MY MEMOIRS
BY
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
TRANSLATED BY
E. M. WALLER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ANDREW LANG
VOL. I
1802 TO 1821
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1907
NOTE
The translator has, in the main, followed the edition published at
Brussels in 1852-56, in the Preface to which the publishers state that
they have printed from "_le manuscrit autographe_" of the author. They
furthermore print a letter from Dumas, dated Brussels, 23rd December
1851, in which Dumas says:
"Je vous offre donc, mon cher Meline, de revoir moi-même les épreuves
de votre réimpression, et de faire de votre édition de Bruxelles la
seule édition complète qui paraîtra à l'étranger."
The translation has been collated (_a_) with the current edition, and
(_b_) with the original edition published in Paris in 1852-55, and
certain omitted passages have been restored. Dumas' spelling of proper
names has been followed save in a few cases deemed to be misprints.
THESE MEMOIRS ARE DEDICATED TO
THE HONOURABLE
COUNT ALFRED D'ORSAY
MY FELLOW-CRAFTSMAN
AND MY BOSOM FRIEND
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
My birth--My name is disputed--Extracts from the official
registers of Villers-Cotterets--Corbeil Club--My
father's marriage certificate--My mother--My maternal
grandfather--Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, father of
Philippe-Égalité--Madame de Montesson--M. de Noailles and
the Academy--A morganatic marriage
CHAPTER II
My father--His birth--The arms of the family--The serpents
of Jamaica--The alligators of St. Domingo--My grandfather--A
young man's adventure--A first duel--M. le duc de Richelieu
acts as second for my father--My father enlists as a private
soldier--He changes his name--Death of my grandfather--His
death certificate
CHAPTER III
My father rejoins his regiment--His portrait--His
strength--His skill--The Nile serpent--The regiment of
the King and the regiment of the Queen--Early days of
the Revolution--Declaration of Pilnitz--The camp at
Maulde--The thirteen Tyrolean chasseurs--My father's
name is mentioned in the order of the day--France under
Providence--Voluntary enlistments--St.-Georges and Boyer--My
father lieutenant-colonel--The camp of the Madeleine--The
pistols of Lepage--My father General of Brigade in the Army
of the North
CHAPTER IV
My father is sent to join Kléber--He is nominated
General-in-Chief in the Western Pyrenees--Bouchotte's
letters--Instructions of the Convention--The Representatives
of the People who sat at Bayonne--Their proclamation--In
spite of this proclamation my father remains at
Bayonne--Monsieur de l'Humanité
CHAPTER V
My father is appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of the
West--His report on the state of La Vendée--My father is
sent to the Army of the Alps as General-in-Chief--State
of the army--Capture of Mont Valaisan and of the Little
Saint-Bernard--Capture of Mont Cenis--My father is recalled
to render an account of his conduct--What he had done--He is
acquitted
CHAPTER VI
The result of a sword-stroke across the head--St. Georges
and the remounts--The quarrel he sought with my father--My
father is transferred to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse--He
hands in his resignation and returns to Villers-Cotterets--A
retrospect over what had happened at home and abroad during
the four years that had just elapsed
CHAPTER VII
My father at Villers-Cotterets--He is called to Paris
to carry out the 13th Vendémiaire--Bonaparte takes
his place--He arrives the next day--_Buonaparte's_
attestation--My father is sent into the district of
Bouillon--He goes to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and to
the Army of the Rhine, and is appointed Commandant at
Landau--He returns as Divisional General in the Army of
the Alps, of which he had been Commander-in-Chief--English
blood and honour--Bonaparte's plan--Bonaparte appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy--The campaign of 1796
CHAPTER VIII
My father in the Army of Italy--He is received
at Milan by Bonaparte and Joséphine--Bonaparte's
troubles in Italy--Scurvy--The campaign is
resumed--Discouragement--Battle of Arcole
CHAPTER IX
The despatch is sent to Bonaparte--Dermoncourt's
reception--Berthier's open response--Military movements
in consequence of the despatch--Correspondence between my
father and Serrurier and Dallemagne--Battle of St.-Georges
and La Favorite--Capture of Mantua--My father as a looker-on
CHAPTER X
My father's first breeze with Bonaparte--My father is sent
to Masséna's army corps--He shares Joubert's command in the
Tyrol--Joubert--The campaign in the Tyrol
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
The bridge of Clausen--Dermoncourt's reports--Prisoners on
parole--Lepage's pistols--Three generals-in-chief at the
same table
CHAPTER II
Joubert's loyalty towards my father--"Send me Dumas"--The
Horatius Codes of the Tyrol--My father is appointed Governor
of the Trévisan--The agent of the Directory--My father fêted
at his departure--The treaty of Campo-Formio--The return
to Paris--The flag of the Army of Italy--The charnel-house
of Morat--Charles the Bold--Bonaparte is elected a member
of the Institute--First thoughts of the expedition to
Egypt--Toulon--Bonaparte and Joséphine--What was going to
happen in Egypt
CHAPTER III
The voyage--The landing--The taking of Alexandria--The
_Chant du Départ_ and the Arabian concert--The respited
prisoners--The march on Cairo--Rum and biscuit--My
father's melons--The Scientific Institute--Battle of
the Pyramids--Scene of the victory--My father's letter
establishing the truth
CHAPTER IV
Admissions of General Dupuis and Adjutant-General Boyer--The
malcontents--Final discussion between Bonaparte and my
father--Battle of Aboukir--My father finds treasure--His
letter on this subject
CHAPTER V
Revolt at Cairo--My father enters the Grand Mosque on
horseback--His home-sickness--He leaves Egypt and lands at
Naples--Ferdinand and Caroline of Naples--Emma Lyon and
Nelson--Ferdinand's manifesto--Comments of his minister,
Belmonte-Pignatelli
CHAPTER VI
Report presented to the French Government by
Divisional-General Alexandre Dumas, on his captivity at
Taranto and at Brindisi, ports in the Kingdom of Naples
CHAPTER VII
My father is exchanged for General Mack--Events during
his captivity--He asks in vain for a share in the
distribution of the 500,000 francs indemnity granted to
the prisoners--The arrears of his pay also refused him--He
is placed on the retired list, in spite of his energetic
protests
CHAPTER VIII
Letter from my father to General Brune on my birth--The
postscript--My godfather and godmother--First recollections
of infancy--Topography of the château des Fossés and
sketches of some of its inhabitants--The snake and the
frog--Why I asked Pierre if he could swim--Continuation of
_Jocrisse_
CHAPTER IX
Mocquet's nightmare--His pipe--Mother Durand--Les bêtes
_fausses_ et le _pierge_--M. Collard--My father's
remedy--Radical cure of Mocquet
CHAPTER X
Who was Berlick?--The fête of Villers-Cotterets--Faust
and Polichinelle--The sabots--Journey to
Paris--Dollé--Manette--Madame de Mauclerc's pension--Madame
de Montesson--_Paul and Virginia_--Madame de Saint-Aubin
CHAPTER XI
Brune and Murat--The return to Villers-Cotterets--L'hôtel de
l'Épée--Princess Pauline--The chase--The chief forester's
permission--My father takes to his bed never to rise
again--Delirium--The gold-headed cane--Death
CHAPTER XII
My love for my father--His love for me--I am taken away to
my cousin Marianne's--Plan of the house--The forge--The
apparition--I learn the death of my father--I wish to go
to heaven to kill God--Our situation at the death of my
father--Hatred of Bonaparte
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
My mother and I take refuge with my grandfather--Madame
Darcourt's house--My first books and my first terrors--The
park at Villers-Cotterets--M. Deviolaine and his family--The
swarm of bees--The old cloister
CHAPTER II
The two snakes--M. de Valence and Madame de Montesson--Who
little Hermine was--Garnier the wheelwright and Madame de
Valence--Madame Lafarge--Fantastic apparition of Madame de
Genlis
CHAPTER III
Mademoiselle Pivert--I make her read the _Thousand and One
Nights_, or, rather, one story in that collection--Old
Hiraux, my music-master--The little worries of his life--He
takes his revenge on his persecutors after the fashion of
the Maréchal de Montluc--He is condemned to be flogged,
and nearly loses the sight of his eyes--What happened on
Easter Day in the organ-loft at the monastery--He becomes
a grocer's lad--His vocation leads him to the study of
music--I have little aptitude for the violin
CHAPTER IV
The dog lantern-bearer--Demoustier's epitaph--My first
fencing-master--"The king drinks"--The fourth terror of my
life--The tub of honey
CHAPTER V
My horror of great heights--The Abbé Conseil--My opening at
the Seminary--My mother, much pressed, decides to enter me
there--The horn inkstand--Cécile at the grocer's--My flight
CHAPTER VI
The Abbé Grégoire's College--The reception I got there--The
fountains play to celebrate my arrival--The conspiracy
against me--Bligny challenges me to single combat--I win
CHAPTER VII
The Abbé Fortier--The jealous husband and the viaticum--A
pleasant visit--Victor Letellier--The pocket-pistol--I
terrify the population--Tournemolle is requisitioned--He
disarms me
CHAPTER VIII
A political chronology--Trouble follows trouble--The fire at
the farm at None--Death of Stanislas Picot--The hiding-place
for the louis d'or--The Cossacks--The haricot mutton
CHAPTER IX
The quarry--Frenchmen eat the haricot cooked for the
Cossacks--The Duc de Treviso--He allows himself to be
surprised--Ducoudray the hosier--Terrors
CHAPTER X
The return to Villers-Cotterets, and what we met on
the way--The box with the thirty louis in it--The
leather-bag--The mole--Our departure--The journey--The
arrival at Mensal and our sojourn their--King Joseph--The
King of Rome--We leave Mensal--Our visit to Crispy in
Valois--The dead and wounded--The surrender of Paris--The
isle of Elba
CHAPTER XI
Am I to be called Davy de La Pailleterie or Alexandre
Dumas?--_Deus dedit, Deus dabit_--The tobacco-shop--The
cause of the Emperor Napoleon's fall, as it appeared to my
writing-master--My first communion--How I prepared for it
BOOK IV
CHAPTER I
Auguste Lafarge--Bird-snaring on a large scale--A wonderful
catch--An epigram--I wish to write French verses--My method
of translating Virgil and Tacitus--Montanan--My political
opinions
CHAPTER II
The single-barrelled gun--_Quiot Biche_--Biche and Boudoux
compared--I become a poacher--It is proposed to issue a
writ against me--Madame Darcourt as plenipotentiary--How it
happened that Cretan's writ caused me no bother
CHAPTER III
Bonaparte's landing at the Gulf of Juan--Proclamations and
Ordonnances--Louis XVIII. and M. de Vitrolles--Cornu the
hatter--Newspaper information
CHAPTER IV
General Exelmans--His trial--The two brothers
Lallemand--Their conspiracy--They are arrested and led
through Villers-Cotterets--The affronts to which they were
subjected
CHAPTER V
My mother and I conspire--The secret--M. Richard--_La
pistole_ and the pistols--The offer made to the brothers
Lallemand in order to save them--They refuse--I meet one of
them, twenty-eight years later, at the house of M. le duc de
Cazes
CHAPTER VI
Napoleon and the Allies--The French army and the Emperor
pass through Villers-Cotterets--Bearers of ill tidings
CHAPTER VII
Waterloo--The Élysée--La Malmaison
CHAPTER VIII
Cæsar--Charlemagne--Napoleon
CHAPTER IX
The rout--The haricot mutton reappears--M. Picot the
lawyer--By diplomatic means, he persuades my mother to let
me go shooting with him--I despise sleep, food and drink
CHAPTER X
Trapping larks--I wax strong in the matter of my
compositions--The wounded partridge--I take the consequences
whatever they are--The farm at Brassoire--M. Deviolaine's
sally at the accouchement of his wife
CHAPTER XI
M. Moquet de Brassoire--The ambuscade--Three hares
charge me--What prevents me from being the king of the
battue--Because I did not take the bull by the horns, I just
escape being disembowelled by it--Sabine and her puppies
BOOK V
CHAPTER I
The second period of my youth--Forest-keepers and
sailors--Choron, Moinat, Mildet, Berthelin--La Maison-Neuve
CHAPTER II
Choron and the mad dog--Niquet, otherwise called
_Bobino_--His mistress--The boar-hunt--The kill--Bobino's
triumph--He is decorated--The boar which he had killed rises
again
CHAPTER III
Boars and keepers--The bullet of Robin-des-Bois--The
pork-butcher
CHAPTER IV
A wolf-hunt--Small towns--Choron's tragic death
CHAPTER V
My mother realises that I am fifteen years old, and that
_la marette_ and _la pipée_ will not lead to a brilliant
future for me--I enter the office of Me. Mennesson, notary,
as errand-boy, otherwise guttersnipe--Me. Mennesson and his
clerks--La Fontaine-Eau-Claire
CHAPTER VI
Who the assassin was and who the assassinated--Auguste
Picot--Equality before the law--Last exploits of Marot--His
execution
CHAPTER VII
Spring at Villers-Cotterets--Whitsuntide--The Abbé Grégoire
invites me to dance with his niece--Red books--The Chevalier
de Faublas--Laurence and Vittoria--A dandy of 1818
CHAPTER VIII
I leap the _Haha_--A slit follows--The two pairs of
gloves--The quadrille--Fourcade's triumph--I pick up the
crumbs--The waltz--The child becomes a man
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
BY ANDREW LANG
There is no real biography of Alexandre Dumas. Nobody has collected
and sifted all his correspondence, tracked his every movement, and
pursued him through newspapers and legal documents. Letters and other
papers (if they have been preserved) should be as abundant in the case
of Dumas as they are scanty in the case of Molière. But they are left
to the dust of unsearched offices; and it is curious that in France
so little has been systematically written about her most popular if
not her greatest novelist. Many treatises on one or other point in
the life and work of Dumas exist, but there is nothing like Boswell's
_Johnson_ or Lockhart's _Scott._ The _Mémoires_ by the novelist himself
cover only part of his career, _Les Enfances Dumas_; and they bear the
same resemblance to a serious conscientious autobiography as _Vingt
Ans Après_ bears to Mr. Gardiner's _History of England._ They contain
facts, indeed, but facts beheld through the radiant prismatic fancy of
the author, who, if he had a good story to tell, dressed it up "with
a cocked hat and a sword," as was the manner of an earlier novelist.
The volumes of travel, and the delightful work on Dumas's domestic
menagerie, _Mes Bêtes_, also contain personal confessions, as does the
novel, _Ange Pitou_, with the _Causeries_, and other books. Fortunately
Dumas wrote most about his early life, and the early life of most
people is more interesting than the records of their later years.
In its limitation to his years of youth, the _Mémoires_ of Dumas
resemble that equally delightful book, the long autobiographical
fragment by George Sand. Both may contain much _Dichtung_ as well as
_Wahrheit_: at least we see the youth of the great novelists as they
liked to see it themselves. The _Mémoires_, with _Mes Bêtes_, possess
this advantage over most of the books, that the most crabbed critic
cannot say that Dumas did not write them himself. In these works,
certainly, he was unaided by Maquet or any other collaborator. They
are all his own, and the essential point of note is that they display
all the humour, the goodness of heart, the overflowing joy in life,
which make the charm of the novels. Here, unmixed, unadulterated, we
have that essence of Dumas with which he transfigured the tame "copy"
drawn up by Maquet and others under his direction. He told them where
to find their historical materials, he gave them the leading ideas
of the plot, told them how to block out the chapters, and then he
took these chapters and infused into them his own spirit, the spirit
which, in its pure shape, pervades every page of the _Mémoires._ They
demonstrate that, while he received mechanical aid from collaborators,
took from their hands the dry bones of his romances, it was he who made
the dry bones live. He is now d'Artagnan, now Athos, now Gorenflot, now
Chicot,--all these and many other personages are mere aspects of the
immortal, the creative Alexandre.
Dumas's autobiography, as far as it is presented in this colossal
fragment, does not carry us into the period of his great novels
(1844-1850). Even this Porthos of the pen found the task of writing
the whole of his autobiography _trop lourd._ The work (in how many
volumes?) would have been monumental: he left his "star-y-pointing
pyramid" incomplete, and no mortal can achieve the task which he left
undone.
Despite his vanity, which was genial and humorous, Alexandre Dumas
could never take himself seriously. This amiable failing is a mistake
everywhere if a man wants to be taken seriously by a world wherein the
majority have no sense of humour. The French are more eminent in wit;
their masters of humour are Rabelais, Montaigne, Molière, Pascal, and,
in modern times, Dumas, Théophile Gautier, and Charles de Bernard. Of
these perhaps only two received fair recognition during their lives.
Dumas, of course, was not unrecognised; few men of the pen have made
more noise in the world. He knew many of the most distinguished people,
from Victor Hugo and Louis Philippe to Garibaldi. Dickens he might
have known, but when Dickens was in Paris Dumas invited him to be at
a certain spot in the midnight hour, when a mysterious carriage would
convey him to some place unnamed. Mr. R. L. Stevenson would have kept
tryst, Dickens did not; he could not tell what prank this eternal boy
had in his mind. Being of this humour, Dumas, however eminent his
associates, however great the affairs in which he was concerned, always
appeared to the world rather as Mousqueton than as Porthos, a tall
man of his hands, indeed, but also much of a comic character, often
something of a butt. Garrulous, gay, doing all things with emphasis and
a flourish, treating a revolution much in the manner of comic opera,
Dumas was not _un homme sérieux._ In literature it was the same. He
could not help being merry; the world seemed a very jolly place to him;
he never hooted, he said, at the great spectacle of the drama of Life.
His own extraordinary gifts of industry, knowledge, brilliance,
ingenuity, sympathy, were playthings to him. He scattered wit as he
scattered wealth, lavishly, with both hands, being so reckless that,
on occasion, he would sign work into which he had put nothing of his
own. To such a pitch did Dumas carry his lack of seriousness that the
last quarter or more of his life makes rather sorry reading. "The
chase of the crown piece" may be amusing in youth, but when middle
age takes the field in pursuit of the evasive coin, the spectacle
ceases to exhilarate. Dumas was really of a most generous nature,
but he disregarded the Aristotelian mean--he was recklessly lavish.
Consequently he was, of course, preyed upon by parasites of both
sexes, odious hangers-on of literature, the drama, and the plastic
arts. He, who could not turn away a stray self-invited dog, managed to
endure persons rather worse than most of that strange class of human
beings--the professional friends of men of genius. "What a set, what
a world!" says Mr. Matthew Arnold, contemplating the Godwin circle
that surrounded Shelley. "What a set!" expresses Lockhart's sentiments
about certain friends of Sir Walter Scott. We cannot imagine why great
men tolerate these people, but too often they do; a famous English
poet was horrified by "those about" George Sand. The society which
professionally swarmed round Dumas was worse--the _cher maître_ was
robbed on every hand. He "made himself a motley to the view," and as
all this was at its worst after his great novels--with which we are
chiefly concerned--were written, I intend to pass very lightly over the
story of his decline.
