more.
One of his regiments, being engaged in the interval with the Russian
army, was mowed down with grape-shot, and hacked to pieces by the
Cossacks, only eighteen men being left. General d'Hautpoult, forced to
fall back three times with his division, led it back twice to the charge;
and as he threw himself against the enemy the third time shouted loudly,
"Forward, cuirassiers, in God's name! forward, my brave cuirassiers?"
But the grapeshot had mowed down too many of these brave fellows; very
few were left to follow their chief, and he soon fell pierced with wounds
in the midst of a square of Russians into which he had rushed almost
alone.

I think it was in this battle also that General Ordenerl killed with his
own hands a general officer of the enemy. The Emperor asked if he could
not have taken him alive. "Sire," replied the general with his strong
German accent, "I gave him only one blow, but I tried to make it a good
one." On the very morning of the battle, General Corbineau, the
Emperor's aide-de-camp, while at breakfast with the officers on duty,
declared to them that he was oppressed by the saddest presentiments; but
these gentlemen, attempting to divert his mind, turned the affair into a
joke. General Corbineau a few moments after received an order from his
Majesty, and not finding some money he wished at Monsieur de Meneval's
quarters, came to me, and I gave it to him from the Emperor's private
purse; at the end of a few hours I met Monsieur de Meneval, to whom I
rendered an account of General Corbineau's request, and the sum I had
lent him. I was still speaking to Monsieur de Meneval, when an officer
passing at a gallop gave us the sad news of the general's death. I have
never forgotten the impression made on me by this sad news, and I still
find no explanation of the strange mental distress which gave warning to
this brave soldier of his approaching end.

Poland was relying upon the Emperor to re-establish her independence, and
consequently the Poles were filled with hope and enthusiasm on witnessing
the arrival of the French army. As for our soldiers, this winter
campaign was most distasteful to them; for cold and wretchedness, bad
weather and bad roads, had inspired them with an extreme aversion to this
country.

In a review at Warsaw, at which the inhabitants crowded around our
troops, a soldier began to swear roundly against the snow and mud, and,
as a consequence, against Poland and the Poles. "Y