of great difficulty; for the revolted state of Naples, and, above
all, the turbulence and ferocity of the Lazzaroni, were sources of
incessant alarm. To travel, or pass from town to town, without an armed
escort, was at that time impossible; fighting, skirmishing, solitary
assassinations, and wholesale massacres, were of daily occurrence,
particularly in the province of Otranto, where the embers of revolt
were still fanned by the presence of the brave old Cardinal Ruffo,
who appeared at the head of his followers, clad in full pontificals,
wearing his scarlet hat, and carrying his pastoral staff surmounted
by a cross; and thus attired, in a sacred costume so well calculated
to rouse the enthusiasm of Italians to frenzy, he led them to battle.
Thus he gave them his benediction before it, and thus he said mass for
the souls of those dead braves who died for "Ferdinand and the Holy
Faith;" thus attired, at many a siege, he sprinkled the battering guns,
like his drums and banners, with holy water, mingling, as it were, the
smoke of the censer with the smoke of battle. Though the fiery spirit
thus roused was restless and abroad, Macdonald ultimately forced the
whole kingdom to submit, and completely mastered the capital, which he
governed with firmness and moderation.
His order of the day, issued on the 4th March, 1799, amply details
the many dangers which surrounded him, and the wise measures he took
to guard against them. He threatened to make the clergy responsible
for the violence of the populace; but concluded by declaring his
reverence for, and attachment to, religion, and his determination to
protect all pastors and magistrates who conformed to the laws of the
new republic. Five days after this, being informed that King Ferdinand
had an intention of landing again, he published a proclamation, in
which he somewhat oddly invited the people of Naples to rise against
their native prince, and unite with France. Acting in concert with the
Commissioner Abrial, he lowered the taxes levied on the people; and,
filled by a just admiration for the memory of Tasso, he saved from
destruction the poet's native town, Sorrento, on the southern side of
the Gulf of Naples, where an insurrection had taken place. After this,
the provisional government made him a rash and pompous offer of forty
thousand auxiliaries.
In April, he generously released and sent to Captain Trowbridge,
a British officer and eleven seamen, who had been cast ashore at
Castellamare, during a tempest. He had treated them with every kindness
as his countrymen. They were the crew of a prize, the _Championnet_,
privateer.
The entire command of the army in Italy was now bestowed upon General
Sherer; and when that officer was defeated between the Lake of Garda
and the Adige, on the 26th of March, he sent a despatch to Macdonald,
desiring him to form a junction with his troops in northern Italy
by forced marches. On hearing of the battle near the Adige, the
Neapolitans again rose in arms; and the massacres of the French by
wandering bands were again of daily occurrence; but, in spite of every
natural and human obstacle, Macdonald effected the junction according
to his orders. As his retreat from Naples would have been dangerous
without an attempt to overawe the armed masses who hovered on the
mountains, he attacked and took Lacava, Castella, and the gloomy
little town of Avellino, before his departure. On the 26th May, he
was in Tuscany, and united with the divisions detached by General
Moreau. There were not wanting those who blamed him for losing time
in combining his force with that of Moreau; but those who did so were
ignorant of the nature of the country he had to traverse with his
trains of artillery and baggage.
"General Macdonald has been here since the 5th instant," says a French
letter from Florence. "We deem him the saviour of the French in Italy,
and our confidence in him will not be disappointed. His army, which has
advanced by forced marches, assembled here yesterday. It is full of
ardour, and its zeal, which a few reverses have only fired anew, is a
happy presage in our favour."
On the 13th June, he attacked Modena, and in less than two hours
dispersed the Austrian division of Count Hohenzollern, which was in
position upon the glacis of the place; and two thousand prisoners were
taken by his French grenadiers. In an account of this affair, General
Sarrazen, who led these grenadiers, mentions that when Macdonald was
pressing on with the infantry of the line against the _cavalry_, he
said to him--
"Macdonald, I shall remain with my grenadiers, and think you had better
do the same."
"Do you not see, M. Sarrazen, that I have them all, as if caught in a
mousetrap," replied the commander, joyously; and, when within a hundred
paces of the Austrian horse, he required them to surrender.
