A Large Barge
Which Followed And Was Towed By The Coche D'eau Was Filled With Austrian
Soldiers, And On The Banks Of The River Were A Number Of Soldiers Of The
Army Of The Loire Returning To Their Families And Homes.
The peaceable demeanour and honourable conduct of this army is worthy of
admiration, and can never be sufficiently praised:
Not a single act of
brigandage has taken place. The Austrian officers expressed to me their
astonishment at this, and said they doubted whether any other army in
Europe, disbanded and under the same circumstances, would behave so well. I
told them the French soldier was a free-man and a citizen and drawn from a
respectable class of people, which was not the case in most other
countries. Yes, these gallant fellows who had been calumniated by furious
Ultras, by the base ministerial prints of England, and the venal satellites
of Toryism, who had been represented as brigands or as infuriated Jacobins
with red caps and poignards, these men, in spite, of the contumely and
insult they met with from servile prefects, and from those who never dared
to face them in the field, are a model of good conduct and they preserve
the utmost subordination, tho' disbanded: they respect scrupulously the
property of the inhabitants and pay for everything. Mr. L., the young Irish
barrister, told me at Dijon that he left his purse by mistake in a shop
there in which were 20 napoleons in gold, when a soldier of the army of the
Loire, who happened to be in the shop, perceived it and came running after
him with it, but refused to accept of anything, tho' much pressed by Mr.
L., who wished to reward him handsomely for his disinterested conduct.
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