Consular Guard, had his headquarters in Paris, and, owing to his
official position, was constantly in touch with Bonaparte. But,
necessary as he was in war time, his companionship during peace was not
altogether congenial to the First Consul, and as time went on it became
almost distasteful. Although happily married to Mademoiselle Louise
Antoinette Gueheneuc, the daughter of a senator, he felt himself
aggrieved that Bonaparte had not supported his suit with Caroline, and
was extremely jealous of many of the First Consul's friends. The
constant bickering between Lannes and Murat never ceased. Moreover
Lannes, as an out-and-out republican, treated the First Consul in a
frank spirit of camaraderie, relying on his services at Arcola and
Montebello. This Bonaparte not unnaturally resented. The increased
ceremonial of the court and the prospect of the Concordat were abhorrent
to the stern republicans, but necessary to establish the divinity which
should at least seem to surround a throne. Relations became so strained
that Bonaparte was soon glad to seize on any excuse to dismiss Lannes
from his post. Murat and his tool Bessieres provided him with a
plausible reason. Lannes, by nature happy-go-lucky and no financier,
wishing no doubt to please the First Consul, spent his money freely in
lavish entertainment at his Paris house, and equipped the guard in most
gorgeous uniforms. To meet these expenses he overdrew his account with
the military authorities by more than three hundred thousand francs.
Murat, hearing of this from Bessieres, brought it to the First Consul's
notice. Bonaparte at once summoned Lannes, rated him soundly, and
commanded him immediately to refund the money. Murat was delighted; he
thought that his enemy was certain to be disgraced. In his difficulty
Lannes turned to his old friend and former chief, Augereau, who at once
lent him the money and refused to take any security. But although he was
thus able to refund the money, Bonaparte dismissed him from the command
of the Guard. Still, remembering his war service and thinking that he
might be useful again later, he did not disgrace him utterly, but at the
end of 1801 sent him as ambassador to Portugal.
Lannes's diplomatic career was at first not very successful. English
influence was all-powerful at Lisbon and the new envoy had not the
talent to counteract it. In the autumn of 1802, thinking himself
slighted by the Portuguese authorities, without consulting Talleyrand,
he suddenly withdrew from Lisbon and returned to France. But at Orleans
he received an angry message from Bonaparte forbidding him to return to
Paris. The First Consul meanwhile addressed peremptory messages to the
court of Lisbon about the supposed insult offered to his ambassador.
Thereon the Portuguese Foreign Minister apologised and Lannes returned.
Angry as Bonaparte was at the moment, he confessed later that Lannes'
soldierly impetuosity had served the cause of France better than the
skilfulness of a consummate diplomat. For from this time onwards French
influence began to increase at Lisbon, Lannes was courted by the
minister, and the Prince Regent himself stood godfather to his son. The
story goes that after the ceremony the Prince Regent took the ambassador
into a salon of the palace where the diamonds from Brazil were stored,
and then gave him a handful, saying, "That is for my godson," then a
second handful for the mother, and a third for himself. Whatever the
truth of the story, the fact remains that Lannes returned to France a
rich man, able not only to repay his loan to Augereau but to indulge in
fresh extravagance.
From Lisbon the ambassador was summoned to attend the coronation of the
Emperor and to take his place among the Marshals. But he was not yet
received back into full favour by the Emperor, and had to return to his
embassy at Lisbon. It was not till March 22, 1805, that he was recalled
to France to command the right wing of the Army of the Ocean, which,
when war broke out between Austria and France, became the Grand Army.
The fifth corps under Lannes reached the Rhine at Kehl on September
25th. Napoleon's scheme of operations was, by making vigorous
demonstrations in the direction of the Black Forest, to persuade the
Austrians that he was advancing in force in that direction, while all
the time his wings were sweeping round the Austrian rear and cutting
their line of communication on the Danube, in the direction of Ratisbon.
The task of deceiving the Austrians was performed to perfection by Murat
with the reserve cavalry and Lannes's corps. Immediately after Mack's
surrender at Ulm, the Emperor detached Lannes and Murat in pursuit of
the Archduke Ferdinand, who had successfully broken through the ring of
French troops. Lannes's infantry tramped sturdily behind Murat's
cavalry, and fighting proceeded day and night. The soldiers marched
thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen hours a day, and captured in five days
fifteen thousand men with eleven colours, one hundred and twenty-eight
guns, and six hundred limbers and provision wagons.
