Napoleon’s marshals were twenty-six in number, of whom seven only
were born in a rank which would have entitled them to become general
officers under the old Monarchy. These were Kellermann, Berthier,
Davoust, Macdonald, Marmont, Grouchy, and Poniatowski, a Pole. Of
the others, Murat was the son of an innkeeper, Lefèbvre of a miller,
Augereau of a mason, Bernadotte of a weaver, and Ney of a cooper.
Masséna’s father, like Murat’s, kept a village wine-shop; Lannes was
the son of an ostler, and was himself apprenticed to a dyer; Victor,
whose real name was Perrin, was the son of an invalided private
soldier, who after leaving the service became a market-crier; while
Soult’s mother kept a mercer’s shop, and Oudinot’s a small _cafè_ with
a circulating library. The marshals sprung from the _bourgeoisie_ or
middle class were Serrurier, whose father was an officer, but never
rose above the rank of captain; Bessières, whose father, though a poor
clerk in a lawyer’s office, was the son of a doctor; Suchet, who was
the son of a silk-merchant; Moncey, the son of a barrister; Gouvion,
who assumed the name of Saint-Cyr, and whose father practiced as an
attorney; and Brune, who started in life as a journalist. It is curious
to trace through the lives of the different men the effect which
their earliest associations had upon them. Some grew ashamed of their
parentage; whilst others bragged overmuch of being self-made men. Only
one or two bore their honors with perfect modesty and tact.
The noblest character among Napoleon’s marshals was beyond doubt
Adrien Moncey, Duc de Conégliano. He was born at Besançon in 1754,
and enlisted at the age of fifteen, simply that he might not be a
charge to his parents. From his father, the barrister, he had picked
up a smattering of education, while Nature had given him a talent
for drawing. He looked so small and young when he was brought before
the colonel of the Franche Comté regiment for enrollment, that the
latter, who was quite a young man—the Count de Survilliers—asked him,
laughing, whether he had been tipsy from “drinking too much milk”
when he fell into the hands of the recruiting sergeant. The sergeant,
by way of proving that young Moncey had been quite sober when he had
put on the white cockade (which was like taking the king’s shilling
in England), produced a cleverly executed caricature of himself which
the boy had drawn; upon which M. de Survilliers predicted that so
accomplished a recruit would quickly win an epaulette. This promise
came to nothing, for in 1789, after twenty years’ service, Moncey was
only a lieutenant. It was a noble trait in him that in after years he
never spoke resentfully of his slow promotion. He used to say that he
had been thoroughly well-trained, and he alluded kindly to all his
former officers. After Napoleon’s overthrow, Moncey’s conduct was most
chivalrous; he privately blamed Ney’s betrayal of the Bourbons, for it
was not in his nature to approve of double-dealing, but he refused to
sit in judgment upon his former comrade. Marshal Victor was sent to
shake his resolution, but Moncey repeated two or three times: “I do not
think I should have acted as Ney did, but I believe he acted according
to his conscience and did well; ordinary rules do not apply to this
case.” He eventually became governor of the Invalides, and it fell to
him in 1840 to receive Napoleon’s body when it was brought from St.
Helena. It was remarked at the time that if Napoleon himself could have
designated the man who was to discharge this pious duty, he would have
chosen none other than Moncey, or Oudinot, who by a happy coincidence
became governor of the Invalides in 1842 after Moncey’s death.
Nicolas Oudinot, Duc de Reggio, was surnamed the Modern Bayard. He was
born in 1767, and like Moncey enlisted in his sixteenth year. He was
wounded thirty-two times in action, but was so little of a braggart
that in going among the old pensioners of the Invalides he was never
heard to allude to his own scars. At Friedland a bullet went through
both his cheeks, breaking two molars. “These Russians do not know how
to draw teeth,” was his only remark, as his wound was being dressed.
After Friedland he received with the title of count a grant of £40,000,
and he began to distribute money at such a rate among his poor
relations, that the emperor remonstrated with him. “You keep the lead
for yourself, and you give the gold away,” said His Majesty in allusion
to two bullets which remained in the marshal’s body.
Macdonald comes next among the marshals for nobility of character. He
was of Irish extraction, born at Sancerre in 1765, and served under
Louis XVI. in Dillon’s Irish Regiment. Macdonald won his colonelcy at
Jemmapes. In 1804, however, all his prospects were suddenly marred
through his generous espousal of Moreau’s cause. Moreau had been
banished on an ill-proven charge of conspiracy; and Macdonald thought,
like most honest men, that he had been very badly treated.
