The Country In The Environs Of This Place
Is Exceedingly Diversified, And It Presents The First Mountain Scenery We
Have Yet Met With.
The banks of the Meuse hereabouts present either an
abrupt precipice or coteaux covered with vines gently sloping to the
water's edge.
Namur is distant thirty-four miles from Brussels, and there
is water conveyance on the Meuse from here to Liege and Maastricht.
MONS, May 14.
We started yesterday morning at four o'clock from Namur. The whole road
between Namur and Mons presents a fine, rich open country abounding in
wheat, but not many trees. We stopped to breakfast at Fleurus, at an inn
where there were some Prussian officers. One of them, a lieutenant in the
2nd West Prussian Regiment, had the kindness to conduct us to see the field
of battle where the French under Jourdan defeated the Austrians in 1794. It
is at a very short distance from the town; he explained the position of the
two armies in a manner perfectly clear and satisfactory to us. The Prussian
officers all seem very eager for the commencement of hostilities, and their
only fear is now that all these mighty preparations will end in nothing;
viz., either that the French people, alarmed at the magnitude of the
preparations against them, will compel the Emperor Napoleon to abdicate, or
that the Allies will grow cool and, under the influence of Austria, bring
about a negotiation which may end in a recognition of the Imperial title
and dynasty. They would compound for a defeat at first, provided the war
were likely to be prolonged. In the meantime, reinforcements continue to
arrive daily for their army. We hear but little news of the intentions or
movements of the other Allies; it being forbidden to enter into political
discussions, it is difficult to ascertain the true state of affairs.
We continued our journey through Charleroy and Binch to this place. At a
small village between Binch and Mons we were stopped by a sentinel at a
Prussian outpost and our passports demanded. Neither the sentinel, however,
nor the sergeant, nor any of the soldiers present, could read or understand
French, in which language the passport was drawn up; but the sergeant told
me that the officers were in a house about a quarter of a mile distant and
that he would conduct me thither, but that he himself could not presume to
let us pass, from not knowing the tenor of our passport. I went accordingly
with the sergeant to this house, There I found the officer commanding the
piquet and several others sitting at table, carousing with beer and tobacco
and nearly invisible from the clouds of smoke which pervaded the room. I
explained to the officer who we were and requested him to put on the
passport his visa in the German language, so that the non-commissioned
officers at the various posts through which we might pass would be able to
understand it and let us pass without hindrance.
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