Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/22

 in Bonn, had hurriedly formed and marched off in the direction of France, many disabled soldiers dropping out of the columns; how, one morning, several bands of Cossacks, dirty, long-bearded fellows, on small, shaggy ponies, had swarmed over the country, and chased the French stragglers, killing many of them; how they had also forced themselves into the houses, stealing everything that took their fancy; and how, when the Cossacks had disappeared, the peasants hid their few remaining possessions in the woods, to save them from the oncoming Russians.

Soon after, the troops belonging to the allied powers marched through the country, on their way into France to fight the campaign of 1814, which ended in the occupation of Paris and Napoleon's exile to the Island of Elba. A short period of apparent peace followed; but when Napoleon, in 1815, suddenly returned from Elba and again seized the government of France, the Prussians levied fresh troops on the Rhine; all able-bodied young men were obliged to enlist; and so my father, who was then eighteen years of age, joined an infantry regiment and marched off to the seat of war in Belgium. The troops were drilled on the way thither in the manual of arms and in the most necessary evolutions to fit them for immediate service. My father's regiment passed over the field of Waterloo a few days after the battle, on its way to a small French fortress which they were to besiege, but which soon capitulated without bloodshed. Later he was transferred to the artillery and raised to the dignity of a corporal, an honor which gratified not a little his youthful ambition. He regretted never to have been in actual combat, and later in life, when his contemporaries told the stories of their deeds and dangers, he was always obliged to admit, with reluctance, the harmless character of his own war experiences.