the Army of Portugal. The Duke of Elchingen showed to his new chief the
same spirit of disobedience and hatred of control. At times slack and
supine in his arrangements, as in the preparations for the siege of
Ciudad Rodrigo and in his want of energy after the siege of Almeida, at
other times upsetting his superiors' plans by his reckless impetuosity,
he was a subordinate whom no one cared to command. Still, when it came
to actual contact with the foe, no officer was able to extract so much
from his men, and his defeat of Crawford's division on the Coa and his
dash at Busaco were quite up to his great reputation. Before the lines
of Torres Vedras his ill-humour broke out again. He bitterly opposed the
idea of an assault, and he grumbled at being kept before the position.
In fact, nothing that his chief could order was right. It was to a great
extent owing to the conduct of the Duke of Elchingen that Massena was at
last compelled to retreat. As he wrote to Berthier, "I have done all I
could to keep the army out of Spain as long as possible ... but I have
been continually opposed, I make bold to say, by the commanders of the
corps d'armee, who have roused such a spirit amongst officers and men
that it would be dangerous to hold our present position any longer."
When, however, the retreat was at last ordered, Ney showed to the full
his immense tactical ability. Although the army was greatly demoralised
during the retreat through Portugal, he never lost a single gun or
baggage wagon. As Napier wrote, "Day after day Ney--the indomitable
Ney--offered battle with the rear guard, and a stream of fire ran along
the wasted valleys of Portugal, from the Tagus to the Mondego, from the
Mondego to the Coa." As often as Wellington with his forty thousand men
overtook the Marshal with his ten thousand, he was baffled by the
tactical cleverness with which his adversary compelled him to deploy his
whole force, only to find before him a vanishing rear guard. But while
displaying such brilliant ability, the Duke of Elchingen would take no
orders from his superior, and when Massena told him to cover Almeida
and Ciudad Rodrigo, he flatly refused and marched off in the opposite
direction. Thereon the Prince of Essling was compelled to remove him
from his command, and wrote to Berthier, "I have been reduced to an
extremity which I have earnestly endeavoured to avoid. The Marshal, the
Duke of Elchingen, has arrived at the climax of disobedience. I have
given the sixth corps to Count Loison, senior general of division. It is
grievous for an old soldier who has commanded armies for so many years
to arrive at such a pass ... with one of his comrades. The Duke of
Elchingen since my arrival has not ceased to thwart me in my military
operations.... His character is well known, I will say no more." Thus
Ney returned to France in disgrace with his comrades, and hated by his
enemies owing to the licence he allowed his soldiers.
The Emperor, however, much as he insisted on blind obedience to his own
orders, soon forgave the Duke of Elchingen, and heaped his wrath on the
unfortunate Massena, whom he held responsible for the failure of the
campaign in Portugal. Accordingly, when in 1812 he planned his Russian
campaign, he entrusted Ney with the command of the third corps. Under
the personal eye of Napoleon, the Duke of Elchingen was a different man
to the Ney of Spain. At Smolensk he showed his old brilliancy, and after
the battle he opposed the further advance into Russia, maintaining that
so far the Russians had never been beaten but only dislodged, that the
peasants were hostile, and once again reminding the Emperor of his
failure in Spain. It was with great disapprobation that he heard
Napoleon accept Caulaincourt's advice, and determine to advance to
Moscow. "Pray heaven," he said, "that the blarney of the ambassador
general may not be more injurious to the army than the most bloody
battle." Gloomy as were his forebodings, they had no effect on his
conduct when he met the enemy, and he won for himself the title of
Prince of Moskowa in the hard-fought battle outside the walls of Moscow.
