STARS OF LESSER MAGNITUDE
‟BAD troops do not exist,” said Napoleon on one occasion. “There are
only bad officers.” Napoleon did his best therefore to find good
officers, and trusted that the rank and file would through them become
good soldiers. And yet, was he successful either in his end or in his
method? The army of 1796, which he did not train, was timid in retreat
though terrible in advance. The men were fanatics, and similar strengths
and weaknesses are typical of fanatics in large bodies. In 1800 Napoleon
had an army which he could manœuvre in line, and which bore the dreadful
strain of Marengo without breaking. Half the men in the ranks, however,
were untrained boys, who, as Napoleon’s despatches tell us, were
ignorant a few days before the battle as to which eye they should use to
aim their muskets. Marengo was largely a personal triumph for Napoleon;
it was his vehement encouragement, coupled with the confident
expectation of Desaix’ arrival, which held the men together during that
long-drawn agony.
The peace which followed Hohenlinden gave Napoleon a chance to train an
army as he wished, and the Austerlitz campaign found him at the head of
an army of two hundred thousand men, half of them veterans, all of them
of very considerable length of service, who were to a man inspired with
the utmost enthusiasm for him and for the Empire. Yet at Austerlitz the
line was abandoned almost entirely in favour of the column; the columns
showed evident signs of disintegration even when victorious. It was
already a little obvious that the Imperial armies were only adapted to a
furious offensive effort, and that failure of this effort meant
unlimited catastrophe. At Jena the Prussians were too heavily
outnumbered to offer any serious resistance, but at Eylau the French
army was only saved from destruction after the failure of their first
offensive by the fact that Napoleon held ready at hand eighteen thousand
cavalry, and by the constitutional sluggishness of the Russian army.
Friedland offered the last example of a really heroic defensive by an
Imperial force, but the soul of that defensive was Lannes. Few other men
could have held a French army corps together against superior forces as
did Lannes on that fateful anniversary of Marengo. After Friedland we
find the French army growing progressively poorer and more unreliable.
We read of panics at Wagram, of the introduction of regimental artillery
to give the infantry confidence, of shameless skulking on the field of
battle and of heavy desertion while on the march. Discipline was fading
at the same time as devotion to the Emperor was losing some of its
force. In the Russian campaign of 1812 the Grand Army had barely crossed
the frontier before it began to go to pieces. Napoleon could not trust
his men to manœuvre at Borodino, and in consequence he had to rely on
frontal attacks made against elaborate fieldworks defended by the most
stubborn of all Continental infantry. At the crisis of the battle he
refused to fling the Imperial Guard into the struggle; some thought it
was because he was too far from his base to risk his best reserve; some
suspected Bessières of having implored him not to waste his best troops;
but perhaps the reason was a more logical one. Had the Guard been sent
forward and been beaten back, the whole army would have fallen back
routed; at Waterloo Napoleon took the risk and lost; at Borodino he
refused to take it and was satisfied with an indecisive gain.
The Grand Army perished in Russia, but in three months Napoleon raised,
trained and equipped three hundred thousand more men and was for a time
once more successful. Curiously enough, this raw infantry of 1813 was to
all intents and purposes of greater military value than the two or three
year trained infantry of 1812. The army of 1812 possessed the little
knowledge proverbially dangerous, and would not willingly expose itself
to sacrifice, but the novices of 1813 knew nothing of war, and suffered
losses and privations which would have roused veterans to mutiny. At
Lützen Ney’s corps of half-grown boys endured for hours the attack of
the whole Allied force, and fought like demons in the shelter of the
villages of Gorschen and Kaya. At Bautzen the French attacked with a
dash and fury reminiscent of Elchingen or Saalfeld. Before Dresden they
accomplished a march which easily bears comparison with anything
achieved in 1796. But the decline of their fame had already begun. At
the Katzbach, at Gross Beeren, at Dennewitz, the conscripts fled in
panic. They had discovered by this time that a battle generally implies
the sacrifice of one portion of the army while the rest gains the
victory, and they were one and all determined not to be the sacrifice.
