private order, dated Camp of Schoenbrunn, 9th of July, 1809, "to him
belongs the exclusive right of assigning the degree of glory which each
merits. His majesty owes the success of his arms to the French troops,
and not to strangers. Prince Ponte Corvo's order of the day, tending
to give false pretensions to troops, at best not above mediocrity, is
contrary to truth, to discipline, and to national honour. The corps
of the Prince of Ponte Corvo did not remain immovable as iron. It was
the first to retreat. His majesty was obliged to cover it by the corps
of the Guard and the division commanded by Marshal Macdonald, by the
division of heavy cavalry commanded by General Nautsonby, and by a part
of the cavalry of the Guard. _To Marshal Macdonald belongs the praise
which the Prince of Ponte Corvo arrogates to himself._ His majesty
desires that this testimony of his displeasure may serve as an example
to every marshal not to attribute to himself the glory which belongs to
others."[27]
After Wagram he commanded in the duchy of Gratz, and maintained in his
army a discipline so severe in repressing plunder and outrage, that on
his departure at the peace with Austria, before his division began its
homeward march for France, the States prayed him to accept an offering
of two hundred thousand francs, but he resolutely declined them.
"Messieurs," said he, "I am a soldier--I have done but my duty."
Then the deputies offered him a jewel-box of great value, as a bridal
gift for one of his daughters; and to the bearers he made the following
reply:--
"Gentlemen, if you believe that you owe me anything, you shall have the
means of repaying me amply, by the care you will take of three hundred
poor invalid soldiers, whom I shall leave in your city."
Napoleon was now in the zenith of his power; his marriage with Maria
Louisa--an espousal more politic than honourable--had been celebrated
at the close of the year of Wagram; and in the year following, Holland,
the Valais, and the Hanse Towns were annexed to France; territories
which, with those of Rome, gave to the new empire an augmentation of
nearly 5,000,000 of subjects.
The war was now raging in the Peninsula, and there the feeble measures
of Augereau in Catalonia made Napoleon resolve to supersede him.
The Duke of Tarentum was named his successor, and, as such, he soon
restored order among the Catalans. In their mountainous province,
more than in any other part of Spain, military talent and energy were
required; as the entire population--a brave, resolute, and hardy
race--were in arms against the invaders. Augereau's losses in the
desultory warfare maintained by the Guerillas were so severe that they
more than counterbalanced his success in the sieges he undertook; and
these losses were so indicative of mismanagement that they ensured his
recal to France. He marched for the frontier laden with the plunder
of Barcelona, and of all the officers who formed its escort, General
Chabran was the only one--as the Catalan journals remarked--who did not
pillage the house in which he had been quartered; but returned to the
Patron de Caza the silver spoons he had used at table.
At this time rapine was the order of the day in the French army; a
hammer and a small saw invariably formed a portion of a soldier's
accoutrements, that he might have tools at hand to break open every
lock-fast place, when the work of pillage began.
In Catalonia, Macdonald found himself at the head of 17,000 men; in the
adjoining province of Aragon, Suchet led 16,000; and the Spanish corps
of O'Donnel were the only regular troops opposed to them both.
On Suchet laying siege to Tortosa, a fortified city on the left bank of
the Ebro, Macdonald marched with 12,000 men to secure the entrance of a
convoy of provisions into Barcelona; and this he achieved in triumph,
defeating a vigorous attempt of the Spaniards to intercept it.
O'Donnel, general of the Spaniards, now directed his main efforts to
relieve Tortosa, where the Conde de Alacha Miguel Lili, with 7800
brave fellows, who had survived or escaped from the battle of Tudela,
made a stout resistance. O'Donnel left nothing undone to impede the
operations of the besiegers and raise the blockade; till Macdonald, to
distract his attention and favour the operations of Suchet, marched
upon Tarragona, a seaport near the mouth of the Francoli. It is
picturesquely situated upon a hill, and is surrounded by old Moorish
walls, having turrets at intervals. As it is a place of importance,
the Spaniards were anxious to preserve it, and pressed Macdonald so
severely that he was forced to take up a position in sight of the
town, in a plain so near the sea that one of his flanks was exposed to
a cannonade from a British frigate. Finding this position untenable,
after a sharp encounter, and reaping no other advantage from his march
than the plunder of Reus, a wealthy little manufacturing town, he
retreated across the plains of Tarragona, harassed on both flanks by
the troops of Sarsfield and Ibarrola, who slew 300 of his soldiers,
captured 130, and retook most of the pillage found in Reus and
elsewhere.
