Here is a touching incident. The day after the battle of Palestro, the Zouaves buried their dead comrades in a great pit dug on a little eminence. When the earth was levelled, they bid adieu, with emotion, to their slain brothers-in-arms. “Comrades!” cried a sergeant, “may God receive you! ’Tis your turn to-day—to morrow it may be ours!” With these simple words the Zou-Zous left their dead brethren to repose on the field of their victory.
And the wounded Zou-Zous, how bear they the agony of musket ball, or bayonet thrust, or sabre gash, when the excitement of the actual combat is over? When Commandant de Bellefonds, of the Zouaves of the Guard, was wounded at Magenta, his men wished to carry him to the ambulance. “Remain in your place,” said he. “Leave me, my friends; I forbid you to remove me: continue to fight.” After the Austrians were repulsed, the Zou-Zous sought their brave officer and bore him away. He eventually recovered.
The Zouaves being by far the most popular and brilliant corps in the army, it is considered, both by officers and privates, an absolute privilege to wear their uniform, and both sub and superior officers have been known to refuse to exchange into line regiments even with prospect of higher rank.
Some of the Zouaves were themselves taken prisoners and sent to Vienna, where they attracted extraordinary notice. On their arrival they were surrounded by Hungarian and Polish soldiers, who examined their uniform and criticized their personal appearance with lively curiosity, making each poor Zou-Zou exhibit himself and explain the use of every portion of his equipments—which, it is said, he did with great good humour. By way of contrast to the above, we present the following. A number of Austrian prisoners arrived at Toulouse. A sub-officer of the 3rd Zouaves, whose family lived there, and who was himself en route to Paris, happened to be at the railway station when the prisoners arrived, and he recognized three Austrians whom he had made prisoners at the battle of Magenta, where he was wounded by one of them. He now shook hands with his ex-captives, and having obtained permission to defer his own departure, he took all three home with him, and treated them with the utmost hospitality.”
ZURICH, BATTLES OF.—The French were defeated here, losing 4000 men, June 4th, 1799. The Imperialists were also defeated here by the French, under Messina, and lost the great number of 20,000 men in action. September 24th, 1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the Register of the Convent of the Friars Minors in Poictiers, there appear the names of the knights and great men buried there after this battle. Among these we find, the Constable of France, the Bishop of Chalons, the Viscount of Chauvigny, the Lords of Mailly, of Rademonde, of Rochecheruire, of Chaumont, of Hes, of Corbon, and a great number of knights. In the church of the Frères Prescheurs there were buried the Duke of Bourbon, the Marshal de Clermont, the Viscount de Rochechouart, the Lord de la Fayette, the Viscount d’Aumale, the Lord St. Gildart, and more than fifty knights.
[2] The rocket consisted of an iron tube, about two foot long, and three inches in diameter, attached to a bamboo cane of fifteen or twenty feet in length. The tube is filled with combustible matter; and this dreadful missile entering the head of a column, passes through a man’s body, and instantly resumes its original force; thus destroying or wounding twenty men, independent of innumerable lacerations caused by the serpentine motion of the long bamboo, which in its irresistible progress, splinters to atoms, when the iron tube assumes a rapid rotary motion, and buries itself in the earth.
[3] It is a curious and interesting literary fact, that Campbell wrote this in a foreign land, viz., at Ratisbon, on hearing of war being declared against Denmark. Some portion of it is said to have been previously roughly sketched out, owing to his admiration of the music of “Ye Gentlemen of England.” His splendid lyric, “The battle of the Baltic,” soon followed.