File:Jazet--Vernet--Capture of the Kabrunn redoubt in 1813.webp

English: Alexandre Jean Louis Jazet (engraving), after Horace Vernet (painting of 1822), Capture of the Kabrunn redoubt (defense of Dantzig, Poland) in 1813.

From the catalogue of the Expositions de Montpellier of 1860: "This painting brings back a singular trait of boldness and French verve. A bomb, originating from the Kabrunn redoubt, burst in Commander Chambure's room, smashing everything around the young officer. Chambure immediately wrote to the Prince of Württemberg, who commanded the enemy army: 'Prince, one of your bombs has come to disturb my sleep. You will find this letter in one of your spiked mortars, and your soldiers will know what it costs to wake the sleeping lion.—De Chambure, commander of the Infernale company.' What was written was done. This astonishing soldier was then barely twenty years old. Soon after, the Emperor made him a twenty-two-year-old colonel."[1]

From the Memoirs of the Baron de Marbut: "M. de Chambure…obtained leave to form a 'free company,' composed of picked volunteers. This band undertook the most venturesome enterprises. It used to go at night and surprise the besiegers' outposts, penetrate within their trenches, destroy their works, spike their guns, and go out into the country to plunder their convoys. One night Chambure took boat with his men, surprised a Russian cantonment, set fire to an ammunition train, destroyed several magazines, killed or wounded more than 150 men, and returned in triumph with a loss of only three. Not long after he attacked a breaching battery, captured it, and spiked the guns. Then, uniting banter to courage, he left in the muzzle of a mortar a letter to the Prince of Wurtemberg, to this effect : 'Prince: as your shells spoil my sleep, I have had to come and spike your mortars. Do not wake me any more, or I shall be obliged to come and see you again.' He did, indeed, come again more than once, and spread a panic among the enemy's sappers and gunners. Horace Vernet has made his name popular by a picture of him in the act of depositing his letter in the mortar."[2]