Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

25
"Taisez-vous!" said he, putting his finger to his lip. "C'est la fortune de la guerre: if ever
you come to Paris, ask for the Marquis d' O'Mahony, and I may render you the hospitality
which your tyrannous laws prevent me from exercising in the ancestral halls of my own
race."
I shook him warmly by the hand as a tear bedimmed his eye. It was, then, the celebrated
colonel of the Irish Brigade, created a Marquis by Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz!
"Marquis," said I, "the country which disowns you is proud of you; but—ha! here, if I
mistake not, comes our signal to advance." And in fact, Captain Vandeleur, riding up
through the shower of shot, asked for the commander of the detachment, and bade me hold
myself in readiness to move as soon as the flank companies of the Ninety-ninth, and Sixtysixth,
and the Grenadier Brigade of the German Legion began to advance up the echelon.
The devoted band soon arrived; Jack Bowser heading the Ninety-ninth (when was he away
and a storming-party to the fore?), and the gallant Potztausend, with his Hanoverian
veterans.
The second rocket flew up.
"Forward, Onety-oneth!" cried I, in a voice of thunder. "Killaloo boys, follow your
captain!" and with a shrill hurray, that sounded above the tremendous fire from the fort, we
sprung upon the steep; Bowser with the brave Ninety-ninth, and the bold Potztausend,
keeping well up with us. We passed the demilune, we passed the culverin, bayoneting the
artillerymen at their guns; we advanced across the two tremendous demilunes which flank
the counterscarp, and prepared for the final spring upon the citadel. Soult I could see quite
pale on the wall; and the scoundrel Cambaceres, who had been so nearly my prisoner that
day, trembled as he cheered his men. "On, boys, on!" I hoarsely exclaimed. "Hurroo!" said
the fighting Onety-oneth.
But there was a movement among the enemy. An officer, glittering with orders, and another
in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to the wall, and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon
and the famous Joachim Murat.
"We are hardly pressed, methinks," Napoleon said sternly. "I must exercise my old trade as
an artilleryman;" and Murat loaded, and the Emperor pointed the only hundred-and-twentyfour-pounder
that had not been silenced by our fire.
"Hurray, Killaloo boys!" shouted I. The next moment a sensation of numbness and death
seized me, and I lay like a corpse upon the rampart.
II.