Six shots were poured in with tremendous precision and effect, and the seventh tore away one of the main supports of the bridge, and down went the densely crowded column into the Rhine. At the same instant the guns of our launches opened a destructive fire upon the banks, which soon were swept clean of the enemy.
High up on the stream, and for nearly a mile below also, we could see the boats of our army pulling in for shore; the crossing of the Rhine had been effected, and we now prepared to follow.
CHAPTER XII. ‘A GLANCE AT STAFF-DUTY’
Although the passage of the Rhine was but the prelude to the attack on the fortress, that exploit being accomplished, Kehl was carried at the point of the bayonet, the French troops entering the outworks pell-mell with the retreating enemy, and in less than two hours after the landing of our first detachments, the tricolour waved over the walls of the fortress.
Lost amid the greater and more important successes which since that time have immortalised the glory of the French arms, it is almost impossible to credit the celebrity attached at that time to this brilliant achievement, whose highest merits probably were rapidity and resolution. Moreau had long been jealous of the fame of his great rival, Bonaparte, whose tactics, rejecting the colder dictates of prudent strategy, and the slow progress of scientific manouvres, seemed to place all his confidence in the sudden inspirations of his genius, and the indomitable bravery of his troops. It was necessary, then, to raise the morale of the army of the Rhine, to accomplish some great feat similar in boldness and heroism to the wonderful achievements of the Italian army. Such was the passage of the Rhine at Strasbourg, effected in the face of a great enemy, advantageously posted, and supported by one of the strongest of all the frontier fortresses.
The morning broke upon us in all the exultation of our triumph, and as our cheers rose high over the field of the late struggle, each heart beat proudly with the thought of how that news would be received in Paris.
‘You ‘ll see how the bulletin will spoil all,’ said a young officer of the army of Italy, as he was getting his wound dressed on the field. ‘There will be such a long narrative of irrelevant matter—such details of this, that, and t’ other—that the public will scarce know whether the placard announces a defeat or a victory.’
‘Parbleu!’ replied an old veteran of the Rhine army, ‘what would you have? You’d not desire to omit the military facts of such an exploit?’
‘To be sure I would,’ rejoined the other. ‘Give me one of our young general’s bulletins, short, stirring, and effective:—“Soldiers! you have crossed the Rhine against an army double your own in numbers and munitions of war. You have carried a fortress, believed impregnable, at the bayonet. Already the great flag of our nation waves over the citadel you have won. Forward, then, and cease not till it floats over the cities of conquered Germany, and let the name of France be that of Empire over the continent of Europe.’”