The background of this eminently picturesque scene, under the blazing eastern sun, was the wide horizon of the mountains of Bou Cada and Taguin, amongst which my brother Aumale captured Abd-el-Kadir's smalah.
On my way back from Boghar I paid a visit to the military works at the Chiffa Gorge, where the 33rd Regiment of the Line was building a wonderful road, under circumstances of the utmost danger and difficulty; and I returned from my tour in Africa feeling deeper admiration and respect than ever for our soldiers, who are as patient under hardship, and as plucky when they have to work in dangerous places, as they are brave in actual battle.
Leaving Algiers, the squadron continued its cruise. We were a great deal at sea, much more than is feasible nowadays, when it costs something considerable in fuel to go the smallest distance. We anchored one evening in a Sardinian bay, where nobody ever stopped by any chance, but which offered a pleasant resting-place for the night at that fine season.
After dinner, I gave the officers leave to go ashore. They found a perfect desert, and any houses they came upon barricaded; but though human inhabitants were lacking, there was an incredible amount of game. Hares swarmed upon the ground. At last one inhabitant turned up, and then some others, and friendly relations were established.
The population, it appeared, had fled at our approach, taking us (I am not joking, truly) for Barbary Moors, coming to make a raid for slaves. Information travels slowly in those parts.
We went to Cagliari, Palermo, Leghorn, Spezzia, and Genoa in succession, and then the squadron returned to winter at Toulon. The period of my command had run out save for these winter months. Being much overworked, and far from well, I applied to be relieved of my functions, and on the 26th November I made them over to Admiral Trehouard, who had commanded one of the divisions under my orders. Trehouard was a brave Breton, who had performed a splendid feat during an action at Obligado in La Plata, where he commanded the French portion of an Anglo-French flotilla, sent to force its way up the river, which was blocked by a boom and defended by a number of forts. The little fleet met with an energetic and obstinate resistance. Several ships had been put hors de combat, including Trehouard's own, which was disabled and had half her crew on shore. The struggle lasted on still, and threatened to end in our defeat, when Captain Hope, commanding the English contingent, ordered out his boats, and went and cut through the boom under a hail of bullets, while Trehouard boarded the last ship he had that was able to move, and ordered her commander, M. de Miniac, who lost his leg at St. Juan d'Ulloa, to run her ashore close to the enemy's principal battery.
After a momentary struggle, and in spite of the Argentine officers' shouts of "Fuego al pelo blanco!" (Fire at the white head!), (Trehouard was prematurely gray), on the quarterdeck; the moral and physical result of the hand-to-hand struggle ended in a complete rout of the enemy. Trehouard was made a rear-admiral, and no man ever deserved his step better.
A young officer was killed beside him that day whose name was Hello. His father, a friend of mine, had put him under my wing when he left the Naval College, and I had watched over his career with sincere affection for several years. Every time I pass one of the commonplace statues placed in our public squares in memory of political chatterers who have died quietly in their beds, I think of all those brave fellows who have died obscurely for their country, with no funeral oration but the tears of their broken-hearted families, but who have carried away to their eternal dwelling-place the proud consolation of duty performed.
I returned to Paris. What a state of things was there! Politics had overwhelmed everything else. To the lovers of order, who had already found their condition oppressive, the state of affairs was soon to become fatal. The makers of sedition, on the other hand, found it most blessed. But to the country at large, as events have too surely proved, it was disastrous.
I will not dwell too long on this sad period, my personal recollections of which are mingled with the events of a well-known page of our national history.