"We yield," replied an officer, sheathing his sabre and riding
confidently forward. Macdonald continued to approach until within
pistol-shot of their line, when the treacherous German suddenly
exclaimed, while unsheathing his weapon,--
"Draw sabres--charge!"
He threw himself at full speed upon Macdonald, who was far from
anticipating a movement so sudden, and, after receiving three
sword-cuts on the head, was thrown from his horse covered with blood.
This was all done in a moment, and the German officer mingled with his
squadron, which instantly took to flight. They were, however, overtaken
and captured, and their leader, a youth of eighteen, was slain.
Macdonald was at first supposed to be dead, for he lay stunned on the
ground, having three deep wounds, with a contusion by the fall from his
horse; yet he was in his saddle, and at the head of his column on the
17th, when the advanced guard of the Russians, under Suwarrow, forced
the French into position on the right bank of the Trebia, so celebrated
for the victory of Hannibal over the forces of the consul Sempronius;
and there, on this classic ground, ensued one of the bloodiest battles
of the Italian campaign.
Macdonald had advanced by Reggio and Modena, to effect a junction with
the army of Moreau, or to relieve Mantua; but being without pontoons,
he found the passage of the Po impossible, as that river was swollen by
recent rains, and, moreover, was defended by General Kray, with 10,000
irregulars, and twice that number of armed peasantry. On the 17th, his
advanced guard was at Placentia; next day, he attacked and repulsed
General Ott, near San Giovanni; but the advance of the Russians, under
Suwarrow, changed the fortune of the field.
General Sarrazen states Macdonald's force at 40,000 strong; M. de Segur
gives it at 28,000. On the bank of that stream, the most rapid and
impetuous in Cisalpine Gaul, the contest was fierce and desperate; but
the daring attempts of Macdonald to cross, at the head of his troops,
were repulsed.
"On the 18th and 19th," says a journal of the time, "the battles were
very murderous. The French formed a square four men deep and fought
desperately, till a column of Russians passed the river up to their
necks in the water, broke through with the bayonet, and made a dreadful
carnage among them. On the whole, the French are supposed to have lost,
since the 11th instant, 15,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners.
Macdonald himself has received two sabre-wounds from a Hungarian
hussar. Among the prisoners taken are 4 generals and 700 officers. Our
loss consists of 4000 men killed and wounded, and 400 prisoners; but
the latter were rescued in the pursuit, and 40 waggons with French
wounded were taken at the same time."
The fury of the Russian advance threw Macdonald's centre into
confusion. Sabre in hand, he strove to enforce order under a heavy fire
of cannon and musketry; but was swept away with the panic-stricken
mass of the 5th regiment of light infantry, among whom he became
entangled, and who were flying in disorder, abandoning their muskets,
knapsacks, canteens, and blankets in their eagerness to escape. By them
he was hurried into the current of the Trebia, and narrowly escaped
being drowned. This confusion was caused by a brilliant charge of 500
Cossacks, who rushed with their lances in the rest through a cloud of
dust. A terrified French chasseur exclaimed,--
"The whole Russian cavalry are upon us--fly!"
Then it was that the 5th gave way, and the centre was broken, but still
the flanks fought desperately; and had the division of Moreau been in
the field, it must have been won for France; but on that day he was
attempting to raise the siege of Tortosa. Three standards were laid at
the feet of Suwarrow.
At Trebia, according to M. de Segur, who once served on Macdonald's
staff, "during three days of a battle, the most desperate in our
annals, twenty-eight thousand French withstood fifty thousand Russians,
held the fortunes of the day in balance, and gave vainly to Moreau the
time to strike a blow for France. The victory remained finally with
Suwarrow; but, in his astonishment, the rude Muscovite exclaimed,--
"One more such success, and we shall lose the Peninsula!"
Meanwhile, Macdonald had been deceived in his expectations; his army
was exhausted; he was severely wounded, and when it was necessary that
he should retire, a torrent of foes behind opposed his retreat. Beyond
this torrent, other foes awaited him. The courage of his soldiers
failed; _but_ he, calm and serene, encouraged them, saying,--
"Be of good cheer, for nothing is impossible to the brave!"
