And the
spirit of these men was terrible. They were raging, furious,
fanatical, adoring the Emperor as a Mameluke does his prophet,
ready to fall upon their own bayonets if their blood could serve
him. If you had seen these fierce old veterans going into
battle, with their flushed faces, their savage eyes, their
furious yells, you would wonder that anything could stand against
them. So high was the spirit of France at that time that every
other spirit would have quailed before it; but these people,
these English, had neither spirit nor soul, but only solid,
immovable beef, against which we broke ourselves in vain. That
was it, my friends! On the one side, poetry, gallantry, self-
sacrifice--all that is beautiful and heroic. On the other side,
beef. Our hopes, our ideals, our dreams--all were shattered on
that terrible beef of Old England.
You have read how the Emperor gathered his forces, and then how
he and I, with a hundred and thirty thousand veterans, hurried to
the northern frontier and fell upon the Prussians and the
English.
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