"All intercourse between Bona and the shores of the Mediterranean was now impeded by long quarantines imposed by an anonymous but absolute authority based upon the short-sighted considerations of an individual egotism and thus setting all else at defiance."

Anything being preferable to awaiting the advance of the epidemic in a state of compulsory inactivity, the Comte de Damremont, to whom the conduct of the enterprize had been given, determined to move upon Constantine at once.

On 1st October, 1837, the Expedition began its march. It was composed of about 11,000 fighting men, but counting the train and non-combatants, the force amounted to fully 13,000, for whom rations had to be carried besides forage for the horses and mules.

The artillery materiél consisted of thirty-three pieces, ten mountain guns, six field guns, three 8-inch mortars, four 6-inch howitzers, four 8-inch howitzers, four 16-pounders, four 24pounders, making with the park, one hundred and twenty-six wheel carriages, requiring twelve hundred horses and mules. The engineer stores were restricted to a few entrenching tools and sand bags of which 40,000 were carried.*

The cavalry force was too small, and too much divided amongst the different brigades, a common practice with the French in their earlier campaigns in Africa, but one which the Prince emphatically condemns; cavalry, he holds, should, in this kind of warfare, be kept together in one, or at most two bodies of sufficient strength to act with vigour and effect.

The infantry force was proportionately the scantiest, but its composition was excellent, a judicious intermixture of old and young soldiers led by tried and experienced officers.

The men had left behind them their buff belts, sword-bayonets and blankets, and carried each a havresack and a pouch attached to a waistbelt only. Seven years had been needed to secure the adoption of this equipment, destined one day to be the recognized pattern for all infantry troops, as the most suited to mobility, the primary essential of strategy, and of modern tactics. Possibly, routine would have held its own still longer, had it not been absolutely necessary, in this expedition, to relieve the soldier of some portion of his clumsy accoutrements, so as to enable him to carry, besides his musket and havresack, eight days rations, and and a four pound faggot, which, borne with a long stave in the hand served to cook his soup three times."

We need not repeat the story of the march, and of the seven days siege. The picture of the assault is, however, too life-like

*General-in-Chief Comte de Damremont; Chief of Staff, Baron Perragaux; Commanding Artillery, Comte Valée; Commanding Engineers, Baron Fleury. First brigade, Duc de Nemours, second brigade, General Trezel, third brigade, General Rulhières, fourth brigade, Colonel Combes.

in its incidents to be omitted altogether. It was fixed for Friday, 13th October. A few feeble spirits were troubled by the sinister presage thus conveyed. "So much the worse for the Moslems!" was General Fleury's remark.

"At 3 a.m. the breach, which was but ten metres wide, was reported practicable by Captains Boutalle of the Engineers, and Gardarens of the Zouaves, the latter of whom was wounded in the perilous reconnaissance. The column of assault were massed, one in the Place d'Armes, a second in a neighbouring ravine, and the third at Bardo. The day broke clear and hot.

"Mahomet's done for! Jesus Christ takes up the duty," shouted the impatient soldiery, in their quaint expressive phrase. "At 7 a.m. but five shot remained. The General-in-Chief ordered

a final salvo to be fired to raise a cloud of dust, the gunners dropped exhausted beside their guns, and the first column under the Duc de Nemours, dashed forward at the double, to the sound of the drums and bugles, accompanied by the shrill cries of the Arabs who thronged the neighbouring heights. LieutenantColonel Lamoricière and the Commandant Vieux of the Engineers, were the first to gain the summits of the slope, up which the column scrambled, with the aid of their hands. Captain Gardarens was wounded a second time, in the act of planting the tricolor in rear of the breach. Here they found themselves in a chaos of ruins devoid of outlets, amongst masses of rubbish, descending in an insecure and shapeless counter-slope. This agglomeration of broken materials, where the footing gave way at every step, became a prison, in which the column was exposed to the convergent fire of a scattered and invisible enemy.

"Colonel Lamoriciére, with his rapid coup-d'œil, and vigorous execution, caused the walls to be pulled down, lanes to be opened out, the houses to be escaladed with ladders, which had been made by dismounting the artillery waggons; three columns were formed, the two first turned to the right and left along the ramparts; the third pushed strait forward towards the heart of the city. But before they were clear of this labyrinth, a face of wall undermined by the fire, and impelled forward by the enemy, fell over on the men as they crowded up to find the outlets, burying part of the 2nd leger. Its brave commander de Serigny, interred above his waist, expired after feeling his limbs one after another give way beneath the slowly sinking weight of the fallen masonary, but still finding words of encouragement for his men, until his crushed breast could no longer emit a sound.

"The columns on the right and left threw themselves headlong into the covered batteries crowning the rampart; these were carried by the Zouaves, after a hideous melée, in which eleven Turks, and forty-five Frenchmen were stabbed in the midst of a

* Killed at the assault. He is stated in the appendices to have been the man who forced the gate open at La Haie Sainte (Hougomont ?), on 18th January, 1815.

dense cloud of smoke in the narrow casemates already choked up with débris and human flesh in a state of putrefaction. Beyond, the barricades were carried by storm, houses were broken open, the assailants receiving the point blank fire of their opponents without the possibility of returning it. It became necessary to mount the roofs to reply to the fire from the minarets. Foot by foot the enemy disputed the ground. . .

The sudden explosion of a magazine overwhelmed the centre column, and the smoke-blackened, mangled victims returning helplessly to the breach created a sudden panic. But Colonel Combes rallied the Voltigeurs of the 47th, and hurled them against the barricades in the street of the Market, the strategetic key of the city. Again the charge was beaten, madly on the breach echoed by all the drums and clarions in the camp. Reinforcements came up; small columns were pushed forward in quick succession; the Mussulmen began to give way, not before the gallant Combes had received his death-wound.