As a central point, from whence he could cover Suchet's operations
against Tortosa, and command a space of country capable of supplying
the troops with food and forage, Macdonald chose a strong position
near Cervera, in sight of the Mediterranean. Finding him secure here,
O'Donnel, instead of attacking him, turned the attention of his own
troops against the French elsewhere, and cut off several of their small
garrisons, until he received a wound which disabled him.
On the 13th December, Macdonald received a welcome reinforcement of ten
thousand men; but, notwithstanding, Eroles, Sarsfield, and Campoverde,
at the head of the Spanish regiments of the line and Guerillas of
Catalonia, fought him successfully in almost every instance. Yet his
movements so completely covered the siege of Tortosa that, after five
months' delay, Suchet was able to break ground before it, and the
Conde Lili surrendered at discretion; for which sentence of death was
pronounced against him by the Spanish authorities; and with great
solemnity, in the market-place of Tarragona, the head was struck from
his _effigy_ by the public executioner.
In 1811, Macdonald possessed himself of Figueras, a small Catalonian
town situated in a fertile plain, not far from the frontier of France.
On an eminence it has a magnificent castle, with bomb-proof towers
and undermined approaches. This important strength had been taken by
the French three years before; but on the night of the 10th April,
1811, some Catalonians who had been forced into the ranks of a French
regiment, finding themselves, by a lucky coincidence, all on guard
together, resolved to have their revenge. They opened a sally-port
to their countrymen, who entering the castle sword in hand, made the
garrison, to the number of four thousand men, prisoners, without a shot
being exchanged. On the 19th of the following August, Macdonald, after
meeting with a determined resistance from these Catalonians, retook the
castle of Figueras, by capitulation, and garrisoned it again for Joseph
Bonaparte.
After this recapture, Catalonia seemed to be subjugated to the yoke of
France; yet, for some reason unknown, Macdonald was withdrawn from the
command of the army there, and it was bestowed upon General Decaen. It
is supposed that Napoleon, who disliked that any one should assume the
part of monitor or judge of his soldiers, was piqued at the tenor of an
obscure passage in Macdonald's report, in which he detailed to Marshal
Berthier the recapture of Figueras. It ran thus:--
"_I please myself in rendering justice_ to the army, in the hope that
the Emperor will view with an eye of favour these brave fellows,
entreating your excellency _to cause it to be remarked_ to his Majesty
that his army in Catalonia is a stranger to the event which has
re-united it in this place."
"How happens it," said General Sarrazen, "that Macdonald, who does not
want for good sense, should have permitted himself to use such awkward
observations?"
In the disastrous invasion of Russia he had command of the 10th Corps,
of which the Prussians formed a part. The details of that terrible
winter campaign are too well known to all the world to require
recapitulation in these memoirs.
The Emperor led his army to Smolensko, on the great road to Moscow, and
crossed the Niemann on the 27th of June.
Macdonald crossed the same river, on the same day, at Tilsit, by a
bridge of boats, and at the head of his French and Prussians (the Corps
d'Yorck) seized Dunabourg, while Kowno, in Lithuania, fell without
a struggle, and the great army of the Empire marched through it in
splendid order, with all its bands playing and colours flying. How
different was the aspect of the few surviving fugitives of that army
when they repassed Kowno in December following!
With orders to occupy the line of Riga, and if it was captured, to
threaten St. Petersburg, Macdonald marched towards the capital of
Livonia, which was occupied by a numerous garrison, whose defensive
measures were ably seconded by a British naval force. Napoleon
conceived that if the main body of the Russians fell back on St.
Petersburg, he would, when following them, be able to effect a junction
with the 10th Corps under Macdonald, after which they could push
on together; but though the latter burned the suburbs of Riga, his
operations against the place were long retarded by the bravery of the
besieged. Though not regularly fortified, the town has considerable
means of defence, being encircled by an earthen rampart, and having a
citadel, while a fortress guards the entrance of the Duna or Dwina.
The project of Napoleon became a failure, when the route pursued by
the retreating Russians proved different from the one he anticipated.
