Miscellaneous. SHOT IN GAY UNIFORMS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7928, 17 December 1887, Page 5

Miscellaneous. SHOT IN GAY UNIFORMS.

Gossip op the Mess. The soldiers of Napoleon I. went into battle in tbelr dress uniforms. His gorgeous infantry charged the enemy in fantiistio gaiters, with forty buttons, and the guard wore Into the fight hats which were decorated with plumes a yard long. Every private wore epaulnto. But in the American Civil War aay the Youth's Companion, even the officers discarded eaulets except for the moßt ceremonlons occasions, and replaced them with simple shoulder straps. " Like a field of ripa wheat," aaya a French historian, " waved the long plumos of the Guard when they went to battle, and the enemy recognising at a distance these intrepid plumes, cried in indescribable terror, 'It is the Guard! 'and the battle was half won already. During the campaign of 1859 in Italy, the third Regiment of the French Grenadiers, supported by the Zouaves, were drawn up facing 30,000 Auatriana during four hours under a broiling sun. They were hardly comfortable, these grenadiers, for they were compelled to wear, their immense bearskin shakos every moment of this time, to say nothing of their heavy braided coats and the imapsacVa upon their backs. Under the murderous sun some of the grenadiers had taken off tbeir ahakos. General Wimpffen, who commanded the brigade, ordered the great hati to be replaoad. " The grenadiers," he said, " 6ght in thoir shakos. Cost what it may we must hoi 3 our own. And now boys, forward." The grenadiers saved the day at Magenta, and the next day the big bearskin bats could be counted on the field of battle by hundreds. "One would think there had been a battle of bears here," someone said with a melancholy smile in passing the scene. Several days later, on the plain of Medole, the Emperor Napoleon 111., riding across the field, found that General Auger, who commanded a battery which was the key of the whole, engagement, had lost his left arm, and that his shoulder had been broken by a shot from an Austrian cannon. The General, surrounded by surgeons, was dying under a tree on the plain. He was still conscious, although spoechless.. The Emperor, deeply moved, and. wisnin» tJ convey so:ne sign to the dying officer that he was raised before his death to the rank of General of Division for his bravo conduct on the field, unfastened one of his own opaulets from his shoulder and put it in the dying man's hand. The General smiled faintly, pressed the epaulet to his lips and died. The Emperor rejoined his staff with ouu shoulder baro of ils eqnulet, and the rumour quickly spread about that he had the epaulet shot away. Even in tho war between the Frenoh and Germans In 1870, tho officers wore epaulets in tho field. At the battle of Gravelotte a squadron of Frenoh Dragoons charged a column of Prussian Huasara who had taken them in the Hank. i In the violence of the shook two of

the opposing horsemen, both dismounted, found themselves oat off from thirest of the commands. Ono was a Major of the German Hussars, and the other an adjutantof theFrenohDraKOons, They faced each other sabres in hand. The Major dealt the adjutant a terrific blow. The Frenchman parried it, but the German's weapon .struck his epaulet tad cut it off ; the sabre broke in two like a piece of glass. The adjutant sprang upon his disarmed enemy and placed the point of his sabre to his throat. "Surrender!" he cried, "You aie unarmed." " Kill me," said the Haaear coolly, dropping the broken sword and reaching as if for his revolver. " I am not unarmed ; I have a revolver." " Bah !" said the Frenchman. " There isn't a shot in it." It was true, and the adjutant led his prisoner away. It is hard to tell which more to admire — the officer who, in order that bis i'Rte might be death rather thanjsurrender, resorted to aheroio subterfuge, or the one who preferred to risk his own life rather than strike a disarmed enemy.