At Leipzig what was left of the army of 1813 lost the greater part of
its numbers—a new lesson to the effect that it is easier to surrender
than to fight had been learned. Napoleon’s last victorious phase, in the
campaign of France in 1814, coincides with his use of a fresh army of
raw conscripts, and his surrender took place when the men of the ranks
had once more learnt the lessons of their predecessors.
Waterloo, the last battle of the Empire, epitomizes all these
observations. The French attacked with dash, but a single reverse was
sufficient to weaken the infantry so much that no support was
forthcoming for the later cavalry attacks. A powerful counter-attack by
the enemy brought about, not merely retreat, but unspeakable panic.
Practically every battalion which had been in action broke and fled. The
Guard, which had moved forward so majestically, dispersed like the
merest conscripts. The only troops which held together were the reserve
battalions of the Old Guard, which had not yet been engaged, and for a
time Lobau’s corps at Planchenoit. The Prussians after Jena were not so
hopelessly disorganized as were the French after Waterloo.
Napoleon undoubtedly appreciated this weakness of his army, and this
explains the reckless manner in which he sought battle at all costs, and
the risks he cheerfully ran in his endeavour to get to grips with his
enemy. His headlong, energetic strategy gave him the initiative, and
this initiative he retained on the field of battle. Jena, Eylau,
Eckmühl, Aspern, Wagram, Borodino, were all examples of a fierce
tactical offensive. On the two principal occasions, at Austerlitz and
Friedland, when he confined some part of his force to a dogged
defensive, he saw that the generals in command were men of wide personal
influence, and that the troops they led were the best available. Davout
and Lannes were certainly successful. At Lützen Ney’s necessarily
defensive rôle was not fully foreseen, but he was able to hold on,
partly through the enthusiasm of his young men, partly through the
advantage they possessed in holding the villages, and partly through
Wittgenstein’s bungling of the attack.
At no period in its development will Napoleon’s army bear comparison
with, say, the army of Cromwell, or the original force of Gustavus
Adolphus, or with the army of the Third Republic. It incidentally
follows that Napoleon’s military achievements should be rated even
higher than they usually are, seeing that the immense successes he
gained were gained with inferior troops.
But if the rank and file were of this doubtful quality, it was far
otherwise with the officers, and the statement of Napoleon’s with which
this chapter opens is therefore subject to doubt. Napoleon’s method of
making war support war exposed his armies, as he candidly admitted, to a
loss of one-half of their numbers every year, and since this loss fell
far more heavily on the privates than on the officers, it followed that
a very widely experienced corps of officers was built up. It was quite
usual for men of good birth to serve a few months in the ranks before
taking commissions; Marbot and Bugeaud are good examples of this among
the younger men. Once they had gained their lieutenancy anything might
happen. They might in ten years be dukes and generals, or they might
still be lieutenants. The open system of promotion was stimulating,
certainly, but it was undoubtedly unfair at times. Curély, who served
from 1800 to 1814, and was subsequently admitted to be the best light
cavalry officer in the French service, only attained his colonelcy in
his last campaign. The men who received the most rapid promotion were
those who had attracted Napoleon’s notice in 1796 or in the Egyptian
campaign. Some of these choices were highly successful, as witness the
career of Davout, but others were positively harmful. Marmont was a
failure, Junot was a failure, Murat was a failure, while men of
undoubted talent served in twenty campaigns without receiving promotion.
Kellermann the younger fought at Waterloo with the same military rank as
he had held at Marengo. Suchet, who was one of the most successful
generals of division in 1799, remained a general of division until 1811.
