Recollections of a Chasseur a Pied

Article from Beadle's Monthly. Recommended.... Starts with
THE Crimean war had just ended, and, as my battalion was one of those which had remained longest in the East, I was one of the first to quit the inhospitable land where we had met only with hunger, cold and death—the last varied, it is true, as we had our choice between cholera on the one hand, lead and cast-iron, on the other. Indeed, even the cold steel sometimes heralded the grim messenger—as on the night of the 23d February, 1855, when the Russian peasants and sailors, armed with knives and hatchets, preceded by their popes, crucifix in hand, and accompanied by the infantry sated with whisky, threw themselves like maniacs upon our trenches, which they carried, after having filled them with the corpses of the Third Zouaves and of a goodly number from my battalion.
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