Arms are lost.
A dizzy multitude fills the roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys, the woods, encumbered by this invasion of forty thousand men. Shouts despair, knapsacks and guns flung among the rye, passages forced at the point of the sword, no more comrades, no more officers, no more generals, an inexpressible terror.
Zieten putting France to the sword at its leisure.
Lions converted into goats.
Such was the flight.
At Genappe, an effort was made to wheel about, to present a battle front, to draw up in line.
Lobau rallied three hundred men. The entrance to the village was barricaded, but at the first volley of Prussian canister, all took to flight again, and Lobau was taken. That volley of grape-shot can be seen to-day imprinted on the ancient gable of a brick building on the right of the road at a few minutes'' distance before you enter Genappe.
The Prussians threw themselves into Genappe, furious, no doubt, that they were not more entirely the conquerors.
The pursuit was stupendous. Blucher ordered extermination.
Roguet had set the lugubrious example of threatening with death any French grenadier who should bring him a Prussian prisoner.
Blucher outdid Roguet.
Duhesme, the general of the Young Guard, hemmed in at the doorway of an inn at Genappe, surrendered his sword to a huzzar of death, who took the sword and slew the prisoner.