If this was the case with the higher ranks, it must have been nearly as
bad with the lower ranks. When the rush of promotion of the
Revolutionary era ended, advancement became very slow indeed. A man who
was a captain at the battle of the Pyramids might well consider himself
fortunate if he commanded a battalion at Ligny. Occasionally, however,
the divisional generals were given their chance. The vast expansion of
the Imperial Army for the Russian campaign increased the commands of
some of the Marshals to eighty or a hundred thousand men, and generals
of division similarly found themselves at the head of twenty or thirty
thousand. Many of them displayed talents of a very high order. St. Cyr
won the battle of Polotsk, for which he received his bâton. The most
remarkable example occurred at Salamanca. Here Wellington had flung
himself suddenly on the over-extended Army of Portugal, had shattered
one wing, and had beaten back the remainder in dire confusion; Marmont,
the commander-in-chief, was badly wounded. Bonnet had hardly succeeded
to the command when he was killed. Several other generals of division
were struck down. The man who took over command of the fleeing mob was
already wounded. He was practically unknown; he was leading a beaten
army in wild retreat from the finest troops in the world. And yet he
rallied that beaten army; in the course of a few hours he had them once
more in hand. He faced about time and again as he toiled across the
wasted Castilian plains; in a dozen fierce rearguard actions he taught
the exultant English that some Frenchmen, as well as being more than men
in victory, were not less than women in defeat, and he showed Wellington
that every French general was not a Marmont. Every morning found his
army posted in some strong position; all day long the English marched by
wretched roads and over thirsty plains to turn the flanks; every evening
as the movement was nearing completion the French fell back to some new
position where the English had to resume the whole weary business next
day. The French survived the severest defeat they had yet received in
the Peninsula at English hands with astonishingly little loss; a few
weeks later they had so far recovered as to thrust fiercely forward once
more, and aid in driving Wellington from Madrid. The man who was
responsible for this wonderful achievement deserved reward. Bessières
and Marmont had been given bâtons for much less. A title, a marshalate,
a dotation of a million francs would not have seemed too much for saving
for France a kingdom, an army of forty thousand men, and dependent
forces numbering a quarter of a million. But Clausel was not made
Marshal, nor Duke of Burgos. Instead he was recalled, and an inferior
general, Souham, sent in his place. Napoleon had a prejudice against
“retreating generals” dating from the days of Moreau. Clausel took the
affront philosophically, and fought on for his Emperor. When it was too
late, his worth was recognized, and during the Hundred Days he was given
the independent command of the Pyrenees. After Waterloo he fled from
France with a price on his head. Clausel went unrewarded; Murat was
over-rewarded. Their lines of conduct differed greatly.
The men who were never granted the coveted rank of Marshal, but who did
each as much for France as any one of half the Marshals, are in number
legion. Their very names would fill a page. Kellermann the younger has
already been mentioned. At Marengo his desperate charge at the head of
the heavy cavalry saved the day, and “set the crown of France on
Napoleon’s head.” But Napoleon found it far safer and far cheaper to
praise a dead man, and he awarded the chief credit to the slain Desaix.
D’Hautpoult died at the head of his Cuirassiers at Eylau, charging one
army to save another. St. Hilaire, the finest of them all, died
miserably at Essling, with the Empire reeling round him. Lasalle, the
pride of the light cavalry, the man who captured Stettin with a few
score Hussars, fell at the head of his men in the pursuit after Wagram.
Montbrun, another Cuirassier, was killed in the great redoubt at
Borodino.
Their names are carved upon the Arc de Triomphe, and the bourgeois peer
at them with self-satisfaction. They fell in a far less worthy cause
than did the myriad Frenchmen who died by poison gas and shrapnel in the
trenches a few years ago. To us now it seems to be nearly blasphemy to
think in the same moment of the Moskowa and the Marne, or to speak in
the same breath of the sieges of Verdun and of Hamburg. The Englishman
turns lightly from the great names on the Arc de Triomphe, and thinks
with proud regret of the simple inscription on an empty tomb in
Whitehall. And yet these men were the wonders of their time. They did
their duty; more cannot be said of any man, and much less of most. They
gave their lives with a smile for a country which they adored. Danger
was as usual to them as was the air they breathed. They gave their blood
in streams; they marched with their men into every Continental capital.
