Source note

GONDRIN, born in 1774, in the department of Isere. Conscripted in 1792 and put in the artillery. Was in the Italian and Egyptian campaigns under Bonaparte, as a private, and returned east after the Peace of Amiens. Enrolled, during the Empire, in the pontoon corps of the Guard, he marched through Germany and Russia; was in the battle at Beresina aiding to build the bridge by which the remnant of the army escaped; with forty-one comrades, received the praise of General Eble who singled him out particularly. Returned to Wilna, as the only survivor of the corps after the death of Eble and in the beginning of the Restoration. Unable to read or write, deaf and decrepit, Gondrin forlornly left Paris which had treated him inhospitably, and returned to the village in Dauphine, where the mayor, Dr. Benassis, gave him work as a ditcher and continued to aid him in 1829. [The Country Doctor.]