During the rapid advance down the Danube on Vienna, the fifth corps
continued in close support of Murat's cavalry. Vienna capitulated and
the Marshals pressed on to seize the bridge before the city. The defence
of the bridge had been entrusted to General Auersperg, with seven
thousand men. The bridge was commanded by a battery of artillery, and
the engineers were preparing to blow it up when Murat, Lannes, and
Bertrand arrived. The three general officers quietly walked down to the
bridge and shouted out to the Austrian picquets that an armistice had
been arranged. Thereon the commander of the picquet proceeded to
withdraw his men and sent word to Auersperg. Meanwhile the three
officers strolled unconcernedly across, while a considerable way behind
them a strong body of Lannes's infantry followed. When the French
generals reached the Austrian end they found a sergeant of engineers
actually proceeding to fire the fuse. Lannes caught him by the arm and
snatched the match from his hand, telling him that it was a crime to
blow up the bridge, and that he would be disgraced if he did such a
thing. Then the two Marshals ran up to the officers commanding the
artillery, who, growing restive at the continual advance of the French
infantry, were preparing to open fire. Meanwhile Auersperg himself
arrived, and the Marshals told him the same tale, affirming that the
French were to occupy the bridge-head. Uncertain, like his subordinates,
and but half convinced, he allowed himself to be bluffed, and thus
Napoleon secured without dispute the crossing of the Danube. The
boldness and audacity of the scheme so successfully carried out by Murat
and Lannes, difficult as it is to condone from a moral point of view,
brings out with great clearness the audacity, sangfroid, and
resourcefulness of both these Marshals.
The successful crossing of the Danube was soon followed by the decisive
battle of Austerlitz. The battle was brought on by Napoleon impressing
the Allies with the idea that it was possible to slip past the French
left flank and surround him, much as he had surrounded Mack at Ulm. For
this purpose the right under Davout was drawn back and concealed by
skilful use of the ground. The centre under Soult and the left under
Lannes were to hold their ground until the Russian left was absolutely
compromised, when Soult was to push forward, and, seizing the commanding
hill of Pratzen, to cut the Russian force in two, while Lannes and Murat
were to fall with all their weight on the isolated Russian right. For
once Murat and Lannes laid aside their jealousy and worked hand in hand,
and the success of the French left was due to the perfect combination of
infantry and cavalry. Of the Russian right, seven thousand five hundred
were made prisoners, and two colours and twenty-seven pieces of
artillery were captured. But hardly had the battle ceased when
bickerings broke out again, and Lannes, thinking Napoleon did not
appreciate him, sent in his resignation, which the Emperor, much to his
surprise, accepted.
The Marshal spent the greater part of the year 1806 in retirement at his
native town of Lectourne, where he was joyfully received by his
erstwhile neighbours and friends. He was always popular with his
fellow-citizens, not only because of his republican ideas and his
unaffected simplicity, but because he never forgot those who at any time
had befriended him--a man who had once lent him a thousand francs was
presented with a beautiful house and garden; the old soldier who had
carried him out of the trenches at St. Jean d'Acre was established as a
local postmaster, and received a small property and an annuity, and the
Marshal never passed the house without going in, taking a meal with
him, and making presents to the wife and children. On one occasion
Lannes was attending a big official reception at Auch. On his way, he
passed a peasant whom he recognised as one of the playfellows of his
boyhood; strongly moved, the Marshal, when he arrived at the prefecture,
asked the prefect if he might invite one of his friends to the luncheon.
The prefect was charmed, but much surprised when an aide-de-camp
returned with the peasant, whom Lannes embraced, placed by his side, and
soon set at ease.
But war once again caused the Emperor to summon his fiery lieutenant.
Lannes took command of the fifth corps on October 5, 1806, and five days
later had the satisfaction of beating a strong Prussian force at
Saalfeld. From Saalfeld the Marshal pushed on towards Jena, near which
town, early on October 13th, his scouts came in contact with a large
Prussian force under Hohenlohe. His small force was in considerable
danger, but Napoleon at once hurried up all possible reinforcements. The
Prussians held an apparently impregnable position on the Landgrafenberg,
a precipitous hill which commanded the town. But during the night a
local pastor pointed out to the French a track, which led up to the
summit, which the Prussians had neglected to occupy. Working all night,
the French sappers made a road up which guns could be hauled by hand,
and on the morning of the 14th the corps of Lannes, Augereau, and the
Guard were safely drawn up on the plateau of the Landgrafenberg, while
Ney and Soult continued the line to the north. A heavy mist overhung the
field of battle, and Hohenlohe was confident that he was only opposed by
the fifth corps, and his surprise was immense when the fog lifted and he
found himself confronted by the French army. The battle commenced by
Lannes seizing the village of Vierzehn Heiligen. While the Prussians
were fully occupied in attempting to hold this village, Napoleon threw
his flanks round them, and the battle ended in the annihilation of
Hohenlohe's army. In the evening Napoleon learned that on the same day
Davout had completely defeated the main Prussian army at Auerstaedt.