Their cowed enemies regarded them timidly, as though they were beings
from another world. Their continued success and their overwhelming
victories might well have led them to believe themselves superhuman. And
when Waterloo was fought and lost they went back to their beloved
France—such of them as survived—and nursed their wounds on pensions of
thirty pounds a year.
There was one general of division who attained as near as might be to a
marshalate without quite achieving this last step. He was made a duke
and he gained a vast fortune. This man was Junot. Junot, indeed, is
often stated to have received his bâton, but he never did, although he
was as much a favourite of Napoleon’s at one time as was Marmont. It was
Junot who at Toulon was writing a letter at Bonaparte’s dictation, when
a cannon shot plunged near-by and scattered earth over them. “We need no
sand to dry the ink now,” laughed Junot, and from that day his future
was made. He married Mademoiselle Laurette Permon, whom Napoleon had
once courted, and whose memoirs are one of the most interesting books of
the period. Junot himself served as Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp all over
Europe and in Egypt as well. He received promotion steadily, and was a
general of division in a very brief while. With that rank, however, he
was forced to be content, for Napoleon realized his shortcomings, while
a wound in the head which he early received unbalanced him a little
mentally. The one outstanding feature of his character was his
passionate devotion to Napoleon. Napoleon was his God, and Junot served
him with a faithfulness almost unexampled. Adventures came his way with
a frequency characteristic of the period. He fell into English hands and
was exchanged; he went as ambassador to Portugal and made a large
fortune; he was appointed Governor of Paris, and withstood Caroline
Bonaparte’s blandishments when she tried to induce him to subvert the
Government. Half dead with wounds, he travelled across Europe in
November, 1805, and arrived at Austerlitz on the very morning of the
battle. He was again wounded heading a charge that day. In 1807 Napoleon
gave him a command which he hoped would bring him fame, and a marshalate
was promised in the event of success. Junot was to lead the army of
Portugal from France to Lisbon; he was to capture the Portuguese royal
family and the English shipping in the harbour; he was to tear down the
Portuguese Government and to rule the country himself in the name of the
Emperor. Junot set out with a mixed French and Spanish force numbering
nearly forty thousand men. At every stage he received frantic orders
from Paris demanding greater speed from him and his men. Junot did what
he could. The whole valley of the Tagus was littered with the guns, dead
horses and exhausted men whom he had left behind. His army was dispersed
into fragments, and it was only with four hundred men at his back that
Junot burst into Lisbon. The English shipping and the Portuguese royal
family had fled the day before.
Junot was in a serious position. With four hundred men he had to rule a
large town simmering with rebellion, but he succeeded, and held the
country down while the rest of his army trailed disconsolately into
Lisbon. His astonishing march had not achieved its object, and the
marshal’s bâton was therefore withheld. Napoleon offered some sort of
consolation by creating Junot Duke of Abrantès, but there is no doubt
that the disappointment weighed heavily upon him. Napoleon had meditated
making Junot Duke of Nazareth, in memory of his victory during the
Syrian campaign, but he had decided that it would be inadvisable, as the
soldiers would call him “Junot of Nazareth.”
Napoleon was not quite so far-sighted when at the same time he made
Victor, at the suggestion of one of the wits of his court, Duke of
Belluno. Victor was commonly called the Beau Soleil of the French Army.
Napoleon’s investiture made him Duke of Belle Lune.
Immediately afterwards the Spanish war broke out, and Junot found
himself isolated at Lisbon. He gathered his forces together, and without
any help whatever from France he maintained them and re-equipped them at
the cost of unfortunate Portugal. But it was not to last long, for
Wellington landed in Mondego bay, and Junot, furiously attacking him,
was badly beaten at Vimiero. There followed the Convention of Cintra. By
it Junot and his men were transported back to France with their arms,
baggage and plunder; all that the English gained was a bloodless
occupation of Portugal. It is difficult now to decide who had the best
of this agreement. Certainly Napoleon thought that Junot had made a good
bargain, and equally certainly the English public thought that
Wellington had blundered badly.