But it is the retreat that has made his name so glorious. After the
first few days he was entrusted with command of the rear guard, and as
demoralisation set in he alone was able to keep the soldiers to their
duty. At Krasnoi his feeble corps of six thousand men was surrounded by
thirty thousand Russians. The main body was beyond recall. When summoned
to lay down his arms, he replied, "A Marshal of France never
surrenders," and closing his shattered columns, he charged the enemy's
batteries and drove them from the field. For three days he struggled on
surrounded by the foe. On one occasion when the enemy suddenly appeared
in force where least expected, his men fell back in dismay, but the
Marshal with admirable presence of mind ordered the charge to be beaten,
shouting out, "Comrades, now is the moment: forward! they are ours." At
last, with but fifteen hundred men left, he regained the main body near
Orcha. When Napoleon heard of their arrival, he rushed to meet the
Marshal, exclaiming, "I have three hundred million francs in my coffers
at the Tuileries; I would willingly have given them to save Marshal
Ney." He embraced the Duke, saying "he had no regret for the troops
which were lost, because they had preserved his dear cousin the Duke of
Elchingen." At the crossing of the Beresina, Ney once again covered
himself with glory, and through the remainder of the terrible retreat he
commanded the rear guard, and was the last man to cross the Niemen at
Kovno and reach German soil. General Dumas, one of the officers of the
general staff, relates how he was resting in an inn at Gumbinnen, when
one evening a man entered clad in a long brown cloak, wearing a long
beard, his face blackened with powder, his whiskers half burned by fire,
but his eyes sparkling with brilliant lustre. "Well, here I am at last,"
he said. "What, General Dumas, do you not know me?" "No; who are you?"
"I am the rear guard of the Grand Army--Marshal Ney. I have fired the
last musket on the bridge of Kovno: I have thrown into the Niemen the
last of our arms, and I have walked hither, as you see, across the
forests."
The campaign of 1813 saw the Duke of Elchingen once again at the
Emperor's side. At Luetzen, his corps of conscripts fought nobly: five
times the gallant Ney led them to the attack; five times they responded
to the call of their leader. As he himself said, "I doubt if I could
have done the same thing with the old grenadiers of the Guard.... The
docility and perhaps inexperience of those brave boys served me better
than the tried courage of veterans. The French infantry can never be too
young." But at Bautzen he showed another phase of his character.
Entrusted with sixty thousand men with orders to make a vast turning
movement, his timidity spoiled the Emperor's careful plans. So
hesitating and uncertain were his dispositions that the Allies had ample
time to meet his attack and quietly withdrew without being compromised,
leaving not a cannon or a prisoner in the hands of the French. Well
might the Emperor cry out, "What, after such a butchery no results? no
prisoners?" But in spite of Ney's lack of strategic skill and his
well-known vacillation when confronted with problems he did not
understand, Napoleon was forced to employ him on an independent command.
After Oudinot was beaten at Grosbeeren, he despatched him to take
command of the army opposed to the mixed force of the Allies under
Bernadotte, which was threatening his communications from the direction
of Berlin. But Ney was no more successful than Oudinot. His dispositions
were even worse than those of the Duke of Reggio, and at Dennewitz,
night alone saved his force from absolute annihilation, while he had to
confess to nine hundred killed and wounded and fifteen thousand taken
prisoners. He but wrote the truth in his despatch to the Emperor, "I
have been totally beaten, and still do not know whether my army has
reassembled." At Leipzig also he was responsible for the want of success
during the first day of the battle, and spent the time in useless
marching and counter-marching; in this case, however, the faulty orders
he received were largely responsible for his errors. But all through the
campaign he felt the want of the clear counsel of the born strategist
Jomini, his former chief of the staff, who had gone over to the Allies.
During the winter campaign in 1814 in France no one fought more fiercely
and stubbornly than the Duke of Elchingen. When the end came and Paris
had surrendered, he was one of those who at Fontainebleau refused to
march on Paris, in spite of the cries of the Guard "To Paris!" Angered
by the tenacity with which the Marshals protested against the folly of
such a march, the Emperor at last exclaimed, "The army will obey me."
"No," replied Ney, "it will obey its commanders." Macdonald, who had
just arrived with his weary troops, backed him up, exclaiming, "We have
had enough of war without kindling a civil war." Thereon Napoleon was
induced to sign a proclamation offering to abdicate; and Caulaincourt,
Macdonald, and Ney set out for Paris to try and get terms from the Czar.
Once in the capital the Marshal seemed to despair of his commission.
Feeble and irresolute, he was easily gained over by Talleyrand, and at
once made his formal adhesion to the provisional government. When the
commissioners returned to the Emperor, he saw but too clearly that his
day was done. "Oh," he exclaimed, "you want repose; have it then; alas!
you know not how many disappointments and dangers await you on your beds
of down."
The Emperor's prophecy was but too true. Though honours were showered
upon him, the peace which followed the restoration of the Bourbons
brought but little satisfaction and enjoyment to the Duke of Elchingen.