The grandfather of Alexandre Dumas, Antoine Alexandre Davy de la
Pailleterie, was more or less noble. It has not been my fortune to
encounter the name of his family in the field of history. They may have
"borne St. Louis company," or charged beneath the banner of the Maid
at Orléans and Pathay; one can only remark that one never heard of
them. The grandfather, at all events, went to San Domingo, and became
the father, by a negro woman, of the father of the novelist. As it is
hardly credible that he married his mistress, Marie Dumas, it is not
clear how the great Alexandre had a right to a marquisate. On this
point, however, he ought to have been better informed than we are, who
have not seen his parchments. His father at all events, before 1789,
enlisted in the army under the maternal name of Dumas. During the
Revolution he rose to the rank of General. He was a kind of Porthos.
Clasping his horse between his knees and seizing a beam overhead with
his hands, he lifted the steed off the ground. Finding that a wall
opposed a charge which he was leading, he threw his regiment, one by
one, over the wall, and then climbed it himself. In 1792 he married
the daughter of an innkeeper at Villers-Cotterets, a good wife to him
and a good mother to his son. In Egypt he disliked the arbitrary
proceedings of Napoleon, went home, and never was employed again. He
had mitigated, as far as in him lay, the sanguinary ferocities of
the Revolutionaries. A good man and a good sportsman, he died while
Alexandre, born July 24th, 1802, was a little boy. The child had been
sent to sleep at a house near his father's, and was awakened by a loud
knock at the moment of the General's death. This corresponds to the
knocks which herald deaths in the family of Woodd: they are on record
in 1661, 1664, 1674, 1784, 1892, 1893, and 1895. Whether the phenomenon
is hereditary in the House of la Pailleterie we are not informed. Dumas
himself had a firm belief in his own powers as a hypnotist, but thought
that little good came of hypnotism. Tennyson was in much the same case.
Madame Dumas was left very poor, and thought of bringing up her child
as a candidate for holy orders. But Dumas had nothing of Aramis except
his amorousness, and ran away into a local forest rather than take
the first educational step towards the ecclesiastical profession. In
later life he was no Voltairean, he held Voltaire very cheap, and
he believed in the essentials of religion. But he was not built by
lavish nature for the celibate life, though he may have exaggerated
when he said that he had five hundred children. The boy, like most
clever boys, was almost equally fond of books and of field sports.
His education was casual; he had some Latin (more than most living
English novelists) and a little German. Later he acquired Italian. His
handwriting was excellent; his writing-master told him that Napoleon's
illegible scrawls perplexed his generals, and certainly Napoleon wrote
one of the worst hands in the world. Perhaps his orders to Grouchy, on
June 17-18th, 1815, were indecipherable. At all events, Dumas saw the
Emperor drive through Villers-Cotterets on June 12th, and drive back on
June 20th. He had beaten the British at 5.30 on the 18th, says Dumas,
but then Blücher came up at 6.30 and Napoleon ceased to be victorious.
What the British were doing in the hour after their defeat Dumas does
not explain, but he expresses a chivalrous admiration for their valour,
especially for that of our Highlanders.
After the British defeat at Waterloo the world did not change much for
a big noisy boy in a little country town. He was promoted to the use
of a fowling-piece, and either game was plentiful in these days or the
fancy of the quadroon rivalled that of Tartarin de Tarascon. Hares
appear to have been treated as big game, the huntsman lying low in
ambush while the doomed quarry fed up to him, when he fired, wounded
the hare in the leg, ran after him, and embraced him in the manner of
Mr. Briggs with his first salmon. The instinct of early genius, or
rather of the parents of early genius, points direct to the office of
the attorney, notary, or "writer." Like Scott and other immortals,
Dumas, about sixteen or eighteen, went into a solicitor's office. He
did not stay there long, as he and a friend, during their master's
absence, poached their way to Paris, defraying their expenses by the
partridges and hares which they bagged. Every boy is a poacher, but in
mature life Dumas is said to have shot a large trout in Loch Zug--I
find I have written; the Lake of Zug is meant. This is perhaps the
darkest blot upon his fame.
His escapade to Paris was discovered by his employer, who hinted a
dislike of such behaviour. The blood of de la Pailleterie was up, and
Dumas resigned his clerkship. He had made at Villers-Cotterets the
acquaintance of Auguste de Leuven, a noble Swede, "kept out of his
own" for political reasons. De Leuven knew Paris and people about
the theatres; he also tried his own hand at playwriting. Dumas in
his society caught the stage fever, and he happened also to see the
_Hamlet_ of Ducis acted--a very French _Hamlet_, but Dumas divined
somehow the greatness of Shakespeare through the veil of Ducis. He
knew no more English than most Frenchmen of letters know. Like M.
Jules Lemaître, he read Shakespeare and Scott, "in cribs," I suspect,
but he read them with delight. Homer, too, he studied only in cribs,
but he perceived the grandeur of the Greek epics, the feebleness of
the cribs, and vowed that he would translate Homer himself. He did
not, however, take the preliminary step of learning Greek. The French
drama of the period is said by those who know it to have been a watery
thing. The great old masters were out--Dumas and Hugo were not yet in.
Dumas began by collaborating with young de Leuven in bright little
patriotic pieces. Thus his earliest efforts were collaborative, as they
continued to be, about which there is much to be said later. Just as
Burns usually needed a keynote to be struck for him by an old song or
a poem of young Fergusson's--by a predecessor of some sort--so Dumas
appears to have needed companionship in composition. It is a curious
mental phenomenon, for he had more ideas than anyone else. He could
master a subject more rapidly for his purpose than anyone else, yet he
required companionship, contact with other minds engaged on the same
theme. I am apt to think that this was the result of the pre-eminently
social nature of Dumas. Charles II., as we learn from Lord Ailesbury's
_Memoirs_, could not bear to be alone, and must have Harry Killigrew to
make him laugh, even on occasions when privacy is courted by mankind.
Most people like to write alone; not so Dumas. Comradeship he must
have, even in composing, and this, I conceive, was the true secret of
his inveterate collaborativeness.
At all events, he began, as a lad, with de Leuven. Through him, after
poaching his way to Paris for a day or two, he made the acquaintance
of Talma, the famous actor. Returning to Paris after that escapade,
he instantly became known to all sorts of useful and interesting
people. This gift of making acquaintances stood him in great stead:
one often wonders how it is done. In a recent biography of a Scot of
letters we find the hero arriving in town, not, it would seem, an
eminently attractive hero, but he is at once familiar with George
Lewes, George Eliot, Tennyson, Browning, and other _sommités._ How is
it done? Dumas's father had known General Foy, General Foy knew the Duc
d'Orléans (Louis Philippe), and got a little clerkship in his service
for the young quadroon. A few days later he goes to a play, and to
whom must he sit next but Charles Nodier, then celebrated, and Nodier
must be reading the Elzevir _Pastissier Français_, of which I doubt
if a dozen copies are known to exist. How Nodier made friends with
Dumas, and hissed his own play, is a most familiar anecdote. It sounds
like a dream, a dream that came through the ivory gate. Shifted from
one clerkship to another, now snubbed, now befriended by officials,
Dumas did certainly read a great deal of modern literature at this
time, especially Schiller and Scott. Without Scott he might never have
written his great novels, for the idea of historical novels, based on
a real knowledge of history, and on a vivid realisation of historical
persons as actual men and women, is Sir Walter's own. Scott's daring
and Turneresque composition was also bequeathed to Dumas. Sir Walter
had no scruples about bringing Amy Robsart to life some fifteen years
or more after her death, or about making Shakespeare a successful
dramatist fifteen years before he came upon the town.
But plays, not novels, at this time occupied Dumas. Chance brought him
acquainted with the history of Christine of Sweden, and with that of
Henri III. of France. A little collaborative comedy was acted, a volume
of _contes_ was published, but was not purchased. A son was born to
Dumas in 1824, the celebrated Alexandre Dumas _fils,_ whose talent was
so unlike that of his sire. The parent tried, with Soulié, to dramatise
_Old Mortality_, to "Terrify" it, as Scott would have said. They did
not finish their attempt, but Dumas now saw Shakespeare acted by
Kemble, Liston, and an English company. He found out "what the theatre
really was," and he proceeded to evolve many "parts to tear a cat
in." More "in Ercles' vein" than in the vein of Shakespeare were the
romantic plays which now arose in France: passions and violent scenes
of intrigue were within the compass of Dumas: humour, too, he had, and
great skill in effect and in _charpentage._ The style, the charm, the
poetry, are absent, _carmina desunt._
Christine and the murder of Monaldeschi furnished the first
topic. After troubles and complications innumerable (there were
three _Christines_ in the field), Dumas's play was written, and
re-constructed, and accepted. In the interval he had made, for the
joy of mankind, the acquaintance of Henri III. and Saint-Mégrin,
of Catherine de Medici and Chicot, and Guise, in the _Mémoires_ of
L'Estoile. The time was now 1828-30. Dumas left his official work;
the authorities did not think him a model clerk, he was a good deal
interrupted by actresses while _Henri III._ was being rehearsed. Just
before the first night his mother suffered a shock of apoplexy; his
attention was divided between the stage and her bedside. With colossal
self-confidence, he invited the Duc d'Orléans to his play. The Due had
a dinner-party, but what of that? The party must meet earlier; the
play must begin earlier than the usual hours, and all the party must
come. But the adventure of the Duchesse de Guise and Saint-Mégrin,
the appearance of that Elagabalus of the Valois, Henri III., with his
_mignons_, and cup and ball, his foppery and asceticism, thrilled and
entertained a large and distinguished audience in the Théâtre Français.
Dumas triumphed; unhappily his mother was unable to share his joy.
His fortune was made, and he took pleasure in his publicity. He was
probably better known for the time and more spoken of than Victor Hugo,
whose really sonorous fame scarcely dates before the first night of
_Hernani._
Though Dumas thus led the _Romantiques_ of 1830 through the breach,
though he was first in the forlorn hope that took the acropolis of the
old classical drama, one does not think of him as a _Romantique._ For
one reason or another, he stands a little aloof from Hugo, Gautier,
Alfred de Musset, and the set of Pétrus Borel, however intimate he may
have been with Augustus Mackeat (Maquet).
Dumas's next play, "classical" in form, was _Christine_, the
long-deferred _Christine_, for the Odéon. The anecdotes about the
difficulties with the classical actress, Mile. Mars, are familiar.
Dumas was now one of the most notable men in Paris, and in the July
days of 1830 he added to his notoriety, conducting himself much like
Mr. Jingle on the same historic occasion. He was prominent, with a
fowling-piece, in the street-fighting, and it seems that he really
did seize the powder magazine at Soissons, by that "native cheek"
which never failed him at need. The details are as good as anything
in his novels, but Dumas surely invented the lady who, beholding him
armed with pistols, declared that it was "a revolt of the blacks."
His unlucky colour and his crisp thick hair gave people so many
opportunities for jests, that Dumas anticipated the world and made the
jokes himself. Perhaps the accident of blood and complexion was one of
the reasons that prevented him from taking himself seriously. We need
not linger over his political adventures: they led him into La Vendée,
where he found the elements of romance. Dumas, I think, was by nature
as Royalist as Athos, who, in his advice to Raoul, expresses the very
creed of the great Montrose. He ought to have fought for the Duchesse
de Berry and the Queen of Naples, but circumstances threw him with
the Orleanists and Garibaldi, though he loved Louis Philippe no more
than other gentlemen did. He tried to be elected for the Assembly: he
might as well have tried to get into the Academy, he was not _un homme
sérieux._
Dumas's career as a novelist was brightest in the forties of the
nineteenth century. In the thirties he was much more occupied with
plays, whereof _Antony_ caused most noise. He went on producing plays
of the most various types--he travelled, he married, but soon "went
by," he made historical compilations, and glided into the field which
chiefly concerns us, that of historical romance. Omitting _Le Capitaine
Paul_ (Paul Jones) of 1838, and _Le Capitaine Pamphile_, a most amusing
book (1840), we find _Le Chevalier d'Harmental_ (1843), _Les Trois
Mousquetaires_ (1844), _Vingt Ans Après_ (1845), _La Reine Margot_
(1845), _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_ (1845), _La Dame de Monsoreau_
(1846), _Joseph Balsamo_ (1846-1848), _Les Quarante Cinq_ (1848), _Le
Vicomte de Bragelonne_ (1848-1850), not to specify dozens of others,
including unavailing things like _Jeanne d'Arc_, charming things like
_La Tulipe Noire,_ and the novels on the Regency, and the long series
on the French Revolution.
Consider the novels of 1844-1850. The _Mousquetaire_ cycle, the Valois
cycle, _Monte Cristo_! Did Scott, or even Dickens, at their best and
most prolific, ever equal this rate of production? Perhaps we must give
the prize to Scott for the work of 1814-1820, including _Waverley, The
Antiquary, Old Mortality, The Heart of Midlothian, Rob Roy_, and so on.
That record cannot be broken, and Scott worked in his odd hours, or
in his holidays, while he worked _alone._ But in all the great novels
of Dumas, Maquet, the _ci-devant_ Augustus Mackeat, collaborated. Yet
who can deny that the work is the work of the Dumas of the _Mémoires_
and of _Mes Bêtes?_ It is the same hand, the same informing spirit,
the same brilliant gaiety, the same honest ethics, the same dazzling
fertility of resource. Maquet did something--there is no doubt on that
head, the men constantly worked together.
But what did Maquet do? He may have made--he did make--"researches."
Heaven knows that they were not very deep. Perhaps he discovered that
Newcastle is on the Tweed, and that the Scottish army which--shall we
say did not adhere to Charles I.?--largely consisted of Highlanders.
Perhaps he suggested that Charles I. might want to hear a Mass on the
eve of his execution. Perhaps he depicted jolly Charles II. as _un beau
ténébreux_, in the _Vicomte de Bragelonne._ I think that there I find
the hand of Maquet. Whatever he did, Maquet did something. I suggest
that he made these remarkable researches, that he listened while Dumas
talked, that he "made objections" (as the _père_ invited the _fils_ to
do), that sometimes he "blocked out" a chapter, which Dumas took, and
made into a new thing, or left standing, like that deplorable Charles
II. at Blois. On the whole, I conceive that (as regards the great
novels) Maquet satisfied Dumas's need of companionship, that he was to
the man of genius what Harry Killigrew was to the actual Charles II.
Before the law, in 1856 and in 1858, M. Maquet claimed his right to be
declared fellow-author of eighteen novels, all the best of them. It was
recognised by the law that he had lent a hand, but he took no more than
that by his legal adventures. M. Glinel publishes two of his letters
to his counsel: "It is not justice which has won the day, but Dumas,"
exclaims Augustus. He also complains that he is threatened with a new
law-suit _"avec l'éternel coquin qu'on appelle Dumas."_ Time kills many
animosities. According to M. About, M. Maquet lived to speak kindly
of Dumas, as did his legion of other collaborators. "The proudest
congratulate themselves on having been trained in so good a school; and
M. Auguste Maquet, the chief of them, speaks with real reverence and
affection of his great friend." Monsieur Henri Blaze de Bury describes
Dumas's method thus:--
"The plot was considered by Dumas and his assistant. The collaborator
wrote the book and brought it to the master, who worked over the draft,
and re-wrote it all. From one volume, often ill-constructed, he would
evolve three volumes or four. _Le Chevalier d'Harmental_ by Maquet at
first was a tale of sixty pages. Often and often Dumas was the unnamed
collaborator of others." M. Blaze de Bury has seen a score of pieces,
signed by other names, of which Dumas in each case wrote two-thirds.
M. About confirms M. Blaze de Bury's account. He has known Dumas give
the ideas to his collaborator. That gentleman then handed in a sketch,
written on small leaves of paper. Dumas copied each leaf out on large
paper, expanding, altering, improving, _en y semant l'esprit à pleines
mains._
By this method of collaboration Dumas really did the work himself. He
supplied the ideas and the _esprit_, and gave the collaborator a lesson
in the art of fiction, much as a tutor teaches composition in Greek or
Latin. In other examples, such as _Le Chevalier d'Harmental_, the idea,
we know, came from Maquet, who had written a _conte_ on the subject.
Nobody wanted the _conte_, and Dumas made it into the novel, whereby
Maquet also benefited. In England collaboration in novel-writing is
unusual. In the case of Mr. Rice and Sir Walter Besant we have Sir
Walter's description of "how it was done," and it appears that he did
most of it. In another case familiar to me, A, an unpopular author,
found in his researches a good and dramatic historical subject. On this
he wrote a tale of seven chapters, and placed that tale in a drawer,
where it lay for years. He then showed it to B, who made a play out of
it. The play was nibbled at, but not accepted. B then took the subject,
and, going behind the original story, worked up to the point at which
it began, whence B and A continued it, and now the thing was a novel,
which did not rival in popularity the works of Dumas. Probably in each
case of collaboration the methods differ. In one case each author wrote
the whole of the book separately, and then the versions were blended.
These are legitimate practices, but in his later years Dumas became
less conscientious. There is a story, we have seen, that Maquet once
inserted sixteen _ques_ in one sentence, and showed it to his friends.
Dumas never looked at it, and the sentence with its sixteen _ques_ duly
appeared in the _feuilleton_ of next day's newspaper, for in newspapers
were the romances "serialised," as some literary journals say. I have
never found that sentence in any of the novels, never met more than
five _ques_ in one sentence of Dumas's, or more than five "whiches"
in one of Sir Walter Scott's. As his age and indolence increased, the
nature of things revenged itself on the fame and fortunes of Dumas.
The author of the later novels, as M. Henri Blaze de Bury says, is
"Dumas-Légion."
The true collaborators of Dumas were human nature and history. Men are
eternally interesting to men, but in historical writing, before Scott,
the men (except the kings and other chief actors) were left much in the
vague. They and their deeds and characters lay hidden in memoirs and
unprinted letters. Such a man as the Cavalier, Edward Wogan, "a very
beautiful person," says Clarendon, was briefly and inaccurately touched
on by that noble author. More justice is done to him by his kinsman,
the adventurous Sir Charles Wogan, in a letter to Swift. He did not
escape Scott, who wrote a poem to his memory. Now, such a character as
Wogan, brave, beautiful, resourceful as d'Artagnan, landing in England
with the gallows before his eyes, and carrying a troop of cavalry
through the hostile Cromwellian country, "wherever might lead him
the shade of Montrose," to join the Clans and strike a blow for King
Charles, was precisely the character for Dumas. Such men as Wogan, such
women as Jane Lane and Lady Ogilvy, Dumas rediscovered, and they were
his inspiration. The past was not really dull, though dull might be the
books of academic historians. They omitted the human element, the life,
the colour, and, we are told, "scientific history" ought to be thus
impartially jejune. The great public turns away from scientific history
to Dumas and to modern imitators, good and bad, and how inordinately
bad some of his followers can be! An American critic half despairs of
his country because some silly novels, pretending to be historical, are
popular. The symptom is good rather than bad. Untrained and undirected,
falling on the stupid and ignorant new novels most loudly trumpeted,
the young Americans do emancipate themselves from the tyranny of
to-day, and their own fancy lends a glamour to some inept romance of
the past. They dwell with tragedy and with Mary Stuart, though she be
the Mary Stuart of a dull, incompetent scribbler. They may hear of
Scott and Dumas, and follow them.
