"Their captain, the Chevalier Coeurdefer, is the representative of an ancient but decayed family in Lorraine, who spent his patrimony among the gambling-houses, the cabarets and bordels of Paris. Dismissed summarily from the French line when a captain in the Regiment du Roi for barbarously slaying a brother officer, after severely wounding him in a duel about a courtesan, he has now joined our army against the Prussians, in the hope of winning himself a new name by reckless bravery, cruelty, and outrage. He is handsome and young, but without fear of God or man; without religion, and without honour. Even their chaplain—"
"What! they have a chaplain?" exclaimed Pringle, laughing.
"Yes, a canon of Notre Dame, who was unfrocked by the Archbishop of Paris for having an affair with a citizen's wife in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He is a burlesque on the clerical character, and fights—as I was about to say—more duels than even the chevalier his leader. One of this choice band plundered a church at Cologne, and as sacrilege could not be tolerated, Prince Xavier made a great hubbub about it. The thief had been seen; he wore the tattered uniform of the Franche Compagnie, and had huge red whiskers. The chevalier paraded his men next day for inspection. Bearing a piece of the true cross, the holy fathers came along the line in solemn procession to discover the culprit; but lo! every man was shaven to the eyes, and not a vestige of whisker was to be seen in the whole band of the Chevalier Jules.
"On the 2nd June, 1759, with the force of M. de Contades, we joined the Maréchal Duc de Broglio near Giessen, and left M. d'Armentieres with twenty thousand men to oppose Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, in the neighbourhood of the Wesel; and on this important day we had an open rupture with the Free Company of Coeurdefer, for when detailed together to form the advanced guard of horse, the gentlemen of the Mousquetaires Gris et Rouges flatly refused to share a post of honour with a corps of outlaws. Then the chevalier, flaming with irrepressible fury, flung his glove in the face of our colonel, Henri the Vicomte de Chateaunoir, with whom he had an old unfinished feud, and a duel to the death was only prevented by the determination of the maréchal duc, who bound them both down by solemn promises to keep the peace towards each other, at least until the close of the campaign; but the villain Coeurdefer made a vow of vengeance, swearing to 'lay the vicomte at his feet, where he had laid many a better man;' and you see how he has kept that vow, for by him or by his men our wounded leader was murdered on the field on the morning after Minden!"
"I do not understand," said Major Cringle, in whose tent this conversation took place one evening, when, with a few droppers-in, he and the now-convalescent Mousquetaire lingered over a few bottles of Rhenish wine; "in fact, it seems to me a marvel how a gallant soldier such as the late Prince Xavier of Saxony could tolerate the presence of such a ruffian and bully as this Captain Coeurdefer."
"For various reasons; he is brave——"
"Bravery is no strange quality in the French or Imperial armies, I think," said one of the 51st.
"Moreover, he is an expert forager, skilful in war, useful in council, and leader of two hundred troopers, who have only one virtue—their devotion to him. Besides, the brutal qualities he displays are not singular in the history of wars in Germany. We have had many such examples as he among the mixed races which make up the armies of France and Austria.
"In the last century there was the terrible Count Merode, a colonel of musketeers, whose name has become a proverb for all that is vile; and there was the ferocious Jehan de Wart, a colonel of horse, who in Bavaria spared neither man, woman, nor child, when the lust of blood glowed in his fiery heart."
"Thank Heaven! we have no such fellows among us," said the officer of the 51st, complacently.