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 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 281 ail English officer ; and because of the position in chap. which he stood, the professional knowledge which _J L, guided his observation, the composure with which he was able to see and to describe, and the more than common responsibility which attaches upon a military narrator, it is probable that his testi- mony will be always appealed to by historians who shall seek to give a truthful account of the founding of the Second French Empire. At the moment when the firing began, this officer was looking upon the military display with his wife at his side, and was so placed that if he looked eastward he would carry his eye along the Boulevard for a distance of about 800 yards, and see as far as the head of the column ; and if he looked westward he could see to the point where the Boulevard Montmartre runs into the Boulevard des Italiens. This is what he writes : ' I went to ' the balcony at which my wife was standing, and ' remained there watching the troops. The whole 1 Boulevard, as far as the eye could reach, was 'crowded with them, — principally infantry in ' subdivisions at quarter distance, and here and ' there a batch of twelve-pounders and howitzers, ' some of which occupied the rising ground of the ' Boulevard Poissoniere. The officers were smok- ' ing their cigars. The windows were crowded ' with people, principally women, tradesmen, ser- ' vants, and children, or, like ourselves, the occu- ' pants of apartments. Suddenly, as I was in- ' tently looking with my glass at the troops in the ' distance eastward, a few musket-shots were fired