s innumerable fires were burning. Three large villages
were easily recognized extending over the heights from left to right.
The one nearest to us, we afterward found, was St. Amand, Ligny in the
middle, and two leagues beyond, was Sombref. We could see them more
distinctly, even, than in the day-time, on account of the fires of the
enemy. The Prussians were in the houses and the orchards and the
fields; and beyond these three villages in a line, was another, lying
still higher and farther away, where fires were burning also. This was
Bry, where the rascals had their reserves.

As we looked at this grand spectacle, I understood the disposition and
the plan, and saw too that it would be very difficult to take the
position. On the plain at our left there were fires also, but it was
the camp of the Third corps, which had turned the corner of the forest
after having repulsed the Prussians, and had halted in some village
this side of Fleurus. There were a few fires along the edge of the
forest, on a line with us; these were the fires of our own soldiers. I
believe there were some on both sides of us, but the great mass were at
the left.

We posted our sentinels immediately, and without lighting our fires
laid down at the border of the wood to wait for further orders.
General Schoeffer came again during the night with several hussar
officers, and talked a long time with our commandant, Gemeau, who was
watching under arms. Their conversation was quite distinct at twenty
paces from us. The general said that our army corps continued to
arrive, but that they were very late, and would not all reach here the
next day. I saw at once that he was right; for our fourth battalion,
which should have joined us at Chatelet, did not come till the day
after the battle, when we were almost exterminated by those rascals at
Ligny, having only four hundred men left. If they had been there they
would have had their share of the combat and of the glory.

As I had been on guard the night before, I quietly stretched myself at
the foot of a tree by the side of Buche, with my comrades. It was
about one o'clock in the morning of the day of the terrible battle of
Ligny. Nearly half of those men who were sleeping around me left their
bodies on the plain and in the villages which we saw, to be food for
the grain, such as was growing so beautifully around us, for the oats
and the barley for ages to come. If they had known that, there was
m