MARSHAL NEY.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 2485, 16 June 1893, Page 5

MARSHAL NEY.

Bravery of the old-fashioned warlike sort which had in it a good deal of bravado, may or may not have included moral courge, was well exemplified in the French Marshal Ney, the removal of whose statue in Paris not long ago brought his name into new prominence. Seventy-seven years ago Ney was shot by a file of soldiers in the garden of the Luxembourg, in Paris, after having been convicted of betraying the king by joining his fortune to Nopoleon's on his return from Elba. Upon the very spot where he was executed, a statue in his memory was subsequently erected ; and this statue has now been removed to another site, the land where it stood having been taken for railway purposes.

When the charge under which Mai shal Ney was tried was issued agairjs him, it was left within his power to fl; from tho country. Thia he refused tt d«j. The gendarmes came to arrest him Ney saw them standing in his courtyard, and put up his window. ' What do you want?' he asked. We are looking for Marshal Ney, said one of the men. ' Well, come up stairs and I will show him to you.' The officers entered the dwelling, anc ascended to the marshal's room. ' I am Michel Ney,' he said, opening he door to them. Ho was sentenced, by a foimal vote of tbe He use of Peers, to be shot. When the announcement of the Eentenco wa-t brought to him in the Luxembourg Pi is* nh« was asleep. He was wakened and the tecrefcary of the House of Peers bfgun to read tr.e sentence. Very near the^ beginning of the document came the lust of Ney's titles, bestowid up-.n him by tbe Emperor. 1 You, then-fore, Duke of Elching* n, Prince oi Moskowa, Grand Gordon of ti e Legion of Honour, Grand ' ' Ob,' exclaimed Ney, ' please skip all that; just say Michel Ney and a lot of rubbish.' i\'ey Wi a I In- son of a hard-working <.ot per, and had risen from tbe ranks ot the army. He was a child of the people and whatever may bave beeu his vanities, he threw them all aside in his last days. When be was led out to dtath, an officer ordered a bandage to be tied over his eyes, ' Why should you do that V saidjNey. ' Haven't I been accustomed for 25 years to !o^k bullets and cannon-balls in the fuce V He himself ordered the soldiers to fire, standing and facing them. His carter snmmtd up ia one life the spectacular heroism of thw } ast,