Thus he was obliged to advance after them to Moscow, while Macdonald
remained for a time before Riga, on which he could make no impression,
though he fought under its walls a series of bloody conflicts, in
futile assaults and repulsing desperate sorties. Suspicion of the faith
of his Prussian regiments was not his least source of anxiety. When
St. Cyr was alarmed that his flanks might be turned by the Russians
from Finland, he wrote an urgent letter to Macdonald requesting him
to oppose the march of those troops who were led by Wittgenstien and
Steinheil, and whose line of march lay in front of the position before
Riga; adding that if he (Macdonald) objected to detach any part of
his forces from the blockade, to come and assume command of St. Cyr's
division in person, and meet this army from Finland. "But Macdonald,"
adds Count Segur, "did not conceive himself justified in making so
important a movement without express orders. He distrusted Yorck, the
Prussian general, whom he suspected of intending to deliver up to the
Russians his park of siege artillery. He replied, that to defend it
was his first and most indispensable duty, and he declined to quit his
station."
Macdonald's suspicions soon proved correct; for on the 13th December,
1812, when in presence of the enemy, he was abandoned by the whole of
the Prussians under General Yorck; and was thus compelled to retire,
though resisting with indomitable energy the attack of the Russians,
who followed him closely, when sword in hand he sought to hew a passage
to the rear. By this time all was lost elsewhere.
He survived the perils of that frightful campaign, in which out of
300,000 soldiers, who, in June, passed the Niemann in all the pomp
of war and pride of former victories, scarcely 50,000 escaped out of
Russia; and of these the greater number had suffered so dreadfully from
wounds, hunger and frost, as to be quite unfit for future service.
With 1131 pieces of cannon, there were taken by the Russians 41
generals, 1298 officers. 167,410 sergeants and rank and file. The
_rest_ were accounted for by the frost and snow, the Cossack lances,
the bullet and the sabre, rendering the paths across the whitened
wastes of Russia impassable with the bodies of the dying and the dead.
Never in all the annals of war were greater sufferings detailed than
those endured by the miserable French on their retreat from flaming
Moscow.
In 1813, Macdonald commanded a corps in Saxony, where, on the 29th
April, he had the satisfaction of routing at Mercebourg the division of
General Yorck, composed of the _same_ Prussians who had abandoned him
at Riga during the previous year; and at Lutzen, where, on the 2nd May,
the combined forces of Russia and Prussia met the French in battle, led
by the Emperor in person, he attacked the Prussian reserve, and after a
long and severe engagement cut it to pieces.
"Now," said he, "I have fully avenged the desertion of General Yorck."
After this Napoleon retired and established his head-quarters at
Dresden, while Leipzig and Breslau were also occupied by his troops.
On being reinforced by the Saxons, whose king he held as a species
of hostage for his people, he resolved on attacking the northern
allies near Bautzen; and Macdonald hastened with his division across
the Spree, to share in the battle which ensued in June. The French
triumphed, and their foes had to retreat, but in fine order, into
Silesia. Macdonald was despatched by the Emperor in pursuit; but was
compelled to fall back, as the roads by which he must have marched were
almost inundated.
Nowhere did he attain more distinction than during the horrors of the
three days of Leipzig.
This Saxon city, which is situated in a fertile plain, has suffered
in many wars, but by none so much as the campaign of 1813. In that
year Napoleon made it the general hospital for the sick and wounded
of his army; thus its beautiful environs soon became the sad scene of
many important events. In several battles and skirmishes the allies
had defeated the French during the months of August and September; but
Napoleon, who, with his characteristic obstinacy, adhered to Dresden as
the centre of his position, found himself out-manoeuvred, when eighty
miles _in his rear_ he heard of Marshal Blucher passing the Black
Elster, and that Bernadotte, a prince of his own making, but now in
arms against him, had arrived, after a long and circuitous march, near
the suburbs of Leipzig, while Schwartzenbourg drew near that city from
the south-east.
This was in the month of October.
The French numbered 160,000 bayonets and sabres; the allies 240,000.
The outposts were soon engaged on the 16th; the following day was spent
in skirmishes and manoeuvres till the three allied armies formed a
junction, and the stern conflict of the 18th began with all its terrors
over an extent of line that covered seven miles. A little village on
the French right, where Napoleon had posted himself, was lost and
retaken again and again at the bayonet's point under a storm of round
and grape shot. Noon arrived, but the battle was still undecided,
when all breathless with speed, an officer, with his uniform torn and
bloody, rushed towards the Emperor.