Thereon he sent forward his various corps to seize all the important
fortresses of Prussia, and detailed Lannes to support Murat in pursuit
of the Prussian troops under Hohenlohe and Bluecher, which retreated in
the direction of the Oder. If the battle of Jena had been followed by
peace, as had happened after Austerlitz in the previous year, it is more
than probable that once again Lannes would have thrown up his command,
for when the bulletin appeared, the part that his corps had taken was
almost entirely neglected. The Marshal's letter to his wife showed that
he was vexed beyond words with his treatment by Napoleon, and he started
out in the worst of tempers to support Murat. But he was too keen a
soldier to let his personal grievances interfere with his active work,
and, although he gave vent to his spleen in the usual recriminations, he
performed his work to admiration. So hard did he push his infantry,
marching sixty miles in forty-eight hours, that he was never more than
five miles behind the light cavalry, and it was owing to his effective
support that, on October 28th, Murat was able to surround Hohenlohe and
force him to surrender at Prinzlow. But, in spite of this, Murat in his
despatch never mentioned the name of Lannes. It took all Napoleon's tact
to smooth the Marshal's ruffled temper, and it was only the prospect of
further action which ultimately prevented him from throwing up his
command in high dudgeon.
By the beginning of November the theatre of war was virtually
transferred from Prussia to Poland. As after Ulm, so after Jena, the
Russians appeared on the scene too late to give effective aid to their
allies, but in sufficient time to prevent the war from ending. Napoleon,
who always had an intense esteem for the Marshal's common sense and
military ability, asked him at this time to furnish a confidential
report on the possibilities of Poland as a theatre of war, and the
Marshal, with his keen insight into character, replied, "I am convinced
that if you attempt to make the Poles rise on our behalf, within a
fortnight they will be more against us than for us."
The French troops crossed the Vistula at Warsaw, and encountered "the
fifth element, mud." Led by Murat, unable to make headway in mud up to
their knees, baffled by the Fabian tactics of the Russians, and lacking
the mighty brain of their Emperor, the Marshals fought without
co-operation, each for his own glory. Lannes was as bad as the rest,
showing in his refusal to give due praise to his brother generals for
their help at Pultusk the same petty spirit of which he had complained
in Murat. During the long winter weeks spent in cantonments along the
Vistula, the Marshal was ill with fever, in hospital at Warsaw, and was
not able to return to the head of his corps in time for the bloody
battle of Eylau. During May he commanded the covering force at the siege
of Dantzig, and was summoned thence to take part in the last phase of
the campaign. The Russian General, Bennigsen, allowed himself to be
outgeneralled by Napoleon, and the French were soon nearer Koenigsberg
than the Russians. Bennigsen made desperate efforts to retrieve his
mistake, and on June 13th actually managed to throw himself across the
Alle at Friedland, just at the moment that Lannes arrived on the scene.
The Marshal at once saw his opportunity. The Russians were drawn up with
the Alle at their backs, so that retreat was impossible, and only
victory could save them. The Marshal's design, therefore, was to hold
the enemy till the main French army arrived. Bennigsen made the most
determined efforts to throw him off, attempting to crush him by superior
weight of horsemen and artillery. But the Marshal held on to him grimly,
and by magnificent handling of Oudinot's grenadiers, the Saxon horse,
and Grouchy's dragoons, he maintained his position in spite of all the
Russian efforts during the night of June 13th. On the morning of the
14th, with ten thousand troops opposed to forty thousand, he fought for
four hours without giving ground, skilfully availing himself of every
bit of wood and cover, till at last reinforcements arrived. When the
main French columns were deployed, Lannes, with the remnant of his
indomitable corps, had a brief period of rest. But during the last phase
of the battle the enemy made a desperate effort to break out of the trap
through his shattered corps, and once again the Marshal led his troops
with invincible elan, and drove the Russians right into the death-trap
of Friedland.
