.
The day after this decisive battle our march was resumed, and the advanced-guard entered that narrow and dismal defile which goes by the name of the ‘Valley of Hell,’ when our left and right flanks, stationed at the entrance of the pass, effectually secured the retreat against molestation. The voltigeurs of St. Cyr crowning the heights as we went, swept away the light troops which were scattered along the rocky eminences, and in less than a fortnight our army debouched by Fribourg and Oppenheim into the valley of the Rhine, not a gun having been lost, not a caisson deserted, during that perilous movement.
The Archduke, however, having ascertained the direction of Moreau’s retreat, advanced by a parallel pass through the Kinzigthal, and attacked St. Cyr at Nauen-dorf, and defeated him. Our right flank, severely handled at Emmendingen, the whole force was obliged to retreat on Hüningen, and once more we found ourselves upon the banks of the Rhine, no longer an advancing army, high in hope, and flushed with victory—but beaten, harassed, and retreating!