age--I resolved to prove to my comrades that if I had neither
experience nor military talent, I was at least brave; and placing
myself resolutely at their head I set off in the direction where I
knew we would encounter the enemy.

We had been marching for a long time when our scouts spotted a
peasant who was trying to hide. They hastened to capture him and
bring him back. I questioned him. He came, it seemed, from four or
five leagues away, and claimed that he had not seen any Austrian
troops. I was sure he was lying, either from fear or from cunning,
because we were very close to the enemy cantonments. I remembered
then that I had read in a book about partisan warfare, which my
father had given me to study, that to persuade the inhabitants of a
country in which one is fighting to talk, it is sometimes necessary
to frighten them. So I roughened my voice, and, trying to give my
boyish face a ferocious look, I shouted, "What! You rascal! You have
been wandering about in a country occupied by a great body of
Austrian troops, and you claim you have seen nothing? You are a spy!
Come on lads, let's shoot him right away."

I ordered four Hussars to dismount, indicating to them not to harm
the fellow, who, finding himself held by the troopers whose carbines
had just been loaded in front of him, was overcome by such terror
that he swore that he would tell me all he knew. He was a servant in
a monastery, who had been given a letter to take to relatives of the
Prior, and he had been told that if he ran into the French, he was
not to tell them where the Austrians were; but now that he was
forced to speak, he told us that a league from us there were several
regiments of the enemy billeted in the villages, and that about a
hundred of Barco's Hussars were in a hamlet which was only a short