Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 125=142.= Exiled French Officers in Alabama
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Upon the colony they bestowed the name of Marengo, which is still preserved in the county. Other relics of their nomenclature, drawn similarly from battles in which some of them had been distinguished, are to be found in the villages of Linden and Arcola….
Who that would have looked upon Marshal Grouchy or General Lefebvre, as, dressed in their plain, rustic habiliments,—the straw hat, the homespun coat, the brogan shoes,—they drove the plough in the open field, or wielded the axe in the new-ground clearing, would, if unacquainted with their history, have dreamed that those farmer-looking men had sat in the councils of monarchs, and had headed mighty armies in the fields of the sternest strife the world has ever seen? "Do you know, sir," said a citizen to a traveller, who, in 1819, was passing the road from Arcola to Eaglesville,—"do you know, sir, who is that fine-looking man who has just ferried you across the creek?" "No. Who is he?" was the reply. "That," said the citizen, "is the officer who commanded Napoleon's advanced guard when he returned from Elba." This was Colonel Raoul, now a general in France.
[Footnote 42: One of the few writers of Alabama. The "Romantic passages" is a book of great interest.]
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