the greatest care, and in his nineteenth year enrolled him as a cadet
in the Legion of Maillebois, which was to enter Holland, and second a
revolution there--a movement neutralized by the influence of Prussia.
In 1784 young Macdonald was appointed a Sub-lieutenant in Dillon's
Regiment, a battalion of the Irish Brigade, which now included in its
rank many Scottish emigrants and their descendants; and in this corps
he remained a subaltern until the Revolution in 1792, when his colonel,
the brave, loyal, and unfortunate Dillon, was murdered at Lisle, where
his body was literally torn to pieces by the revolted soldiers and
infuriated mob.
Although, like the 4th Hussars and the Regiment of Berwick, Dillon's
battalion emigrated entire and joined the fugitive French princes,
Macdonald remained in France; _not_ because he did not share the
loyal sentiments of his comrades, but because he loved the beautiful
Mademoiselle Jacob, whose father had joined the popular party against
the monarchy. This lady he afterwards married; and the influence of her
family led him to embrace, or at least to adopt, the principles of the
revolutionists, while he avoided their crimes and excesses.
The new government soon discovered that Macdonald was a bold, active,
and intelligent officer, and at once gave him employment. He made
the first campaign of the revolutionary war as Staff-major, under
de Bournonville, and served afterwards in the same capacity with
General Dumourier, acquitting himself so much to the satisfaction of
these distinguished leaders, that, on the 1st of March, 1793, he was
appointed Colonel of the Regiment de Picardie, the second regiment of
the old French line, which was then in garrison at Thionville; and this
ancient corps (which was originally raised by Charles IX. in 1562) he
commanded in the first campaign in Belgium.
He was sincerely attached to Dumourier; but, on the defection of that
general from the Republic, after his fruitless attempts on behalf
of the king, his retreat to the camp at Maulde, and the attempt to
assassinate him on the 5th April, Macdonald did not accompany him in
his flight to the Austrians, but remained with the army, in which
he was soon after named a General of Brigade. Under the celebrated
Pichegreu he served with this rank in the Army of the North against the
combined forces of Britain and Austria, and particularly signalized
himself at Werwick and Comines.
The column of Pichegreu consisted of fifty thousand men. It penetrated
to Courtrai, which was surrendered by a garrison that found it
indefensible. Macdonald was next at the investment of Menin on the Lys,
where a formidable resistance was made. The battle before this place
lasted from eight a.m., until four in the afternoon, when the Germans,
who had advanced to the relief, retired, and left Menin to its fate.
A few months after saw all the Austrian Netherlands overrun by the
victorious French, and the allies who had come to protect the province
retiring in disorder beyond the Meuse. On this retreat the British and
Hanoverians were particularly pressed by Macdonald, who followed them
into Holland.
At the passage of the Meuse a Scottish officer named Macdonald came to
Pichegreu's army with a flag of truce, and during the parley--
"You have," said he, "among you a general of my name; we wish much to
take him prisoner."
"Have a care, monsieur," replied a French officer, "that he does not
take _you_."
And next day this officer, with a party, was nearly captured by the
column of Macdonald.[25]
The passage of the Waal on the ice, under the heavy batteries of
Nimeguen, when leading the right wing of the Army of the North, was one
of Macdonald's most brilliant achievements.
After many desultory movements, the discomfited allies had taken up
a position beyond this river, which is a branch of the Rhine, and
contested the passage with the French during the severe winter of 1794.
The stream was a mass of ice, as the frost was unusually intense; thus
the sufferings of the soldiers were great.
Resolved to avail themselves of the advantage which these sufferings
gave them, the French had made repeated attempts to force the passage
of the river. On the night of the 26th December, when an unusual gloom
had settled over the frozen stream and snow-clad scenery, Pichegreu,
with all his forces, advanced towards the boundary with such rapidity
that he lost several cannon and soldiers. Next day he ventured on the
ice and the swamps that bordered it, making a general assault upon the
posts of the allies. Macdonald, with the right wing, pushed boldly
between Fort St. Andre and the walls and batteries of the ancient town
of Nimeguen, in which there lay a strong garrison. His orders were "to
act as an army of observation, and prevent the British and Germans from
supporting the Dutch, as the main attacks were to be made by the left
and centre."