"Sire," he exclaimed, "the left wing has given way; the Saxon cavalry
and artillery have gone over to the enemy!"
"Silence!" replied Napoleon, sternly; "silence!"
The intelligence was kept secret from the right and centre, and still
the strife went on.
By three p.m. came the still more alarming tidings that the Saxon
infantry had deserted _en masse_ to the allies. This also was kept a
secret from the French troops, though the Imperial Guard was ordered
to take their place; but the power thus attained by the allies was no
longer to be withstood, and a precipitate retreat towards the Rhine
became the first thought of the vanquished Emperor.
At nightfall he gave the order to fall back, leaving the environs
of Leipzig strewed with dead and dying; but his order was tardily
executed, as all the French fugitives with their baggage, cannon,
and wounded, on horseback, on foot, or in waggons, were compelled to
take _one_ road, every other being occupied by the cavalry and horse
artillery of the victors; consequently, the sufferings and slaughter of
the French, even after the field was lost, became dreadful. Napoleon,
before retiring, had ordered that the bridge of the White Elster should
be undermined, and directed Macdonald and Prince Joseph Poniatowski,
with their divisions, to defend a portion of the suburbs that lay
between the advancing enemy and the Borna road; and to leave nothing
undone to maintain their post to the last, that the retreat of the
army and baggage might be fully covered.
Poniatowski was brave as a lion. He was nephew of Stanislaus Augustus,
the last King of Poland, and was animated alike by the purest
patriotism and hatred of the Russians; hence he served France against
them as the oppressors of his house and native country. He had 2000
Polish infantry and a few horse with him; and seeing the desperation
of affairs, as the waggons of wounded, dripping with blood, the heavy
artillery with their tumbrils, and the masses of fugitive soldiery
exhausted by three days of fighting and excitement, pressed in close
ranks across the bridge of the Elster, he drew his sabre and turning to
his countrymen--
"Gentlemen," said he, "here we must win or lose our honour!--Forward!"
and at the head of a few Polish cuirassiers he made a rush towards the
enemy. At that moment the bridge of the Elster was _blown up_, and his
retreat cut off for ever!
Macdonald was similarly circumstanced, as his troops had manned and
enfiladed the suburbs, where they were firing briskly to keep the foe
in check from walls, houses, and hedgerows.
According to the _Moniteur_, it was the intention of Napoleon to have
the bridge blown up only at the last moment, and when all his troops
had passed the stream. General Dussaussoy had remitted this duty to
Colonel Montfort, who, in turn, had remitted it to a corporal and four
sappers. On the first appearance of the enemy upon the road, and when
the cuirassiers of Poniatowski charged, the startled corporal fired the
train, and a dark cloud of dust and stones ascending into the air with
a mighty roar, announced the destruction of the bridge; while Macdonald
and his whole corps, with eighty pieces of cannon, all their eagles,
and several hundred carriages laden with powder, baggage, and wounded
men, were on the _wrong_ side of the river. A shout of astonishment and
dismay arose from those who had crossed; and many an anxious eye was
turned back to Leipzig, where the roar of musketry was yet heard in the
rear.
The attention of Napoleon, who had left the city by the road which led
by the bridge to Lindenau (the direct route for France) was arrested by
the explosion, and one of his aides-de-camp exclaimed,
"Sire--sire--they have blown up the bridge of the Elster, and
Macdonald's corps is _yet in Leipzig_!"
"At that time," to quote Bourienne, "Napoleon was accused of having
given orders for the destruction of the bridge, immediately _after_
his own passage, to secure his retreat from the active pursuit of the
enemy. The English journals were unanimous on this point, and there
were few of the inhabitants of Leipzig who doubted the fact."
If this be true, it was a baseness only equalled by the strangulation
of Pichegreu, the torture of Captain Wright in the Temple, and the
lonely butchery of the hapless Duc d'Enghien.
Finding all lost, and that his retreat was cut off, Macdonald sheathed
his sword, and calling on his soldiers to escape as they best could,
threw himself into the river, the waters of which were darkening as the
night drew on. He swam across, and reached the other side in safety.