But by saying aloud what most honest men were afraid even to whisper,
Macdonald incurred the Corsican’s vindictive hatred, and during
five years he was kept in disgrace, being deprived of his command,
and debarred from active service. He thus missed the campaigns
of Austerlitz and Jéna, and this was a bitter chagrin to him. He
retired to a small country-house near Brunoy, and one of his favorite
occupations was gardening. He was much interested in the projects
for manufacturing sugar out of beetroot, which were to render France
independent of West India sugar—a matter of great consequence after
the destruction of France’s naval power at Trafalgar: and he had an
intelligent gardener who helped him in his not very successful efforts
to raise fine beetroots. This man turned out to be a police-spy.
Napoleon in his jealousy of Moreau and hatred of all who sympathized
with the latter, had thought it good to have Macdonald watched, and
he appears to have suspected at one time that the hero of Otricoli
contemplated taking service in the English army. There were other
marshals besides Macdonald who had reasons to complain of Napoleon;
Victor’s hatred of him was very lively, and arose out of a practical
joke. Victor was the vainest of men; he had entered Louis XVI.’s
service at fifteen as a drummer, but when he became an officer under
the Republic he was weak enough to be ashamed of his humble origin
and assumed his Christian name of Victor as a surname instead of his
patronymic of Perrin. He might have pleaded, to be sure, that Victor
was a name of happy augury to a soldier, but he does not appear to
have behaved well toward his Perrin connections. He was a little man
with a waist like a pumpkin, and a round, rosy, jolly face, which had
caused him to be nicknamed _Beau Soleil_. A temperate fondness for red
wine added occasionally to the luster of his complexion. He was not a
general of the first order, but brave and faithful in carrying out his
master’s plans; he had an honorable share in the victory of Friedland,
and after this battle was promoted to the marshalate and to a dukedom.
Now Victor would have liked to be made Duke of Marengo; but Napoleon’s
sister Pauline suggested that his services in the two Italian wars
could be commemorated as well by the title of Belluno—pronounced in
French, Bellune. It was not until after Napoleon had innocently acceded
to this suggestion that he learned his facetious sister had in choosing
the title of Bellune (Belle Lune) played upon the sobriquet of Beau
Soleil. He was at first highly displeased at this, but Victor himself
took the joke so very badly that the emperor ended by joining in the
laughter, and said that if the marshal did not like the title that had
been given him, he should have no other. Wounds in vanity seldom heal,
and Victor, as soon as he could safely exhibit his resentment, showed
himself one of Napoleon’s bitterest enemies. During the Hundred Days he
accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent, and he figured in full uniform at
the _Te Deum_ celebrated in the Cathedral of Saint Bavon in honor of
Waterloo.
Augereau, Duc de Castiglione, was of all the marshals the one in whom
there is least to admire; yet he was for a time the most popular among
them, having been born in Paris and possessing the devil-may-care
impudence of Parisians. He was the son of a mason and of a street
fruit-vendor, and he began life as apprentice to his father’s trade.
Soon after he enlisted, and proved a capital soldier; but his character
was only good in the military sense. He was thirty-two when the
Revolution broke out, and was then wearing a sergeant’s stripes; in
the following year he got a commission; in 1793 he was a colonel; in
1795 a general. His rapid promotion was not won by valor only, but by
sending to the war office bombastic despatches in which he magnified
every achievement of his twenty-fold, and related it with a rigmarole
of patriotic sentiments and compliments to the convention.
There was one great point of resemblance between Augereau and Masséna:
they were both inveterate looters. In 1798, when Masséna was sent
to Rome to establish a republic, his own soldiers were disgusted by
the shameless way in which he plundered palaces and churches, and he
actually had to resign his command owing to their murmurs. Augereau was
a more wily spoiler, for he gave his men a good share of what he took,
and kept another share for Parisian museums, but he always reserved
enough for himself to make his soldiering a very profitable business.
It was politic of Napoleon to make of Augereau a marshal-duke, for
apart from the man’s intrepidity, which was unquestionable (though he
was a poor general), the honors conferred upon him were a compliment
to the whole class of Parisian _ouvriers_. Augereau’s mother, the
costerwoman, lived to see him in all his glory, and he was good to
her, for once, at a state pageant, when he was wearing the plumed
hat of a senator, and the purple velvet mantle with its _semis_ of
golden bees, he gave her his arm in public. This incident delighted
all the market-women of Paris, and helped to make Napoleon’s court
popular; but in general respects Augereau proved an unprofitable,
ungrateful servant. He was one of the first marshals to grumble against
his master’s repeated campaigns, and he deserted him in 1814 under
circumstances which looked suspicious. Napoleon accused him of letting
himself be purposely beaten by the Allies. After the escape from Elba,
Augereau first pronounced himself vehemently against the “usurper;”
then proffered him his services, which were contemptuously spurned. The
Duc de Castiglione’s career ended then, for he retired to his estate at
Houssaye, and died a year afterward, little regretted by anybody.