The latter, numbering 16,000 bayonets, crossed the Meuse in three
columns, near the village of Driel, and invested Fort St. Andre and the
fortifications in the Isle of Bommel; while Macdonald achieved with
signal success the passage elsewhere, and formed his battalions in
position beyond the frozen stream. Taken by surprise, the inert Dutch
soldiers in the Bommeler-waard made but a show of resistance. They were
driven out by the charged bayonet, and 600 of them were captured.
The French left wing advanced towards Breda with equal success, and
stormed the lines between that city and Gertrudenberg in Northern
Brabant; forced the entrenchments at Capellan in Gueldreland, and
stormed Waspick. In this series of reverses the allied British, Dutch,
and Austrians lost one hundred pieces of cannon, and had more than
a thousand prisoners taken; while the French securely established
themselves far beyond the contested river. Ere long all resistance to
their progress ceased; every fortress, city, and castle submitted to
them in succession, till the desperation of his affairs compelled the
Stadtholder to seek refuge in Britain, while his allies retreated by
the way of Amersfort to cross the Issel, abandoning Holland to its
fate, and to the armies of Pichegreu and Macdonald.
For his services in this campaign the latter was now made a General of
Division. Every officer under whom he served mentioned him with honour
in their reports to the Directory; but while, with that openness which
is characteristic of soldiers, his comrades thus rendered every justice
and tribute to his worth and bravery, the suspicious representatives
of the people, who followed the Army of the North, and thrust their
officious counsels upon its generals, occasioned him constant anxiety.
Their dislike of his Scottish name was never concealed, and his natural
frankness unfortunately laid him but too open to their insidious
attacks; till ultimately their animosity was gratified by the Directory
_depriving_ him of his command. Of this injustice Pichegreu complained
bitterly, and said, "My army will soon become disorganized, if thus
wantonly deprived of its best officer."
"We have dismissed Macdonald," was the coarse reply of the Deputy St.
Just, "because neither his _face_ nor his _name_ are republican; but
we will restore him, Pichegreu, to thee, and with thy head shalt thou
answer for him."
This opinion of the Committee of Public Safety so far influenced the
Directory, that, until he replaced Championnet in Italy, Macdonald
was never entrusted with an independent command. Soon after this
mortification in Holland, the convention for a peace between France
and Austria was held at Leoben, and on its conclusion he repaired to
Cologne, and, quitting the army of the Rhine, joined that of Italy,
where the bright star of Napoleon was now in the ascendant. By the
nature of his frontier service Macdonald had hitherto little or no
correspondence with the future Emperor, who having also imbibed the
suspicions of the Directory, was long in discovering the worth or
relying on the fidelity of the only Scottish soldier in his service.
Macdonald appeared in Italy too late to bear any part in the first
events of the campaign of 1797, when the armies of the aggressive
republic marched to spread their new political principles throughout
the Italian peninsula; but in the following year he was at the invasion
of the Papal States, with the terrible Massena and with Berthier, who
proclaimed the republic at Rome, on which the Pope fled to Florence.
One of the early measures of the French generals was the suppression
of the English, Scottish, and Irish colleges, all the effects in which
were seized and the students dispersed.
To the Pope they sent a tricoloured cockade and the offer of a pension,
to which he made the following reply:--
"I acknowledge no uniform save that with which the Church has adorned
me. My life is at your disposal, but my soul is beyond your power.
I cannot be ignorant of the hand whence the scourge proceeds which
chastises the sheep and afflicts the pastor for the errors of his
flock; but I submit to the Divine will. Your pension I need not.
A staff and scrip are sufficient for an old man who must pass the
remainder of his days in sackcloth and ashes. Rob, pillage, burn as
you please, and destroy the monuments of antiquity, _but religion you
cannot destroy_: it will, in defiance of your efforts, exist to the end
of time!"