"It was a Saragossa on a small scale, and as at Saragossa the defenders far outnumbered the besiegers. Miniature columns led by the officers and under officers of the Engineers made their way amidst the maze of foul and tortuous lanes and endless vaulted corridors, which constitute the town of Constantine. Armed with hatchets and small ladders, formed out of the sides of the artillery waggons, they attacked one after another the detached buildings destitute of terraces, and separated by small court-yards, eminently favourable to the defence, entering by the roofs, when the doors proved impregnable."

Later, a deputation from the inhabitants informed General Rulhières, that the town surrendered, and by 9 a.m., after a furious melée of two hours duration, Constantine was in the hands of the besiegers. The Prince continues :

:

"The principal inhabitants, in surrendering at discretion, had not counted in vain upon French generosity. Pillage, the habitual, and in a certain sense, the legalized consequence of an attack by storm, was promptly repressed by the officers who had dearly purchased their rights to be obeyed, in that fifty-seven of their number had shed their blood, and twenty-three had paid with their lives for a victory which remained unsullied by any ex

cesses.

"This heavy loss amongst the officers, who, in accordance with a glorious and time-honoured custom of the French army, were in a stronger numerical proportion than is customary in any other army, has been one of the secrets of its strength, and is a pledge for its future, for it may be predicted that in the first European war which may occur, victory will rest with the troops which make the greatest sacrifice of officers.

"The soldiers who had passed from the direst extreme of misery to the brilliant temptations of oriental luxury, were seen at the

call of honour and of discipline to halt, to tender the hand of fellowship to the conquered, and to take charge of children whom their bayonets had made orphans.

"Such a triumph, more rare in history and more glorious even than the assault, could only be achieved by thoroughly national troops, whose ardour exhausted in the service of their country, and not in the mere intoxication of powder and blood, ended with the fight; such a triumph were possible only with troops who make no trade of war, and who find in the esteem of their country, and the approbation of their chiefs, the recompense which mercenaries seek in booty.

"It is a lasting eulogium upon French discipline, ever powerful from the very cause which has subjected it to criticism in other countries, where it can neither be imitated nor understood, that close bond of union which subsists between its officers, utter strangers to the spirit of caste, and its soldiers, who are neither their slaves nor their equals, for the officer is to the soldier an elder brother in the battle-field, a father in the camp, and quarters, and a guide and a friend always, and under all cir

cumstances.

"To this peculiarity of the French army is due that constancy, that unanimity of emulation devoid of jealousy, that tenacious and obedient perseverance under privation, that indomitable and unflagging devotion, without which it would have been impossible to overcome the combined elements of a skilfully conducted defence, and in the course of six days to have achieved one of those feats of arms which honour, not only the army and the age, but the nation itself. It was the King himself who remarked, when referring from the throne to the expedition against Constantine, 'that victory had sometimes contributed more beneficially to the might of France; never had it exalted more highly the glory and honour of her arms.'

"In military history, the siege of Constantine will ever be remarkable from the circumstance that the works usually executed by night and under cover, were undertaken in broad daylight; that the siege works, without preliminary approaches, and on the bare rock, were commenced at distances at which they usually terminate; and that the place was taken with a smaller force of artillery than was concentrated within it at the only attackable point.

"Alas! that so brilliant a deed of arms should have cost so dear in the number and worth of its victims."

The last chapter gives an account of the operations of 1838-9, including the seizure by the Division d'Orleans of the Portes de Fer, a dark and perilous defile on the proposed line of communi. cation with Constantine, to which it had hitherto been regarded as an unsurmountable obstacle. Some observations on the sanitory condition of the army at this period deserve special notice.

"Privations and fatigues so excessive, in the long run exhausted the most robust constitutions; and falling sick, the soldier found the evils of his condition greatly aggravated. In the circle of posts which had just been occupied or completed, the army had kept in view the security of others, but had forgotten its own. and hospitals there were none.

Barracks

"Thousands of sick, huddled together in badly constructed huts of wood, or under old and thread-bare tents, exposed to the utmost extremes of temperature, lay in their clothes on the damp ground, without straw, without water or drinking utensils, without air, without medicine, almost without doctors, for the latter, too few in number, had succumbed themselves, falling victims to fatigues above their powers of endurance.

"In these terrible charnel-houses, the sick were handed over to the tender mercies of soi-disant nurses, who cloaking their own unwillingness to share in the duties of the field under a hypocritical pretence of philanthrophy, robbed and cheated those whom it was their duty to assist and aid.

"The care of the sick has ever been a sacred duty. In the field, it cannot, as in France, be confided to the sisterhoods of Charity, sublime institutions worthy of a country in which woman has ever been exhalted by the homage paid to her sex. But might it not be possible for the discharge of this holy mission. in time of war to found some religious association of the sterner sex, who should find their vocation in the common faith of Christianity, and in the tradition of the fraternities of hospitallers of a bye-gone day."

Bearing in mind that these paragraphs were penned more than a quarter of a century since, to note them appears a simple act of justice to the memory of a chivalrous young Prince, who found his proudest boast in that he too was a soldier of France, and one of "les anciens Algeriens."

With the return of the Division d'Orleans to Algiers in November, 1839, the Narrative come abruptly to a close.

"It is not for us," say the Editors, "to attempt the completion of the unfinished page. To relate the concluding events of the war, were needed a pen authorized by the personal experience of the writer."

With them we would hope, that when these troublous days are over, some other of the "Anciens Algeriens" may be found willing to undertake the task, and to complete the story of the Army of Africa. Should even the literary execution fall far short of that of the volume now before us, it would still be a welcome addition to Military History.