he
officers under Louis XVIII. must be exterminated, and others, that we
were given up _en masse_, and several declared that the marshals were
traitors, and ought to be court-martialed and shot.

At last the commandant ordered a halt, and riding down the line he told
the men, that the traitors had left too late to do mischief, that we
would make the attack that very day, and that the enemy would not have
time to profit by the treason, and that he would be surprised and
overwhelmed. This calmed the fury of a great proportion of the men,
and we resumed our march, and all along the route, we heard repeatedly
that the exposure of our plans had been made too late.

But our anger gave place to joy, when about ten o'clock we heard the
thunder of cannon five or six leagues to the left, on the other side of
the Sambre. The men raised their shakos on their bayonets and shouted:
"Forward! Vive l'Empereur!"

Many of the old soldiers wept, and over all that great plain there was
one immense shout; when one regiment had ceased another took it up.
The cannon thundered incessantly. We quickened our steps. We had been
marching on Charleroi since seven o'clock, when an order reached us by
an orderly to support the right. I remember that in all the villages
through which we passed, the doors and windows were full of eager
friendly faces, waving their hands and shouting, "The French, the
French!" We could see that they were friendly to us, and that they
were of the same blood as ourselves; and in the two halts that we made,
they came out with their loaves of excellent home-made bread, with a
knife stuck in the crust, and great jugs of black beer, and offered
them to us without asking any return. We had come to deliver them
without knowing it, and nobody in their country knew it either, which
shows the sagacity of the Emperor, for there were already in that
corner of the Sambre et Meuse, more than one hundred thousand men, and
not the slightest hint of it had reached the enemy.

The treason of Bourmont had prevented our surprising them as they were
scattered about in their separate camps. We could then have
annihilated them at a blow, but now it would be much more difficult.

We continued our march till after noon, in the intense heat and choking
dust. The farther we advanced the greater the number of troops we saw,
infantry and cavalry. They massed themselves more and more, so to
speak, and behind us there were still other