Macdonald's Scottish surname was a puzzle to the Italians, who styled
him Maldonaldo, Mardona, and every possible variety of the original.
After occupying the States of the Church, and leaving Macdonald with
his corps to overawe them, the French armies, whose line of march
was everywhere marked by flames, plunder, and barbarity, advanced
into Naples to expel the old Bourbon king, and erect an affiliated
republic on the ruins of his throne. On this service our hero
commanded under Championnet. Prior to this he had been charged with
the duty of repressing the insurrections which broke out among the
Romans, who massacred or assassinated the French soldiers whenever an
opportunity of doing so occurred. The most serious of these risings
was at Froisinone, a village in the valley of the Apennines. This
he suppressed with great severity, and, to strike terror into the
peasantry, shot all prisoners taken in arms. The barbarities of the
French, during their brief ascendency, are still remembered with horror
in Italy. They and their partisans hunted and destroyed the Neapolitan
royalists like wild beasts, and made a desert of all Apulia. It was
in this province that Ettore Caraffa, Conti di Ruvo, and heir of the
Duke of Andria, joined the invaders of his native country, and, after
storming and reducing to ashes Andria, a prosperous and populous city
in the province of Bari, he was so extolled by the Directory for his
generous republicanism, that "when General Broussier carried the
town of Trani by storm, Caraffa recommended that it should be burned
also--and burned it was, with nearly all that were in it--the wounded
and the dead, with those that were living and unhurt. They made, in
fact, a hell of all that smiling Adriatic coast long before Cardinal
Ruffo had passed the first defile in the Calabrias."
At Froisinone the Roman insurgents murdered the son of the Consul
Mathei merely because his father was at the head of the new government.
Macdonald offered from fifty to five hundred piastres for the chiefs of
the insurrection, dead or alive. He issued a proclamation to the Romans
inviting them to obedience and respect for the new authorities put over
them, as being the only means of raising the Roman Republic to the rank
she should occupy; and he concludes thus: "The great nation wills it
so, and its will must be executed.--Macdonald."
Towards the end of 1798, as Commander-in-chief of the Roman territory,
he ordained the Consulate to raise two regiments of horse and a
battalion of infantry in each department.
The Court of Naples had now been subverted; under the protection of a
British fleet and army, the king retired to Sicily, and a republic was
supposed to be quietly established at the extremity of the peninsula,
when the brave Calabrese, a race of hardy mountaineers, who were living
in wild places in all the simple civilization of three centuries ago,
rose in arms, and, uniting with the Apulians from the plains, poured
against the French in tumultuary hordes--half robbers and wholly
patriots. Then began a war of torture and extermination. These new
insurgents demanded a general from their foolish and feeble king; but,
instead of a soldier, he sent them a priest--a man of peace to oppose
armies led by such men as Championnet, Macdonald, Berthier, and Massena!
This was the celebrated Cardinal Ruffo, a descendant of the ancient
princes of Ruffo-Scilla, whose now ruined castle crowns that rock so
famed in ancient story, and opposite to the fabled whirlpool upon the
Sicilian shore. In a remote corner of Calabria he unfurled the banner
of Bourbon, with the cry of "Viva Ferdinand and our Holy Faith!"
This brought to the muster-place thousands, who swore upon their
knives, daggers, crosses, and relics, to clear their native land of
those lawless Jacobins and infidel republicans who were violating
and desecrating everything, whether sacred or profane. The mountain
robbers, who knew well the secret passes of that romantic and beautiful
country--men who under their own government had subsisted by rapine
and slaughter, led the van of the new movement. The cardinal cared
little for the morals of his followers. Provided they were stanch,
brave, good marksmen, and well armed, he received them all with an
apostolical benediction, and left the rest to Providence and gunpowder.
He marched at their head direct for Naples, where the French army under
Championnet was cantoned; and, as he advanced, his wild and tumultuary
army was increased, in every town and valley through which he marched,
by sturdy peasants armed with muskets, daggers, and weapons of every
description.
