Chateau and Country Life in France by Mary Alsop King Waddington
page 61 of 237 (25%)
page 61 of 237 (25%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
years of the reign of Louis XV--carried his youthful ardour and dreams
of liberty to America and took part, as did so many of the young French nobles, in the great struggle for independence that was being fought out on the other side of the Atlantic. Soon after his return to France he was named Ambassador to Russia to the court of Catherine II, and was supposed to have been very much in the good graces of that very pleasure-loving sovereign. He accompanied her on her famous trip to the Crimea, arranged for her by her minister and favourite, Potemkin--when fairy villages, with happy populations singing and dancing, sprang up in the road wherever she passed as if by magic--quite dispelling her ideas of the poverty and oppression of some of her subjects. Among the portraits there is a miniature of the Empress Catherine. It is a fine, strongly marked face. She wears a high fur cap--a sort of military pelisse with lace jabots and diamond star. The son of the Maréchal, also soldier and courtier, was aide-de-camp to Napoleon and made almost all his campaigns with him. His description of the Russian campaign and the retreat of the "Grande Armée" from Moscow is one of the most graphic and interesting that has ever been written of those awful days. His memoirs are quite charming. Childhood and early youth passed in the country in all the agonies of the Terror--simply and severely brought up in an atmosphere absolutely hostile to any national or popular movement. The young student, dreaming of a future and regeneration for France, arrived one day in Paris, where an unwonted stir denoted that something was going on. He heard and saw the young Republican General Bonaparte addressing some regiments. He marked the proud bearing of the men--even the recruits--and in an explosion of patriotism his |
|