E-text prepared by Brian Coe, Graeme Mackreth, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 58173-h.htm or 58173-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58173/pg58173-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58173/58173-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/greatinvasionof00erckiala [Illustration: MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.] THE GREAT INVASION OF 1813-14; Or, After Leipzig. by MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, Authors of "Waterloo," "The Conscript," "The Blockade," &c. Being a Story of the Entry of the Allied Forces into Alsace and Lorraine, and Their March upon Paris after the Battle of Leipzig, Called the Battle of the Kings and Nations. Ward, Lock and Co. London: Warwick House, Salisbury Square, E.C. New York: Bond Street. [Illustration] THE GREAT INVASION; OR AFTER LEIPZIG. CHAPTER I. If you would like to know the story of the Great Invasion of 1814, just as it was told me by the old huntsman, Frantz du Hengst, you must come with me to the village of Charmes, in that province of France called the Vosges. About thirty little houses, with stuccoed fronts, and their roofs covered with dark green moss, are dotted along the borders of the Sarre; you can see their gables round which the ivy creeps and the honeysuckle twines--the honeysuckle withered now, for winter is near--the beehives closed with wisps of straw, the little gardens, the wooden palings, the hedge-rows that divide them from each other. To the left, on a high mountain, stand the ruins of the ancient castle of Falkenstein, destroyed two hundred years ago by the Swedes. It is now nothing but a heap of ruins, over-run with brambles and weeds. The approach to it is by an old, worn pathway, called a _schlitte_[1] road, of which you can catch a glimpse through the fir-trees. To the right, on the hillside, is seen the farm of Bois-de-Chênes, a large building, with granaries, stables, and outhouses, the flat roof weighted with huge stones to resist the keen north wind. Cows are grazing on the common, and a few goats are climbing the steep rocks. All is calm and silent. Some children, in drawers made of a sort of gray cloth, their heads and feet bare, are warming themselves round their little fires on the outskirts of the wood. If you watch the light blue columns of smoke as they disperse in the air, or hang motionless in white and gray clouds over the valley, you will discover behind these clouds the barren tops of the Grosmann and the Donon.