Guard began to retreat, firing from
all sides in order to keep off the wretches who sought safety within
it. Only the officers and generals might save themselves.

I shall never forget, even if I should live a thousand years, the
immeasurable, unceasing cries which filled the valley for more than a
league; and in the distance the _grenadiere_ was sounding like an
alarm-bell in the midst of a conflagration. But this was much more
terrible; it was the last appeal of France, of a proud and courageous
nation; it was the voice of the country saying, "Help, my children! I
perish!"

This rolling of the drums of the Old Guard in the midst of disaster,
had in it something touching and horrible. I sobbed like a
child;--Buche hurried me along, but I cried, "Jean, leave me--we are
lost, everything is lost!"

The thought of Catherine, and Mr. Goulden, and Pfalzbourg, did not
enter my mind. What astonishes me to-day is, that we were not
massacred a hundred times on the road, where files of English and
Prussians were passing. But perhaps they mistook us for Germans, or
they were running after the Emperor, for they were all hoping to see
him.

Opposite the little farm of Rossomme, we were obliged to turn off the
road to the right, into the field; it was here that the last square of
the Guard still held out against the attack of the Prussians; they soon
gave way, for twenty minutes afterward the enemy poured over the road,
and the Prussian chasseurs separated into bands to arrest all those who
straggled or remained behind. This road was like a bridge; all who did
not keep on it fell into the abyss.

At the slope of the ravine in the rear of the inn "Passe-Avant," some
Prussian hussars rushed upon us: there were not more than five or six
of them, and they called out to us to surrender; but if we had raised
the butts of our muskets, they would have sabred us. We aimed at them,
and seeing that we were not wounded, they passed on.

This forced us to return to the road, where the uproar could be heard
for at least two leagues; cavalry, infantry, artillery, ambulances, and
baggage-wagons, were creeping along the road pell-mell, howling,
beating, neighing, and weeping. The retreat at Leipzig furnished no
such spectacle as this.

The moon rose above the wood behind Planchenois, and lighted up this
crowd of shapskas,[1] bear-skin caps, helmets, sabres, bayonets, broken
caissons, and abandoned cannon; the crowd and confusion inc