After a most suffering, cold, and uncomfortable journey of six days we reached Blois. A number of our soldiers and sailors perished with cold on the road. We assisted some few of them with money and something to eat. Poor fellows! some were so worn out that they threw themselves down on the stubble in the fields, where the severe frost soon put an end to their sufferings. The day we quitted Verdun the retreating French army from Moscow, with numerous waggons full of their frostbitten and wounded men, entered it. That and the allied army advancing on the French borders were the cause of our being sent away with so much speed. When this division of the enemy's army marched through Verdun for the purpose of conquering Russia, it was the general remark amongst the English that the appearance of the men and their appointments could not be better in any country; but to see them return in the extreme of wretchedness and suffering was truly pitiable. Oh, Bonaparte! I charge thee fling away ambition; it is, unfortunately for the world, thy besetting sin. It cannot continue for ever, and you will be brought up with a severe round turn before you are many years older--such is my prophecy.
We had not been settled at Blois a month before we had orders to quit it and to proceed to Gueret on the river Creuse. We understood the allied army having entered France was the cause of our removal.
As I had never heard of Gueret before, I requested my landlord to give me some information respecting it. "Why," said he, with a most awful shrug of his shoulders, "it is where Louis the Fourteenth banished his _petite noblesse_, and is now filled with lawyers, who, as the town is small and the inhabitants are not numerous, go to law with each other to keep themselves, I suppose, in practice. Oh, you will find the roads rough and much out of order; we call it '_un chemin perdu_,' and as the town is insignificant, and produces nothing, we call it '_un endroit inconnu_.' I do not think," added he, "there are more than _cinquante cheminées à feu_ in the whole town."
This information did not raise my spirits. However, there was no alternative, and it was of little use to be downhearted. The weather continued very severe, and we had again to encounter frost, snow, and intense cold. We prayed for the humane Emperor of France, and wished him elevated on Haman's gibbet. Our journey was most horrible and fatiguing; the roads in some places were literally lost, and we were obliged to drive over ploughed fields in order to avoid the deep ruts. I thought we should have had all our bones dislocated. The five days we were on this wretched road will never be effaced from my memory. We slept where we could. Inns there were very few, and those few the abodes of poverty, filth, and rags. The small farms sometimes took us in, where, whilst eating the coarse brown bread and tough fowls they put before us, and for which they made us pay most extravagantly, the pigs and poultry kept us company during our repast.