Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1887 — SHOT IN THEIR GOOD CLOTHES. [ARTICLE]

SHOT IN THEIR GOOD CLOTHES.

The Gorjeoni Uniforms in Which French Soldiers Have Gone to Battle. Tlie soldiers of Napoleon L went into battle in their dress uniforms. His gorgeous infantiy charged the enemy in fantastic gaiters with forty buttons, and the guard wore into the fight hats which were decorated with plumes a yard long. Every private wore epaulets. But in our great war, says the Youth's Companion, even the officers discarded epaulets except for the most ceremonious occasions, and replaced them with simple shoulder-straps. “Like a field of ripe wheat,” says a French historian, “waved the long plumes of the guard when they went into battle, and the enemy, recognising at a distance these intrepid plumes, cried in indescribable terror: ‘lt is the guard!’ And the battle was half won already.” During the campaign of 1859, in Italy, the Third Begiment of the French grenadiers, supported by the zouaves, were drawn up facing 30,000 Austrians during four hours under a broiling sun. They were hardly comfortable, these grenadiers, for they were compelled to wear their immense bear-skin shakos every moment of this time, to say nothing of their heavy braided coats and the knapsacks upon their backs. Under the murderous sun some of the grenadiers had taken off their shakos. Gen. Wimpffen, who commanded the brigade, ordered the great hats to be replaced. “The grenadiers,” he said, “fight in the r shakos. Cost what it may, we must hold our own. And now, boys, forward!” The grenadiers saved the day at Magenta, and the next day the big bear-skin hats could be counted on the field of battle by hundreds. “One would think there had been a battle of bears here,” some one said, with a melancholy smile, in passing the scene. Several days later, on the plain of Medole, the Emperor Napoleon 111., riding across the field, found that Gen. Auger, who commanded a battery which was the key of the whole engagement, had lost his left arm, and that his shoulder had been broken by a shot from an Austrian cannon. The General, surrounded by surgeons, was dying beneath a tree on the plain. He was still conscious, although speechless. The Emperor, greatly moved and wishing to convey some sign to the dying officer that he was raised before his death to the rank of General of Division for his bravery on the field, unfastened one of his own epaulets from his shoulder and put it into the dying man’s hand. The General smiled faintly, pressed the epaulet to his lips, and died. The Emperor rejoined his staff with one shoulder bare of its epaulet., and the rumor quickly spread abroad that he had had the epaulet shot away. Even in the war between the French and Germans, in 1870, the officers still wore epaulets in the field. At the battle of Gravelotte a squadron of French dragoons charged a column of Prussian hussars who had taken them in the flank. In the violence of the shock two of the opposing horsemen, both dismounted, found themselves cut off from the rest of the commands. One was a Major of the German hussars and the other an Adjutant of the French dragoons. They faced each other, sabers in hand. The Major dealt the Adjutant a terrific blow. The Frenchman parried it, but the German’s weapon struck his epaulet and cut it off; the saber broke in two like a piece of glass. The Adjutant sprang upon his disarmed enemy and placed the point of his saber to his throat. ' “ Surrender!” he cried. “ You are unarmed.” “Kill me,” said the hussar, coolly, dropping his broken sword and reaching as if for his revolver. “I am not unarmed; I have a revolver. ” “Bah!” said the Frenchman. “There isn’t a shot in it.” It was true, and the Adjutant led liis prisoner away. It is hard to tell which more to admire—the oTcer who, in order that his fate might death rather than surrender, resorted to a heroic eubterluge, or the one who preferred to risk his own life rather than strike a disarmed enemy.