New regiments, whose very existence had been unsuspected hitherto, kept pouring into the army daily, regiments whose names were not entered on any list. Only created the day before, they were totally inexperienced, but on they marched against the enemy. St. Georges had been made colonel of the Free Legion of American cavalry in the South. Boyer raised the regiment of the hussars _de la Liberté et de l'Égalité_ as his contribution. They both knew my father, and both wanted to have him under their orders. St. Georges took him first, as second lieutenant, on the 1st September 1792. Boyer made him a lieutenant the next day. Finally St. Georges, wishing to keep him at any price, made him lieutenant-colonel on January 10th, 1793. My father was in reality in command of the regiment, for St. Georges, who was no fire eater, remained at Lille under the pretext of superintending the organisation of his troops (using for his own purposes the money given him to buy horses). Placed, as I have said, at the head of the regiment, my father saw before him a vast field for the display of his sagacity and his courage. The squadrons of men trained by him were noted for their patriotism and their good military discipline. Always under fire, very few engagements took place in the camp of la Madeleine without his squadrons taking part, and wherever they went they left an honourable, and often a glorious record behind them. Once, for example, the regiment was in the van-guard when suddenly it came across a Dutch regiment hidden in the rye which, at that season and in that part of the country, grew as high as a man. The presence of this regiment was revealed by the movement of a sergeant who was about fifteen paces from my father, and who raised his gun to fire. But my father saw this movement, realised that at such a distance the sergeant could not fail to hit him, drew a pistol from his holster and pulled the trigger with such rapidity and good luck that before the weapon was levelled its barrel was pierced clean through by the pistol bullet. This pistol shot was the signal for a magnificent charge, in which the Dutch regiment was cut to pieces. My father picked up the bullet-pierced firelock on the battlefield, and it was only held together on both sides by two fragments of iron. I had it in my possession a long time, but in the end it was stolen from me in a house-moving. The pistols which had wrought this miracle of accuracy had been given by my mother, and came from the workshops of Lepage. They acquired further renown in the Italian campaign, and we shall have more to say concerning them when we come to that chapter in our history. My father received his commission as brigadier-general of the Army of the North on July 30, 1793. On September the 3rd of the same year he was appointed general of division of the same army. Finally, five days later, he was made general commander-in-chief of the Army of the Western Pyrenees.