Most of us nowadays, when thinking of the Napoleonic wars, consider them
as a part of the remote past, and it is difficult to realize that there
may be people still living who took part in the battles of Marengo,
Jena, and Waterloo. But all of Napoleon's soldiers are not yet dead, and
one man who fought under the great French general is said to be living
now near Cleveland, Ohio. Whether that is true or not, it is a fact that
only recently one of Napoleon's old warriors died at the Soldiers' Home,
Kearny, New Jersey.
His name was Henry Mueller, and a picture of the old gentleman is given
herewith. He was born in Germany in 1794, and when the French armies
invaded Prussia Mueller was fifteen years old. With many of his
compatriots, he was drafted into the Grand Army, and marched off to
Russia to fight the Cossacks and the cold. He was at Moscow, and tramped
all the way back in the disastrous retreat, suffering untold tortures,
and seeing his fellow-soldiers falling in the snow almost at every step.
But Mueller kept up, and lived to get back into Germany, and to fight at
the battles of Bautzen, Leipsic, and finally in the great battle of
Waterloo.
After Napoleon had been captured by the British and sent to the lonely
island of St. Helena, and the great armies of Europe had been disbanded,
Mueller took ship and came to the United States. Not long after his
arrival in this country the Seminole and Mexican wars broke out, and the
old spirit of the soldier was reawakened in Mueller, and he went again
to the front, this time wearing the American uniform and fighting for
the American flag. So much warfare had now made a confirmed soldier of
the German, and so when the war of the rebellion broke out in 1861 he
again took up his musket and fought through the entire war.
One of the most wonderful things of all these experiences is that
Mueller was never seriously wounded, and managed to keep himself in such
good health that he lived to be over one hundred years old, and spent
his last days in peace and comfort in the Soldiers' Home, smoking his
long German pipe on the lawn under the trees, and telling of his own
personal experiences, which, to most of us, are part of a very remote
history.
* * * * *
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