Dumas has been blamed by moralists like Mr. Fitzgerald for depraving
the morals of France! That he set an example of violence and frenzy,
crime and licence on the stage, cannot easily be denied. But in the
_Musketeers_ he decidedly improves on the taste and morals of the
France of 1630-1660, whether tested by d'Artagnan's _Mémoires_ or by
the more authentic works of Tallemant and de Retz. He is infinitely
more delicate, he apologises for what he justly calls the "infamies"
of certain proceedings of his heroes, and he puts heart and sentiment
even into the light love of Milady's _soubrette._ If d'Artagnan "had no
youth, no heart, only ambition," he acquires a heart as he goes on:
and, indeed, never lacked one--for friends of his own sex.
Dumas was at the opposite pole from a Galahad or a Joseph. His life,
as regards women, was much like that of Burns or Byron. His morality
on this point is that of the camp or of the theatre in which he lived
so much. This must be granted as an undeniable fact. But there are
other departments of conduct, and in the virtues of courage, devotion,
fortitude, friendship, and loyalty, the Musketeers are rich enough.
Their vices, happily, are not those of our age but of one much less
sensitive on certain points of honour, as Dumas remarks, and as history
proves. But the virtues of the Musketeers are, in any age, no bad
example.
Dumas never writes to inflame the passions, to corrupt, or to instruct
a prurient curiosity. The standard of his work is far higher than that
of his model or of the age about which he writes. His motto is _sursum
corda_; he has not a word to encourage pessimism, or a taste for the
squalid. He and his men face Fortune boldly, bearing what mortals
must endure, and bearing it well and gaily. His ethics are saved by
his humour, generosity, and sound-hearted humanity. These qualities
increase and become more manifest as this great cycle rolls on to its
heroic culmination in the death of d'Artagnan, the death of Porthos,
the unwonted tears of Aramis.
For many years "high sniffing" French critics have sneered at Dumas as
a scene-painter, a dauber, a babe in psychological lore, and so forth.
But of late we have seen in the success of M. Rostand's _Cyrano de
Bergerac,_ that France looks lovingly back on her old ideals of a frank
and healthy life in the open air--a life of gallant swordsmen, kind
friends, and true lovers. In Major Marchand, of the Fashoda affair, we
may recognise a gentleman and soldier of the school of Dumas, not of
Maupassant, or Flaubert, or Zola. To know his task and to do it despite
the most cruel obstacles; to face every form of peril with gaiety; to
accept disappointment with a manly courtesy, winning the heartiest
admiration from his political opponents, these are accomplishments
after Dumas's own heart; and this is a morality which the study of
Dumas encourages, and which our time requires.
The authors who relax, and discourage, and deprave may be thought
better artists (an opinion which I do not share), but they are less
of men than the author of _The Three Musketeers._ Who reads it, but
wants to go on reading the sequel, and the sequel to that, and, were it
possible, yet another sequel? But Aramis alone of the four is left on
the stage, and we pine for another sequel--with Aramis as Pope.
I have dwelt on the _Musketeers_ and their historical sources as a type
of the powers and methods of Dumas. As much might be said in detail
as to the sources of the other great novels, especially those of the
Valois circle. History gives little more than the name of Chicot, and
his ferocity in the St. Bartholomew massacres. La Mole, Coconnas, and
_le brave Bussy_, were really "rather beasts than otherwise," as the
lad in Mr. Eden Philpotts's _Human Boy_ says about pirates. Catherine
de Medici is the Catherine of the _Mémoires_, which are probably
truthful on the whole, whatever criticism may say. Dumas fills with
gaiety these old times of perfidy and cruelty; he adds Gorenflot and
Chicot; he humanises Coconnas; he even inspires regret for Henri III.;
he has a Shakespearean love and tolerance for his characters. The
critics may and do sniff, but Dumas pleased George Sand, Thackeray,
and Mr. Stevenson, who have praised him so well that feebler plaudits
are impertinent, Thackeray especially chooses _La Tulipe Noire_ as a
complement and contrast to the _Musketeers._ Monte Cristo, rich and
revengeful, has never been my favourite; I leave him when his treasure
hunt is ended, and the Cagliostro cycle deals with matters too cruel
for fiction.
In brief, though the rest of the life of Dumas was full of labour, the
_anni mirabiles_ of 1844-1850 are the prime of his harvests. In 1844,
on a tour with the son of Jérôme Napoleon (who certainly had a strange
bear-leader), Dumas saw the actual isle of Monte Cristo; it dwelt in
his boyish fancy, and became the earliest of all Treasure Islands;
but its use as the first part of a tale in the manner of Eugène Sue
was an afterthought--like the American scenes and Mrs. Gamp in _Martin
Chuzzlewit._ In 1843-44, Dumas, being rich, built his Abbotsford, Monte
Cristo, between Saint Germain and Marly le Roi. Thenceforth it was the
farce of which the real Abbotsford is the tragedy. It was open house
and endless guests, very unlike the guests who visited the villa on
the Tweed. At both houses many dogs were kept, at Monte Cristo only
were piles of gold left lying about for everyone to help himself. The
Théâtre Historique was also founded, that road to ruin Dumas could
not leave untrodden, and he abandoned all his schemes to visit Spain
and Algiers with the Duc de Montpensier, like Buckingham with Prince
Charles. The celebrated vulture, Jugurtha, was now acquired and brought
home, to fill his niche in the gallery of _Mes Bêtes_, one of the most
delightful books in the world.
On returning Dumas found, like Odysseus, "troubles in his house,"
angry editors clamorous for belated "copy." Then came the parasites,
and then the Revolution of 1848, exciting but expensive to a political
man of letters. The Théâtre Historique was ruined, and Dumas chose
another path to financial collapse, the ownership of a newspaper. In
1851 Dumas went to Brussels, quarrelled with Maquet (one creditor among
many), wrote his _Mémoires_, tried to retrench, but embarked on a new
newspaper, _Le Mousquetaire._ He was the reverse of a man of business;
_Le Mousquetaire_ was not profitable like _Household Words._ The office
was a bear garden. More plays were written, more of every kind of thing
was written, a weekly paper was attempted, and as the star of Alexandre
_fils_ was rising, the star of Alexandre _père_ descended through shady
spaces of the sky. Dumas travelled in Russia, and wrote about that;
he joined Garibaldi in 1860, and obtained in Italy an archæological
appointment! The populace of Naples did not take Dumas seriously, any
more than the staff of the British Museum would have done. For reasons
known or unknown to the mob they hooted and threatened the Director of
Excavations: the editor of a Garibaldian newspaper, the father of the
god-daughter of Garibaldi, a child whose mother had accompanied Dumas
in the costume of a sailor. At this time the hero was fifty-eight,
and perhaps the Neapolitans detected some incongruity between the age
and the proceedings of the Director of Excavations. Perhaps _la vertu
va se nicher_ in the hearts of the lower classes of "the great sinful
streets" of the city of Neapolis.
In 1864 Dumas and the new Italian Government were not on harmonious
terms. He left his Liberal newspaper and his meritorious excavations
in Pompeii; he returned to Paris accompanied by a lady bearing the
pleasing name of Fanny Gordosa. The gordosiousness, if I may use
the term, of Fanny far exceeded her capacities as a housekeeper and
domestic manager, and the undefeated veteran had to pursue that hunt
for the _pièce de cent sous_ whereof we have spoken. _La jeunesse n'a
qu'un temps_, but Dumas was determined "to be boy for ever." Stories
are told about him which, whether they be true or untrue, are better
unrepeated. Senile boyishness, where the sex is concerned, cannot be
seemly. Money became more scarce as work ceased to be genuine work.
Dumas fell to giving public lectures. A daughter came to attend him, as
the Duchess of Albany presided over and more or less reformed the last
years of her royal father. In 1869-70 the strength of this Porthos of
the pen was broken: _c'est trop lourd!_ In the autumn of 1870, about
the time of the disaster of Sedan, the younger Dumas carried his father
to a village near Dieppe. They kept from him the sorrows of these days:
his mind dwelt with the past and the dead. He died on December 5th, and
on the same day, at Dieppe, the Germans reached the sea. His body lies
at Villers-Cotterets, beside his father and mother.
ANDREW LANG.
THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
My birth--My name is disputed--Extracts from the official registers of
Villers-Cotterets--Corbeil Club--My father's marriage certificate--My
mother--My maternal grandfather--Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, father
of Philippe-Égalité--Madame de Montesson--M. de Noailles and the
Academy--A morganatic marriage.
I was born at Villers-Cotterets, a small town in the department of
Aisne, situated on the road between Paris and Laon, about two hundred
paces from the rue de la Noue, where Demoustier died; two leagues
from La Ferté-Milon, where Racine was born; and seven leagues from
Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine.
I was born on the 24th of July 1802, in the rue de Lormet, in the house
now belonging to my friend Cartier. He will certainly have to sell it
me some day, so that I may die in the same room in which I was born.
I will step forward into the darkness of the other world in the place
that received me when I stepped into this world from the darkness of
the past.
I was born July 24th, 1802, at half-past five in the morning; which
fact makes me out to be forty-five years and three months old at the
date I begin these Memoirs--namely, on Monday, October the 18th, 1847.
Most facts concerning my life have been disputed, even my very name of
_Davy de la Pailleterie_, which I am not very tenacious about, since
I have never borne it. It will only be found after my name of _Dumas_
in official deeds that I have executed before a lawyer, or in civil
actions wherein I played either the principal part or was a witness.
I therefore ask permission to transcribe my birth certificate, to allay
any further discussion upon the subject.
_Extract from the Registers of the Town of
Villers-Cotterets._
"On the fifth day of the month of Thermidor, year X of the
French Republic.
"Certificate of the birth of Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la
Pailleterie, born this day at half-past five in the morning,
son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie,
lieutenant-general, born at Jérémie, on the coast of the
island of Saint-Domingo, dwelling at Villers-Cotterets;
and of Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Labouret, born at the
above-mentioned Villers-Cotterets, _his wife._
"The sex of the child is notified to be male.
"First witness: Claude Labouret, maternal grandfather of the
child.
"Second witness: Jean-Michel Deviolaine, inspector of
forests in the fourth communal arrondissement of the
department of Aisne, twenty-sixth jurisdiction, dwelling at
the above mentioned Villers-Cotterets. This statement has
been made to us by the father of the child, and is signed by
"Al. Dumas, Labouret, and Deviolaine.
"Proved according to the law by me Nicolas Brice-Mussart,
mayor of the town of Villers-Cotterets, in his capacity as
official of the Civil State, _Signed_: MUSSART."
I have italicised the words _his wife_, because those who contested my
right to the name of _Davy de la Pailleterie_ sought to prove that I
was illegitimate.
Now, had I been illegitimate I should quietly have accepted the bar as
more celebrated bastards than I have done, and, like them, I should
have laboured arduously with mind or body until I had succeeded in
giving a personal value to my name. But what is to be done, gentlemen?
I am not illegitimate, and it is high time the public followed my
lead--and resigned itself to my legitimacy.
They next fell back upon my father. In a club at Corbeil--it was in
1848--there lived an extremely well-dressed gentleman, forsooth, whom
I was informed belonged to the magistracy; a fact which I should never
have believed had I not been assured of it by trustworthy people; well,
this gentleman had read, in I know not what biography, that it was not
I but my father who was a bastard, and he told me the reason why I
never signed myself by my name of Davy de la Pailleterie was because my
father was never really called by that name, since he was not the son
of the marquis de la Pailleterie.
I began by calling this gentleman by the name usually applied to people
who tell you such things; but, as he seemed quite as insensible to it
as though it had been his family name, I wrote to Villers-Cotterets for
a second birth certificate referring to my father, similar to the one
they had already sent me about myself.
I now ask the reader's permission to lay this second certificate before
him; if he have the bad taste to prefer our prose to that of the
secretary to the mayoralty of Villers-Cotterets, let him thrash the
matter out with this gentleman of Corbeil.[1]
_Certificate of Birth from, the Registers of the Town of
Villers-Cotterets._
"In the year 1792, first of the French Republic, on the 28th
of the month of November, at eight o'clock at night, after
the publication of banns put up at the main door of the Town
Hall, on Sunday the 18th of the present month, and affixed
there ever since that date for the purpose of proclaiming
the intended marriage between citizen _Thomas-Alexandre Davy
de la Pailleterie_, aged thirty years and eight months,
colonel in the hussars du Midi, born at la Guinodée,
Trou-Jérémie, America, _son of the late Alexandre-Antoine
Davy de la Pailleterie_, formerly commissary of artillery,
who died at Saint-Germain en Laye, June 1786, and of the
late Marie-Cessette Dumas, who died at la Guinodée, near
Trou-Jérémie, America, in 1772; his father and mother, of
the one part;
"And citizen Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Labouret, eldest
daughter of citizen Claude Labouret, commandant of the
National Guard of Villers-Cotterets and proprietor of the
hôtel de _l'Écu_, and of Marie-Joseph Prévot, her father and
mother, of the other part;
"The said domiciled persons, namely, the future husband in
barracks at Amiens and the future wife in this town; their
_birth certificates_ having also been inspected and naught
being found wrong therein; I, Alexandre-Auguste-Nicolas
Longpré, public and municipal officer of this commune, the
undersigned, having received the declaration of marriage of
the aforesaid parties, have pronounced in the name of the
law that they are united in marriage. This act has taken
place in the presence of citizens: Louis-Brigitte-Auguste
Espagne, lieutenant-colonel of the 7th regiment of hussars
stationed at Cambrai, a native of Audi, in the department of
Gers;
"Jean-Jacques-Étienne de Béze, lieutenant in the same
regiment of hussars, native of Clamercy, department of la
Nièvre;
"Jean-Michel Deviolaine, registrar of the corporation and
a leading citizen of this town, all three friends of the
husband;
"Françoise-Élisabeth Retou, _mother-in-law_ of the husband,
widow of the late Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie,
dwelling at Saint-Germain en Laye.
"Present, the father and mother of the bride, all of age,
who, together with the contracting parties, have signed
their hands to this deed in our presence:
"_Signed at the registry_:
"MARIE LOUISE ÉLISABETH LABOURET; THOMAS-ALEXANDRE
DUMAS-DAVY DE LA PAILLETERIE; widow of LA PAILLETERIE;
LABOURET; MARIE-JOSEPH PRÉVOT; L. A. ESPAGNE;
JEAN-JACQUES-ÉTIENNE DE BÉZE; JEAN--MICHEL DEVIOLAINE, and
LONGPRÉ, Public Officer."
Having settled that neither my father nor I were bastards, and
reserving to myself to prove at the close of this chapter that my
grandfather was no more illegitimate than we, I will continue.
My mother, Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Labouret, was the daughter of Claude
Labouret, as we saw, commandant of the National Guard and proprietor
of the hôtel de l'_Écu_, at the time he signed his daughter's marriage
contract, but formerly first steward of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans,
son of that Louis d'Orléans who made so little noise, and father of
Philippe-Joseph, later known as Philippe-Égalité, who made so much!
Louis-Philippe died of an attack of gout, at the castle of
Sainte-Assise, November the 18th, 1785. The Abbé Maury, who quarrelled
so violently in 1791 with the son, had in 1786 pronounced the funeral
oration over the father at Nôtre-Dame.
I recollect having often heard my grandfather speak of that prince as
an excellent and on the whole a charitable man, though inclined to
avarice. But far before all others my grandfather worshipped Madame de
Montesson to the verge of idolatry.
We know how Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, left a widower after his first
marriage with that famous Louise-Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, whose
licentiousness had scandalised even the Court of Louis XV., had, on
April the 24th, 1775, married as his second wife Charlotte-Jeanne
Béraud de la Haie de Riou, marquise de Montesson, who in 1769 had been
left the widow of the marquis de Montesson, lieutenant of the king's
armies.
This marriage, although it was kept secret, was made with the consent
of Louis XV. Soulavie gives some curious details about its celebration
and accomplishment which are of sufficient interest to confide to these
pages.
We feel sure these details are not unwelcome now that manners have
become so different from what they then were.
Let us first impress upon our readers that Madame de Montesson was
supposed by Court and town to hold the extraordinary notion of not
wishing to become the wife of M. le duc d'Orléans until after he had
married her.
M. de Noailles has since written a book which opened the doors of the
Academy to him, upon the resistance of Madame de Maintenon to the
solicitations of Louis XIV. under similar circumstances.
Behold on what slight causes depends the homogeneity of incorporated
associations! If the widow Scarron had not been a maid at the time of
her second marriage, which was quite possible, M. de Noailles would not
have written his book, and the Academy, which felt the need of M. de
Noailles' presence, would have remained incomplete, and in consequence
imperfect.
That would not have mattered to M. de Noailles, who would always have
remained M. de Noailles.
But what would have become of the Academy?
But let us return to M. le duc d'Orléans, to his marriage with Madame
de Montesson, and to Soulavie's anecdote, which we will reproduce in
his own words.
"The Court and capital were aware of the tortures endured by
the duc d'Orléans and of Madame de Montesson's strictness.
"The love-lorn prince scarcely ever encountered the king
or the duc de Choiseul without renewing his request to be
allowed to marry Madame de Montesson.
"But the king had made it a matter of state policy not to
allow either his natural children or those of the princes to
be legitimatised, and this rule was adhered to throughout
his reign.
"For the same reasons he refused the nobility of the realm
permission to contract marriages with princes of the blood.
"The interminable contentions between the lawful princes and
those legitimatised by Louis XIV., the dangerous intrigues
of M. de Maine and of Madame de Maintenon, were the latest
examples cited to serve as a motive for the refusals with
which the king and his ministers confronted M. le duc
d'Orléans. The royal blood of the house of Bourbon was
still considered divine, and to contaminate it was held a
political crime.
"In the South the house of Bourbon was allied on the side of
Henry IV., the Béarnais prince, to several inferior noble
families. The house of Bourbon did not recognise such
alliances, and if any gentleman not well versed in these
matters attempted to support them it was quite a sufficient
ground for excluding him from Court favour.
"Moreover, the minister was so certain of maintaining
supremacy over the Orléans family, that Louis XV.
steadfastly refused to make Madame de Montesson the first
princess of the blood by a solemn marriage, forcing the
duc d'Orléans to be contented with a secret marriage. This
marriage, although a lawful, conjugal union, was not allowed
any of the distinctions belonging to marriages of princes of
the blood, and was not to be made public.