Accustomed to the bustle and hurry of a soldier's life, he was too old
to acquire the tastes of a life of tranquillity. Books brought him no
satisfaction, since he could scarcely read; society frightened him, and
his plain manners and blunt speech shocked the salons of Paris and
grated on the nerves of the courtiers. By nature ascetic, he hated
dissipation. Moreover, his family life was by no means happy. His wife,
ambitious, fond of luxury and pleasure, was unable to share his pursuits
and tastes, and worried her husband with childish complaints of loss of
prestige at the new court. Consequently the blunt old soldier was only
too glad to leave her at his hotel in Paris, and bury himself in his
estate in the country, where field sports offered him a recreation he
could appreciate, and his old comrades and country neighbours afforded
him a society at least congenial.
From this peaceful life at Coudreaux the Marshal was suddenly summoned
on March 6, 1815, to Paris. On arriving there he was met by his lawyer,
who informed him of Napoleon's descent on Frejus. "It is a great
misfortune," he said; "what is the Government doing? Who are they going
to send against that man?" Then he hurried off to the Minister of War to
receive his instructions. He was ordered to Besancon to take command of
the troops there, and to help oppose Napoleon's advance on Paris. Before
starting for his headquarters he went to pay his respects to the King,
and expressed his indignation at the Emperor's action, promising "to
bring him back in an iron cage." On arriving at his command he found
everything in confusion, and the soldiers ready at any moment to declare
for the Emperor. Ney had but one thought, and that to save the King. In
reply to a friend who told him that the soldiers could not fight the
Emperor, he replied, "They shall fight; I will begin the action myself,
and run my sword to the hilt in the breast of the first who hesitates to
follow my example." But when he arrived, on the evening of the 13th, at
Lons la Saulnier he was met by the news that on all sides the troops
were deserting, and that the Duke of Orleans and Monsieur had been
compelled to withdraw from Lyons. That same evening emissaries arrived
from Napoleon alleging that all the Marshals had promised to go over,
and that the Congress of Vienna had approved of the overthrow of the
Bourbons, assuring the Marshal that the Emperor would receive him as on
the day after the battle of Moskowa. While but half convinced by these
specious arguments and a prey to doubt, news arrived that his vanguard
at Bourg had deserted, and that the inhabitants of Chalons-sur-Saone had
seized his artillery. In his agony he exclaimed to the emissaries, "It
is impossible for me to stop the water of the ocean with my own hand."
On the morrow he called the generals of division to give him counsel;
one of them was Bourmont, a double-dyed traitor who deserted Napoleon on
the eve of Waterloo; the other was the stern old republican warrior
Lecourbe. They could give him but little advice, so at last the fatal
decision was made, and Ney called his troops together and read the
proclamation drawn up by Napoleon.
Scarcely had he done so than he began to perceive the enormity of his
action. Meanwhile he wrote an impassioned letter to Napoleon urging him
to seek no more wars of conquest. It might suit the Emperor's policy to
cause the Marshal to desert those to whom he had sworn allegiance, but
he mistrusted men who broke their word, and though he received Ney with
outward cordiality, he saw but little of the "black beast," as he called
him, during the Hundred Days, for the Duke of Elchingen, full of remorse
and shame, hid himself at Coudreaux. It was not till the end of May that
Napoleon summoned him to Paris, and greeted him with the words, "I
thought you had become an emigre." "I ought to have done it long ago,"
replied the Marshal; "now it is too late." Still the Emperor kept him
without employment till on June 11th he sent him to inspect the troops
around Lille, and from there summoned him to join the army before
Charleroi on the afternoon of June 15th. Immediately on his arrival he
was put in command of the left wing of the army, composed of Reille and
d'Erlon's corps, and received verbal orders to push northwards and
occupy Quatre Bras. The Marshal's task was not an enviable one. He had
to improvise a staff and make himself acquainted with his subordinates
and at the same time try and elucidate the contradictory orders of his
old enemy Soult, now chief of the staff to the Emperor. Accordingly,
when on the evening of the 15th his advance guard found Quatre Bras held
by the enemy, he decided to make no attack that night. But on the
morning of the 16th he made a still greater error. For not only did he
neglect to make a reconnaissance, which would have showed him that he
was opposed by a mere handful of troops, but, slothful as ever, he
omitted to give orders for the proper concentration of his divisions,
which were strung out along sixteen miles of road. A day begun thus
