1837-1838
After the wedding festivities I went back to sea, a lieutenant still, on board the Hercule, 100 guns—Captain Casy. Captain, petty officers, crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal. Before a week was out I caught myself talking with their accent!
We were bound for South America Gibraltar was our first port, and our reception by the governor, Sir Alexander Woodford, Lady Woodford, and their charming children was of the kindest. I have a recollection of it which I treasure all the more in that later in the day I had to do with another governor with whom I had no cause at all to be satisfied. From Gibraltar we went to Tangier, the Moorish town I was to bombard some years afterwards, but where on this occasion I fought with wild boars only under the guidance of that first-class sportsman, Mr. Drummond Hay. The beauty of the eyes and colouring and the originality of the costume of the Jewish girls at Tangier delighted me, but not to the extent of chasing a certain melancholy from my heart, which had clung about it ever since the beginning of my cruise, through the long night watches, and even amidst the amusements of our stays in port. I was thinking of HER! There always is a HER when one is only twenty! After Tangier the ship stopped at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, to take in water, and during this operation I organized a scientific expedition to the famous Peak of Teneriffe, which is nearly twelve thousand feet high, and from which my professor M. Pouillet had asked me to take some scientific observations. My brother officer, Rigaud de Genouilly, one of the ship's lieutenants, accompanied me. After two days climbing and bivouacking for one night at a great height, we were only about five or six hundred feet or so from the summit, when we were caught up by a messenger bringing us the captain's orders to get back as fast as we could. A despatch boat had just anchored at Santa Cruz bringing news that in consequence of some foreign complication a French squadron had been ordered to Tunis, and would probably go on to the East. The Hercule was to join it immediately. We tore down the mountain, rejoicing in the thought that we were most likely going to do some firing, and after a passage of twenty days, spent in all sorts of fighting drill, we cast anchor in the Bay of Tunis, only to have a bucket of cold water thrown over our heads. The complications on which we had built a whole structure of danger and glory had passed away. The squadron we were to have joined had departed, and orders awaited us to resume our interrupted cruise, and bear away for South America. One piece of news was we were told was that the expedition which was to go and avenge our last year's defeat at Constantine was fitting out at Bona, and that my brother Nemours commanded one of the brigades. Now my big ship was to revictual at Algiers, and I besought the captain, who had a free hand, to touch at Bona and give me a chance of seeing my brother. The passage from Tunis to Bona was delayed by calms, and when we got in, I found to my great regret that the expedition had started, but that a small column was being formed which was to join it, starting on the following morning. At this news I rushed to my captain, and calling all the resources of persuasion and every wile of diplomacy to my aid, I strove to convince him that there would be time for me, during his revictualling, whereat I should be practically useless, to make a rush to the expeditionary force and get back again, and that if the King, my father, knew I had happened to be where I was, he would be much displeased at my turning my back on an enterprise which was to avenge our national honour. There were no telegraph wires in those days, and I contrived to get the desired permission. Twenty-four hours later I turned soldier for the nonce, and started off, mounted and accoutred and full of fresh dreams of glory, destined once more to disappointment—a disappointment shared by various engineer and artillery officers and three Prussians, Messieurs von Willisen, [Footnote: H. de Willisen, aide-de-camp to the Prince of Prussia, who afterwards became the Emperor William, was in chief command of the Holstein army.] von Noville, and Oelrichs, who had arrived too late to start with the expeditionary force, and, like myself, were endeavouring to rejoin it. What shall I say about the march of the column to which I was attached upon Constantine? It lasted over twelve days of fearful weather, during which no discomfort was spared us. Torrents of rain, rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of the regiments in the column brought with it from France. And we had the mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which was so sodden that no gun nor vehicle could get up it, even with triple teams, and listening to the firing of the attacking batteries before Constantine without being able to get there.
One day, during this delay, the chief medical officer, by way of consolation, greeted us with these words at breakfast: "Bad news, gentlemen; we have just discovered that the cesspools of the hospital (a miserable hut) have burst, and for the last twenty-four hours they have been leaking into the spring where we get our drinking water."
"Hang it all, doctor, you really might have kept that to yourself," we all cried in a breath!
Amid all this suffering and discomfort, physical and moral, the courage, spirits, good humour and downright gaiety of the soldiers never failed for a single moment. I had never seen them before under such trying circumstances, and I thought them quite admirable, and their officers too,—the very embodiment of devotion. One day, the rear guard detachment had dropped some way behind the main column, and found itself stopped by an impetuous torrent, which was swelling visibly under a deluge of rain. The first men who tried to cross were carried off their feet, thrown down, and only pulled out with great difficulty. Without a moment's hesitation all the officers plunged into the water, though it was up to their arm-pits, and holding on to each other's arms they formed a sort of animated dam, above which they made their men cross over, and it was all done in the simplest way. Frenchmen of all classes, soldiers, sailors, what-not, a splendid race they are, when the spirit of obedience and discipline inspires them with a sense of duty! At last we came in sight of Constantine, and shortly after of a body of cavalry, the Third Chasseurs d'Afrique, sent out to meet us. From an officer detached in advance we learnt the place had been taken by assault three days previously, and that the Comte de Damremont, general in command, had been cut in two by a round shot, while he was talking to my brother Nemours. Very soon, galloping up to the Coudiat-Ati, I was in the arms of that good brother, who had behaved so brilliantly during the whole campaign. He was in the act of inspecting his brave little army, and we finished the inspection together. Then he scanned me from top to toe, and the smart soldier spoke instead of the brother "You can't go about like that, haven't you anything else to put on?"
"I'm afraid I haven't," I sadly replied, with a humiliated glance at my short jacket, my trousers turned up with a bit of gutta percha, and my straw hat covered with waxed cloth, none of which had been improved by camping out in the mud. The only soldier-like things about me were my sword and my lieutenant's epaulettes. But they manufactured me a cap, a naval lieutenant, Fabre Lamaurelle, who had come up with me, lent me his coat, and so I became presentable.
The sight of the breach excited me greatly, and my first care was to mount it. If my readers will call up the appearance of the buildings pulled down when a new street is opened in Paris, they will get some idea of the picture the top of the breach presented. It was a chaos of ruins, caused by cannon shot and explosions, without any apparent way out. The ground was like the moraine of a glacier, scattered over with caps, epaulettes, and human remains. A soldier of the 2nd Light Infantry was standing sentry beside a big stone.
"What are you doing there?"
"Do you see that bit of a blue cloak down that hole? The colonel is underneath that stone, and the bayonets sticking out of the rubbish belong to the men he was leading. The explosion buried them all alive!"