"Madame de Montesson had no ambition to play the part of
first princess of the blood against the king's wishes, nor
yet to keep up hostilities over matters of etiquette with
the princesses: it was not in her nature to do so.
"Already accustomed to observe the rules of modesty with M.
le duc d'Orléans, she seemed quite content to marry him in
the same way that Madame de Maintenon had married Louis XIV.
"The Archbishop of Paris was informed of the king's
consent, and allowed the pair exemption from the threefold
publication of their banns.
"The chevalier de Durfort, first gentleman of the chamber
to the prince, by reversion from the comte de Pons, and
Périgny, the prince's friend, were witnesses to the
marriage, which was blessed by the Abbé Poupart, curé
de Saint-Eustache, in the presence of M. de Beaumont,
archbishop of Paris.
"On his wedding-day the duc d'Orléans held a very large
Court at Villers-Cotterets.
"The previous evening, and again on the morning of the
ceremony, he told M. de Valençay and his most intimate
friends that he had reached at last an epoch in his life,
and that his present happiness had but the single drawback
that it could not be made public.
"On the morning of the day when he received the nuptial
benediction at Paris he said:
"'I leave society, but I shall return to it again later; I
shall not return alone, but accompanied by a lady to whom
you will show that attachment you now bear towards myself
and my interests.'
"The Castle was in the greatest state of expectation all
that day; for M. d'Orléans going away without uttering the
word _Marriage_ had taken the key to the mysteries of that
day.
"At night they saw him re-enter the crowded reception
chamber, leading by the hand Madame de Montesson, upon whom
all looks were fixed.
"Modesty was the most attractive of her charms; all the
company were touched by her momentary embarrassment.
"The marquis de Valençay advanced to her and, treating her
with the deference and submission due to a princess of the
blood, did the honours of the house as one initiated in the
mysteries of the morning.
"The hour for retiring arrived.
"It was the custom with the king and in the establishments
of the princes for the highest nobleman to receive the
night robe from the hands of the valet-de-chambre and to
present it to the prince when he went to bed: at Court, the
prerogative of giving it to the king belonged to the first
prince of the blood; in his own palace he received it from
the first chamberlain.
"Madame de Sévigné says in a letter dated 17th of January
1680 that:
"'In royal marriages the newly wedded couple were put to
bed and their night robes given them by the king and queen.
When Louis XIV. had given his to M. le prince de Conti,
and the queen hers to the princess, the king kissed her
tenderly when she was in bed, and begged her not to oppose
M. le prince de Conti in any way, but to be obedient and
submissive.'
"At M. le duc d'Orléans' wedding the ceremony of the
night robe took place after this fashion. There was some
embarrassment just at first, the duc d'Orléans and the
marquis de Valençay temporising for a few moments, the
former before asking for it, the latter before receiving it.
"M. d'Orléans bore himself as a man who prided himself upon
his moderation in the most lawful of pleasures.
"Valençay at length presented it to the prince, who,
stripping off his day vestments to the waist, afforded to
all the company a view of his hairless skin, an example of
the fashion indulged in by the highest foppery of the times.
"Princes or great noblemen would not consummate their
marriages, nor receive first favours from a mistress, until
after they had submitted to this preliminary operation.
"The news of this fact immediately spread throughout the
room and over the palace, and it put an end to any doubts
of the marriage between the duc d'Orléans and Madame de
Montesson, over which there had been so much controversy and
opposition.
"After his marriage the duc d'Orléans lived in the closest
intimacy with his wife, she paying him unreservedly the
homage due to the first prince of the blood.
"In public she addressed him as _Monseigneur_, and spoke
with due respect to the princesses of the blood, ceding them
their customary precedence, whether in their exits or their
entrances, and during their visits to the state apartments
of the Palais-Royal.
"She maintained her name as the widow of M. de Montesson;
her husband called her _Madame de Montesson_ or
simply _madame_, occasionally _my wife_, according to
circumstances. He addressed her thus in the presence of his
friends, who often heard him say to her as he withdrew from
their company: 'My wife, shall we now go to bed?'
"Madame de Montesson's sterling character was for long the
source of the prince's happiness, his real happiness.
"She devoted her days to the study of music and of hunting,
which pastime she shared with the prince. She also had a
theatre in the house she inhabited in the Chaussée d'Antin,
on the stage of which she often acted with him.
"The duc d'Orléans was naturally good-natured and simple
in his tastes, and the part of a peasant fitted him; while
Madame de Montesson played well in the rôles of shepherdess
and lover.
"The late duchesse d'Orléans had degraded the character of
this house to such a degree that no ladies entered it save
with the utmost and constant wariness. Madame de Montesson
re-established its high tone and dignity; she opened the
way to refined pleasures, awakened interest in intellectual
tastes and the fine arts, and brought back once more a
spirit of gaiety and good fellowship."
Sainte-Assise and this château at Villers-Cotterets wherein, as related
by Soulavie, this ardently desired marriage was brought about, were
both residences belonging to the duc d'Orléans.
The château had been part of the inheritance of the family since the
marriage of Monsieur, brother of King Louis XIV., with Henrietta of
England.
The edifice, which was almost as large as the town itself, became a
workhouse, and is now a home of refuge for seven or eight hundred poor
people. There is nothing remarkable about it from an architectural
point of view, except one corner of the ancient chapel, which belongs,
so far as one can judge from the little that remains, to the finest
period of the Renaissance. The castle was begun by François I. and
finished by Henri II.
Both father and son set their own marks on it.
François I. carved salamanders on it, and Henri II. his coat of arms
with that of his wife, Katherine de Médicis.
The two arms are composed of the letters K and H, and are encircled in
the three crescents of Diane de Poitiers.
A curious intermingling of the arms of the married wife and of the
mistress is still visible in the corner of the prison which overlooks
the little lane that leads to the drinking trough.
We must here point out that Madame de Montesson was the aunt of Madame
de Genlis, and through her influence it was that the author of _Adèle
et Théodore_ entered the house of Madame la duchesse d'Orléans, wife of
Philippe-Joseph, as maid of honour; a post which led to her becoming
the mistress of Philippe-Égalité, and governess to the three young
princes, the duc de Valois, the duc de Montpensier and the comte de
Beaujolais. The duc de Valois became duc de Chartres upon the death
of his grandfather, and, on the 9th of August 1830, he became Louis
Philippe I., to-day King of the French.
[Footnote 1: We ought to say that this incident, which occurred in
1848, is interpolated in MS. written in 1847.]
CHAPTER II
My father--His birth--The arms of the family--The serpents of
Jamaica--The alligators of St. Domingo--My grandfather--A young man's
adventure--A first duel--M. le duc de Richelieu acts as second for
my father--My father enlists as a private soldier--He changes his
name--Death of my grandfather--His death certificate.
My father, who has already been mentioned twice in the beginning of
this history--first with reference to my birth certificate and later in
connection with his own marriage contract--was the Republican General
Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie.
As already stated in the documents quoted by us, he was himself the
son of the marquis Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, colonel
and commissary-general of artillery, and he inherited the estate of la
Pailleterie, which had been raised to a marquisate by Louis XIV., in
1707.
The arms of the family were three eagles _azure_ with wings spread
_or_, two wings across one, one with a ring _argent_ in the middle;
clasped left and right by the talons of the eagles at the head of the
escutcheon and reposing on the crest of the remaining eagle.
To these arms, my father, when enlisting as a private, added a motto,
or rather, he took it in place of his arms when he renounced his title:
this was "_Deus dedit, Deus dabit_"; a device which would have been
presumptuous had not Providence countersigned it.
I am unaware what Court quarrel or speculative motive decided my
grandfather to leave France, about the year 1760, and to sell his
property and to go and establish himself in St. Domingo.
With this end in view he had purchased a large tract of land at the
eastern side of the island, close to Cape Rose, and known under the
name of la Guinodée, near Trou-Jérémie.
Here, on March 25th, 1762, my father was born--the son of
Louise-Cessette Dumas and of the marquis de la Pailleterie.
The marquis de la Pailleterie, born in 1710, was then fifty-two years
old.
My father's eyes opened on the most beautiful scenery of that glorious
island, the queen of the gulf in which it lies, the air of which is so
pure that it is said no venomous reptile can live there.
A general, sent to re-conquer the island, when we had lost it, hit upon
the ingenious idea of importing from Jamaica into St. Domingo a whole
cargo of the deadliest reptiles that could be found, as auxiliaries.
Negro snake-charmers were commissioned to take them up at the one
island and to set them free on the other.
Tradition has it that a month afterwards every one of the snakes had
perished.
St. Domingo, then, possesses neither the black snake of Java, nor the
rattlesnake of North America, nor the hooded cobra of the Cape; but St.
Domingo has alligators.
I recollect hearing my father relate--when I must have been quite a
young child, since he died in 1806 and I was born in 1802--I recollect,
I say, hearing my father relate, that one day, when he was ten years
old, and was returning from the town to his home, when he saw to his
great surprise an object that looked like a tree-trunk lying on the
sea-shore. He had not noticed it when he passed the same place two hours
before; and he amused himself by picking up pebbles and throwing them
at the log; when, suddenly, at the touch of the pebbles, the log woke
up.
The log was an alligator dozing in the sun. Now alligators, it seems,
wake up in most unpleasant tempers; this one spied my father and
started to run after him. My father was a true son of the Colonies,
a son of the seashores and of the savannas, and knew how to run fast;
but it would seem that the alligator ran or rather jumped still faster
than he, and this adventure bid fair to have left me for ever in limbo,
had not a negro, who was sitting astride a wall eating sweet potatoes,
noticed what was happening, and cried out to my already breathless
father:
"Run to the right, little sah; run to the left, little sah."
Which, translated, meant, "Run zigzag, young gentleman," a style of
locomotion entirely repugnant to the alligator's mechanism, who can
only run straight ahead of him, or leap lizard-wise.
Thanks to this advice, my father reached home safe and sound; but, when
there, he fell, panting and breathless, like the Greek from Marathon,
and, like him, was very nearly past getting up again.
This race, wherein the beast was hunter and the human being the hunted,
left a deep impression on my father's mind.
My grandfather, brought up in the aristocratic circle of Versailles,
had little taste for a colonist's mode of life: moreover, his wife, to
whom he had been warmly attached, had died in 1772; and as she managed
the estate it deteriorated in value daily after her death. The marquis
leased the estate for a rent to be paid him regularly, and returned to
France.
This return took place about the year 1780, when my father was eighteen
years of age.
In the midst of the gilded youth of that period, the Fayettes, the
Lameths, the Dillons, the Lazuns, who were all his companions,
my father lived in the style of a gentleman's son. Handsome in
looks, although his mulatto complexion gave him a curiously foreign
appearance; as graceful as a Creole, with a good figure at a time
when a well-set-up figure was thought much of, and with hands and
feet like a woman's; amazingly agile at all physical exercises, and
one of the most promising pupils of the first fencing-master of his
time--Laboissière; struggling for supremacy in dexterity and agility
with St. Georges, who, although forty-eight years old, laid claim to
be still a young man and fully justified his pretensions, it was to be
expected that my father would have a host of adventures, and he had: we
will only repeat one, which deserves that distinction on account of its
original character.
Moreover, a celebrated name is connected with it, and this name appears
so often in my dramas or in my novels that it seems almost my duty to
explain to the public how I came to have such a predilection for it.
The marquis de la Pailleterie had been a comrade of the duc de
Richelieu, and was, at the time of this anecdote, his senior by
fourteen years; he commanded a brigade at the siege of Philipsbourg in
1738, under the marquis d'Asfeld.
My grandfather was then first gentleman to the prince de Conti.
As is generally known, the duc de Richelieu was, on his grandfather's
side (whose name was Vignerot), of quite low descent.
He had foolishly changed the _t_ of the ending of his name to _d_, to
confute pedigree hunters by making them think it was of English origin.
These heraldic grubbers claimed that the name Vignerot with a _t_ and
not with a _d_ at the end of it had originally sprung from a lute
player, who had seduced the great Cardinal's niece, as did Abelard the
niece of Canon Fulbert; but, more lucky than Abelard, he finished his
course by marrying her after he had seduced her.
The marshal--who at this time was not yet made a marshal--was, by his
father, a Vignerot, and only on his grandmother's side a Richelieu.
This did not, however, prevent him from taking for his first wife
Mademoiselle de Noailles, and for his second Mademoiselle de Guise, the
latter alliance connecting him with the imperial house of Austria, and
making him cousin to the prince de Pont and the prince de Lixen.
Now it fell out one day that the duc de Richelieu had an attack of
colic, and therefore had not taken the usual pains with his toilet; it
fell out, I say, that he returned to the camp with my grandfather, and
went out hunting, covered with sweat and mud all over.
The princes de Pont and de Lixen were hunting at the same time, and the
duke, who was in haste to return home to change his clothes, passed by
them at a gallop and saluted them.
"Oh! oh!" said the prince de Lixen, "is that you, cousin? How muddy
you are! But perhaps you are a little bit cleaner since you married my
cousin."
M. de Richelieu pulled up his horse and leapt to the ground, motioning
to my grandfather to do the same, and he advanced to the prince de
Lixen:
"Sir," said he, "you did me the honour to address me."
"Yes, M. le duc," replied the prince.
"I am afraid I misunderstood the words you did me the honour to address
to me. Will you have the goodness to repeat them to me exactly as you
said them?"
The prince de Lixen bowed his head in the affirmative, and repeated
word for word the phrase he had uttered.
It was so insolently done that there was no way out of it. M. de
Richelieu bowed to the prince de Lixen and clapped his hand to his
sword.
The prince followed suit.
The prince de Pont naturally was obliged to be his brother's second,
and my grandfather Richelieu's.
A minute later M. de Richelieu plunged his sword through the body of
the prince de Lixen, who fell back stone dead into the arms of the
prince de Pont.[1]
Fifty-five years had gone by since this event. M. de Richelieu, the
oldest of the marshals of France, had been in 1781 appointed president
of the Tribunal of Affairs of Honour, in his eighty-fifth year.
He would therefore be eighty-seven when the anecdote we are about to
relate took place.
My father would be twenty-two.
My father was one night at the theatre of la Montansier in undress,
in the box of a very beautiful Creole who was the rage at the time.
Whether on account of the lady's immense popularity or because of his
imperfect toilet, he kept at the back of the box.
A musketeer, who had recognised the lady from the orchestra, opened the
box door and, without in any way asking leave, seated himself by her
and began to enter into conversation.
"Pardon me, monsieur," said the lady, interrupting him at the first
words he uttered, "but I think you are not sufficiently aware that I am
not alone."
"Who, then, is with you?" asked the musketeer.
"Why, that gentleman, of course," replied the lady, indicating my
father.
"Oh! pardon me!" said the young man; "I took monsieur for your lackey."
This piece of impertinence was no sooner uttered than the ill-mannered
musketeer was shot forth as from a catapult into the middle of the pit.
This unexpected descent produced a great sensation.
It was a matter of interest both to the falling body and to the people
on whom he fell.
In those days people had to stand in the pit, therefore there was
no need for them to rise up; they turned to the box from which the
musketeer had been hurled, and hooted loudly.
At the same time my father, who naturally expected the usual sequel
to such a proceeding, left the box to meet his enemy in the corridor.
But instead he found a police constable, who touched him with an
ivory-headed ebony baton and informed him that by order of the marshals
of France he was attached to his person.
It was the first time my father had encountered the arm of the law.
Brought up in St. Domingo, where there was no marshals' tribunal, he
was not versed in the practices of that institution.
"Pardon me, monsieur," he said to the guard, "am I right in assuming
that you are going to stick to me?"
"I have that honour, monsieur," replied the guard.
"Will you have the kindness to explain to me what that will mean?"
"It means, monsieur, that from this moment until the Tribunal of
Affairs of Honour shall have settled your case, I shall not leave your
side."
"You will not leave me?"
"No, monsieur."
"What! you will follow me?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Everywhere I go?"
"Everywhere."
"Even to madame's house?"
The guard bowed with exquisite politeness.
"Even to madame's house," he replied.
"Even to my own?" continued my father.
"Even to your house."
"Into my bedroom?"
"Into your bedroom."
"Oh! this is too much!"
"It is even so, monsieur."
And the guard bowed with the same politeness as at first.
My father felt a strong inclination to disengage himself of the
constable as he had of the musketeer; but the whole of the replies and
injunctions we have above reported were made so courteously he had no
reasonable excuse for taking offence.
My father escorted the lady to her door, saluted her as respectfully
as the constable had saluted him, and took home with him the
representative of the marshals of France.
This gentleman installed himself in his apartment, went out with him,
came back with him, and followed him as faithfully as his shadow.
Three days later my father was summoned to appear before the duc de
Richelieu, who then lived at the famous pavilion de Hanovre.
This was the name by which the Parisians had dubbed the mansion
Richelieu had built at the corner of the boulevard and of the rue
Choiseul (Louis-le-Grand), thereby hinting, and perhaps not without
some show of reason, that the war with Hanover had supplied the
requisite funds.
My father then styled himself the comte de la Pailleterie; we shall
soon relate the reason for his renouncing this name and title. It was
under this name and title, therefore, that my father was introduced to
the marshal.
The name awoke a recollection alike in the mind and in the heart of the
conqueror of Mahon.
"Oh! oh!" he exclaimed, as he turned round in his armchair, "are you by
any chance son of the marquis de la Pailleterie, one of my old friends,
who was my second in a duel in which I had the misfortune to kill the
prince of Lixen during the siege of Philipsbourg?"
"Yes, monseigneur."
"Then, m'sieur (this was the way the duc de Richelieu pronounced the
word _monsieur_), you are the son of a brave gentleman and ought to
have a fair hearing; relate your case to me."
My father told what had happened just as I have given it.
There was too close a resemblance between this affair and the one the
duc de Richelieu had had with his cousin for the marshal not to be
struck with it.
"Oh! oh!" he said, "and you swear that was exactly what occurred,
m'sieur?"
"Upon my word of honour, monseigneur."
"You must have reparation, then, and if you will to-day accept me as
a second, I shall be delighted to render the same service to you that
your father rendered me forty-six or forty-seven years ago."
As may well be imagined, my father accepted the offer, which was
thoroughly characteristic of Richelieu.
The meeting took place in the very garden of the pavilion de Hanovre,
and my father's adversary received a sword-cut across the shoulder.
This event reunited the two old friends; the duc de Richelieu asked
news of the father from his son, and learnt that the marquis de
Pailleterie, after having lived in St. Domingo nearly twenty years, had
returned to France, and now lived at Saint-Germain en Laye.
An invitation was sent to the marquis de la Pailleterie to come and
visit the duke at the pavillon de Hanovre.