badly was bound to bring difficulties. But these difficulties were
enormously increased in the afternoon. After three despatches ordering
him to carry Quatre Bras with all his force, he received a fourth
written by Soult at Napoleon's order telling him to move to the right to
support Grouchy in his attack on the Prussians, ending with the words,
"The fate of France is in your hands, therefore do not hesitate to move
according to the Emperor's commands." To add further to his
difficulties, d'Erlon's corps was detached from his command without his
knowledge. In this distracted condition, the Marshal lost all control
over himself, calling out, "Ah, those English balls! I wish they were
all in my belly!" Thus it was, mad with rage, that he rode up to
Kellermann, calling out, "We must make a supreme effort. Take your
cavalry and fling yourself upon the English centre. Crush them--ride
them down!" But it was too late. Wellington himself with thirty thousand
men now held Quatre Bras. The Marshal had himself to thank for his want
of success, for if he had been less slothful in the morning, the battle
would have been won before the contradictory orders could have had any
effect on his plans. On the morning of the 17th the dispirited Prince of
Moskowa took no steps to find out what his enemy was doing, although he
received orders from the Emperor at ten o'clock to occupy Quatre Bras if
there was only a rear guard there. Accordingly the English had ample
time to retreat. When Napoleon hurried up in pursuit at 2 p.m. he
greeted his lieutenant with the bitter reproach, "You have ruined
France!" But though the Emperor recognised that he was no longer the Ney
of former days, he still retained him in his command. At Waterloo the
Marshal showed his old dash on the battlefield. The left wing was hurled
against the Allies with a vehemence that recalled the Prince of
Moskowa's conduct in the Russian campaign. But, impetuous as ever,
finding he could not crush the stubborn foe with his infantry, he rushed
back and prematurely ordered up 5,000 of the cavalry of the Guard. "He
has compromised us again," growled his old enemy Soult, "as he did at
Jena." "It is too early by an hour," exclaimed the Emperor, "but we must
support him now that he has done it." The mistake was fatal to
Napoleon's plans. In vain the French cavalry charged the English
squares, still unshaken by artillery and infantry fire. Meanwhile the
Prussians appeared on the allied left. The Emperor staked his last card,
and ordered the Guard to make one last effort to crush the English
infantry. Sword in hand the gallant Prince of Moskowa led the
magnificent veterans to the attack. But the fire of the English lines
swept them down by hundreds. A shout arose, "La garde recule." Ney, the
indomitable, in vain seeking death, was swept away by the mass, his
clothing in rags, foaming at the mouth, his broken sword in his hand,
rushing from corps to corps, trying to rally the runaways with taunts of
"Cowards, have you forgotten how to die?" At one moment he passed
d'Erlon as they were swept along in the rush, and screamed out to him,
"If you and I come out of this alive, d'Erlon, we shall be hanged." Well
it had been for him if he could have found the death he so eagerly
sought. Five horses were shot under him, his clothes were riddled with
bullets, but he was reserved for a sinister fate.
The Marshal returned to Paris and witnessed the capitulation and second
abdication. Thereafter he had thoughts of withdrawing to Switzerland or
to America. But unfortunately he considered himself safe under the terms
of the capitulation, and, anxious to clear his name for the sake of his
children, he remained hidden at the chateau of Bessonis, near Aurillac,
waiting to see what the attitude of the Government would be. There he
was discovered by a zealous police official, who caught sight of the
Egyptian sabre Napoleon had presented to him in 1801. He was at once
arrested and taken to Paris. The military court appointed to try him
declared itself unable to try a peer of France. Accordingly the House of
Peers was ordered to proceed with his trial, and found him guilty by a
majority of one hundred and sixty-nine to nineteen. The Marshal's
lawyers tried to get him off by the subterfuge that he was no longer a
Frenchman, since his native town, Sarrelouis, had been taken from
France. But Ney would hear of no such excuse. "I am a Frenchman," he
cried, "and will die a Frenchman." Early on the following day, December
7, 1815, the sentence was read to the prisoner. The officer entrusted
with this melancholy duty commenced to read his titles, Prince of
Moskowa, Duke of Elchingen, &c. But the Marshal cut him short: "Why
cannot you simply say 'Michel Ney, once a French soldier and soon to be
a heap of dust'?" At eight o'clock in the morning the Marshal, with a
firm step, was conveyed to the place of execution. To the officer who
prepared to bandage his eyes he said, "Are you ignorant that for
twenty-five years I have been accustomed to face both ball and bullet?"
