"Paget," exclaimed Brigadier-General Sir Charles Stewart, hurrying up at a canter, "allow me to present you with a valuable prisoner. We have just had the honour to take Lieutenant-General Lefebre Desnouettes, commander of the cavalry of the Imperial Guard."
Lord Paget bowed very low to the captive.
Pale, exhausted, and covered with sword-cuts, he was the picture of a soldier; and his eyes had that keen, bright, almost wolfish expression, peculiar to those who have recently stared the grim King of Terrors face to face on the battlefield. He was led away, and was soon after presented to Sir John Moore, to whom he spoke with intense bitterness of his own defeat.
"Bonaparte," said he, "is the minion of fortune; he never forgives the unfortunate, but ever believes them culpable!"
Moore sought to console him, and presented him with a splendid oriental scimitar, which Lefebre ever after preserved with gratitude, and wore in England, whither he was despatched at once in charge of Captain Wyndham, one of the general's aides-de-camp.
The division continued its retreat by the ruined walls and mouldering citadel of Astorga, and Villa Franca del Bierzo, and, though many perished by the way, Quentin Kennedy, endowed by spirit and enthusiasm rather than bodily strength, bore up manfully amid the fatigue, the privations, and the horrors of that long and devious retreat of so many hundred miles, along roads covered with deep snow, over steep and rugged mountain sierras, through half-frozen rivers, where the bridges had been broken down or blown up, and by narrow defiles, followed by an enthusiastic enemy, whose well-victualled force, outnumbering by three times that of Moore, came on fast and surely, with flying artillery, lightly-armed dragoons, and pestilent little Voltigeurs, skirmishing every foot of the way—the sharp ringing of carbines and the boom of field-pieces being the invariable close of each day's march, and the prelude to its resumption in the cold, dark early morning, when the cavalry rear-guard held the advance of the foe in check, till the jaded and half-slept infantry pushed on, and on, and on—hopeless, heartless, and in rags, leaving, en route, in the form of dead and dying men, women, children, and horses, traces of the havoc that neglect and disaster were making in the ranks, for now the Spanish authorities omitted utterly to supply the troops with either billets or rations, or any necessary provisions.
A junction of Hope's division with the main body of the British army was effected, however; on the 31st of December, Moore quitted Astorga with his famine-stricken force, and so hot and fierce was the pursuit, that on the following day, the first of the new year, Napoleon entered the little town at the head of eighty thousand horse and foot, with two hundred pieces of cannon, while many thousand bayonets more were on the march to join him!
The Emperor, however, went no further than Astorga, for there he left to Soult—to use his own inflated words—"the glorious mission of destroying the British—of pursuing them to the point of embarkation, and driving them into the sea!"
And the state of matters we have described continued until the army reached Lugo, after a five days' march through a rugged and savage country.