On this occasion, the light company, under Captain Richard Drewe, supported the ninety-fifth (rifle brigade) in driving the enemy from the abatis formed at the entrance to the village. The troops suffered very severely during the foregoing operations from the intense cold, the winter being unusually severe, and though sleeping on the line of march was generally fatal, it was no easy matter to prevent it.
General Sir Thomas Graham stated in his despatch, “All the troops engaged behaved with the usual spirit and intrepidity of British soldiers,” and the conduct of Major Dawson Kelly, of the SEVENTY-THIRD, was particularly noticed.
After this success the British troops were employed in constructing a breastwork and battery; on the 3rd of February several pieces of heavy ordnance opened upon the city of Antwerp, and on the French shipping in the Scheldt; the cannonade was continued until the 6th, when General Bulow, having received orders to march southward, to act with the grand army of the Allies, it became necessary to relinquish the attack on Antwerp, when the British retired towards Breda.
On the 16th of March, 1814, a detachment of the SEVENTY-THIRD, consisting of two hundred men, under the command of Major Dawson Kelly, was bombarded by a French seventy-four gun-ship and eight gun brigs, in Fort Frederick on the river Scheldt.
Peace was shortly afterwards concluded. On the 4th of April, Napoleon Bonaparte signed his abdication in favour of his son; but this proposal being rejected, he signed in a few days a second abdication, renouncing the thrones of France and Italy entirely for himself and heirs. He afterwards selected Elba for his residence, which island was ceded to him in full sovereignty for life, and a pension payable from the revenues of France, and by the treaty which was signed at Paris on the 11th of April between the Allies and Napoleon, it was agreed that he should enjoy the imperial title for life. Ample pensions were also assigned to his relatives.
On the 3rd of May, 1814, Louis XVIII. entered Paris, and ascended the throne of his ancestors, and on the 30th of that month the general peace between France and the allied powers of Austria, Russia, Great Britain, and Prussia, was signed at Paris.
In the beginning of May, the battalion was ordered into quarters at Antwerp, and in September following it marched to Tournay, where it arrived in October.
1815
The commencement of the year 1815 saw Louis XVIII. apparently firmly seated on the throne of France; but various causes of discontent existed in that country. The army, long accustomed to war, still retained a chivalrous veneration for Napoleon Bonaparte, who was kept acquainted with the state of the public mind, and this feeling of his former troops. In the evening of the 26th of February he embarked at Porto Ferrajo, in the island of Elba, with about a thousand troops, of whom a few were French, and the remainder Poles, Corsicans, Neapolitans, and Elbese. With this motley band he landed at Cannes, in Provence, on the 1st of March, 1815, and the result proved that his calculations were correct. After being joined by the garrison of Grenoble, he proceeded to Lyons, and entered that city amidst the acclamations of “Vive l’Empereur!” from the soldiers and the people. The possession of the second city in France being thus obtained, Napoleon assumed his former dignity of Emperor, and continued his advance to Paris, which he reached on the 20th of March, his progress having been a continued triumph.
In the meantime, Louis XVIII. had withdrawn from Paris to Ghent, and Napoleon took possession of the throne of France as Emperor, but the allied powers refused to acknowledge his sovereignty, and determined to effect his dethronement.