Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 239, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1912 — MEN OF THE FIRST REPUBLIC Type of the Soldiers With Whom the Great Napoleon Swept All Europe. [ARTICLE]

MEN OF THE FIRST REPUBLIC Type of the Soldiers With Whom the Great Napoleon Swept All Europe.

Another contribution to "Napoleoniana” is the collection of memoirs and letters of the army surgeon, Baron Desgnettes, who was with the Egyptian expedition. One day he found Eugene Beauharnais asleep in the sand in the desert of Ramanieh. "Wake up, Eugene, wake up! This repose does not suit either your name or profession. A man of war must be without rest and without pity.” On another occasion Napoleon had condemned several of his pet Grenadiers to death for looting and murder. His reflections, made to Desgnettes, are worth quoting: “My sentence on the Grenadiers of the Thirty-second regiment cost me dear, but I was obliged to do it. A commander-in-chief must have a tremendous power. How can you reasononably question the right of a man to whom the state sometimes entrusts the lives of a hundred thousand troops to punish such serious offenses as he deems fit? I convicted these Grenadiers before punishing them! When I seized Antoine by the collar and said to him: 'Come, miserable wretch, and let me confront you with your accomplice, ' he was confounded“But what men!—fellows to win a battle by themselves! Perhaps the corporal has won some. You did not see how they died? Like Caesars, showing their affection for me. One of their comrades went to drink with them in prison, and remarked: 'Perhaps there was some truth in the charge, else Bonaparte would not have condemned you.’ 'Be silent,’ was the answer; 'you do not know what you are saying; he was deceived again, as he often has been before, but no matter —let us drink to his health.' And when the time came for the execution, they marched steadily out and stood calmly before the firing party, saying: 'This is how the Grenadiers of the Thirty-second die.’ Afterward the officers came to see me, but I would not receive them; but, faith! I pity those upon whom the Thirty-second may fall on the first occasion that presents itself for them to wipe out the remembrance of all this.”