Poor Poniatowski, though bleeding and severely wounded, imitated his
example; but he was pierced by a bullet, from one of the enemy's
skirmishers, who had now lined the steep bank of the Elster, and opened
a murderous fire upon the mass of unfortunate fugitives, the wreck of
Macdonald's corps, who were struggling in the stream. In the dark, the
unfortunate prince was swept away with his charger and drowned. Five
days after, his corpse was found by a fisherman, and interred on the
bank of the stream. A granite sarcophagus, surrounded by acacias and
weeping-willows, marks the place where he lies.
Colonel Montfort, the corporal, and the four sappers, were delivered
over to a court-martial.
Such was the closing episode of that terrible day at Leipzig, the
anniversary of the more glorious events of Ulm and of Jena--a day that
cost France nearly forty thousand men.
Napoleon continued his retreat to Mayence, with an army exhausted by
toil, crushed by defeat, and savage in spirit, but lacking the stamina
to make one more vigorous stand for France, save at Hanau; for French
soldiers, more than any other, are the worst to retrieve a disaster.
"The _defensive_ system," to quote the _Memoirs_ of Marshal Ney,
"accords ill with the disposition of the French soldier, at least if
it is not to be maintained by successive diversions and excursions;
in a word, if you are not constantly occupied in that little warfare,
inactivity destroys the force of troops who rest continually on the
defensive. They are obliged to be constantly on the alert night and
day; while, on the other hand, offensive expeditions wisely combined
raise the spirit of the soldier, and prevent him from having time
to ponder on the real cause of his dangerous situation. It is in
the _offensive_ that you find the French soldier inexhaustible in
resources. His active disposition and valour in assaults double his
power. A general should never hesitate to march with the bayonet
against an enemy, if the ground is favourable for the use of that
weapon. It is in the _attack_, in fine, that you accustom the French
soldier to every species of warfare--alike to brave the enemy's fire,
and to leave the field open to the development of his intelligence and
courage."
But now the spirit of the French soldiers was almost dead for a time;
and so ill was this retreat conducted, that the rear-guard, with 20,000
sick and wounded, fell into the hands of the enemy.
Macdonald was at the battle of Hanau, the last stand made by this
discomfited host in Hesse Cassel. There the French were attacked by
the Austrians and Bavarians, whom they routed, and then continued
retreating, the whole of their cavalry hewing a passage, sword in hand,
through the lines of the enemy.
He was now despatched by the Emperor to Cologne, with orders to
organize a new army. These instructions he found the impossibility of
fulfilling, so he abandoned the Rhine, along the banks of which the
bayonets of the allies were glittering everywhere, and falling back
into the interior of ancient France, with the war-worn veterans of his
shattered column, he formed the left wing of the retreating army; and
at its head, during the campaign of 1814, he gave more than one severe
repulse to the Prussians, who were pressing towards Paris under Marshal
Blucher. These encounters were chiefly on the banks of the Marne, and
especially at Nangis, in the north of France, where he fought a severe
action with the allies on the 17th of February; but these struggles and
all the valour of the French Imperialists were vain, for ere long the
capital was taken; then Germany found itself freed from oppression;
Holland rang with acclamations on the downfall of Napoleon; and
Wellington had halted in his long career of victory, on the banks of
the Garonne, and by the hill of Toulouse.
Macdonald adhered to the fallen Emperor--the child of Destiny--and
was with him in the old palace of Fontainebleau at the time of his
abdication from the most splendid of European thrones. Hope had fled.
His army was dispersed and crumbling to pieces; its great officers
and leaders had abandoned him; and such is the instability of human
affairs, that the people of whose blood he had been so lavish--the
people to whom he had been a demi-god--were turning with ardour
to another monarch, and welcomed the foemen against whom they had
struggled for more than twenty years of war and carnage that were
without parallel.
"The wreck of the army assembled at Fontainebleau," says General
Bourienne, "the remains of a million of men levied in fifteen
months--comprising the corps of Marshals Oudinot, Ney, Macdonald, and
General Gerard--did not exceed twenty-five thousand."
Various interviews that took place between Napoleon and the Duke of
Tarentum about this time are carefully detailed by this gossiping old
soldier, in the supplement to the _Biographie Universelle_, and other
memoirs.