"Hollo! Joseph! Come and eat with us. Comrades are always comrades, you know."
"That is all very well," said Zébédé; "but I find meat and drink the best comrades."
He shut up my knapsack himself, saying:
"Keep that, Joseph. I have not been so well regaled for more than a month. You shall not lose it."
A half-hour after, the recall was beaten; the skirmishers came in, and Sergeant Pinto, who was among the number, recognized me, and said:
"Well; so you have escaped! But you came back in an evil moment! Things go wrong—wrong!"
The colonel and commandants mounted, and we began moving. The Cossacks withdrew. We marched with arms at will; Zébédé was at my side and related all that passed since Lutzen; the great victories of Bautzen and Wurtzen; the forced marches to overtake the retreating enemy; the march on Berlin; then the armistice, the arrival of the veterans of Spain—men accustomed to pillaging and living on the peasantry.
Unfortunately, at the close of the armistice, all were against us. The country people looked on us with horror; they cut the bridges down, and kept the Russians and Prussians informed of all our movements. It rained almost constantly, and the day of the battle of Dresden, it fell so heavily that the emperor's hat hung down upon his shoulders. But when victorious, we only laughed at these things. Zébédé told me all this in detail; how after the victory at Dresden, General Vandamme, who was to cut off the retreat of the Austrians, had penetrated to Kulm in his ardor; and how those whom we had beaten the day before fell upon him on all sides, front, flank, and rear, and captured him and several other generals, utterly destroying his corps d'armée. Two days before, owing to a false movement of Marshal Macdonald, the enemy had surprised our division, and the fifth, sixth, and eleventh corps on the heights of Luwenberg, and in the mélée Zébédé received two blows from the butt of a grenadier's musket, and was thrown into the river Katzbach. Luckily he seized the over-hanging branch of a tree, and managed to regain the bank. He told me how all that night, despite the blood that flowed from his nose and ears, he had marched to the village of Goldberg, almost dead with hunger, fatigue, and his wounds, and how a joiner had taken pity upon him and given him bread, onions, and water. He told me how, on the day following, they had marched across the fields, each one taking his own course, without orders, because the marshals, generals, and all mounted officers had fled as far as possible, in the fear of being captured. He assured me that fifty hussars could have captured them, one after another; but that by good fortune, Blücher could not cross the river, so that they finally rallied at Wolda, and further on at Buntzlau their officers met them, surprised at yet having troops to lead. He told me how Marshal Oudinot and Marshal Ney had been beaten; the first at Gross-Beeren, and the other at Dennewitz.
We were between three armies, who were uniting to crush us; that of the north, commanded by Bernadotte; that of Silesia, commanded by Blücher; and the army of Bohemia, commanded by Schwartzenberg. We marched in turn against each of them; they feared the emperor and retreated before us; but we could not be at once in Silesia and Bohemia, so march followed march, and countermarch, countermarch. All the men asked was to fight; they wanted their misery to end. A sort of guerrilla, named Thielmann, raised the peasantry against us, and the Bavarians and Wurtemburgers declared against us. We had all Europe on our hands.