With the remains of his shattered army he retired towards Tuscany
and Bologna; and at Piacenza a great quantity of his ammunition and
baggage fell into the hands of his pursuers. In the Directory there
were men who now reproached him with having wished to gain a battle
alone, or at least without the participation of Moreau; but it was by
the express command of that general, on whose part he fully expected
assistance, that he attempted to force the passage of the Trebia, and
break the left wing of the Austro-Russian army. Notwithstanding the
desperation of his circumstances, he was not without hopes of making
another stand; but, on being deserted by General Lahoz, a Cisalpiner,
and his corps, which united with twenty thousand insurgents to gall his
flight, Macdonald relinquished all idea of again giving battle, and
continued his retreat towards the mountains of Genoa, followed by the
troops of Generals Ott, Klenau, Lahoz, and Count Hohenzollern, and by
hordes of brigands and guerillas, who murdered his men on all hands,
and massacred them in the mountain passes.
With a flag of truce, he sent an officer to the Austrian general Melas,
praying that he would treat with mercy the wounded Frenchmen whom he
had been compelled to abandon in Piacenza.
"The request is needless," replied Melas; "Austrian soldiers know too
well the duties of humanity to require such advice."
Wounds and fatigue had so severely impaired Macdonald's health, that he
was fain to ask Suwarrow's permission to visit the baths of Pisa. This,
the Russian with chivalry and courtesy granted at once; but, instead of
visiting the celebrated Bagni di Pisa, the general returned to France,
relinquishing the command of his column, after uniting it to the army
of Moreau; and immediately on his arrival in Paris he was entrusted by
Napoleon with the command at Versailles.
By this time the French had abandoned the whole coast of the Adriatic,
and lost their conquests in Naples, where nothing remained of them but
the graves of the slain.
During the past hostilities the domestic relations of the Republic
had not improved in character or in spirit; and the feeble condition
of the Directory afforded an admirable path by which the ambition of
Napoleon might lead to a newer and firmer form of government. Returning
hastily from his unsuccessful Egyptian campaign, he had reached Paris;
and entering at once into the schemes of Talleyrand and his friend
Sieyes, a military conspiracy was formed to remodel the Republic as a
Consulate, of which _he_ should be the head. Whatever may have been
the motives, or secret ambitions, which led the military chiefs to
revolutionize France again, it cannot be denied that she benefited
thereby; and the energy with which the essay was made, and the success
it had, were a sure guarantee for the decision of future affairs.
Macdonald was in command at Versailles while these plans were maturing,
and when Napoleon arrived at the Palace of St. Cloud. Though not
actually in the conspiracy, he was in the secret, and knew that
opposition to Napoleon would neither be for the interests of France,
the army, or himself; thus he took the lead in the matter, and by
suddenly closing or dispersing the political club at Versailles, made
the inhabitants aware that he, at least, deemed the time had come,
"when a just administration should obliterate the horrors of the last
few years, and the fatal vacillation of the weak Directory."
On the 18th Brumaire, the attempt was to be made; and Napoleon,
accompanied by Macdonald, De Bournouville, and Moreau, inspected in the
gardens of the Tuileries ten thousand chosen soldiers on whose faith
they could depend, and there Augereau, the future Duke of Castiglione,
joined them.
"M. le Général," said he, embracing Napoleon, "you have not called for
_me_, but I have come to join you."
"You are welcome," replied Napoleon.
It was a perilous task they had undertaken, to overthrow the political
incubus that had pressed so long upon France; and while the startled
Directory, who had already discovered the designs of those without,
were debating about their own safety, and while Moulins urged that
a battalion should be sent to seize Napoleon, the latter suddenly
appeared, sword in hand, at the door of the hall, and entered with his
grenadiers, three deep, at a time when the projected Consulate was
being discussed by some of the Directory with very little chance of
success. He decided the matter at once, by ordering his drummers to
beat a _pas de charge_, and by dismissing the judges with a promptitude
worthy of Cromwell, and with a courage which evinced that, on his part,
nothing would be wanting to retain the power he had won.
When an army was formed for the re-conquest of Naples, in 1800,
Napoleon offered Macdonald the command of the _corps de reserve_. He
did this to testify his pleasure for his adherence to the revolution
of the 18th Brumaire; but the general, who felt piqued by the offer
of a command so subordinate, in a country where he had before led an
army, urged illness and wounds as a reason for remaining in France.
