Saw Napoleon's Retreat.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 30 October 1914, Page 8

Saw Napoleon's Retreat.

In the district of Meseritz a wo-

man who can prove by official papers that she' was one hundred and twenty years old on October 15th has been found by the "Frankfurter Zeitung." She is believed to be the only person in Germany who saw Napoleon's army marching on Moscow. Afterwards she saw the Russian Cossacks chase the French soldiers back across the frontier. The woman's name is Hedwig Stavne. She was born at Pleschen, on the Russian frontier, October loth, 1793, being the daughter of an innkeeper. She remembers well seeing Jerome's right wing of the Grand Army pass her father's door. The troops behaved w"ell, she says, but "the beggars wouldn't eat black bread," and her mother had to kill geese and chickens for them. The Cossacks, on the other hand, are a terrible memory for her. She says that her father fled with all his cattle into a neighbouring forest to escape the Cossacks, and for days , she carried food to him.