The sounds of the drum beat as you're about to loose a flag and seeing the IVe_45e line marching up a hill into countless highlanders, then seeing the 7e charge across the field to help, the 1er holding the central flag in the ruined house against wave after wave of british troops - just epic.
I want it all back, the big battles the fun and enjoyment :/
This thread and all the cool stories that get posted are giving me a serious history boner.
Oh shit! That reminds me I've still got accounts of 1er at Waterloo to go, completely forgot!
Readers recall that when we left off the 1er had repulsed multiple allied cavalry charges and saved the 95th de Lignes Eagle.
After seeing that the 1er Grenadier’s withdrawal was in less danger, Napoleon left to see to the 1er Chasseurs at Le Caillou. The 1er were generally unmolested after fending off the British cavalry near Rosomme, despite the slaughter surrounding them, General Petit wrote:
“Half a league [about two kilometre] from Genappe the two squares joined together on the main road where they marched on in column by sections. In this manner, and whilst marching, they were joined by many soldiers from the other regiments of the Guard. The enemy followed up closely but did not bother them.”
Maudit describes the horrors of the retreat:
"What a distressing spectacle had passed under our eyes between the battlefield and Genappe! A multitude of wounded, not wanting to return to the pontoons, nor to fall into the hands of the Prussians, who, in the flush of an unexpected victory, rarely gave quarter, they re-doubled their efforts to drag themselves along the road followed by the remainder of the army, but soon overwhelmed by fatigue and the need for medical attention, and not even having had the initial care from a medical station, they fell to be finished off by Bulow's uhlans and hussars: some of our wounded blew out their own brains rather than survive such a disaster or return to the English pontoons."
Returning to General Petit, he described the terrible situation at Genappe when the 1er arrived:
“As the 1st Regiment arrived at Genappe, a panic had seized the soldiers of the artillery train. They had cut the traces of their horses, overturned their guns and caissons, fired on us, so that the village and the horses were so much of an obstacle that we had to by-pass the village by its left. The Regiment marched across the fields along the tracks and by-roads throughout the night.”
Ejaculating yet Augy?
