Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/271

 BETWEEN THE CZAK AND THE SULTAN. 229 — the apparition of the indignant Colonel whose chap, barrack had been invaded — was exactly what was L. to be expected, exactly what was to be combated; but yet, as though it were something monstrous and undreamt of, it came upon the Prince with a crushing power. To him, a literary man, standing in a barrack-yard in the dress of the great con- queror, an angry Colonel, with authentic warrant to command, was something real, and therefore, it seems, dreadfuL In a moment Prince Louis succumbed to him. Some thought that, after what had been done that morning, the Prince owed it to the unfortunate Vaudrey (whom he had seduced into the plot) to take care not to let the enterprise collapse without testing his fortune to the utmost by a strenuous, not to say desperate resistance ; but this view did not prevail One of the ornaments which the Prince wore was a sword ; yet, without striking a blow, he suffered himself to be publicly stripped of his grand cordon of the Legion of Honour and all his other decora- tions.* According to one account, the angry Colonel inflicted this dishonour with his own hands, and not only pulled the grand cordon from the Prince's bosom, but tore off his epaulettes, and trampled both epaulettes and grand cordon under foot. When he had been thus stripped the Prince stating the arrival of Lt.-Col. Talandier in the barrack-yard, the despatch says, ' Dans une minute L. N. Bonaparte et les ' raiserables qui avaient pris parti pour hii out etc arretes, efc ' les d6corations dont ils etaient revfitua ont e^e arrache*es par ' les Bohlata dn 4G"'e.'
 * Despatch of General Voirol, 'Moniteur,' 2d Nov. After