The fury with which these irregular hordes, clad in their picturesque
costume, their Italian hats, and shaggy zammaras, assailed Championnet
at Naples, with the advance of another column under General Mack from
another point, forced Macdonald to march with his division, four
thousand strong, from Rome, and retire to Ottricoli, a small town on
a hill near the Tiber, about thirty-six miles distant. He left a
garrison in the Castle of St. Angelo, which was summoned by Mack to
surrender. He sent a copy of this document, which was imperious in its
tenor, to General Championnet, who empowered Macdonald to reply, which
he did in the following terms:--
Head-quarters, Monterozi, 29th November, 1798.
"The Commander-in-chief, sir, has sufficient confidence in me to
recognise as his own the reply which I make to your letter of the 28th
November. I well know that he has not given any answer to your letters
concerning the evacuation of the forts and strong places; and one of
these, we consider the Castle of St. Angelo. The silence of contempt
alone was due to your insolent menaces on this subject, and this was
the only answer that could be expected consistently with the dignity
of the French name. You mention a regard for treaties, and yet you
invade the territory of a Republic in alliance with France, and do so
without provocation, and without its having given you the least reason
for such conduct.
"You have attacked the French troops, who trusted in the most sacred
defences--the law of nations and the security of treaties.
"You have shot at our flags of truce which were proceeding from Tivoli
to Vicavero, and you have made the French garrison at Rieti prisoners
of war.
"You have attacked our troops on the heights of Terni, and yet you do
not call that a declaration of war!
"Force alone, sir, constrained us to retire from Rome (and you, sir,
know better than any one the truth of what I say), that the conquerors
of Europe will avenge such proceedings! At present, I confine myself
merely to stating our injuries; the French army will do the rest. I
declare to you, sir, that I place our sick, Valville the commissary
of war, and the other Frenchmen who have remained at Rome, under
the care of all the soldiers whom you command. If a hair of their
heads be touched, it shall be a signal for _the death of the whole
Neapolitan army_! The French Republican soldiers are not assassins;
but the Neapolitan generals, the officers and soldiers who were
taken prisoners of war, on the day before yesterday, on the heights
of Terni, shall answer with their heads for the safety of my wounded.
Your summons to the commander of Fort St. Angelo is of such a nature,
that I have made it public, in order to add to the indignation and to
the horror which your threats inspire, and which we despise as much as
we think there is little to be dreaded from them.
"Macdonald."
In his position at Civita Castellana, near Ottricoli, he was attacked
by Mack with great determination. Championnet, in his despatch,
states that the enemy were forty thousand strong, and advanced in
five columns. "General Macdonald, surrounded on all sides, gave proof
of his great talents. He received the attack with that courage which
distinguishes the man of firm character, and by his able dispositions
entirely disconcerted the enemy." His advanced guard, under Kellerman,
consisted only of three squadrons of the 19th chasseurs à cheval,
the first battalion of the 11th regiment, and two pieces of flying
artillery. This handful of brave fellows routed Mack's first column,
slew four hundred, and took fifteen pieces of cannon, fifty caissons,
and two thousand prisoners, while they had but _thirty_ killed.
The Italians of De Mert retired to the heights of Calvi, a steep
mountain range, where, after a midnight march, during a severe December
storm, Macdonald surrounded and attacked them a few days after, and by
a flag of truce summoned them to capitulate. To this they made some
ridiculous propositions, but he sent the following ultimatum:--
"The column shall surrender prisoners at discretion, or be put to the
sword!"
On this they surrendered at once to the number of five thousand, with
all their arms, fifteen standards, eight guns, and three hundred
horses. Among the prisoners were the Marshal De Mert and Don Carello.
After this, he returned to Rome, re-established the Republic, and then
taking the route to Capua, followed Mack's Neapolitans, who fled
before him. Mack was an Austrian general who had entered the service of
Ferdinand of Naples to organize the patriots. For this purpose he had
brought with him from Vienna fourteen experienced officers.
