“But, Soldiers! intoxication dimmed the laurels of yesterday’s glorious day!  Let us drink no more of the fascinating liquors of our native Champagne.  Let us remember Hannibal and Capua; and, before we plunge into dissipation, that we have Rome still to conquer!

“Soldiers!  Seltzer-water is good after too much drink.  Wait awhile, and your Emperor will lead you into a Seltzer-water country.  Frenchmen! it lies beyond the Rhine!”

Deafening shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!” saluted this allusion of the Prince, and the army knew that their natural boundary should be restored to them.  The compliments to the gallantry of the Prince of Joinville likewise won all hearts, and immensely advanced the Prince’s cause.  The Journal des Debats did not know which way to turn.  In one paragraph it called the Emperor “a sanguinary tyrant, murderer, and pickpocket;” in a second it owned he was “a magnanimous rebel, and worthy of forgiveness;” and, after proclaiming “the brilliant victory of the Prince of Joinville,” presently denominated it a “funeste journee.”

The next day the Emperor, as we may now call him, was about to march on Paris, when Messrs. Ruinart and Moet were presented, and requested to be paid for 300,000 bottles of wine.  “Send three hundred thousand more to the Tuileries,” said the Prince, sternly:  “our soldiers will be thirsty when they reach Paris.”  And taking Moet with him as a hostage, and promising Ruinart that he would have him shot unless he obeyed, with trumpets playing and eagles glancing in the sun, the gallant Imperial army marched on their triumphant way.

CHAPTER V.

The battle of Tours.

We have now to record the expedition of the Prince of Nemours against his advancing cousin, Henry V. His Royal Highness could not march against the enemy with such a force as he would have desired to bring against them; for his royal father, wisely remembering the vast amount of property he had stowed away under the Tuileries, refused to allow a single soldier to quit the forts round the capital, which thus was defended by one hundred and forty-four thousand guns (eighty-four-pounders), and four hundred and thirty-two thousand men:—­little enough, when one considers that there were but three men to a gun.  To provision this immense army, and a population of double the amount within the walls, his Majesty caused the country to be scoured for fifty miles round, and left neither ox, nor ass, nor blade of grass.  When appealed to by the inhabitants of the plundered district, the royal Philip replied, with tears in his eyes, that his heart bled for them—­that they were his children—­that every cow taken from the meanest peasant was like a limb torn from his own body; but that duty must be done, that the interests of the country demanded the sacrifice, and that in fact, they might go to the deuce.  This the unfortunate creatures certainly did.