The Conscript: A Story of the French war of 1813

"It is a pretty present, Joseph," said he. "Catharine ought to think herself happy in having such a lover as you. She is a good girl. Now we can take our supper. Set the table."

All this bustle and movement produced a strange effect upon me, and I could not yet realize that I must quit the city. As I was thus in the greatest distress, the door opened an...

"Yes, yes," said he; "all this is very sad. Before the conscription of 1798, I too was going to marry a girl of our village, who was named Margrédel, and whom I loved better tha...

And I, raising myself too from the ground, saw Napoleon, riding calmly through the hail of shot---his hat pulled down over his large head--his gray great-coat open, a broad red...

We had great difficulty in getting into the townhouse and in climbing the old oak stairs, where people were going up and down in swarms. In the great hall above, the gendarme Ke...

At the corner of the Hotel de Ville, I saw a sight which I shall remember all my life. There, around a placard, were more than five hundred people, men and women crowded against...

"Everything is moving; I feel his presence in the air. You do not yet understand this, conscript, but he is here; everything says so. Before he came, we were lame, crippled; onl...

As he spoke, I remembered that the Mayor of Phalsbourg had received the cross for having gone to meet the Empress Marie Louise in carriages garlanded with flowers, singing old s...

Sergeant Pinto hung his lantern to the pillar in the middle; each man placed his piece in the rack, and then took off his knapsack, his blouse and his shoes, without speaking. Z...

Instead of following "Madame Thérèse" with stories celebrating the victories of Napoleon and thus appealing to their compatriots' love of glory and military illusions, MM. Erckm...

Zébédé told me all this in detail; how, after the victory of Dresden, General Vandamme, who was to cut off the retreat of the Austrians, had penetrated to Kulm in his ardor; and...

Zimmer, mistrusting nothing, went some fifteen feet out. He was a good swimmer, but his left arm was yet weak, and the strength of the current carried him away so quickly that h...

At daybreak, wagons arrived with food and brandy for us; the rain had ceased; we made soup, but nothing could warm me; I had caught the fever; within I was cold while my body bu...

At nine o'clock the Austrians formed their columns of attack on the Caunewitz road, and poured down on us from all sides. Nevertheless we held our own until about ten o'clock, a...