If the Convention had not been concluded, the English would have cut
Junot off from France (two hundred thousand Spanish insurgents had done
that already) and would have shut him up in Lisbon. Without a doubt,
Junot would have made a desperate resistance there. Masséna’s holding of
Genoa in 1800 might have been re-enacted, and the wretched Portuguese
might have starved while Junot held out. In this event the hands of the
English would have been so full that no help could have been offered to
the Spanish armies; Moore’s skilful thrust at Sahagun could never have
been made, and the Spaniards might have met with utter annihilation. By
the Convention of Cintra, France gained an immediate benefit, but
England eventually gained even more.
After Vimiero, Junot’s military career is one of continued
failure—failure under Masséna in the Busaco campaign, failure under
Napoleon in the Russian campaign, until at last the Duke of Abrantès was
sent into comparative exile as Governor of Illyria. Here his troubles,
his wounds and his disappointments bore too heavily upon him. He went
raving mad, and performed all sorts of lunatic actions in his Illyrian
province until he was removed to France. At Dijon he flung himself from
a window and killed himself. Junot is one more example of those whom
Napoleon favoured, who met with horrible ends.
But Marshals and Generals alike, Napoleon’s superior officers were
nearly all distinguished by one common failing—a dread of
responsibility and a hopeless irresolution when compelled to act on
their own initiative. The examples of this are almost too numerous to
mention; the most striking perhaps is Berthier’s failure during the
early period of the campaign of 1809. There are many others which had
much more important results, although at first they seem trivial in
comparison. Thus, Dupont’s surrender at Baylen, although it only
involved twenty thousand men, was one of the principal causes of the
prolongation of the Peninsular War. Dupont surrendered with twenty
thousand men; his action necessitated the employment in the Peninsula of
three hundred thousand men for six years afterwards.
Another incident of the same type was Vandamme’s disaster at Kulm.
Vandamme was a burly, heavy-jawed soldier of the furious and thoughtless
kind, who had learnt his trade thoroughly well by rule of thumb, and who
had made his name a byword throughout Germany on account of his dreadful
depredations. His boast was that he feared neither God nor devil, and
Napoleon referred to this once when he said that Vandamme was the most
valuable of all his soldiers because he was the only one he could employ
in a war against the Infernal regions, should such a contingency arise.
In July, 1813, the Armistice of Pleisswitz had come to an end, and
Austria had joined the ranks of Napoleon’s enemies. The Grand Army was
in Silesia when the news arrived that the Austrians were marching on
Dresden. Napoleon turned back without hesitation, marched a hundred and
twenty miles in four days, and by what was almost his last victory he
saved the town. At the commencement of his march he had detached
Vandamme with twenty thousand men to hold the passes of the Erz Gebirge
against the retreating forces. The beaten Austrian army came reeling
back towards them. The Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia were
present in its ranks, and it seemed as if nothing could save them from
surrender. Fortunately, perhaps, for Europe, Napoleon was unwell and did
not press the pursuit as closely as he might have done, and Vandamme,
who rushed into peril like a bull into the ring, without outposts,
without flank guards, without any reasonable protection, was overwhelmed
by forces outnumbering his by four to one, and was forced to surrender.
Vandamme may have feared neither God nor devil, but he had not the
brains for a command in chief, even against men.
His own honour he redeemed from all possible accusations of cowardice,
when, a prisoner in Austrian hands, with all the possibilities before
him of condemnation to slow death in a salt-mine or speedy death on the
spot, he was led before the Czar, and he did not quail. Alexander rated
him for his excesses in Prussia, and Vandamme hit back at Alexander’s
tender spot—his conscience. “At least I did not kill my own father,”
said Vandamme.
