there was an ugly murmuring all through the camp , as laurence walked by the fires : saxon stragglers coming in from the battlefield were murmuring that they had borne the brunt of the attack , sacrificed to try and hold the french ; and worse yet , there had been another defeat : general tauentzein , retreating from hof in the face of the french advance , had backed out of marshal soult 's arms and straight into marshal bernadotte 's , from frying-pan to fire , and had lost four hundred men before at last escaping .