Tag: Baggage
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Guard Grenadier Philippe Ballut at Lützen and Bautzen, 1813 …
In the evening, with the 2nd Grenadier Regiment occupying the ground on a plateau, the soldiers sighted the town of Lützen, with its round bell tower and a tall belfry tower dominating the large tile roofed buildings. The French cavalry had already entered the town to capture a few stragglers. It was known that Blücher…
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Captain Puffeney’s recollections of the 1806-1807 Campaigns …
The son of humble farmers from the Franche-Comté region, Captain Pierre-François Puffeney was born in Les Planches, near Arbois, on 5 December 1772. He was not yet twenty when he enlisted as a volunteer in the 2nd Battalion of the Jura, to fly, as it was then called, to the defence of the Fatherland. A…
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Correspondence of grognard Jean-Henry Rattier (IV) …
Bayonne, 15 March 1812. We arrived here the day before yesterday, and we are leaving tomorrow for Paris, where we will arrive on 16 April. I would have obtained permission to go to Ardèche, but I had to be in the capital by 15 April, which prevented me from obtaining it. I could only have…
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A letter on the Chasseurs à Cheval of the Guard, after Friedland …
Here we present an unpublished letter from Colonel Claude-Étienne Guyot (1768-1837) to Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais about the plight of the Chasseurs à Cheval of the Imperial Guard after the battle of Friedland. We learn that Guyot regularly kept Eugène informed about the state of the regiment (Eugène having served in the prestigious unit) and…
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A cavalry officer’s recollections of the battle of Vitoria, 1813 …
Charles Louis Constant, Count of Agoult (1790-1875), recalls his experiences set during the battle which is considered ‘the Waterloo of the Peninsula’. He was a captain serving in the 4th Dragoon Regiment. Our ‘fortunes’ in Spain were becoming more critical by the day. Reason had long been warning to withdraw behind the Ebro (river). Napoleon…
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To Austerlitz – A French officer’s 1805 journal … (II)
Ingolstadt, 2 Brumaire year XIV (24 October 1805). Frankly, it was time for the Austrians to surrender their arms to us at Ulm. If they had thought of being stubborn, I believe that the besiegers would have been more to be pitied than the besieged. During the 48 hours which preceded the surrender, I lived…