When between Mure and Vizele, Cambronne, who commanded the advance guard of forty grenadiers, met a battalion which had been sent from Grenoble to arrest their march. Colonel La Badoyere, who headed the battalion, refused to parley with Cambronne; upon which the Emperor, without hesitation, advanced alone; followed at some distance by 100 grenadiers with their arms reversed. There was profound silence until Napoleon had approached within a few paces, when he halted, and throwing open his surtout exclaimed, “If there be amongst you a soldier who would kill his general—his Emperor, let him do it now!—Here I am!” The cry of Vive l’Empereur burst instantaneously from every lip. Napoleon threw himself among them, and taking a veteran, covered with chevrons and medals, by the arm, said, “Speak honestly, old moustache, couldst thou have had the heart to kill thy Emperor?” The man dropped his ramrod into his piece to show that it was unloaded, and answered, “Judge if I could have done thee much harm,—all the rest are the same.”
THE RETURN FROM ELBA.
NAPOLEON AT CHARLEROI.
Horace Vernet has attempted to present us with a portrait of Napoleon, as he appeared on the eve of his great conflict with the Allied Army. Buonaparte arrived at Charleroi about 11 o’clock, on the 15th of June, 1815, which place was evacuated by the Prussians, under General Ziethen, in great haste. Napoleon ordered Marshal Ney to repair to Gosselin, and take the command of the whole of the left wing of the army, occupying a position beyond Quatre-Bras with 40,000 men. The Prussians retired upon Fleurus.
On the 18th of June the battle of Waterloo took place.
NAPOLEON AT CHARLEROI.