The French Drummer-Boy

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Title:     The French Drummer-Boy
Author: Howard J. Chidley [More Titles by Chidley]

[Christian story -- From: Fifty-Two Story Talks to Boys and Girls]

I want to tell you to-day of one of the bravest deeds ever done by a boy.

It happened this way. Back in the year 1793, when the French people were having trouble with their king and queen, and finally put them to death, the rulers called in soldiers from other nations to help them against their own people. The foreign soldiers met the French troops before a town called Maubeuge, and there a fierce battle was fought.

The fiercest part of the fighting was carried on against Hungarian Grenadiers, who held the market-place of the town. During this charge a drummer-boy in the French army saw that his countrymen were having a hard time of it, so he slipped around back of these Hungarian soldiers to the other side of the market-place, right in the thick of the enemy, and there drummed the charge, in order to make his comrades think that some of the French soldiers had already pushed through the enemy's ranks, and so encourage the others to push on.

Many years after, in digging up the ground about the market-place, the little bones of that drummer-boy were found buried alongside the bones of the tall Hungarian men amongst whom he had fallen. The French people have put up a statue to his memory in the town of Avesnes, and he is shown still beating the charge on his drum, and looking out toward the frontier whence the enemy of his people came.

[The end]
Howard J. Chidley's short story: French Drummer-Boy

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