Mathieu Martinel and the Blazing Barracks
The soldier went quite deliberately into a burning room full of gunpowder and ammunition.
after 1820
The soldier went quite deliberately into a burning room full of gunpowder and ammunition.
after 1820
Mathieu Martinel was a cavalry soldier in the French army. At the age of twenty, he had already saved a fellow-soldier from drowning in the River Ill, but his heroic exploits were far from over.
NOT long after his adventure in the river, Martinel was walking through the barracks at Strasbourg when he was met by a rush of panic-stricken soldiers. They told him breathlessly of a fire in a room containing a barrel of gunpowder and a thousand rounds of ammunition.
Martinel immediately ran to the building. On opening the door, he was beaten back by the fierceness of the blaze, but he could not stop to think about that: in the room above the store was a sick-bay with nine bedridden men in it.
He forced himself into the smoke and heat, with hair curling and eyes smarting.
With his bare hands, Martinel swept the powder and ammunition, which were just starting to ignite, as far from the flames as he could, and then made for the window so he could direct the fire-fighters’ efforts wherever they were most needed.