Tilsit followed, and Napoleon showered honours on his trusty
lieutenants. On June 30, 1807, he gave to Lannes the principality of
Sievers in the department of Kalish, and on March 19, 1808, he conferred
on him a greater honour when he created him Duke of Montebello in memory
of his famous victory.
The Duke of Montebello spent his days of peace for the most part at
Lectourne. He was summoned thence in October, 1808, to accompany the
Emperor to Erfurt, and there the Czar Alexander made a special hero of
his old adversary of Austerlitz, Pultusk, and Friedland, and presented
him with the grand cordon of the Order of St. Andrew.
The period between Tilsit and Erfurt gave Lannes the last peaceful days
that he ever spent, for from Erfurt he was hurried off again to war,
this time to Spain. As usual when there was hard fighting in prospect,
Napoleon knew that he could ill afford to do without his most trusty and
able lieutenant. But Lannes had but little enthusiasm for the Spanish
War. His reputation stood so high that there was little chance of
enhancing it, and by now the fire-eating republican soldier was settling
down into a quiet country gentleman, who preferred the domestic circle
and the pleasure of playing the grand seigneur before an audience of
friends to the stir of the camp and the pomp of the court. But he was
too well drilled in soldierly instincts to refuse to serve when
summoned by his chief, and accordingly, much against his will, he set
out on what he expected to be a short inglorious campaign of a couple of
months against a disorganised provincial militia.
Lannes accompanied the Emperor on his journey to Spain, attached to the
headquarter staff without any definite command, for the Emperor knew
that all was not well with the armies there, but he could not, until he
had himself looked into the question, decide where he could use to the
best advantage the great administrative and tactical ability of the Duke
of Montebello. During the hurried crossing of the mountains of Tolosa
the Marshal had the misfortune to be thrown from his horse. So severe
were the injuries he received that it seemed impossible to take him
beyond Vittoria, but Larrey, the Emperor's surgeon, ordered him to be
wrapped in the bloody skin of a newly killed sheep; so successful was
the prescription that the Marshal was soon able to follow the Emperor
and rejoin headquarters. On his arrival the Emperor sent him to take
over Moncey's corps of thirty-five thousand men, with orders to attack
Castanos's forty-nine thousand at Tudela, while Ney, with twelve
thousand, worked round the Spanish rear. On the morning of November 28th
Lannes attacked the Spaniards at Tudela and won an easy victory, for the
Aragonese, under Palafox, thought only of Saragossa, and the Valencians
and Andalusians, under Castanos, of their line of retreat to the south.
Lannes, seeing the exaggerated length of the Spanish position, at once
divined the reason, and drove home an overwhelming attack against their
weak centre. Successful as the battle was, it had not the far-reaching
effects Napoleon had desired, for, owing to the mountainous nature of
the ground, Ney was unable to get across the Spanish line of retreat;
however, the enemy lost four thousand men at Tudela and, what was more
important, all their artillery.
The battle of Tudela opened the road to Madrid. But when Napoleon
arrived there, instead of driving the remnants of the Spanish armies
before him and sweeping down to Seville, he found that there was a
pressing danger in the north. To give the scattered Spaniards a chance
of rallying, Sir John Moore was making a bold advance on Madrid, and was
close to Salamanca. Napoleon at once ordered Lannes to hand over his
corps to Moncey and to join headquarters. The corps of Ney and a part of
Victor's corps were sent off to oppose the English, and on December 28th
Napoleon and the Duke of Montebello set out to overtake them. The
weather was awful, and the passage of the mountain passes in face of the
blizzards of snow tried the endurance of the troops to the uttermost.
Lannes, in spite of the fact that he had not entirely recovered from his
fall, joined Napoleon in setting an example to the troops. At the head
of the column marched the Emperor with one arm linked to Lannes and the
other to Duroc. When completely worn out by the unaccustomed efforts and
by the weight of their riding-boots, the Emperor and Lannes at times
took a brief rest on the limber of a gun carriage, and then got down and
marched again.