On the march to Capua Macdonald's soldiers suffered greatly from the
constant rain and storms of snow, by the overflow of the mountain
torrents, the destruction of all the bridges, and by the rifles of the
armed peasantry, who mercilessly slew every straggler. The bravest men
in the Neapolitan army were the mountain banditti; and many of these
romantic desperadoes, who led armed bands, received the commission of
colonel, and were decorated with knightly orders.
Fra Diavolo, a brigand by profession, was a colonel in the infantry,
and cavaliere of San Constantino; the Abate Proni, a ferocious monk
of the Abruzzi; Gaetano Mammone, a miller from Sora; and Benedetto
Mangone--three outlaws and brigands, covered themselves with
distinction in this horrible war against the French; but Benedetto was
a veritable monster. "He never spared the life of a Frenchman who fell
into his power; and it is said that he butchered with his own hand
four hundred Frenchmen and Neapolitan republicans; and that it was his
custom to have a human head placed upon the table when he dined, as
other people would have a vase of flowers."
In March, 1799, a picquet of sixty Polish soldiers was captured between
Capua and Fondi by the Calabrese, who put every one of them to death.
In the Campagna Frenchmen were roasted alive by the peasantry, or tied
naked to trees and left to be devoured by dogs and wolves. Stragglers
were destroyed by every means barbarity could devise.
The King of Naples, who had come from Sicily, fled again; and General
Mack, before he was blocked up in Capua, wrote in these terms:--
"Sire, of forty thousand men with whom I entered the Roman territory,
only twelve thousand remain; and, of these, many are going over daily
to the French."
Macdonald, with Championnet, laid siege to Capua, where Mack made
a vigorous resistance and repulsed them; but the attack was renewed
with fresh fury; the city was won by assault, and the remains of the
Neapolitan army, who had gathered courage from despair, and whom shame
for past defeats inspired with a glow of double vengeance, perished
under the bayonets of the French. Their bodies choked the bed of the
Volturno; and for six leagues from thence the road to Naples was
strewed with their dead and dying, till even the conquerors grew tired
of slaughter. When Mack yielded himself a prisoner of war to the
General of Division, he proffered his sword, a handsome weapon, which
had been presented to him by the King of Great Britain in 1795.
Championnet laughed, and returned it to him, saying--
"Keep your sword, M. le General, the laws of the Republic prohibit the
use of British manufactures."
At this time the rage of the French army against their peculating
commissaries was great, for they had suffered severely by the scarcity
of provisions; but Championnet and Macdonald skilfully turned this
discontent against the enemy.
"Soldiers," they exclaimed, after the fall of Capua, "your magazines
are at Naples!"
"Let us march, then--to Naples lead us!" was the reply, and to the
capital the fugitives of Mack's army were pursued. A dreadful slaughter
was made among the Lazzaroni, for a fresh struggle ensued at Naples,
and every house from which the troops were fired on was burned to the
ground, and its inmates bayoneted.
Macdonald had distinguished himself in every engagement with the
unfortunate Mack; but now a series of disputes ensued between him
and Championnet, who had many troubles to contend with. Irritated by
the devastations committed by the Sieur Faitpoult, Commissary of the
Directory, the general commanding ordered him to quit Naples, with his
horde of plunderers, within twenty-four hours. Faitpoult, instead of
obeying, raised the standard of mutiny against Championnet, but was
forced to retire.
The coarse reproaches of the Deputy St. Just still rankled in the
memory of Macdonald, who left nothing undone to gain the confidence
of the Directory, and persuade the members of it that he respected
their authority, while it is but too probable that he despised them in
his heart. The Sieur Faitpoult had friends in the Directory; thus the
firmness of Championnet in expelling him from Naples was styled mutiny
to the Republic, and he was ordered to quit the peninsula, and resign
his command to General Macdonald. Poor Championnet was placed under
arrest; and, relinquishing his bâton to his more fortunate second in
command, had to appear before a court-martial at Turin.