The Invasion of France in 1814

Toward ten o'clock, Catherine Lefevre and Louise, after having wished Hullin good-night, went up to sleep in the room over the large kitchen; in which there were two feather-bed...

When Jean-Claude Hullin, in his shirt-sleeves, opened the shutters of his little house the next morning, he saw all the neighboring mountains--the Jaegerthal, the Grosmann, the...

Materne and his two boys walked for some time in silence. The weather had become fine; the pale winter sun shone over the brilliant snow without melting it, and the ground remai...

The next day at dawn, Hullin, wearing his blue cloth Sunday breeches, his large brown velvet jacket and red waistcoat with brass buttons, and a broad beaver mountaineer's hat tu...

Catherine, Louise, Doctor Lorquin and all the others came out of the farm, cheering and congratulating each other, gazing at the marks of the bullets and at the bank blackened w...

If you would wish to know the history of the great invasion of 1814, such as it was related to me by the old hunter Frantz du Hengst, you must transport yourself to the village...

For three days they had been entirely without food on the Falkenstein, and Dives had given no signs of life. How often, during those long days of agony, did the mountaineers tur...

The farm was silent; a sentry, his musket over his arm, was pacing before the granary, where about thirty partisans were asleep upon the straw. At the sight of these great dark...

In front of the farm, on a bank, about a hundred feet distant, the Cossack could be seen who had been killed the previous evening by Kasper. He was white with the frost, and as...

You can imagine the animation at the farm, the bustling of the domestics, the shouts of enthusiasm, the chinking of glasses and forks, the joy depicted on all faces, when Jean-C...

An extraordinary agitation reigned at that time all along the line of the Vosges: the tidings of the invasion which was approaching spread from village to village, and among the...

Catherine Lefevre came out of the ancient ruin about seven in the morning; Louise and Hexe-Baizel were still asleep; but broad daylight, the clear light of the high regions, was...

All through the battle, till the close of night, the good people of Grandfontaine had observed the poor crazy Yegof standing upon the crest of the Little Donon, and, his crown o...

Toward two o'clock the next morning, snow began to fall. At daybreak the Germans had left Grandfontaine, Framont, and even Schirmeck. In the distance, on the plains of Alsace, c...

The old clock began to strike nine; and as Hullin was recommencing his work, the door opened and Catherine Lefevre, the mistress of Bois-de-Chenes, appeared on the threshold, to...

The Germans, huddled together in Grandfontaine, fled in crowds in the direction of Framont, on foot and on horseback, hurrying, dragging along their ammunition-wagons, strewing...

All the friends of Hullin, Marc Dives, and of Mother Lefevre, their long gaiters on their legs and old muskets on their shoulders, journeyed, through the silent woods, toward th...

As Hullin, at the head of the mountaineers, was taking his measures for the defence of his country, the madman Yegof, with his tin crown, that sad spectacle of humanity shorn of...

Hullin had established his head-quarters in the large room on the ground floor, to the right of the barn, facing Framont: on the other side of the passage was the ambulance: the...

"For twenty years have I heard speak of the Russians, Austrians, and Cossacks," said old Materne, smiling, "and I shall not be sorry to see a few within reach of my musket: it g...

While Hullin was learning the disaster of our armies, and was walking slowly, his head bent, and an anxious expression on his face, toward the village of Charmes, everything wen...

On the rock of the Falkenstein, high up in the clouds, stands a tower, somewhat sunken at its base. This tower, overgrown with brambles, hawthorn, and bilberries, is as old as t...

At the end of the dark alley was the yard of the farm, into which one descended by five or six well-worn steps. On the left were the granary and the wine-press; to the right the...

Hullin's orders had all been carried out; the defiles of the Zorne and of the Sarre were well guarded; while that of Blanru, the extreme point of the position, had been put into...

At the end of the valley of Bouleaux, two gun-shots from the village of Charmes, to the left, the little troop began slowly to ascend the path to the old "burg." Hullin, remembe...

The combat was hardly over, when, toward eight o'clock, Marc Dives, Gaspard, and about thirty mountaineers, laden with provisions, ascended the Falkenstein. What a spectacle awa...

In the evening of that same day, after their supper, Louise, having taken her spinning-wheel, was gone for a little diversion to the Mother Rochart's where all the good women an...