Of course my grandfather accepted willingly enough. The two heroes of
the Regency held long conversations over their campaigns and their
love-affairs. Then over dessert the talk fell on my father; and the
marshal proposed to take the first opportunity that offered to place
his old friend's son in the army.
It was decreed that my father's military career should begin under less
illustrious auspices.
About this time my grandfather married again, and took his housekeeper
to wife, Marie-Françoise Retou; he was then seventy-four years of age.
This marriage caused an estrangement between father and son.
The result of this estrangement was that the father tied up his money
bags tighter than ever, and the son soon discovered that life in Paris
without money is a sorry life.
He then had an interview with the marquis, and told him he had made up
his mind to a course of action.
"What is that?" asked the marquis.
"To enlist."
"As what?"
"As a private."
"In what regiment?"
"In the first regiment I come across."
"That is all very fine," replied my grandfather, "but as I am the
marquis de la Pailleterie, a colonel and commissary-general of
artillery, I will not allow you to drag my name in the mire of the
lowest ranks of the army."
"Then you object to my enlisting?"
"No; but you must enlist under an assumed name."
"That is quite fair," replied my father. "I will enlist under the name
of Dumas."
"Very well."
And the marquis, who had never in any sense been a very tender parent,
turned his back on his son and left him free to go his own gait.
So my father enlisted under the name of Alexandre Dumas, as had been
agreed.
He enlisted in a regiment of the Queen's Dragoons, 6th of the Army, as
Number 429, on June 2nd, 1786.
It was the duc de Grammont, grandfather of my friend the real duc de
Guiche, who entered his enlistment under the name of Alexandre Dumas;
and, as a verification of this enlistment, a certificate was drawn up
which the duc de Guiche brought me only two years since as a souvenir
of his father the duc de Grammont.
It was signed by four noblemen belonging to Saint-Germain en Laye, and
stated that although enlisting under the name of Alexandre Dumas the
new recruit was really the son of the marquis de la Pailleterie.
As for the marquis, he died thirteen days after his son's enlistment in
the Queen's Dragoons, as became an old aristocrat who could not endure
to see the fall of the Bastille.
I give his death certificate from the civil registers of Saint-Germain
en Laye.
"On Friday, June 16th, 1786, the body of the high and mighty
Seigneur Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, knight,
seigneur and patron of Bielleville, whose death took place
the preceding day, aged about 76, husband of Marie-Françoise
Retou, was interred in the cemetery, and mass was sung
in the presence of the clergy, of sieur Denis Nivarrat,
citizen, and of sieur Louis Regnault, also citizen; friends
of the deceased, who have signed this at Saint-Germain en
Laye."
By this death the last tie that bound my father to the aristocracy was
severed.
[Footnote 1: There are different versions of this anecdote, but I give
it as I found it related among my father's papers, where this note is
added in another handwriting: _The general had this story from the duc
de Richelieu himself._ I cannot, then, do other than adopt or rather
retain this version of it.]
CHAPTER III
My father rejoins his regiment--His portrait--His strength--His
skill--The Nile serpent--The regiment of the King and the regiment of
the Queen--Early days of the Revolution--Declaration of Pilnitz--The
camp at Maulde--The thirteen Tyrolean chasseurs--My father's name is
mentioned in the order of the day--France under Providence--Voluntary
enlistments--St. Georges and Boyer--My father lieutenant-colonel--The
camp of the Madeleine--The pistols of Lepage--My father General of
Brigade in the Army of the North.
The new recruit rejoined his regiment, which was quartered at Laon,
towards the end of the month of June 1786.
My father, as already stated, was twenty-four, and as handsome a young
fellow as could be found anywhere. His complexion was dark, his eyes of
a rich chestnut colour, and his well-shaped nose was of the kind only
found in the crossing of Indian and Caucasian races. His teeth were
white, his lips mobile, his neck well set on his powerful shoulders,
and, in spite of his height of five feet nine inches, he had the hands
and feet of a woman. These feet were the envy of his mistresses, whose
shoes he was very rarely able to put on.
At the time of his marriage the calf of his leg was the same width as
my mother's waist.
His free colonial life had developed his strength and prowess to an
extraordinary degree; he was a veritable American horse-lad, a cowboy.
His skill with gun or pistol was the envy of St. Georges and Junot. And
his muscular strength became a proverb in the army. More than once he
amused himself in the riding-school by passing under a beam, grasping
it with his arms, and lifting his horse between his legs. I have seen
him do it, and I recollect my childish amazement when I saw him carry
two men standing up on his bent knee and hop across the room with these
two men on him. I saw him once in a rage take a branch of considerable
toughness in both his hands and break it between them by turning one
hand to the right and the other to the left. Another time I remember
going out one day from the little château des Fossés where we lived,
and my father found he had forgotten the key of a gate: I recollect
seeing him get out of the carriage, take up the gate crosswise, and at
the second or third attempt break down the stone pillar in which it was
fixed.
Dr. Ferus, who served under my father, has often told me that when
about eighteen he, Ferus, was sent as assistant-surgeon to the Alpine
army. On the first evening of his arrival, by the camp firelight he
watched a soldier who, among other trials of strength, amused himself
by putting his finger into the mouth of a heavy musket and lifting it
up not by, his arm but on his extended finger.
A man wrapped in a cloak mingled among the onlookers and watched with
them: then, laughing and flinging back his cloak, he said:
"That is not bad--but now bring four guns."
He was obeyed, for he was recognised as the commander-in-chief.
He then put his four fingers in the four gun holes and lifted the four
guns with as much ease as the soldier had lifted one.
"See how easy it is," said he, placing them gently on the ground--"when
one is in training for such exercises."
When Ferus told me this incident, he said he still marvelled how any
man's muscles could bear such a weight.
Old Moulin, landlord of the Palais-Royal at Avignon, where Marshal
Brune was murdered, was also possessed of immense strength. When
trying to defend the marshal from assassination he took up one of the
assassins, to use his own expression, "_by putting his hand under his
ribs_, and threw him out of the window." This same Moulin told me once,
when I was passing through Avignon, that when he was serving under
my father in Italy orders were given forbidding the soldiers to go
out without their sabres, under penalty of forty-eight hours in the
guardroom.
This order was issued on account of the number of assassinations that
had taken place.
My father was riding out, and met old Moulin, who was then a handsome,
strapping fellow of twenty-five. Unluckily this handsome, strapping
fellow had not his sword on.
Directly he caught sight of my father he set off at a run to try and
slip down a side street; but my father had spied the fugitive and
guessed the cause, so he put his horse to a gallop and, catching
up with the culprit, he sang out, "You rascal, so you want to be
murdered?" Then, seizing hold of him by his coat-collar, he raised him
completely off the ground without either urging on or slackening his
horse's pace, and carried him thus in a tight grip, just as a hawk
swoops down on a lark, until, meeting a patrol, he threw down his
burden and exclaimed:
"Forty-eight hours in the guardroom for this scoundrel!"
Old Moulin had his forty-eight hours in the guardroom, but it was not
the forty-eight hours in prison that lived longest in his memory, it
was that ten minutes' ride.
My father's skill as a hunter was equal to his strength; I have come
across veterans who had hunted with him, when serving in the Alps,
where, as we have just seen, he had been in command, and they preserved
many traditions of his almost inconceivable agility as a good shot.
One example will suffice.
My father had selected from among his aides-de-camp Captain d'Horbourg
de Marsanges, commandant of the crack company of the 15th regiment of
dragoons, as an excellent and indefatigable sportsman.
He was my father's regular hunting companion.
One day my father and his aide-de-camp left Cairo, by the Nile Gate,
to go hunting on the isle of Rhodes; they had not gone more than five
hundred steps from the walls before they met a captain of dromedaries,
who, sinning against all the accepted codes of hunting, wished success
to their expedition.
"Devil take the brute!" exclaimed Captain d'Horbourg, who was steeped
in all the hunter's superstitions. "Our day is ruined, and I expect we
had better turn back."
"What!" said my father. "Are you mad?"
"But, General, you know the proverb?"
"Of course I know it, but it is a French proverb and not an Arabian
one. Now, if we were hunting over the plain of St. Denis I should not
say anything. Come, let us go on."
They embarked, and reached the island.
Usually so abounding in game, the isle seemed barren.
Captain d'Horbourg consigned the captain of dromedaries to the infernal
regions every five minutes.
Suddenly he stopped short, his eyes fixed and his gun arrested in his
hand.
"General!" he cried to my father, who was about twenty-five paces from
him.
"Well, what's the matter?"
"A snake!"
"What! a snake?"
"Yes, and such a size! It is thicker than my arm."
"Where is it?"
"In front of me!"
My father took a few steps forward, but although he looked most
attentively, he could not see anything.
He shrugged his shoulders to indicate his inability.
"Why, there, there! Can't you see it?" said the captain. "It is curled
round and round, sitting up on its coils with its head poised, hissing."
"Well, then, fire at it as quickly as you can, or it will spring."
Captain d'Horbourg rapidly raised his gun to his shoulder and drew the
trigger.
Only the priming went off.
At the same moment the snake sprang, but before it had covered the
distance that separated it from the captain, the gun went off, and the
ball shattered its head.
The serpent fell at the captain's feet and coiled round his legs in its
death convulsions, writhing in its agony.
The captain shrieked, for he did not see for the moment the state the
snake was in.
When he had recovered himself and was somewhat reassured, Captain
d'Horbourg took the snake to Cairo, skinned it and had the skin made
into a sword-belt as a souvenir of his narrow escape.
But the whole way back he kept reiterating to my father--
"Ah! General--didn't I tell you that devil of a rider would bring us
ill luck!"
As a matter of fact the two hunters shot nothing but the snake, and it
could not be described as a good bag.
In the month of July 1843, on my return from Florence, I lodged at the
hotel de _Paris_, in the rue de Richelieu, where I received a letter
signed "Ludovic d'Horbourg," wherein the writer begged an interview
with me to unburden his mind of a dying request made him by his father.
The next day was to be the first representation of _Les Demoiselles de
Saint-Cyr_, so I put off the interview till the day after.
General Dumas's old Egyptian aide-de-camp had, on his deathbed, as a
sign of his gratitude, ordered his son Ludovic d'Horbourg to give me
after his death the skin of the serpent my father had killed so quickly
and cleverly on the isle of Rhodes. It seems he had often related this
adventure with the Nile serpent to his son, for, amidst the innumerable
dangers Count d'Horbourg had encountered throughout his long military
career, this one had remained the most deeply imprinted on his memory.
Thanks to this verbal account, I am able to give the story here in all
its details.
My father had hardly rejoined his regiment before an occasion for
displaying his skill as a pupil of Laboissière presented itself.
The King's and Queen's regiments, which had always been in rivalry
with each other, both happened to be stationed in the same town. This
afforded a grand opportunity for constant skirmishes between them, and
you may be sure such worthy opponents were not going to lose their
chances.
One day a soldier of the King's regiment passed one belonging to the
Queen's regiment.
The former stopped the latter and said--
"Comrade, I can tell you something you do not know."
"Well," replied the other, "if you tell it me I shall know it."
"All right I the king ... the queen."
"That is a lie," replied the other,--"it is the other way round, the
queen ... the king."
One insult was as gross as the other, and could only be wiped out by
duels.
About a hundred duels took place during the next twenty-four
hours--three fell to my father's account.
In one of them he was cut across the forehead. Luckily his head was as
tough as Duguesclin's.
He took no notice of this wound at the time, but it led to grave
complications later, which nearly drove him out of his mind.
My father took no part in the earlier events of the Revolution. The
National Assembly was constituted, the Bastille fell, and Mirabeau
sprang into fame, thundered and died. Meanwhile my father served as
private soldier or corporal in provincial barracks.
About 1790 he came with a detachment to Villers-Collerets, and there he
met my mother, whom, as we have stated, he married November 28, 1792.
In the meantime the Revolution was spreading throughout France, and
coalitions were being formed between the foreign Powers. On August 27,
1791, four days after the first insurrection of the negroes at St.
Domingo, Leopold I., Emperor of Germany, and Frederic-William II., King
of Prussia, met at Pilnitz and, in the presence of M. de Bouillé, who
enjoyed such a terrible celebrity in the affair of the Swiss at Nancy,
drew up the following declaration:--
"Their Majesties, having listened to the petitions and
remonstrances of their Royal Highnesses Monsieur and the
comte d'Artois, brothers of the king, have jointly agreed
in considering the present position of the King of France
a question of common interest throughout Europe. They hope
that this interest will not fail to be recognised by the
Powers whose aid has been solicited, and that in consequence
they will not withhold the use of the most efficacious means
within their power, in conjunction with the undersigned
Majesties, for the re-establishment of the King of France
in a more stable position, within the limits of the most
perfect freedom consistent with the basis of a monarchical
government, equally befitting the rights of the sovereigns
and the welfare of the French nation. Then, and in that
case, their said Majesties the Emperor and the King of
Prussia are mutually resolved to take prompt measures with
the forces necessary to obtain the end proposed in common.
In the meantime, they agree to give orders to their armies
to prepare for active service."
These were the lines that kindled the fire at Quiévrain, which was not
to be extinguished before the battle of Waterloo.
On January 14, 1792, an edict of the National Assembly invited King
Louis XVI. to demand in the name of the nation explanations from the
emperor. The 10th of February was the date fixed for his reply. "And,
in default of such reply," the edict went on to say, "the silence of
the emperor will, after the declaration of Pilnitz, be looked upon as
an infraction of the treaties of 1756, and considered hostile."
On March 1st following, the Emperor Leopold died, worn out by
debauchery, at the age of forty-five years, and his son François
succeeded to the Hereditary Estates.
As no satisfactory reply was returned, the troops proceeded to the
frontier, and the regiment of the Queen's Dragoons, in which my father
always served (though since February 16th, 1792, in the rank of
brigadier), was placed under the command of General Beurnonville.
It was while in camp at Maulde that my father found his first
opportunity to distinguish himself. Commanding as brigadier a
reconnoitring party of four dragoons, he unexpectedly encountered a
patrol of the enemy, comprised of thirteen Tyrolean chasseurs and a
corporal.
Despite his inferiority in numbers he did not hesitate for a second
to order his men to charge as soon as he saw them. The Tyroleans, who
were unprepared for such a sudden attack, retired into a small meadow,
surrounded by a ditch large enough to arrest the progress of the
cavalry. But, as I have said, my father was a first-rate horseman; he
mounted his good horse Joseph, gathered up the reins, urged him on, and
they leapt the ditch after the fashion of M. de Montmorency. My father
instantly landed alone in the very midst of the thirteen chasseurs,
who, completely dumbfounded by such boldness, delivered up their arms
and surrendered. The victor piled up the thirteen carbines in a heap,
placed them on his saddle-bow, made the thirteen men march to meet his
four dragoons, who had stopped on the other side of the ditch, over
which they could not jump, and, being the last to cross the ditch, he
led his prisoners into the camp.
Prisoners were rare in these days and the apparition of four men
leading in thirteen produced a great sensation in the camp. This
proof of the courage of the young officer was much talked of. General
Beurnonville desired to see him; made him _maréchal des logis_, invited
him to dinner, and mentioned his name in the order of the day.
This was the first mark of distinction attached to the new name of
Alexandre Dumas, adopted by the son of the marquis de la Pailleterie.
From that moment General Beurnonville promised my father his good-will,
a promise he never failed to keep: he used to say when my father was on
duty over the general's quarters:
"Oh! Dumas is watching over us, so I shall sleep peacefully to-night."
This was the time of Volunteer enrolment, and France set a unique
example to the world.
Never had a nation been so near its downfall as was France in 1792,
unless it were the France of 1428.
Two miracles saved this dearly loved daughter of God. In 1428 the Lord
raised up a maiden to save France, as Christ by His death saved the
world.
In 1792 He roused and inspired a whole nation.
Xerxes, on the rock of Salamis, was not more sure of Athens, when
its fortunes rested on the waves and on the fleet of Themistocles;
Louis XIV. at the gates of Amsterdam was not more sure of Holland,
who was ready to drown herself to escape his conquest, than was King
Frederic-William of conquering France at Longwy and at Verdun.
France felt the hand of death pressed on her, but, by a terrible and
powerful convulsion, although her feet were already wrapped in her
grave-clothes, she struggled out of her tomb.
She was betrayed on all sides.
By her king, who attempted to fly to Varennes to rejoin Bouillé at
Montmédy; her nobility, who fought in the enemy's ranks and urged the
Prussians on France; the priests, more terrible still, who spread
abroad a spirit of civil war, not merely between citizens of the same
country, province, or town, but between members of the same family,
between husband and wife, between son and father, between brother and
sister.
At this period, when French Rome was struggling, we will not say
against the world, but against Europe, there was scarcely a house which
did not contain its Camille cursing her brother or weeping for her
lover.
Oh! it is at such moments as these that France is great, and it is
evident she has a true mission from Providence, since she rose up,
struggled and triumphed, when all other nations would have succumbed.
All historians refer to Paris at this period as though it were Paris
that did everything and sent the army of the Revolution to march to the
frontiers.
Of course Paris did much, Paris with its enlistment offices in every
public square, Paris with its recruiting sergeants going from house to
house, Paris with its roaring cannons, its beating drums, its clanging
bells, Paris with its proclamations of the country's danger, Paris
with the great folds of its flag of distress floating from the windows
of the hôtel de Ville, Paris with the stentorian tones of Danton
calling the people to arms; but the provinces did quite as much as
Paris, and they had not passed through those terrible days of the 2nd
and 3rd of September.
Two departments alone, le Gard and le Haute-Saône, levied two armies
among themselves.
Two men unaided, each equipped and armed a squadron of cavalry.
One village gave every single man it had, and offered besides a sum of
three hundred thousand francs.
The mothers did more than give themselves or their money, they gave
their sons, a more terrible and heartrending travail than that of
giving them birth.
Eight hundred thousand men enlisted; France, which had been under great
difficulty to raise an army to defend her Thermopylæ of the Argonne
and to win the battle of Valmy, had a dozen armies at her command,
and a year later began the march to conquer Europe. Frederic-William
and Leopold made a grave error when they declared war against the
Revolution; had they been satisfied with drawing a kind of protective
cordon round France and with surrounding her with an armed girdle,
France would in all probability have preyed upon herself. The volcano
which threw up such fire and lava would have engulfed everything in the
heart of that deep crater called Paris, wherein such days as the 5th
and 6th October, as the 20th June, as the 10th August, as the 2nd and
3rd September, as the 21st January, had seethed and burst forth. But
they broke open the mountain with two strokes of their swords, and laid
bare a channel by which the Revolution flowed out over the whole world.
New regiments, whose very existence had been unsuspected hitherto, kept
pouring into the army daily, regiments whose names were not entered on
any list.
Only created the day before, they were totally inexperienced, but on
they marched against the enemy.
St. Georges had been made colonel of the Free Legion of American
cavalry in the South.