When Napoleon handed over the pursuit to Soult, he despatched the Duke
of Montebello to take command of the corps of Junot and Moncey at
Saragossa. On his arrival, on January 22, 1809, the Marshal found that
the garrison of Saragossa was in much better heart than the besiegers,
for on the west the third corps, owing to illness and fatigue, numbered
barely thirteen thousand, and Gazan's division across the Ebro, before
the eastern suburb, was scarcely seven thousand strong, while the total
strength of the garrison was almost sixty thousand. Consequently Junot
and Gazan were seriously contemplating raising the siege. Lannes's first
duty was to restore the morale of the troops; to reprimand the general
officers, who had been slack in their duty; to set an example to them by
his fiery diligence, which refused to let him go to bed once during the
whole of the first week he was before Saragossa; to restore the courage
of the troops by daily exposing his life in the trenches, and, when
necessary, reconnoitring in person with the utmost sangfroid right up to
the Spanish positions; supervising hospitals, reorganising commissariat,
planning with the engineer officers new methods of sap--in a word, to be
everywhere and to do everything. Nothing can more clearly illustrate
Napoleon's dictum, "A la guerre les hommes ne sont rien, c'est un homme
qui est tout." Within five days of Lannes's taking over command the
whole complexion of the situation had altered. The French were making
the most resolute assaults with irresistible elan, carrying out the most
difficult street-fighting with the greatest zest, sapping, mining, and
blowing up convents and fortified posts, fighting above ground and below
ground, suffering the most terrible losses, yet ever eager to fight
again. By February 11th, thanks to the new morale of the troops, and to
the fact that dysentery and enteric were playing havoc in the garrison,
Lannes had captured house by house the western half of the town, and had
arrived at the Corso. But once again murmurings broke out among the
French troops, who had by now lost a fourth of their numbers, and at the
same time a strong force of Spaniards under Palafox's brothers
threatened to overwhelm Suchet, who was covering the siege. Lannes
proved superior to all difficulties; by his fiery speeches and tact he
reanimated both officers and men, pointing out to them the triumph they
had already won in penning in fifty thousand Spaniards with a mere
handful. Then, hurrying off with reinforcements for Suchet, he dug the
covering force into an entrenched position on the heights of Villa
Mayor, and four days later was back at Saragossa in time to superintend
the attack across the Corso. On February 18th the French captured the
suburb on the left bank of the river, and thus placed the inner town
between two fires.
Disease and the success of their enemies had taken all the heart out of
the Spanish defence, and on February 20th Palafox surrendered. Between
December 21st and February 21st the Spanish losses had been fifty-four
thousand dead from wounds and disease, and Saragossa itself was but a
heap of crumbling ruins. Lannes did all in his power to alleviate the
sufferings of the unfortunate inhabitants, yet in spite of all his
efforts another ten thousand died within the next month. Unfortunately
also for his reputation the Marshal, acting on distinct orders from
Napoleon, treated his military prisoners with extreme severity and
executed two of the most prominent. The great strain of the siege told
heavily on the health of the Marshal, who had never completely recovered
from his accident near Tolosa; accordingly, after refitting the corps
under his command, he handed them over to Mortier and Junot, and at the
end of March set out for Lectourne. But his stay there was short, for
Napoleon, with the Spanish and Austrian wars on his hands, could not
afford to do without his assistance.
By April 25th Lannes found himself once again at the post of danger, but
this time on the Danube, at the battle of Abensberg. As he himself said,
the first rumour of war always made him shiver, but as soon as he had
taken the first step forward he had no thought but for his profession.
But, much as he would have liked to dally at Lectourne, and much as he
grumbled at Napoleon's overweening ambition once at the front he was the
dashing soldier of the first Italian campaign. He arrived in time to
take his share in the five days' fighting at Abensberg, Landshut,
Eckmuehl, and Ratisbon. At Ratisbon he had an opportunity of showing that
time had had no effect on his spirit; after two storming parties had
been swept away, he called for volunteers for a third attempt: none
stepped forward, and he himself rushed to seize a ladder. His staff held
him back; but the lesson was not in vain: volunteers crowded to seize
the scaling ladders, led by two of the Marshal's aides-de-camp, and
soon the walls of Ratisbon were crowned with French soldiers and the
town was won.
Napoleon himself accompanied Lannes on the march to Vienna, and the
Marshal was perfectly happy. Murat was absent, and there was no evil
influence to cloud his friendship with his great chief. Once again
Vienna succumbed without a shot, but this time the Austrians took care
that there was no bridge over which Napoleon might cross the Danube.
Accordingly, the Emperor determined to bridge the river below Vienna,
making use of the Isle of Lobau, which lay two-thirds of the way across.
The bridge from the south bank to Lobau was built under the personal
supervision of the Emperor and Lannes, and on one occasion when they
were reconnoitring in person they both fell into the river, and the
Marshal, who was out of his depth, was pulled out by the Emperor
himself.