of Cossacks; and when the Emperor was informed of this circumstance the
day after the battle, his resentment was appeased, though not his
disappointment. Our troops bivouacked on the field of battle, which his
Majesty visited three times, for the purpose of directing the assistance
of the wounded, and removal of the dead.

Generals d'Hautpoult, Corbineau, and Boursier were mortally wounded at
Eylau; and it seems to me I can still hear the brave d'Hautpoult saying
to his Majesty, just as he dashed off at a gallop to charge the enemy:
"Sire, you will now see my great claws; they will pierce through the
enemy's squares as if they were butter" An hour after he was no more.
One of his regiments, being engaged in the interval with the Russian
army, was mowed down with grape-shot, and hacked to pieces by the
Cossacks, only eighteen men being left. General d'Hautpoult, forced to
fall back three times with his division, led it back twice to the charge;
and as he threw himself against the enemy the third time shouted loudly,
"Forward, cuirassiers, in God's name! forward, my brave cuirassiers?"
But the grapeshot had mowed down too many of these brave fellows; very
few were left to follow their chief, and he soon fell pierced with wounds
in the midst of a square of Russians into which he had rushed almost
alone.

I think it was in this battle also that General Ordenerl killed with his
own hands a general officer of the enemy. The Emperor asked if he could
not have taken him alive. "Sire," replied the general with his strong
German accent, "I gave him only one blow, but I tried to make it a good
one." On the very morning of the battle, General Corbineau, the
Emperor's aide-de-camp, while at breakfast with the officers on duty,
declared to them that he was oppressed by the saddest presentiments; but
these gentlemen, attempting to divert his mind, turned the affair into a