Masséna, who had been born the year after Augereau, died the year after
him, in 1817. He too had enlisted very young, but finding he could get
no promotion, had asked his friends to buy his discharge, and during
the five years that preceded the Revolution, he served as potman in his
father’s tavern at Leven. Re-enlisting in 1789, he became a general in
less than four years. After Rivoli, Bonaparte dubbed him “The darling
of victory;” but it was a curious feature in Masséna that his talents
only came out on the battle-field. Usually he was a dull dog, with no
faculty for expressing his ideas, and he wore a morose look. Napoleon
said that “the noise of cannon cleared his mind,” endowing him with
penetration and gaiety at the same time. The din of war had just the
contrary effect upon Brune, who, but for his tragic death, would have
remained the most obscure of the marshals, though he is conspicuous
from being almost the only one of the twenty-six who had no title of
nobility. Brune was a notable example of what strong will-power can
do to conquer innate nervousness. He was the son of a barrister, and
having imbibed the hottest revolutionary principles, vapored them
off by turning journalist. He went to Paris, and was introduced to
Danton, for whom he conceived an enthusiastic admiration. He became
the demagogue’s disciple, letter-writer, and boon companion, and it is
pretty certain that he would eventually have kept him company on the
guillotine, had it not been for a lucky sneer from a woman’s lips which
drove him into the army. Brune had written a pamphlet on military
operations, and it was being talked of at Danton’s table, when Mdlle.
Gerfault, an actress of the Palais Royal, better known as “Eglé,” said
mockingly, “You will be a general when we fight with pens.” Stung to
the quick, Brune applied for a commission, was sent into the army with
the rank of major, and in about a year, through Danton’s patronage,
became a brigade-general; meanwhile poor Eglé, having wagged her pert
tongue at Robespierre, lost her head in consequence.
The marshal on whom ducal honors seemed to sit most queerly was
François Lefèbvre, Duc de Dantzig. He was born in 1755, the son of a
miller, and was a sergeant in the French guards at the time of the
Revolution. He had then just married a _vivandière_. The anecdotes of
Madame Lefèbvre’s incongruous sayings at the consular and imperial
courts are so many as to remind one of the proverb, “We yield only to
riches.” Everything that could be imagined in the way of a _lapsus
linguæ_ or a bull was attributed to this good-natured Mrs. Malaprop,
whose oddities amused Josephine, but not always Napoleon.
Once Lefèbvre fell ill of ague, and his servant, an old soldier, caught
the malady at the same time. The servant was quickly cured; but the
fever clung to the marshal until it occurred to his energetic duchess
that the doctor had blundered by giving to a marshal the same doses as
to a private soldier. She rapidly counted on her fingers the different
rungs of the military ladder. “Here, drink, this suits your rank,” she
said, putting a full tumbler to her husband’s lips, and the duke having
swallowed a dozen doses at one gulp, was soon on his legs again. “You
have much to learn, my friend,” was the lady’s subsequent remark to the
astonished doctor.
Napoleon was a great stickler for appearances, and for this reason
loathed the dirtiness and slovenliness of Davoust. Madame Junot, in
her amusing “Memoirs,” relates that the Duc d’Auerstadt, having some
facial resemblance to Napoleon, was fond of copying him in dress and
manners; but she adds that Napoleon himself was very neat. A marshal
had no excuse for being untidy. Davoust had been at Brienne with
Bonaparte, and had thus a longer experience of his master’s character
than any of the other marshals. Had he been wise he would have turned
it to account, not only by cultivating the graces, but by giving the
emperor that ungrudging, demonstrative loyalty which Napoleon valued
above all things, and rewarded by constant favor. But Davoust was a
caballer, a grievance-monger, and a _grognard_; and it must have been
rather diverting to see him aping the manners of a master at whom he
was always carping in holes and corners. On the other hand, it must
be said that Davoust proved faithful in the hour of misfortune, and
did not rally to the Bourbons till 1818; that is, when all chances of
an imperial restoration were gone; moreover, every time he held an
important command he did his duty with courage, talent, and fidelity.
His affected brusqueness of speech was an unfortunate mannerism, for it
made him many enemies, and sometimes exposed him to odd reprisals. The
roughness of tongue which was affected in Davoust was natural in Soult.