The penetration of Napoleon, was too keen for the true sentiments
of Macdonald to escape him; thus on the 24th of August, in the same
year, he was appointed to command the army of Switzerland, which was
destined to penetrate into the Tyrol, to second the operations of the
army of Italy and favour the columns of Moreau (who was then warring in
Germany) by compelling the Austrians to employ at least thirty thousand
of their best men among the Tyrolean mountains--the bulwark of the
German empire.
Macdonald marched from Bearn in September, with forty thousand men,[26]
towards Helvetia, accompanied by General Matthew Dumas, chief of the
staff, a soldier who used his pen better than his sword. His first
desire was that a corps of Helvetians should be formed to co-operate
with the French against the Austrians; but this request the Swiss
government declined; and he soon found his campaign to consist of a
series of arduous marches among the mountains, where, as the season
advanced and the winter drew on, his soldiers endured every misery
that, toil, hunger, and cold could inflict.
In the passage of the Alps, when one of his columns, composed of the
80th Regiment, with some cavalry, artillery, sappers, and guides,
under Laboissière, attempted to cross the Splugen, in the country
of the Grisons, a dreadful avalanche suddenly came thundering down
from the mountains to bar their march, and swept forty-two of the
10th Dragoons, with their horses, over a precipice. His other columns
met with equal difficulties. A letter in the Paris papers, dated
"Head-quarters, Chicavenna, 7th December, 1800," relates:--
"It was necessary to traverse the Splugen and Mount Carduiet. These
mountains, even in July, present all the horrors of winter; judge what
they are in December! Threatening and inaccessible rocks, seas of snow
on all sides, torrents of avalanches falling with a noise equally
terrible. Since our first march, two hundred men, with their horses,
have been swallowed up. After unheard-of labour, we succeeded in
disengaging all of them except three. There was not the least trace of
a road; but by labour and constancy we opened a narrow path, bordered
by precipices which the eye could not fathom nor the foot always avoid."
Two-thirds of the pass, which leads towards Como had been traversed,
the troops in front, with muskets slung, digging a path for their
comrades in the rear, till the column, exhausted by cold and fatigue,
began to retire without orders, though the dangers behind--snow,
hunger, and avalanches--were the same as those in front. Macdonald
galloped towards his sinking soldiers, and his presence had an
immediate effect on them. They halted; he entreated and threatened; but
they listened in sullen silence.
Then he dismounted, seized a shovel, and proceeded to dig the snow,
exclaiming--
"My comrades, I would rather perish in the abyss than stoop to turn my
steps on perils such as these!"
"Vive M. le Général!" cried the soldiers of the 80th. Confidence was
inspired anew; again the muskets were slung, the shovels resumed, and
after three days of labour, danger, and toil, the passage was achieved,
and the troops of Macdonald debouched from that terrible gorge, where
the frozen precipices seemed to hang from heaven, and where whirlwinds
of hail, tempests of snow, with death in its most frightful form, had
been encountered.
The resistance he experienced from the Austrian troops was trivial; and
on the 7th of January, 1801, he made himself master of the circle and
city of Trent; but the armistice concluded at Treviso on the 16th of
the same month put an end to the war. After this he remained for some
time at Isola, suffering from an illness caused by the fatigues he had
undergone at Splugen, and Delmas commanded in the interim.
At the close of the campaign he returned to Paris, where his opposition
to some of the arbitrary measures of the First Consul made that haughty
personage resolve on politely getting rid of a troublesome mentor,
by sending him on a distant mission. He was accordingly dispatched
to Denmark, as Minister Plenipotentiary from France to the Court
of Christian VII. There he resided for three years, and there he
encountered so many disagreeables, as his presence was unwelcome in
Copenhagen, that he frequently solicited his recall; but Napoleon was
jealous of Moreau, who was Macdonald's chief friend: thus he was only
recalled when the First Consul was about to exchange the consular staff
for an imperial sceptre.
It was about this time that the famous conspiracy of General Pichegreu
and Georges Cadoudal, and their correspondence with the Prince of
Condé, were discovered. In that correspondence Moreau was compromised
to a dangerous extent; thus his friend Macdonald was received with
greater coldness at the Tuileries.
