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 joke.  General Corbineau a few moments after received an order from his Majesty, and not finding some money he wished at Monsieur de Meneval’s quarters, came to me, and I gave it to him from the Emperor’s private purse; at the end of a few hours I met Monsieur de Meneval, to whom I rendered an account of General Corbineau’s request, and the sum I had lent him.  I was still speaking to Monsieur de Meneval, when an officer passing at a gallop gave us the sad news of the general’s death.  I have never forgotten the impression made on me by this sad news, and I still find no explanation of the strange mental distress which gave warning to this brave soldier of his approaching end.

Poland was relying upon the Emperor to re-establish her independence, and consequently the Poles were filled with hope and enthusiasm on witnessing the arrival of the French army.  As for our soldiers, this winter campaign was most distasteful to them; for cold and wretchedness, bad weather and bad roads, had inspired them with an extreme aversion to this country.

In a review at Warsaw, at which the inhabitants crowded around our troops, a soldier began to swear roundly against the snow and mud, and, as a consequence, against Poland and the Poles.  “You are wrong, Monsieur soldier,” replied a young lady of a good bourgeois family of the town, “not to love our country, for we love the French very much.”—­“You are doubtless very lovable, mademoiselle,” replied the soldier; “but if you wish to persuade me of the truth of what you say, you will prepare us a good dinner, my comrade and I.”—­“Come, then, messieurs,” said the parents of the young Pole now advancing, “and we will drink together to the health of your Emperor.”  And they really carried off with them the two soldiers, who partook of the best dinner the country afforded.

The soldiers were accustomed to say that four words formed the basis of the Polish language,—­kleba? niema; “bread? there is none;” voia? sara; “water? they have gone to draw it.”

As the Emperor was one day passing through a column of infantry in the suburbs of Mysigniez, where the troops endured great privations since the bad roads prevented the arrival of supplies, “Papa, kleba,” cried a soldier.  “Niema,” immediately replied the Emperor.  The whole column burst into shouts of laughter, and no further request was made.