This marshal had an excellent heart, but he could not, for the life
of him, refrain from snarling at anybody whom he heard praised. The
proverb about bite and bark might have been invented for him, as the
men at whom he grumbled most were often those whom he most favored.
Soult was born in the same year as Napoleon, 1769, and out-lived
all his brother marshals, dying in 1852, when the second empire was
already an impending fact. He had been a private soldier under Louis
XVI., he passed through every grade in the service, he became prime
minister, and when he voluntarily resigned office in 1847, owing to
the infirmities of age, Louis Philippe created him marshal-general—a
title which had only been borne by three marshals before him, Turenne,
Villars, and Maurice de Saxe. But these honors never quite consoled
Soult for having failed to become king of Portugal. He could not
stomach the luck of his comrade Bernadotte, the son of a weaver, who
was wearing the crown of Sweden.
Bernadotte, whom Soult envied, has some affinities with M. Grévy.
This president of the republic first won renown by a parliamentary
motion to the effect that a republic did not want a president; so
Bernadotte came to be a king, after a long and steadfast profession
of republican principles. Born in 1764, he enlisted at eighteen, and
was sergeant-major in 1789. He was very nearly court-martialed at that
time for haranguing a crowd in revolutionary terms. Five years later
he was a general, and in 1798 ambassador at Vienna. He was an able,
thoughtful, hardy, handsome man, who, having received no education as a
boy, made up for it by diligent study in after years; and no man ever
so well corrected, in small or great things, the imperfections of early
training. Tallyrand said of him, “He is a man who learns and _unlearns_
every day.” One thing he learned was to read the character of Napoleon
and not to be afraid of him, for the act which led to his becoming king
of Sweden was one of rare audacity. Commanding an army sent against
the Swedes in 1808, he suspended operations on learning the overthrow
by revolution of Gustavus IV., against whom war had been declared.
The Swedes were profoundly grateful for this, and Napoleon dared not
say much, because he was supposed to have no quarrel with the Swedes
as a people; but Bernadotte was marked down in his bad books from
that day, and he was in complete disgrace when in 1810 Charles XIII.
adopted him as crown prince with the approval of the Swedish people.
Bernadotte made an excellent king, but remembering his austere advocacy
of republicanism, it is impossible not to smile and ask whether there
is not some truth in Madame de Girardin’s definition of equality as _le
privilége pour tous_.
Napoleon always valued Kellerman as having been a general in the old
royal army. Born in 1735, he was a maréchal de camp (brigadier) when
the war broke out. The emperor would have been glad to have had more
of such men at his court; but it was creditable to the king’s general
officers that very few of them forgot their duties as soldiers during
the troublous period when so many temptations to commit treason beset
men holding high command. Grouchy, who in 1789 was a lieutenant in
the king’s body-guard, hardly cuts a fine figure as a revolutionist
accepting a generalship in 1793 from the convention which had beheaded
his king. He was an uncanny person altogether; the convention having
voted that all noblemen should be debarred from commissions, he
enlisted as a private soldier, and this was imputed to him as an act
of patriotism; but he had friends in high quarters who promised that
he should quickly regain his rank if he formally renounced his titles;
and this he did, getting his generalship restored in consequence. In
after years he resumed his marquisate, and denied that he had ever
abjured it. Napoleon created him marshal during the Hundred Days for
having taken the Duc d’Angoulême prisoner; but the Bourbons declined
to recognize his title to the _bâton_, and he had to wait till Louis
Philippe’s reign before it was confirmed to him. Grouchy was never
a popular marshal, though he fought well in 1814 in the campaign of
France. His inaction on the day of Waterloo has been satisfactorily
explained, but somehow all his acts have required explanation; he was
one of those men whose records are never intelligible without footnotes.
But how many of the marshals remained faithful to their master when his
sun had set? At St. Helena Napoleon alluded most often to Lannes and
Bessières, who both died whilst he was in the heyday of his power, the
first at Essling, the second at Lützen. As to these two Napoleon could
cherish illusions, and he loved to think that Lannes especially—his
brave, hot-headed, hot-hearted “Jean-Jean”—would have clung to him like
a brother in misfortune. Perhaps it was as well that Lannes was spared
an ordeal to which Murat, hot-headed and hot-hearted too, succumbed. It
is at all events a bitter subject for reflection that the great emperor
found among his marshals and dukes no such friend as he had among the
hundreds of humbler officers, captains, and lieutenants, who threw up
their commissions sooner than serve the Bourbons.—_Temple Bar._