Boyer raised the regiment of the hussars _de la Liberté et de
l'Égalité_ as his contribution.
They both knew my father, and both wanted to have him under their
orders.
St. Georges took him first, as second lieutenant, on the 1st September
1792.
Boyer made him a lieutenant the next day.
Finally St. Georges, wishing to keep him at any price, made him
lieutenant-colonel on January 10th, 1793.
My father was in reality in command of the regiment, for St. Georges,
who was no fire eater, remained at Lille under the pretext of
superintending the organisation of his troops (using for his own
purposes the money given him to buy horses). Placed, as I have said,
at the head of the regiment, my father saw before him a vast field
for the display of his sagacity and his courage. The squadrons of men
trained by him were noted for their patriotism and their good military
discipline. Always under fire, very few engagements took place in the
camp of la Madeleine without his squadrons taking part, and wherever
they went they left an honourable, and often a glorious record behind
them. Once, for example, the regiment was in the van-guard when
suddenly it came across a Dutch regiment hidden in the rye which, at
that season and in that part of the country, grew as high as a man. The
presence of this regiment was revealed by the movement of a sergeant
who was about fifteen paces from my father, and who raised his gun to
fire. But my father saw this movement, realised that at such a distance
the sergeant could not fail to hit him, drew a pistol from his holster
and pulled the trigger with such rapidity and good luck that before the
weapon was levelled its barrel was pierced clean through by the pistol
bullet.
This pistol shot was the signal for a magnificent charge, in which the
Dutch regiment was cut to pieces.
My father picked up the bullet-pierced firelock on the battlefield, and
it was only held together on both sides by two fragments of iron. I
had it in my possession a long time, but in the end it was stolen from
me in a house-moving.
The pistols which had wrought this miracle of accuracy had been given
by my mother, and came from the workshops of Lepage. They acquired
further renown in the Italian campaign, and we shall have more to say
concerning them when we come to that chapter in our history.
My father received his commission as brigadier-general of the Army of
the North on July 30, 1793.
On September the 3rd of the same year he was appointed general of
division of the same army.
Finally, five days later, he was made general commander-in-chief of the
Army of the Western Pyrenees.
So when my mother married my father, on November 28th, 1792, he was
lieutenant-colonel of hussars; and in less than a year afterwards he
had been appointed general-in-command.
It had taken him but twenty months to rise from the lowest rung of
the ladder, where he was nothing but a simple soldier, to one of the
highest positions in the army.
CHAPTER IV
My father is sent to join Kléber--He is nominated General-in-Chief
in the Western Pyrenees--Bouchotte's letters--Instructions of the
Convention--The Representatives of the People who sat at Bayonne--Their
proclamation--In spite of this proclamation my father remains at
Bayonne--_Monsieur de l'Humanité._
With the grade of brigadier-general, my father was sent to join Kléber
at the siege of Maestricht, but he remained only a short time under his
orders. Later, in Egypt, Kléber became his intimate friend.
Created divisional general of the same army on the 3rd of September,
he was given the command of the Western Pyrenees, and five days later
he received news of his nomination from Bouchotte, minister of war, in
these terms:--
"PARIS, _11th September 1793, Year II of the Republic, one
and indivisible._
"THE MINISTER OF WAR to CITIZEN DUMAS, General of Division
of the Northern Army.
"I have to inform you, General, that the Executive
Provisional Council, relying upon your patriotism, your
courage, and your experience, has appointed you to the
position of general-in-chief to the Army of the Western
Pyrenees, rendered vacant by the death of Delbecq. The
National Convention has approved this nomination, and I
hasten to send you your credentials, and to ask you to lose
no time in taking up the post committed to your charge.
"This appointment will afford you fresh opportunities for
showing your devotion to the public welfare in beating down
its enemies: the zeal for the Republic you have hitherto
shown is a sure guarantee that you will not spare her
enemies. J. BOUCHOTTE."
On the 24th, his instructions were sent him.
We transcribe these instructions here, because they seem to us to
be important, in that they emanated direct from the Revolutionary
Government, at the most revolutionary epoch of that Government, that is
to say, on the 24th of September 1793, and yet did not prescribe any
of those rigorous measures in which the Representatives of the People
indulged in the departments. Perhaps it may be these Representatives of
the People had particular instructions, and suffered the soldiers to
play the most prominent parts in that bloody tragedy.
We shall see the rôle that was laid out for my father.
"WESTERN PYRENEES.
"PARIS, _24th September, Year II._
_"Notes for General Alexandre Dumas._
"The Army of the Western Pyrenees is composed (according
to article 2 of the decree of 30th April 1793) of the
Republican forces that are situated along the frontier and
in fortified towns or ports, in the whole of the territory
that borders the left bank of the Garonne, including the
departments of the Basses-Pyrénées, Hautes-Pyrénées, the
Landes and Gers, as well as the whole of the country along
the left bank of the Garonne, in the departments of the
Haute-Garonne, of Lot-et-Garonne, and of la Gironde.
"It is thought best that the general should go immediately
to Bayonne by Bordeaux. He had better interview the
Representatives of the People, the constituted authorities
and the military heads, as he goes along. He must consult
together with them upon every matter that concerns the
defence and the tranquil settlement of the portion of the
Republic comprised in his command; as well as upon the
most convenient means to be employed in making necessary
requisitions, which should be demanded in the troop-centres
indicated by the Representatives of the People.
"He will reach Saint Jean-de-Luz as soon as possible, where
his headquarters will be made. He will carefully examine his
staff and head employés of the different branches of the
army.
"He will make himself acquainted with every detail
concerning his sphere of administration.
"He must examine all books of orders, plans, charts, and
memoranda relative to the defence of the frontier and the
seaboards. He must give ear to the chief engineer and other
authorised personages.
"He must pay a visit to the camps, cantonments, and
stations, in order to regulate the order and discipline that
ought to exist throughout the service.
"He must take cognisance of the most important passes,
ports, and highways, and if they are occupied by the Spanish
he must use his best endeavours to expel them and to take
possession of them, if it is desirable from a military point
of view, and possible without unduly risking the troops.
"Their actual position is in four divisions.
"1st. That of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, consisting of twelve
thousand men, with its van-guard stationed at Bruges and its
outposts extending from Trouber in Borda as far as Coulin
Baïta.
"The main body is encamped in front of the fort of Socoa
de Saint-Jean-de-Luz, upon the heights of la Chapelle de
Boudagain de Belchéséa, as far as the river Nivelle.
"The purpose of this division is to keep the enemy behind la
Bidassoa and to defend the pass of Reza.
"2nd. The division of Serres and of Saint-Plée, of from
four to five thousand men, is stationed at Ascain, Serres,
Saint-Plée, and Aintroevé, with its outposts protecting
Helbaren and Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours.
"It prevents entrance into France by way of Tugarro, Murdé,
and Ordache, and harasses the enemy in the valley of Bastan;
furthermore it can throw forward troops to Souzarde,
Espelette, and Itlassu.
"3rd. The division of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-port consists of
about ten thousand men, of which two battalions and three
Basque companies are at Baygorry, to defend the valley, and
one battalion at Anhaix. The rest covers the town, which is
a most important pivot. Furthermore, it threatens the enemy
in les Bloules, the valley of Bastan, and the road from
Pampelune by Roncevaux.
"4th. The division of the cantonments of Pau includes
Pau, Navarreins, Oleron, the Basse-Burice, the valleys of
Barettoux, Ayret, Ossan, Oevar, and Saint-Savin.
"This division numbers five thousand men, and can
be increased by requisitioning the departments of
Hautes-Pyrénées, of Gers, Haute-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne,
Gironde, and the Landes.
"Its object is to defend the valleys and to be the reserve
from which the whole army should be supplemented.
"The Spanish have a formidable artillery from Fontarabia to
Biriatou.
"Their forces, it is said, consist of fifteen thousand
men from Fontarabia to Cerdac, and as many round
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-port, everywhere intrenched.
"Their military arrangements seem excellent.
"In time of peace, our posts on the extreme frontier
were stationed at Andaye, at Saint-Jacques de Souberang,
Pas-de-Béhobie, Biriatou, and other places a league from
the frontier, in the neighbourhood of the Ruhne, and on the
banks of the Bidassoa.
"The great camp to be occupied is la Croix des Bouquets
and Andaye, with outposts at Serres and at Joliment, to
restrain the Spanish, whose flanks and rear will thereby be
endangered.
"Beyond Saint-Jean-Pied-de-port is the post of
Castel-Mignon, which the Spanish have taken from us. We
ought to try to recapture this, and even the pass of
Baguette, which is the way into Spain at that point.
"These items of local information have been extracted
from memoranda, particulars of which will be found at the
headquarters of the general army and at the engineer's
office, with transcripts of the military reconnoitrings that
have been carried on along the frontier.
"The general will acquaint himself with these details, and
he will direct his operations according to the strength of
his active and reserve forces, and to those of the enemy and
their positions, taking advantage of every circumstance that
may promise an advantageous attack, without running risks.
"He will keep a controlling hand over all movements and
instructions given to the troops, and especially over the
officers, who shall be suspended if they are not found
fulfilling their proper duties.
"Military schools shall be open to common use; they
shall deal with all branches of the service: police,
account-keeping, and Republican discipline.
"A general officer and an officer from the chief staff shall
be specially set apart for this object.
"The general will find the army in excellent spirits, and he
will only have to keep it so.
"He must watch and arrest suspected men, who might escape
from the army.
"All communication with the enemy must be avoided.
"No one must be allowed to penetrate into his camp under any
pretext whatever.
"Deserters must be sent to the rear to some suitable place.
"He must maintain an accurate correspondence with the
minister of war, independently of that from the headquarters.
"In short, his sense of patriotism and his courage render
him worthy of the confidence of the nation. He will not
keep back anything, and he will set his brothers-at-arms an
example of every Republican virtue."
It is clear that these instructions had nothing very revolutionary
about them.
But when he reached Bayonne, serious differences broke out between my
father and the Representatives of the People sitting in that town.
These Representatives of the People were citizens Monestier, Pinet
senior, Garreau, d'Artigoyte, and Cavaignac.
This Assembly had gained for itself a sorry notoriety in the south;
and when the above-mentioned members heard that my father was coming,
knowing his moderate views, they tried to ward off the blow.
On the 3rd Brumaire, before my father had actually arrived, they issued
the following proclamation:--
"IN THE NAME OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE:
"The Representatives of the People within the sphere of the
Army of the Western Pyrenees and the adjoining departments,
being informed that the minister of war has promoted to
the rank of divisional generals in the Army of the Western
Pyrenees certain citizens who have not the confidence of
Republicans; appointments which have raised a sense of
uneasiness among the democratic people of Bayonne; fearing,
in the first place, that the _sans-culotte_ officers placed
in their posts by the Representatives of the Montagnards
may be deprived by them; and, secondly, fearing that they
will see a recrudescence of intriguers and military spies
at work misleading the soldiers; have been impelled to
communicate their fears to their colleague Garreau, who has
already on their behalf drawn up the following provisional
measures:
"Being informed that citizen Dumas has been appointed by
the Executive Council general of the Army of the Western
Pyrenees, that he is on his way to Bayonne, and that he has
been announced by his aide-de-camp Darièle, who has already
arrived in the said town;
"Taking note of the fact that when the minister of war made
the above-mentioned appointments he could not then have
been acquainted with the _important operations_ which the
Representatives of the People have carried out by means
of the Army of the Western Pyrenees;--operations rendered
imperative on behalf of the public safety, of which the
minister and the Executive Council will warmly approve as
soon as they are acquainted with them;
"Also having regard to the interests of the army, which
require that nominations made by Representatives of the
People of generals and officers who have merited the
confidence of the soldiery by their courage, their talents,
and their Republican opinions, shall be maintained;
"It is resolved:--
"_Art._ 1. The appointments made up to this date by the
Representatives of the People in the Army of the Western
Pyrenees, whether that of general in command or those of any
other officer, shall hold good.
"_Art._ 2. Citizen Muller, general commanding the Army of
the Western Pyrenees, is forbidden to deliver letters of
commission to officers who have just been or who are about
to be promoted by the Executive Council to any rank in the
said army whatever, or to recognise them in the rank the
minister may have conferred or proposes to confer on them.
"_Art._ 3. It is decreed that citizen Dumas, who has been
nominated general of the Army of the Western Pyrenees by the
Executive Council, and also all other officers who shall be
or have been promoted to any sort of rank in the said army
by the above-named Council, shall on their arrival remain
outside the walls of Bayonne and of Saint-Esprit, until such
time as the Representatives of the People of this town shall
have arrived.
"General la Roche, commandant of the town of Bayonne and
of the fort of Saint-Esprit, will see that this command
is strictly adhered to. Those officers, however, who
were already in the army when they were appointed by the
minister, are exempted from this order, and will remain at
their posts in the ranks they have held previously.
"_Art._ 4. The Representatives of the People will frequently
visit Bayonne to confer together as to what action shall be
taken relative to the nominations of the Executive Council.
"In the meantime they request their colleague, citizen
Garreau, at present at Bayonne, to adhere strictly to this
proclamation, and to look to it that its regulations are
enforced.
"Drawn up at Mont-de-Marsan, 1st of the second month of the
year II of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
"J. B. B. MONESTIER (of Puy-de Dôme),
"J. PINET (senior), and D'ARTIGOYTE.
"The above-signed Representatives, approving this decree,
declare that it does not and cannot apply to citizen
Fregeville, general of division so long attached to this
army, whom the Representatives of the People have summoned
to them both at Toulouse and at Bordeaux. They therefore
consider that General Fregeville should exercise his
functions as general of division whether at Bayonne or in
the army, from the time of his arrival.
"At Bayonne, 3rd of the second month of the year II of the
French Republic, one and indivisible.
"Authenticated copy. GARREAU."
If you would know how these famous Representatives of the People
occupied their time at Bayonne and in the surrounding country, and in
what way my father's presence was distasteful to them, glance through
their correspondence. That will explain why it was decreed that General
Dumas should depart outside the walls of Bayonne as soon as he reached
the town.
Unfortunately, my father was not the type of man who could be made
meekly to go out of a town when he believed he had the right to remain
in it.
So he stayed at Bayonne.
This refusal to obey the order of the Representatives of the People
led to a fresh proclamation, which was issued the day after his
entrance, on the 9th Brumaire:--
"IN THE NAME OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE:
"The Representatives of the People, in the sphere of
the Army of the Western Pyrenees and the neighbouring
departments,
"Assured that the Committee of Public Safety and the
National Convention are neither aware of the urgently needed
reforms which have been brought about in this army, nor of
the fresh appointments that had taken place in it, when
the minister of war or Executive Council, supported by the
National Council, promoted General Dumas;
"And in view of the fact that General Muller has received
from these Representatives the position of provisional
commander-in-chief of this army by reason of the proofs he
has already given of his abilities, of his activity, of his
courage, and of his pronounced Republican opinions; and
in consideration of his tried experience of four months'
laborious work in conducting war in countries and localities
where it is impossible to exercise the same methods of
warfare as among the armies of the Republic; work which
takes considerable time and requires great intelligence
in order to unite all the scattered forces employed at a
multitude of different points, and to weld them into one
harmonious army corps; and finally, on account of his
services to this army and of his high moral character, which
have won for him the respect, affection, and confidence of
its officers and men;
"Seeing that General Muller is still in full enjoyment of
this esteem, of this friendship, and of this confidence;
that he alone can carry on the campaign to its completion
as he alone has the clue to its workings; and finally, that
this campaign and war can hardly last more than another
three weeks, or even less;
"Considering that General Dumas (against whom, let it be
understood, the Representatives of the People have no
personal objections) cannot obtain a knowledge of these
localities, of the plans and of the positions, in a less
period than six weeks, as he himself admitted in the
_friendly_ Conference which the Representatives of the
People have had with him;
"And as order and discipline, harmony and concord have
reigned more forcibly and with more marked success since the
provisional election of General Muller and the reforms made
in the army;
"It is resolved, in the highest interests of the Republic,
that temporarily, and until a definite command comes from
the National Assembly, General Muller shall retain the
command-in-chief of the Army of the Western Pyrenees;
"But it is also resolved that General Dumas be left at
liberty to serve in this same army as general of division
until a definite decree is received.
"At Bayonne, 2nd day of the 2nd month in the year II of the
Republic, one and indivisible.
"_Signed_:
"J. B. B. MONESTIER (of Puy-de-Dôme), D'ARTIGOYTE, GARREAU,
CAVAIGNAC, and PINET (senior.)"
My father had obtained the satisfaction he desired.
The Representatives of the People had declared that they had no
complaint to make against him, and had withdrawn the clause in their
decree that had enjoined him to leave Bayonne.
As to the sanction they granted him to serve as general of division, it
may easily be guessed he meant to ignore it altogether.
So he installed himself and his staff in the square where lodgings had
been taken for him in advance. Unluckily, all the executions took place
in this square.
When the ghastly hours arrived, and all other windows were filled with
spectators, my father closed his, pulled down the blinds and drew his
curtains.
Soon a terrible commotion began under his closed windows--all the
_sans-culottes_ of the countryside gathered below and yelled:
"Hah! _Monsieur de l'Humanité!_ Come to your windows! Show yourself!"
But in spite of these yells, which were of such a threatening character
that my father and his aides-de-camp stood sword and pistols in hand,
fearing, more than once, matters would develop into an attack, not one
of the windows were opened, not one of the officers belonging to my
father's general staff appeared at the balcony.
After this affair, the new general appointed by the Executive Powers
was no longer addressed as citizen Alexandre Dumas, he was known only
by a name sufficiently compromising at that time--especially among the
people who had dubbed him with it--that of _Monsieur de l'Humanité._
Dispute if you wish, gentlemen, my name of Davy de la Pailleterie; but
what you cannot dispute is the fact that I am the son of a man who in
face of the enemy was called _Horatius Cocles,_ and before a scaffold
_Monsieur de l'Humanité._
CHAPTER V
My father is appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of the West--His
report on the state of La Vendée--My father is sent to the Army of the
Alps as General-in-Chief--State of the army--Capture of Mont Valaisan
and of the Little Saint-Bernard--Capture of Mont Cenis--My father is
recalled to render an account of his conduct--What he had done--He is
acquitted.
It can be seen that such a state of things could not last: moreover, my
father by his resistance risked his life in a far more dangerous game
than that of the battlefield.
The Committee of Public Safety replied on the 10th of Frimaire in the
following terms:--
"The Committee of Public Safety decrees:
"That the Provisional Executive Council shall immediately
send 10,000 men of the Army of the Western Pyrenees into la
Vendée to join the portion of the Army of the West which
is acting against the rebels of that department and its
neighbouring tracts on the left bank of the Loire. This
division is to be under the command of General Dumas.
"The Executive Council is to take the most active steps to
carry out these orders, and must forward its despatches by
special courier.