The high indignation which he had the temerity to express after the
mock trial and banishment of his brother soldier Moreau, who fled to
America, completed the displeasure of the new Emperor, who withdrew all
countenance from Macdonald, and, notwithstanding his past services,
bravery, and endurance, his name was omitted from the list of marshals
of the Empire who were then created.
He retired to the country, inspired by a mortification which he could
not repress; and remained in seclusion, unnoticed, during the early
part of the new war against Spain and Austria, and until 1809 would
seem to have been forgotten; but he had perhaps the consolation of
remembering "that he must not fear who thirsts for glory; and although
we often find that true merit is eclipsed for a time, we have never
known it to be entirely lost; it bursts at last through the clouds
which environ it, and appears resplendent in its bright and genuine
colours."
These were the words of Fabius Maximus to Emilius when, with Varro, he
went to lead the Roman army; and thus the "true merit," the coolness
and intrepidity of Macdonald, were destined to shine again, for he was
remembered by Napoleon when that monarch became entangled with the
Italian and Peninsula wars--when the great armies of Austria pressed
him on one hand and the distant hordes of Russia were gathering on
the other; then, but not till then, did he seem to remember the brave
soldier whom petty quarrels and court intrigues had compelled him to
overlook. This was in that year when the perfidy of Napoleon to the
royal family of Spain and to the whole Spanish nation excited such
indignation, not only at the Court of Vienna, but throughout the whole
of Germany and Europe generally.
Macdonald was now offered the command of a division in that corps
of the army of Italy led by Prince Eugene Beauharnois, who was then
evincing his usual intrepidity, but was experiencing severe checks
from the Archduke John of Austria. This offer he at once accepted, for
he had grown weary alike of peace and of retirement. He joined Prince
Eugene; and from that period was deemed his mentor rather than his
second in command.
At the head of the right wing he crossed the Isola on the 14th and 15th
of April, 1809, and drove the Austrians from their strong positions at
Goritz, capturing eleven of their guns and much munition of war.
These successes led to those at Raab and at Laybach, both of which were
the result of Macdonald's combinations and manoeuvres; and pushing on
vigorously, without leisure or delay, with his division, he joined the
grand army of the Emperor before the gates of Vienna.
On the 5th and 6th of July he was at the famous battle of Wagram, where
he led two divisions of infantry, some of which were battalions of the
Garde Impériale. With these he advanced under a fire, when two hundred
pieces of cannon were engaged on both sides, and when the roar of
the conflict was the greatest ever heard even by the oldest veteran
of these warlike armies. Three-fourths of his column perished under
the storm of shot by which it was assailed as he advanced to break the
Austrian centre, the task assigned to him by the Emperor.
The fury with which his troops came on was irresistible. He drove back
the brigades of the archduke with immense loss, and a total rout of the
Austrians ensued, thus terminating a two days' conflict which will ever
be remembered in the annals of carnage--for few prisoners were taken on
either side, which proved the resolution of both--to conquer or die!
Thirty-six thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three officers and
soldiers of both armies lay killed or wounded on the field and round
the walls of Vienna; while, as related in the memoir of Count O'Reilly,
corpses in every variety of uniform, gashed and bloody, floated in
hundreds down the dark waters of the Danube, or were daily thrown upon
its shores to feed the wolves or to fester and decay. Such was the
field of Wagram, and it was the culminating point in the fortunes of
Stephen Macdonald.
Napoleon, though little disposed to view him with favour, when the
field was won, sprang from his horse, and embraced him with ardour,
exclaiming,--
"Now, Macdonald, we are together for life and death!"
He complimented him before his staff, extolled him in the bulletin, and
on the field of battle made him at last a Marshal of the Empire.
Of all the French marshals he was the only one who thus received a
bâton in the field, and soon after he was created Duke of Tarentum,
from a town of that name in Naples.
"Among all the marshals of France," says the editor of Bourienne's
_Memoirs_, "there is not one so pure from every stain on the soldier's
character--so daringly honest with Napoleon in his prosperity--so
lastingly true to him in his adversity, as this, his only Scottish
officer."
Napoleon thus bore honourable testimony to the value of his service at
Wagram, the glory of which another marshal sought to appropriate to
himself.