Personal sketches of his own times, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by Sir Jonah Barrington

My anxiety to witness a battle, without being a party in it, did not long remain ungratified. While walking one afternoon on the Boulevard Italien, a very heavy firing of musketry and cannon burst upon my ear. It proceeded from up the course of the Seine, in the direction of Sevres. I knew at once that an engagement was going forward, and my heart bounded at the thought: the sounds appeared to me of all others the most sublime and tremendous. A light breeze bore them to the city. One moment there was a rattling of musketry, which appeared nearer or more distant according to the strength of the air which wafted its volleys; another, the heavy echo of ordnance rolled through the groves and valley of Sevres, and the village of Issy; again, these seemed superseded by a separate firing, as of small bodies of skirmishers; and the whole was mingled with the distant yet audible shouts and hurras of the assailants and assailed. Altogether, my nerves experienced a sensation different from any that had preceded it, and alike distinguished both from bravery and trepidation.

As yet the battle had only reached me by one sense; although imagination, it is true, supplied the place of all. Though my eyes viewed not the field of action, yet the sanguinary conflict moved before my fancy in most vivid colouring.

I was in company with Mr. Lewins when the first firing roused our attention. “A treble line” of ladies were seated in front of Tortoni’s, under the lofty arbours of the Boulevard Italien, enjoying their ices, attended by a host of unmilitary chers-amis, who, together with mendicant songsters and musicians, were dispersed along that line of female attraction, which “occupied” one side of the entire boulevard, and with scarcely any interruption “stretched away” to the Porte St. Martin. Strange to say, scarcely a movement was excited amongst the fair part of the society by the report of the ordnance and musketry; not one beauty rose from her chair, or checked the passage of the refreshing ice to her pouting lips. I could not but be astonished at this apathy, as I supposed, which was only disturbed by the thunder of a tremendous salvo of artillery, announcing that the affair was becoming more general.

“Ah! mon Dieu! ma chère!” said one lovely creature to another, as they sat at the entrance of Tortoni’s: “sacre Dieu! qu’est-ce que ce superbe coup-là?”—“C’est le canon, ma chère!” replied her friend: “la bataille est à la pointe de commencer.”—“Ah! oui, oui! c’est bien magnifique! écoutez! écoutez!”—“Ah!” returned the other, tasting with curious deliberation her lemon-ice, “cette glace est très excellente!—mon Dieu! mon Dieu!”

Meanwhile the firing continued. I could stand it no longer; I was stung with curiosity, and determined to see the battle. Being at a very little distance from our hotel, I recommended Lady Barrington and my family to retire thither, (which advice they did not take,) and I immediately set off to seek a good position somewhere in the neighbourhood of the fight, which I imagined could not be far distant, as the sounds seemed every moment to increase in strength. It had reached Issy, and seemed approaching. I now perceived a great many gendarmes singly, and in profound silence, strolling about the boulevard, and remarking (though without seeming to notice) every thing and every body.

I had no mode of accounting for the fortitude and indifference of so many females, but by supposing that a great proportion of them might have been themselves campaigning with their husbands or their chers-amis—a circumstance that, I was told, had been by no means uncommon during the wars of the revolution and of Napoleon. But that could not have been the case with at least five hundred who then were seated on the boulevard under the trees.

One lady told me herself, some time after, that she did not dress for ten years in the attire of a female: her husband had acted, I believe, as commissary general. They are both living and well, to the best of my knowledge, at this moment: the lady is particularly clever and intelligent. “Nothing,” said she to me one day, “nothing, sir, can longer appear strange to me. I really think I have witnessed an example of every thing good or evil!” and from the various character of the scenes through which she had passed, I believe her.

A Jew physician living in Rue Richelieu, (a friend of Baron Rothschild,) who had a tolerable telescope, had lent it to me. I first endeavoured to gain admission into the pillar in the Place Vendome, but was refused. I saw that the roof of Nôtre Dame was already crowded, and knew not where to go. I durst not pass a barrier, and I never felt the tortures of curiosity so strongly upon me! At length I got a cabriolet, and desired the man to drive me to any point from whence I might see the battle. He accordingly took me to the farther end of Rue de Bataille, at Chailloit, in the vicinity whereof was the site marked out for the palace of the King of Rome. He seemed to me scarcely to regard any thing about him. (He afterward told me his curious history, which a future volume may contain.) Here was a green plat, with a few half-dead trees; and under one of those I sat down upon the grass and overlooked distinctly the entire left of the engagement and the sanguinary combat which was fought on the slopes, lawn, and about the house and courts of Bellevue.

Whoever has seen the site of that intended palace must recollect that the view it commands is one of the finest imaginable. It had been the hanging gardens of a monastery: the Seine flows at the foot of the slope, and thence the eye wanders to the hill of Bellevue and onward to St. Cloud. The village of Issy, which commences at the foot of Bellevue, stretches itself at some distance thinly up the banks of the Seine toward Paris, nearly to Vaugirard, one of the suburbs—which leaves a border of meadow and garden ground here and there to edge the waters. Extensive, undulating hills rise up high behind the Hotel de Bellevue, and there the first attack had been made upon the Prussians. In front the Pont de Jena opens the entrance to the Champ de Mars, terminated by the magnificent gilt dome of the Ecole Militaire and Hôtel des Invalides, with the city of Paris stretching to the left.

It was then a tranquil evening: the sun, in all his glory, piercing through the smoke which seemed to mount reluctantly from the field of battle, and illuminating its sombre flakes, likened it to a rich gilded canopy moving over the combatants.