Indecision characterizes the actions of many French generals during the
Empire. The most discussed case perhaps was Grouchy’s hesitation at
Wavre during the Waterloo campaign, and this, curiously enough, was not
really hesitation. The sole military crime of which Grouchy was guilty
was a too pedantic obedience to orders. Grouchy has been blamed for
misreading the situation and for not marching from Wavre on Waterloo,
but Napoleon misread the situation just as badly, as his orders to
Grouchy clearly prove. Moreover, once Grouchy’s hands had been freed by
the destruction of the main French army, his actions were exceedingly
bold and competent. His retreat across the Allies’ rear and his capture
of Namur were manœuvres of sound military skill.
Grouchy’s military career had been in every way honourable throughout
his life. He had ridden bravely to destruction at the head of his
dragoons during Murat’s charge at Eylau. He had fought magnificently at
Friedland and elsewhere. The only other time when he had been in
independent command, and when he did display genuine dilatoriness was
many years before when he had found himself in command owing to the loss
of Hoche on the French expedition to Bantry Bay in 1796. Grouchy’s
courage failed him then, and he withdrew at the very time when his
landing would have set Ireland in an inextinguishable blaze. For a
series of quite strictly correct actions at Waterloo Grouchy has gone
down to history as a fool and a humbug, but he was neither—to any great
extent.
During the Waterloo campaign there was certainly one example of a
general being overwhelmed by his sense of responsibility. Up to the
moment of execution not one of Napoleon’s plans of attack had been more
brilliantly conceived or better arranged. A hundred and twenty thousand
men were assembled at the crossings of the Sambre by Charleroi without
the enemy gathering more than a hint as to what was in the air; in fact
the Allies’ Intelligence completely lost sight of Gérard’s corps of
sixteen thousand men. From this point, however, the arrangements rapidly
grew worse and worse. Bad staff work caused delays at the crossing of
the Sambre; Ney’s unexpected appointment to the command of the left wing
was disturbing, in that he was without a staff and his sudden elevation
annoyed d’Erlon and Reille, his subordinate corps commanders. Zieten’s
stubborn rearguard actions held up the French columns for a considerable
time; and finally a sort of universal misunderstanding led to everyone
being more or less in the dark as to the need for a determined and
immediate attack. Ney, goaded by repeated orders, at last attacked at
Quatre Bras quite six hours later than he should have done, and even
then he had only half his force in hand. The other half, under d’Erlon,
was making its way towards him, when it was caught up by an aide-de-camp
of Napoleon’s, who was bearing a message to Ney requesting him to send
help to the Emperor at Ligny. The aide-de-camp, on his own
responsibility, sent d’Erlon marching over towards Ligny instead of to
Quatre Bras, and went on to inform Ney of his action. Ney was furious.
Every moment the British army in front of him was being reinforced, and
he was now being steadily pushed back. He saw defeat close upon him, and
he sent off a frantic order to d’Erlon to retrace his steps and march on
Quatre Bras. The order reached d’Erlon at the crisis of the battle of
Ligny. For hours a fierce and sanguinary battle had raged there, and at
the crucial moment d’Erlon had appeared, like a god from a machine, with
twenty thousand men on the Prussian flank. Napoleon sent him urgent
orders to attack, but the officier d’ordonnance returned disconsolate.
D’Erlon had just received Ney’s order and had marched back towards
Quatre Bras, where he arrived just as darkness fell, two hours too late.
His sense of responsibility did not permit him to disregard the orders
of his immediate superior, although it had lain in his power, by
disregarding them, to have dealt the Prussian army a blow from which it
could hardly have recovered. The attack d’Erlon should have made was
later made by six thousand weary men who had fought all day long, and
naturally did not have the immense success d’Erlon might have achieved.
Drouet, Comte d’Erlon, had built himself up during twenty campaigns a
reputation as a skilful and hard-fighting officer. He was neither a
poltroon nor congenitally weak-minded; what was the matter with him was
that he had fought twenty campaigns under Napoleon. The brilliance of
the Emperor and the implicit, blind obedience he demanded had weakened
d’Erlon’s initiative past all reckoning. It is interesting to compare
d’Erlon’s action at Ligny with Lannes’ at Friedland, or with the daring
of the subordinate Prussian officers at Mars-la-Tour and at Gravelotte
in 1870.