"_Signed in the Records_:
"ROBESPIERRE, LINDET, RIVIÈRE, CARNOT, BILLAULD-VARENNES,
and C. A. PRIEUR.
"Authenticated copy.
"J. BOUCHOTTE, Minister of War."
My father went to la Vendée.
There he found an entirely different state of things.
As soon as he arrived General Canclaux was recalled to Paris under
suspicion.
Everything fell on my father's shoulders; and he received the chief
command of the Army of the West.
He began his work by taking stock of the men at his disposal, as a good
workman before setting to work examines the tools in his hands.
The tools were bad, according to my father's report. If we read it
attentively in the light of to-day, if we take careful note of the time
it was penned (17 Vendémiaire, year II), we shall see that there was
sufficient matter in this report to have guillotined him twenty times
over.
It was miraculous that he escaped.
Here is the report:--
"REPORT ON THE ARMY OF LA VENDÉE.
"WESTERN ARMY.
"GENERAL QUARTERS AT FONTENAY-LE-PEUPLE, _17th Vendémiaire,
Year II of the Republic, one and indivisible._
"_The Commander-in-Chief to the Committee of Public Safety._
"I have delayed my report on the state of the war and army
at la Vendée, so that I might be able to make quite sure
of my information from personal observation; otherwise
it would have been but an echo of the various accounts
which have been told me by persons who had each his own
particular point of view. Now, on my return from my tour of
inspection, it will be quite another matter; I shall speak
of facts which have come to my personal knowledge, and of
irregularities which I myself have witnessed.
"Well, to speak plainly, there is no part of the Army of the
West, whether in its military or administrative departments,
which does not need the hand of a martinet. The battalions
have no sort of cohesion. The old muster-rolls are reduced
to a hundred and fifty men.
"By that you can judge of the small number of recruits there
has been, of the incapacity of its regiments, the efficient
portions of which are paralysed by the inexperience of
the majority, whilst the officers themselves are so
undisciplined it is quite hopeless to expect them to train
fresh men.
"But there are worse evils than these.
"The evil lies deeper, in the spirit of lawlessness and
pillage that prevails through the whole army, a spirit
fostered by lack of punishment and produced by long-standing
habit. This spirit has been carried to such a pitch that
I have ventured to say it is quite impossible to put it
down, except by transferring these corps to other armies
and in replacing them by troops that have been trained to
subordination.
"To convince you of the truth of this it will be sufficient
to tell you that the soldiers have threatened to shoot
their officers for trying to stop pillage according to my
orders. You may at first be amazed at such outrages; but
you will cease to be surprised when you reflect that it is
the necessary consequence of the system carried on till
now during this war. When once _an impulse to plunder and
pillage_ has been indulged in, it is difficult to stop it at
will, as you, citizen Representatives, know; la Vendée has
been _treated just like a town taken by assault: everything
in it has been sacked, pillaged, burnt._ The soldiers do not
understand why they are forbidden to do to-day what they
did yesterday. You will not find even among the general
officers any means of recalling the rank and file to a
love of justice and more decent behaviour. I do not doubt
that there are some who have higher principles and desire
to return to a better state of things. Some of these men
served in this army when pillage was in practice; witnesses
to the defeat of our arms, these men have lost, by their
participation in these past defeats, the requisite authority
to put a stop to the state of disorganisation I have pointed
out; the remainder are lacking in intelligence, in firmness,
in proper methods for reducing the troops to order and
discipline. Therefore, after careful examination, I have
found but few general officers capable of doing any good.
Their influence is usually bad, and a deplorable spirit of
pillage, of lawlessness, and of license reigns throughout
the army. There is no spirit of activity, no supervision, no
teaching. One night I walked right through the whole camp
without being so much as observed, let alone recognised. Is
there, then, any wonder at our recent defeats?
"And this, notwithstanding that military virtues are never
more needed than in civil warfare. How can we fulfil your
orders without such virtues? How are we to convince these
country-people of your just dealings when justice is
violated by your own troops? of your respect for persons
and property _when the men_ who are charged to proclaim
that respect publicly pillage and murder unpunished? Your
designs and their carrying out constantly contradict one
another, and there can be no successful outcome unless this
is all changed: to change the system we must change the men.
It is above all urgently necessary to support precepts by
example, as the inhabitants of these parts have so often
been deceived by false hopes and broken promises.
"I shall, however, have expressed myself badly if you infer
from my report that la Vendée is still a source of danger to
the Republic and threatens her liberty.
"That is not my opinion at all, for I fully believe the war
could be quickly ended if such measures as I propose were
adopted. These are:
"1. A complete reorganisation of the army.
"2. A thorough change in the staff officers.
"3. A carefully sifted selection of officers intended for
la Vendée. They should be able to maintain the strictest
discipline and to stop the tendency to pillage, by their
tried experience, their intelligence, and their integrity,
and, finally, by their own steady and determined conduct.
"Citizen Representatives, must I speak out? So many
difficulties confront me that I prefer to make this
admission to you rather than fall short of your
expectations. I should be proud to be able to end this
disastrous war and to help to deliver the Republic at last
from the perils with which it is threatened; but desire
for glory does not make me blind to facts; the materials
at my disposal are not adequate to satisfy your views, to
reorganise the army, to make up for the inefficiency of
the general officers, to restore the confidence of the
inhabitants of the revolted provinces; in short, to rouse
new life and infuse a better spirit all round.
"Whilst, therefore, matters remain in this condition it will
be quite impossible for me to respond to your hopes and to
assure you of a speedy termination to the war in la Vendée."
Could not the reader fancy he was studying the report of an old Roman
warrior of the time of Regulus or of Cato the Elder, who had had to be
sent into a revolted province as a result of the proconsulship of a
Calpurnius Piso or a Verres?
This report was equivalent to a resignation, and, considering the
spirit of the time, seemed pretty certain to lead to that end; but
some good genius always seemed to protect my father; and, instead
of forfeiting his head as the penalty for declaring such terrible
truths, he was made commander-in-chief of the Army of the Alps on 2nd
Nivôse, year II. He took up his new command on the 2nd of the following
Pluviôse.
Let us here say a few words about the situation of the Alpine army at
the time my father was appointed commander-in-chief.
In the first place, the defeats of Quiévrain and of Marchain and the
taking of Longwy and the bombardment of Lille were such comparatively
ancient history as to have been almost forgotten. At the end of a year
France, who had been so near a foreign invasion, had carried war into
the enemy's territory. Belgium was entirely conquered; our soldiers
were examining the mountains of the Savoy which they were soon to
scale; and our old enemy Austria was already threatened on the one hand
by Germany and on the other by Italy.
Three fresh enemies, England, Spain and Holland, rose against us, in
response to Francis's and Frederic William's cry of distress. The old
Allies, who had placed the old monarchy within an ace of destruction at
Fontenoy and at Rosbach, threatened the young Republic; but, as we have
said, to the chant of _la Marseillaise_, a miracle was wrought, the
whole of France rose simultaneously, and seven armies confronted their
enemies on all sides.
When the Prussians had penetrated as far as la Champagne and the
Austrians had invaded Flanders, the King of Sardinia made sure
that France was lost; he did not hesitate to join the Coalition
and to prepare his army for war. The Government, alarmed by these
demonstrations, sent General Montesquiou South to prospect. He had
not been there a month before, becoming convinced that France ought
to reckon the King of Sardinia henceforth among her enemies, he
sent the Government a plan for the invasion of Savoy. After untold
difficulties, including even a temporary disgrace, General Montesquiou
received orders to put his project into execution. He transported his
camp to Abrelles, and ordered General Anselme, who was in command of
the camp of Var, to make ready to invade the district of Nice towards
the end of September, and to combine his forces with those of the fleet
then under the command of Admiral Truguet at the port of Toulon.
As soon as the Piedmontese were aware of our preparations to invade,
they hastened to make ready for our attack. Three forts had been built,
one near Champareille, and the other two at Miaux. Montesquiou allowed
these preparations to grow and intrenchments to be thrown up. Then,
just when he knew the Piedmontese were about to mount guns in them, he
sent Major-General Laroque with the 2nd battalion of light infantry
and some grenadiers to take them by surprise. The Piedmontese, whose
preparations for defence were not yet complete, made no attempt to
resist the attack, and, abandoning the half-finished fortifications
which they had raised with such labour, they fled without firing a
single shot. The evacuation of the bridges, the marches from Bellegarde
and Nôtre-Dame-de-Miaux and Apremont, were the result of this retreat.
The French followed the Piedmontese a half-day's march behind.
Montmeillan opened its gates.
Public opinion, checked until now by the Sardinian occupation, began
to wake up. The French were welcomed on all sides as liberators.
The Piedmontese fled to the sound of the cheering which greeted the
tricoloured flag. Deputations from all the villages hurried up to
General Montesquiou; his march was a triumphal procession; deputies
came to him even to the château des Marches to bring him the keys
of Chambéry, and the next day he entered the town with an escort of
a hundred cavalry, eight companies of grenadiers and four pieces of
cannon. There a grand banquet awaited him, his staff, and his soldiers,
given by the Municipal Council.
Savoy was now incorporated into France under the name of the department
of Mont-Blanc, a title retained until 1814. This first conquest was
brought about without the firing of a single rifle--solely by the
superiority of the tactics of the French general over those of his
enemy.
In the meantime, General Anselme took possession of the district of
Nice and added the department of the Alpes-Maritimes to France; the
principality of Monaco soon followed.
But here the French invasion ended. Civil war began to rage at home.
Jean Chouan had raised la Vendée by his nocturnal whisperings; the
scaffold, ever ready in the squares of Revolutionary towns, claimed its
ghastly toll; General Montesquiou was proscribed by the Convention, but
succeeded in escaping to Switzerland, where he found refuge. Anselme
was arrested and beheaded for the conquest of Nice. Biron took his
place, and followed him to the scaffold. Finally Kellermann, whom my
father was to succeed, took a turn as commander-in-chief in a post
known to be under suspicion, and more dangerous than grapeshot; but
Kellermann soon found himself between the Piedmontese army, eager to
assume the offensive, and Lyon, which was in a state of revolt. He kept
his eyes on Italy and France alternately, and divided his small army
into two corps, leaving one under General Brunet's command, and leading
the other up to the walls of Lyon himself.
Directly the Piedmontese discovered Kellermann's departure, they took
advantage of the reduced numbers of the French troops, and fell upon
them with 25,000 men. For eighteen days that handful of brave men
fought incessantly, only falling back step by step, losing but a matter
of twenty leagues of ground, and saving all their magazines.
However, General Brunet could not hold out much longer, and he notified
his position to Kellermann. Kellermann immediately raised the siege of
Lyon, and joined the army with a reinforcement of three thousand men,
bringing up the total of his forces to eight thousand men. He placed
three hundred of the National Guards in the second line, and with these
trifling numbers he began the attack on 13th September 1793.
His plan of attack was most cleverly contrived, and was carried
into execution with equal skill by his lieutenants and men. It was a
complete success, and, from October 9th following, the enemy was chased
from Faucigny, from Tarantaise, and from la Maurienne; the Piedmontese
were driven from post to post till they reached St. Maurice, which they
hoped to hold, since they had mounted there several pieces of cannon.
The advance guard reached it at seven o'clock on the morning of October
4th; the cannonade lasted until ten o'clock, till the bulk of the army
appeared on the scenes with its artillery. Whilst the French guns were
silencing the enemy's battery, Kellermann ordered the 2nd battalion of
light cavalry to outflank the Piedmontese. The eight hundred men who
composed this battalion were accustomed to mountain warfare, and dashed
over the boulders, leaped the precipices, climbed down the abysses and
attacked the Piedmontese with such impetuosity that they could not
withstand the onslaught, but fled in disorder, abandoning St. Maurice.
When Kellermann left this village he wrote to the Convention as
follows:--
"Mont Blanc was invaded several days ago by a considerable
number of the enemy, but to-day it is evacuated; the
frontier from Nice to Geneva is open, and the retreat of
the Piedmontese from la Tarantaise will necessitate their
retiring from la Maurienne. The taking of Mont Blanc has
cost the enemy two thousand men and a vast quantity of
money."
Kellermann's reward was a warrant for his arrest and a summons to
appear before the Convention.
It was to replace him whilst he went to give an account of his
victories, that my father was called to the Army of the Alps.
His first care on arrival was to reconnoitre the enemy's lines and to
re-establish the broken communications between the Army of the Alps and
the Army in Italy; while busied over these preliminary operations he
sent the Convention a plan of campaign which was adopted.
All this time my father was making friends with the boldest
chamois-hunters; he made one or two excursions with them to show them
that he was capable of making one of their party, and, when he had
gained their confidence, or rather their devotion, by hunting with them
among the snows, he converted his hunting comrades into guides.
One morning the general left his army in command of General Bagdelaune,
took provisions to last several days, and set out with three of his
faithful hunters.
He was absent five days; during these five days he examined all
the passes by which it might be possible to reach the redoubt on
Mont Cenis. This work was no easy task, for the passes could only
be examined by night; and the least false step would have hurled a
reckless scout into the precipices.
He returned on the fifth day.
Mont Cenis was the strategic point, the pivot on which all his plans
had to turn; Mont Cenis, with its everlasting snows, its bottomless
abysses, and its impracticable paths, was reckoned impregnable.
As he re-entered the camp my father remarked:
"In a month Mont Cenis will be ours."
It should be pointed out that the men who had to second him in this
enterprise were used to mountain warfare; they stuck at nothing short
of the impossible; now they were about to overcome the impossible: the
soldiers would have to pass where no mountaineer had ever passed, paths
whose snows the foot of man had never trodden, where only the hoofs of
chamois or the eagle's talons had pressed.
My father had three thousand iron _crampons_ (frost-nails) made for
distribution among his soldiers, and they were bidden to practise the
use of these in crossing the most difficult places.
Spring came, and with it the possibility of action; but the Piedmontese
too had been busy, and were preparing to give their enemies a warm
reception. Mont Cenis, the Valaisan, and the Little St. Bernard
bristled with guns. My father decided he must begin by seizing
St. Bernard and the Valaisan. The enemy he wanted to get at were
bivouacking among the clouds. It was a war with Titans: and the heavens
had to be climbed.
On the evening of April 24th General Bagdelaune received instructions
to scale the Little St. Bernard and to be ready by daybreak to attack
it.
My father reserved Mont Valaisan to himself.
General Bagdelaune set out at nine at night; he marched for six hours
in the region of precipices without the least sign of paths, trusting
in guides who themselves several times got confused in the darkness
and misled our soldiers. At last, at break of day, they reached the
redoubt, and attacked it with that courage and fury of which his men
had so many times before given proof; but the redoubt was a hard nut
to crack. The mountain seemed like a flaming volcano; three times
Bagdelaune rallied his men to the attack and three times they were
driven back. Suddenly the muzzles of the cannon of an outlying fort,
which my father had just stormed, were turned on them; a hail of
bullets overwhelmed the defenders of St. Bernard; my father had been
the first to succeed in his enterprise, he had turned the Piedmontese
cannon against themselves. Mont Valaisan, which should have protected
St. Bernard, now destroyed it. The French, seeing the help that had
so unexpectedly come to them, made a fourth dash. The Piedmontese,
intimidated by this effectual diversion, did not even attempt to
offer resistance, but fled on all sides; General Bagdelaune sent two
battalions of new recruits from the Côte d'Or with the 2nd battalion of
light infantry in pursuit of them; for three leagues the Piedmontese
were followed and hunted down like chamois in bloody tracks; twenty
pieces of cannon, six howitzers, thirteen pieces of mountain artillery,
two hundred muskets, and two hundred prisoners were the trophies from
this twofold victory.
But there was still Mont Cenis to take.
The possession of this last redoubt would complete the effective
occupation of the whole of the Savoy, and to gain it the
commander-in-chief of the Army of the Alps concentrated all his
attention. The Piedmontese would thus be cut off from all means of
pouring down the defiles into this duchy at their own sweet will, and
they would be compelled to camp in the plains of Piedmont.
Several attempts had been already made and proved abortive; in one of
these attempts, tried in the month of February, General Sarret had lost
his life. His foot slipped, and he fell to the bottom of a precipice,
where his body was buried beneath the snows.
This accident had suggested to my father the precaution of having
crampons made for himself and his men.
Mont Cenis was only assailable from three sides; the fourth was so
well defended by Nature that the Piedmontese simply protected it by a
stockade.
To get up from this side meant a climb from the very bottom of a
precipice.
My father made a pretence of attacking the other three sides; then, on
the 19th Floréal (8th of May), he set out at night with three hundred
men.
He had to turn the mountain, climb the inaccessible rock-side, and give
the signal for attack to the other corps by his own attack.
Before beginning the ascent my father showed his men the rock they had
to climb.
"Understand beforehand," he said, "that any man who slips is a dead
man, for nothing can save him if he falls from such a height. It will
therefore be useless to call for help; his cry will not save him, and
may imperil the enterprise by giving the alarm."
Three men fell; their bodies were heard bounding from rock to rock; but
no cry, not a groan, not a murmur, escaped them.
The climbers reached the plateau. Although it was a dark night, the
long line of soldiers, clothed in blue uniforms, could have been
perceived outlined against the snow from the fort. But my father had
foreseen this contingency; each man had a cotton cap and a shirt rolled
up in his knapsack.
This was the ordinary dress my father adopted at night when he hunted
chamois.
They reached the foot of the palisade without having roused a single
challenge. The men began climbing the palisades as soon as they reached
them; but thanks to my father's herculean strength he thought of a
better and quieter way--namely, to take each man by the seat of his
trousers and the collar of his coat and throw him over the palisades.
The snow would break the fall, and also deaden the noise. Surprised out
of their sleep, and seeing the French soldiers in their midst without
knowing how they had come there, the Piedmontese hardly offered any
resistance.
So just a month to the day, after it had been predicted, Mont Cenis
became ours!
Whilst my father was taking Mont Cenis, another column of the Army of
the Alps crossed the pass of Argentière, near Barcelonnette, seized the
post at the Barricades, invaded the valley of la Hure, and thereby put
the Army of the Alps in close connection with the Army of Italy, the
extreme left arm of which had advanced as far as the little village of
Isola, near San-Dalmatio-Salvatico.
My father had just reached the stage at which the commanding generals
of the Army of the Alps were recalled to be guillotined.
He expected this reward, and he was not therefore surprised to receive
this communication:--
_6th Messidor, Year II._
"CITIZEN GENERAL,--You are commanded to leave the Army of
the Alps instantly and to present yourself in Paris, to
answer the accusations which are being made against you."
"COLLOT D'HERBOIS."
The accusations, or rather the accusation, which my father had to
answer was this:
My father had entered the little village of St. Maurice in mid-winter.
The first thing he saw in the open square of the village was a
guillotine ready prepared for an execution.
