Marshal Blucher, though a very fine fellow, was a very rough diamond,
with the manners of a common soldier. On his arrival in Paris, he went
every day to the salon, and played the highest stakes at rouge et noir.
The salon, during the time that the marshal remained in Paris, was
crowded by persons who came to see him play. His manner of playing was
anything but gentlemanlike, and when he lost, he used to swear in
German at everything that was French, looking daggers at the croupiers.
He generally managed to lose all he had about him, also all the money
his servant, who was waiting in the ante-chamber, carried. I recollect
looking attentively at the manner in which he played; he would put his
right hand into his pocket, and bring out several rouleaus of
Napoleons, and throw them on the red or black. If he won the first
coup, he would allow it to remain; but when the croupier stated that
the table was not responsible for more than ten thousand francs, then
Blucher would roar like a lion, and rap out oaths in his native
language, which would doubtless have met with great success at
Billingsgate, if duly translated: fortunately, they were not heeded, as
they were not understood by the lookers-on.
At that period there were rumours--and reliable ones, too--that Blucher
and the Duke of Wellington were at loggerheads. The Prussians wanted
to blow up the Bridge of Jena; but the Duke sent a battalion of our
regiment to prevent it, and the Prussian engineers who were mining the
bridge were civilly sent away: this circumstance created some ill-will
between the chiefs.
A sort of congress of the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King
of Prussia, with Blucher and Wellington, met at the Hotel of Foreign
Affairs, on the Boulevard, when, after much ado, the Duke of Wellington
emphatically declared that if any of the monuments were destroyed he
would take the British army from Paris: this threat had the desired
effect. Nevertheless, Blucher levied contributions on the poor
Parisians, and his army was newly clothed. The Bank of France was
called upon to furnish him with several thousand pounds, which, it was
said, were to reimburse him for the money lost at play. This, with
many other instances of extortion and tyranny, was the cause of
Blucher's removal, and he took his departure by order of the King.
I once saw a regiment of Prussians march down the Rue St. Honore when a
line of half-a-dozen hackney-coachmen were quietly endeavouring to make
their way in a contrary direction; suddenly some of the Prussian
soldiers left their ranks, and with the butt-end of their muskets
knocked the poor coachmen off their seats. I was in uniform, and felt
naturally ashamed at what I had seen: some Frenchmen came up to me and
requested me to report what I had witnessed to the Duke of Wellington;
but, upon my telling them it would be of no avail, they one and all
said the English ought to blush at having allies and friends capable of
such wanton brutality.
The fact is that the French had behaved so ill at Berlin, after the
Battle of Jena, in 1806, that the Prussians had sworn to be revenged,
if ever they had the opportunity to visit upon France the cruelties,
the extortion, insults, and hard usage their own capital had suffered;
and they kept their word.
One afternoon, when upwards of a hundred Prussian officers entered the
galleries of the Palais Royal, they visited all the shops in turn,
insulting the women and striking the men, breaking the windows and
turning everything upside down: nothing, indeed, could have been more
outrageous than their conduct. When information was brought to Lord
James Hay of what was going on, he went out, and arrived just as a
troop of French gensdarmes were on the point of charging the Prussians,
then in the garden. He lost no time in calling out his men, and,
placing himself between the gensdarmes and the officers, said he should
fire upon the first who moved. The Prussians then came to him and said,
"We had all vowed to return upon the heads of the French in Paris the
insults that they had heaped upon our countrymen in Berlin; we have
kept our vow, and we will now retire." Nothing could equal the bitter
hatred which existed, and still exists, between the French and the
Prussians.