And yet one cannot help but think, on reading military history, that the
Lannes and the Davouts of this world are astonishingly few when compared
with the d’Erlons and the Duponts. Military history is a history of
blunders, fortunate or unfortunate. Men are found everywhere in control
of the lives and destinies of ten, twenty, a hundred thousand men, and
completely unable even to expend them in an efficient manner. On reading
of the fumbling campaigns of Schwartzenberg, of Carlo Alberto, of
Napoleon III., or even of wars waged more recently still, and of which
we ourselves have had experience, one cannot help feeling overwhelming
pity at the thought of the wretched men—every one of them as full of
life as you or I—who were called upon to lay down everything at the
call of duty or patriotism—and to lay down everything _uselessly_. The
argument against war which appeals most to those who may have to take
part in it is not so much that it is expensive or that it costs lives,
but that it is so blightingly inefficient. To die because one’s country
is in need, that is one thing; but to die because one’s commanding
officer has bad dreams, is quite another matter.
But the armies of Napoleon were at least free from a horrible slur which
has been cast upon other armies. We cannot find anywhere any hint that
the officers did not do all their duty as far as they visualized it. On
going into action the men did not shout “Les epaulettes en avant” as did
the army of the Second Empire at Solferino. No officer of Napoleon’s
ever wasted his men’s lives to gratify his own pride, in the way that
English marines died at Trafalgar. It was said with pride of an officer
of Marlborough’s that he always said, “Come on” not “Go on” to his men.
The same could be said of every one of the higher officers of the army
of the First Empire. The hundreds of volumes of memoirs written by
Napoleon’s men teem with examples (grudgingly given, in some cases) of
valour, but there is hardly one case where an Imperial officer is
accused of cowardice, or even of shirking. The officers bore exactly the
same hardships as did the men, and the friendship and trust which
existed between the rank and file and the commissioned officers of the
army of the First Empire has never been excelled in any other army in
history.
A simple calculation at any Napoleonic battle will show that the number
of generals killed is proportionate to that of the privates, while of
the twenty-four Marshals of the Empire who fought after the
inauguration, three—Lannes, Bessières and Poniatowski—were killed in
action, and all the others were wounded at various times. Napoleon
himself, as is well known, was wounded during the fighting round
Ratisbon in 1809, and Duroc, his trusted Grand Marshal of the Palace,
was struck down at his side by a stray cannon shot at Bautzen in 1813,
and died an hour later in horrible agony.
The facts about the Imperial army are curiously contradictory. The men
were devoted to Napoleon, but their devotion did not hold them together
in moments of panic. The officers were experienced in all the details of
war, but for all their experience they lost touch with the Prussian army
during the vital period following Ligny. Napoleon had laid down as
essential various rules of strategy—but he departed from them during
the autumn campaign of 1813. Nothing seems consistent or satisfactory
during the whole period.
Yet there are hundreds upon hundreds of incidents of which one cannot
read without a thrill. Cambronne at Waterloo replying with a curse when
called upon to surrender in the face of certain destruction; the Red
Lancers of the Guard gaining the Somo Sierra in the teeth of a tempest
of cannon shot; the conscripts of 1814, in sabots and blouses, facing
undaunted the savage enemy cavalry at Champaubert; Ney rallying the
rearguard during the retreat from Moscow; Kellermann charging an army at
Quatre Bras; the engineers dying gladly to save the army at the
Beresina; all these incidents are worthy to be remembered with pride,
and almost blot out the memory of the hideous ferocity of these selfsame
men in Spain, in Germany and in Russia.
It is the fate of the Emperor and the Grand Army to be equally at the
mercy of the panegyrics of the admirer and the insults of anyone who
chooses to inveigh against them.
[Illustration: LETIZIA BONAPARTE
(MADAME MÈRE)]
[Illustration: ELISE BACCIOCHI
(née BONAPARTE)]