CHAPTER X

GENERAL DE PREROLLES

The sub-lieutenant had kept his word, and the progress of his career
deserves detailed mention.

He was a lieutenant at the taking of Puebla, where he was first to mount
in the assault of the Convent of Guadalupita. Captain of the Third
Zouaves after the siege of Oajaca, he had exercised, during the rest of
the expedition, command over a mounted company, whose duty was to
maintain communications between the various columns, continuing, at the
same time, their operations in the Michoacan.

This confidential mission, requiring as much power to take the initiative
as it demanded a cool head, gave the Marquis opportunity to execute, with
rapidity and decision, several master-strokes, which, in the following
circumstances, won for him the cross of the Legion of Honor.

The most audacious of the guerrillas who had devastated this fertile
country was a chief called Regulas. He pillaged the farms, stopped
railway trains, boldly demanding ransom from captives from the municipal
governments of large towns. He was continually, active, and always
inaccessible.

Warned by his scouts that the followers of this villain menaced the town
of Pazcuaro, Captain de Prerolles prepared himself eagerly to meet them.
He overtook them in a night march, and fell upon them unexpectedly, just
as they were holding up the diligence from Morelia to Guadalajara. His
plans had been so well laid that not a man escaped. What was the surprise
of the French officer to find, among the travellers, delivered by himself
from certain death, Paul Landry, the principal cause of his ruin, who the
chances of war now laid under obligations to him!

"This is my revenge," said the Captain, simply, to Landry, attempting to
avoid his thanks, and returning to him intact his luggage, of which the
chinacos had not had time to divide the contents.

Reconciled in Algiers with his regiment, Henri de Prerolles did not again
quit the province of Constantine except to serve in the army of the
Rhine, as chief of battalion in the line, until the promotions which
followed the declaration of war in 1870. Officer of the Legion of Honor
for his gallantry at Gravelotte and at St. Privat, and assigned for his
ability to the employ of the chief of corps, he had just been called upon
to assume command of his former battalion of chasseurs, when the
disastrous surrender of Metz left him a prisoner of war in the hands of
the Germans.

Profoundly af