Then, taking off his hat, he said, "I declare before God and man that I
have never betrayed my country. May my death render her happy. Vive la
France!" Then, turning to the soldiers, he gave the word, "Soldiers,
fire!"
Thus, in his forty-seventh year, the Prince of Moskowa, a peasant's son,
but now immortal as the "Bravest of the Brave," expiated his error. Pity
it was that he had not the courage of his gallant subordinate at Lons la
Saulnier, who had broken his sword in pieces with the words, "It is
easier for a man of honour to break iron than to infringe his word."
Looking backward, and calmly reading the evidence of the trial, it is
clear that Ney set out in March, 1815, with every intention to remain
faithful to the King. But his moral courage failed him; and the glamour
of his old life, and the contact with the iron will of the great
Corsican, broke down his principles. To some the punishment meted out to
him seemed hard; but when the Emperor heard of his execution he said
that he only got his deserts. "No one should break his word. I despise
traitors. Ney has dishonoured himself." And the Duke of Wellington
refused to plead for the Marshal, for he said "it was absolutely
necessary to make an example." But the clearest proof of the justice of
the penalty was the fact that from the fatal day at Lons la Saulnier the
Marshal was never himself again, and he who, during those terrible days
in Russia, had been able to sleep like a little child, never could sleep
in peace.
Among the Marshals of Napoleon, Ney, with his title of the "Bravest of
the Brave," and his magnificent record of hard fighting, will always
appeal to those who love romance. But, great fighter as he was, he was
not a great general. At times, at St. Helena, Napoleon, remembering his
mistakes at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, used to say that he ought not to
have made him a Marshal, for he only had the courage and honesty of a
hussar, forgetting his words in Russia, "I have three hundred millions
francs in my coffers at the Tuileries; I would willingly have given them
to save Marshal Ney." But, cruel as it may seem, perhaps the Emperor
expressed his real opinion of him when he said, "He was precious on the
battlefield, but too immoral and too stupid to succeed." In action he
was always master of himself, but as Jomini, his old chief of the staff,
wrote of him, "Ney's best qualities, his heroic valour, his rapid coup
d'oeil, and his energy, diminished in the same proportion that the
extent of his command increased his responsibility. Admirable on the
battlefield, he displayed less assurance not only in council, but
whenever he was not actually face to face with the enemy." In a word, he
lacked that marked intellectual capacity which is the chief
characteristic of great soldiers like Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon, and
Wellington.
VIII
LOUIS NICOLAS DAVOUT, MARSHAL, DUKE OF AUERSTAeDT, PRINCE OF ECKMUeHL
There was an old saying in Burgundy that "when a Davout comes into the
world, another sword has leaped from the scabbard"; but so finely
tempered a weapon as Louis Nicolas had never before been produced by the
warrior nobles of Annoux, though the line stretched back in unbroken
descent to the days of the first Crusades. Born at Auxerre on May 18,
1770, the future Marshal was destined for the service, and at the age of
fifteen entered the Royal Military School at Paris. In the fatal year
1789 he received his commission in the Royal Champagne regiment of
cavalry stationed at Hesdin, but his period of service with the royal
army was short. From his boyhood, young Davout was one of those whom it
was impossible to drive, who, while they submit to no authority, are as
clay in the hands of the master mind who can gain their affections. His
turbulent spirit had early become captivated by the specious
revolutionary logic of a brilliant young lawyer, Turreau, who, a few
years later, became his stepfather. Full of burning zeal for his new
political tenets, chafing under the dull routine of garrison life,
despising his mediocre companions, the young sub-lieutenant soon found
himself in trouble, and was dismissed from the service for the part he
took in aiding the revolutionaries in their attempts to seduce the
privates and non-commissioned officers from their allegiance to their
sovereign. His return to civil life was but brief, for, when in 1791 the
Prussian invasion summoned the country to arms, Louis Nicolas enlisted
in the Volunteers of the Yonne, and owing to his former military
training was at once elected lieutenant-colonel.