He was informed that four wretched men were going to be executed for
trying to steal and smelt down the church clock.
The crime did not seem to my father deserving of the penalty of death,
and he turned to Captain Dermoncourt--the same who was soon to become
his aide-de-camp:--
"Dermoncourt," he said to him, "it is horribly cold, as you can see and
feel for yourself; we may not find any wood where we are going, let
that devilish red-coloured machine you see there be pulled down and
taken away to make firewood for us."
Dermoncourt, accustomed to implicit obedience, obeyed implicitly.
This proceeding, put into execution with truly military rapidity, very
much embarrassed the executioner, who had four men to guillotine and no
longer a guillotine to do it with.
My father, perceiving the poor man's dilemma, took pity on him,
relieved him of his four prisoners, gave him a quittance for them, and
let them go, with the advice to flee to the mountains as fast as their
legs could carry them.
It need hardly be said that the prisoners did not wait for a second
bidding.
By nothing short of a miracle my father escaped paying for the four
heads he had saved by his own; but, thanks to his conquest of the St.
Bernard, of Valaisan, and of Mont Cenis, he was pardoned for this
insult to patriotism.
But the nickname of "M. de l'Humanité" was now more applicable than
ever, and was more often than ever applied to him.
I have already said how lucky my father was.
CHAPTER VI
The result of a sword-stroke across the head--St. Georges and
the remounts--The quarrel he sought with my father--My father is
transferred to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse--He hands in his resignation
and returns to Villers-Cotterets--A retrospect over what had happened
at home and abroad during the four years that had just elapsed.
My father was glad enough to find himself once more in Paris, as soon
as he saw they were not going to guillotine him. He had been troubled
for long by a wen on his forehead, which had caused him great pain.
This wen had grown upon the old sword-cut he had received in one of
those three army duels he fought to sustain the pre-eminence of the
queen over the king. The wen was found to have adhered to his skull,
and its removal meant a rather critical operation.
The operation was very successfully performed by M. Pelletan.
On the 15th of Thermidor this year, an order from the Committee of
Public Safety appointed my father as commandant of the military school
established at the camp of Sablons.
This appointment did not last long.
On the 18th Thermidor, three days, that is, after this appointment, he
was ordered to join the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse.
But before quitting Paris my father had an account to settle with his
old colonel, St. Georges.
We mentioned previously that instead of joining his regiment St.
Georges had found it more convenient to settle at Lille, where he
induced the Government to place him in charge of a remount depot;
in addition to this, by virtue of the powers which regimental heads
arrogated to themselves at this period, he requisitioned an immense
number of pleasure-horses, in which he traded.
The price these horses fetched was estimated at upwards of a million
francs.
Although people were not very strict in those days at this kind of
peccadillo, St. Georges went to such lengths that he was summoned to
Paris to show his accounts. As St. Georges' books were very badly kept,
he hit on the idea of throwing the blame upon my father, by saying
it was Lieutenant-Colonel Dumas who had had charge of the regimental
remounts.
The minister of war therefore wrote to my father, who immediately
proved that he had never ordered a single requisition, nor bought nor
sold a single horse.
The reply of the minister entirely exculpated my father from blame.
But this did not lessen his grudge against St. Georges, and as his wen
caused him horrible suffering and kept him in a perpetual state of
irritability of temper, he positively swore he would fight a duel with
his old colonel.
Brave though St. Georges was with pistol or sword in hand, he much
preferred to choose his own duels. Fortunately or unfortunately, this
one was noised abroad. My father called three times at St. Georges'
house without finding him at home; he called again another three
times, each time leaving his card. At length he wrote such a pressing
threat in pencil on the last of these cards, that, the day but one
after he had undergone his operation, my father, who was in bed and
nursed by Dermoncourt (the captain who had turned the guillotine of
St. Maurice into faggots), received a visit from St. Georges, who, on
being told that the invalid was ill in bed, was about to leave his card
and withdraw, when Dermoncourt, who had heard a great deal about him,
seeing a magnificent specimen of a mulatto, who stuttered in his talk,
recognised St. Georges, and ran after him.
"Ah! M. de St. Georges," he exclaimed, "is it you? Do not go away, I
beseech you; for, ill though he is, the general is quite capable of
running after you, so anxious is he to see you."
St. Georges at once made up his mind what part to play.
"Oh! dear good Dumas!" he cried. "I know how very much he longs to see
me; and I him. We were always such great friends. Where is he? where is
he?"
And darting into the room he flung himself upon the bed, clasped my
father in his arms and hugged him almost to suffocation.
My father endeavoured to speak, but St. Georges did not give him time.
"Ah!--and you wanted then to kill me, Dumas?" he said. "To kill me--me?
To kill St. Georges? Is it possible? Why, you are my own son! Were St.
Georges dead, no other man but you could replace him. Be quick and get
up! Order me a cutlet, and let there be an end to all this nonsense."
At first my father was strongly inclined to pursue the quarrel to the
bitter end; but what could you say to a man who threw himself on your
bed, embraced you, called you his son, and invited himself to lunch?
My father held out his hand and said:
"Ah! you ruffian, you may well be pleased to call me your successor
instead of being the successor of the former minister of war; for I
promise you I would have hung you!"
"Oh! but surely you would have guillotined me," said St. Georges,
laughing at the wrong side of his mouth.
"Not a bit of it, not a bit of it! Only honest folk are guillotined
nowadays; thieves are hung."
"Now tell me frankly what were your intentions in coming to see me?"
said St. Georges.
"First of all to find you."
"Certainly, but what next?"
"Next?"
"Yes."
"I should have gone into the room I was told you were in, I should have
shut the door behind me, I should have put the key in my pocket, and
whichever of us two remained alive at the end of five minutes would
have had to open it."
"In that case," replied St. Georges, "you see I was very wise not to be
found at home."
But as at that moment the door opened to announce that lunch was ready,
the discussion ended and the meal began.
With that rapidity of movement with which the Convention manoeuvred
its generals at this period, my father was changed from the Army of
Sambre-et-Meuse to the chief command on the coast of Brest; but he
had grown disgusted with these factitious moves, and, sixteen days
after his appointment, he sent in his resignation, and retired to
Villers-Cotterets, to be with my mother, who, a year or two before, had
given birth to my eldest sister.
Many things had happened since the 28th November 1792, when
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie had
married Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Labouret.
In the first place, to look abroad, a speedy vengeance had succeeded
the defeats of Marchain and the taking of Longwy and of Verdun, in the
victories of Valmy and of Jemappes. Charleroy had been occupied by
General Montesquiou, and Nice by General Anselme. The siege of Lille
was raised; and Mayence was taken by General Custine. Our troops had
entered Frankfort-on-the-Maine. Brussels had been occupied by General
Dumouriez, and Savoy restored to France. The citadel of Anvers had been
taken by General Labourdonnaye, Namur by General Valence. England,
Holland and Spain had declared war. Breda and Gertruydenberg had
been taken by Arçon. The First Coalition against France was formed,
comprising Prussia, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Spain,
Portugal, the two Sicilies, the Papal States, and the King of Sardinia.
The battle of Nerwinde had been lost, which led to the emigration
of Dumouriez and of the duc de Chartres. Porentruy was restored to
France. The English took Tobago from us. Spain invaded le Roussillon.
Lyons rose in arms. Negroes massacred the whites at St. Domingo.
Mayence surrendered to the Prussians, Valenciennes to the Austrians,
and Pondichéry to the English. Toulon was handed over. Le Quesnoy
capitulated. But Jourdan blockaded Maubeuge, Toulon was retaken, and
Bonaparte appeared on the scenes.
The year 1794 opened under brighter auspices. Jourdan, Marceau,
Lefebvre, Championnet, and Kléber won the battle of Fleurus. Ypres was
re-captured by Moreau. A second battle of Fleurus opened up Belgium
once more to the French armies. The taking of Ostende and of Tournay
by General Pichegru, and the occupation of Mons by General Ferrand,
had freed our frontiers and made way for the besieging of Condé,
Valenciennes, le Quesnoy, and Landrecies, which were taken--Condé
on June 15th, Valenciennes on the 28th July, le Quesnoy the 11th
of September 1793, and Landrecies the 30th April 1794. Finally we
re-entered Ghent, Brussels, Landrecies, Nieuport, Anvers, Liège,
Fontarabia, St. Sébastien, Valenciennes, Condé, and Aix-la-Chapelle.
We invaded Roncevaux, that valley of poetical associations. We took
by force Andernach, Coblentz, Venloo, Maestricht, Nimègue, Figuières.
We gained the battle of Escola, which lasted five days, from the 15th
to the 20th October 1794, and in which the two generals commanding
were killed; Dugoummier on the 18th; and la Union on the 20th. We
took possession of Amsterdam, and the Stadtholder fled to London. We
took the Dutch fleet (which was blocked up in the ice of the Texel)
with a charge of cavalry. Berg-op-Zoom surrendered to Pichegru. Ross
was taken after a seventy days' siege. Holland was conquered; and
finally a treaty was concluded between Tuscany and France; which openly
recognised the French Republic as a part of the political system of
Europe.
Prussia imitated Tuscany's example, and concluded a treaty of peace
with France at Bâle. It was signed by baron de Hardenberg and François
Barthélemy, nephew of the author of the _Voyages du jeune Anacharsis._
By April 5th, 1795, the two Powers had nothing further to restore to
each other.
A third treaty of peace was signed on May 16th between France and the
United Netherlands. The United Netherlands ceded the whole of the
Batavian provinces along the left bank of the eastern Escaut, and on
both banks of the Meuse to the south of Venloo.
The United Netherlands paid France 100,000,000 florins sterling, Dutch
currency, to indemnify the cost of the war.
Finally, on July 22nd, Spain in her turn treated for peace with France;
France surrendered to Spain her conquests in Biscay and in Catalonia.
Spain ceded to France the portion of St. Domingo which she possessed.
Such was our position with regard to Europe towards the middle of the
year 1795.
Now a word about our home politics.
On all sides were signs of arrest and change.
The old world was tottering and dragging down into the débris with it
the very people who had undermined it. A new world was springing into
being.
The age of Louis XV. was at an end. The age of Napoleon was beginning.
The great event which occupied the mind of France was the trial of
Louis XVI. on the 28th November 1792.
On the 7th November the Convention had decreed, upon the report of the
Mailhe (Deputy of the Haute-Garonne) that Louis XVI. could be tried and
that the Convention should try him. The same day Robespierre demanded
that the king should without further delay be pronounced a traitor
to his country, a criminal towards humanity, and that he should be
sentenced to death to set a good example to the world.
On December 4th it was decreed that whoever should attempt to reinstate
royalty in France, or any other power which might assail the supremacy
of the people, should suffer the penalty of death.
On December 6th a decree was issued nominating a Commission of
twenty-one members, with instructions to accelerate the examination and
trial of Louis XVI.
On December 11, Louis XVI. appeared before the Convention.
On the 25th he made his will.
On the 15th January the nominal appeal turned upon these two queries:
1. _Was Louis guilty of conspiracy against liberty and of an attempt
against the safety of the State?_--_YES or NO._
Out of 719 members present, 683 voted in the affirmative.
2. _Should the sentence to be passed upon Louis be submitted to the
sanction of the people in their primary assemblies?_--_YES or No._
Out of 749 members present, 424 refused an appeal to the people.
A third question was put; vital, supreme, final.--_What penalty had
Louis incurred?_
Three hundred and eighty-seven votes out of seven hundred and thirteen
replied: _The penalty of death._
Finally they proceeded to promulgate a fourth nominal appeal, couched
in these terms:
_Should the execution of the sentence on Louis Capet be
reprieved?_--_YES or NO._
Three hundred and eighty votes were against reprieve.
Three hundred and ten for it.
There could not then be any reprieve.
On January 20th the sentence was declared to Louis XVI.
On the 21st January at ten o'clock Louis XVI. was executed.
The Convention created ten armies to meet the outburst of indignation
that rose throughout the whole of Europe: the Army of the North and of
the Ardennes, commanded by General Custine; the Army of the Moselle,
commanded by Houchard; the Army of the Rhine, commanded by Alexandre
Beauharnais; the Army of the Alps, commanded by Kellermann; the Army of
Italy, commanded by Brunet; the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees, commanded
by Defiers; the Army of the Western Pyrenees, commanded by Dubousquet;
the Army of the Coastline of Rochelle, commanded by General Canclaux;
the Army of the Shores of the Channel, commanded by Félix Wimpfen; the
Army of the West, commanded by Westermann.
At the same time, Representatives of the People were appointed in
connection with each army, selected by the Convention, and invested
with absolute powers.
Three of the generals we have just named died on the scaffold: Custine,
Houchard, and Alexandre Beauharnais.
The Girondists, who had voted with the Jacobins at the king's trial,
now split off from them.
On the 18th April a Commission was formed to restrain the Terrorist
party.
This Commission was elected on the 18th, dissolved on the 27th,
re-established on the 28th, and definitely suppressed on the 31st.
The result was to bring about a total separation between the two
parties.
On the 31rst of May the Girondists were proscribed.
On the 13th June Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat.
On August 1st, Marie-Antoinette was accused by the Revolutionary
Tribunal.
On the 5th August an itinerary Revolutionist army was created to survey
the departments, bearing the guillotine and artillery with them.
On September the 3rd the trial of Marie-Antoinette began.
On the 5th the decree which abolished the Christian Calendar and dated
the beginning of the French Era from the 22nd September 1792 was issued.
On the 12th, Marie-Antoinette underwent her first examination.
On the 16th, Marie-Antoinette was condemned to death.
At eleven o'clock the same morning she ascended the scaffold.
On the 31st October the execution of the Girondists followed.
On the 6th November it was Philippe-Égalité's turn.
On the 11th, Bailly's.
On the 1st December the prisoners were reckoned up: they numbered 4130
in the various prisons of Paris.
On March 1st, 1794, there were 6000.
On April 27, 7200.
On April 5th, Danton, Charbot, Bazire, Lacroix, Camille Desmoulins,
Hérault de Séchelles, and Fabre d'Églantine were guillotined.
Robespierre ruled without opposition as master of France, aided by
Barère, Merlin de Douai, Saint-Just, Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Fouché
de Nantes, Vadier, and Carnot.
On the 16th the following decrees were issued:--
1. That all individuals warned of conspiracy, or who are under
suspicion, shall be conducted to the Revolutionary Tribunal at Paris
from any part of the Republic.
2. That all so-called nobles and foreigners shall leave the frontier
and sea-board towns within ten days under penalty of death.
On the 22nd they guillotined Malesherbes, who defended Louis XVI.
They made the martyrdom and holocaust complete by conducting to the
scaffold at the same time his daughter, his sister, his son-in-law, his
granddaughter and her husband.
The number of prisoners grew and grew. On the 1st May they mounted to
8000.
On the 8th, Lavoisier was executed; and twenty-seven other
tax-collectors, whose names are now forgotten, were executed with him.
On the 10th, Princess Élisabeth ascended the scaffold; and, as her
neckerchief was pushed aside, she exclaimed to the executioner:
"In the name of modesty, monsieur, cover up my bosom."
She died as she had lived, a Christian, a saint, a martyr.
On the 8th June, Robespierre celebrated the Feast of Supreme Reason. He
was the high priest of the new religion. Standing on a platform raised
against the walls of the Tuileries, and surrounded by his disciples,
he made a speech in which he condescended to recognise the Supreme
Being and the immortality of the soul; after which he set fire to two
mannikins representing Atheism and Fanaticism.
Still the prisoners went on increasing. 11,400 were incarcerated in
Paris prisons.
There were thirty-two prisons in Paris--twenty-seven more than in the
time of the Bastille.
A 2nd and 3rd of September was expected.
A 9th and 10th of Thermidor arrived, and it was high time. At Bicêtre
the experiment of a guillotine with nine blades was tried. The former
machine, it seemed, could not work fast enough. By the 25th, 26th, and
27th July they had only managed to execute some 135 persons in all by
means of the guillotines between the Place de la Révolution and that of
the faubourg St. Antoine.
The Thermidorians next reigned; their rule was milder, but it
nevertheless had its special events.
On the 26th July the two Robespierres were executed, with Couthon, St.
Just, Lebas, Henriot, and seventeen other Jacobins.
On August 10th a decree lessened the power of the Revolutionary
Tribunal, which the nation did not yet dare to abolish altogether.
It issued regulations more favourable to the accused: they were now
allowed to have legal counsel to defend their cases. True, the queen
had been allowed two; but they had received orders not to defend her.
Executions no longer occurred daily, and each execution accounted for
only a small number of victims.
In former times, when they guillotined the condemned in batches of
twenty-five and thirty, the blades grew blunt by the time the last
person's turn arrived. They had to fall two or three times before they
finished their task; this method spilt such a quantity of blood that it
set up an epidemic in the faubourg St. Antoine, caused by the smell of
the blood. In the Place de la Révolution the blood flowed into a ditch
which was dug round the scaffold. A child fell into this ditch and was
drowned.
After the Revolutionary Tribune came the Committee of Public Safety.
Here cause followed effect instead of preceding it. The Committee of
Public Safety indeed! A name of terrible omen. The Committee of Public
Safety might, indeed, have saved France; but you will remember the
saying of Pyrrhus after the battle of Siris:
"Another victory like that, and we are lost."
Another Committee of Public Safety, and there would be no France left.
On August 24th a decree was made to limit its prerogatives. Barère,
Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Carnot were turned out of this
formidable institution; Barère after having sat there seventeen months,
and Carnot fourteen.
On October 8th seventy-three of the proscribed deputies re-entered the
Convention. They were proscribed after the 31st of May; they returned
to office after the 9th Thermidor. Chief among these were Lanjuinais,
who sat last on 31st May; Boissy-d'Anglas, who saluted the head of
Féraud on 1st Prairial, Daunou and Henri la Rivière.
On the 16th, Carrier was accused by a majority of 418 votes out of 500,
and condemned to death.
On the 2nd February 1795, Barère, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois
and Vadier were impeached, and on the 1st April they were sentenced to
banishment.
Barère took refuge in Belgium, returned to France in 1830, and died in
the bosom of his family.
Billaud-Varennes was transported to Cayenne with Collot d'Herbois,
but managed to escape to Mexico, where he entered a monastery of
Dominicans, under the name of Polycarpe Vareñas. He fought on the side
of the settlers against the mother country, twice narrowly escaped
being shot, and died at Haiti in 1820.
Collot d'Herbois, an indifferent comedian and poet, nearly always half
drunk, mistook a bottle of nitric acid for brandy, and died in horrible
agony at Cayenne in 1796.
And last on the list, Vadier disappeared completely, and was never
afterwards heard of.
On May 3rd a decree restored confiscated goods to the families of all
those who were condemned for _any reason whatsoever save emigration._
Two families were excepted from the operation of this beneficial law,
those of Louis XVI. and Robespierre.
What a strange turn of fortune's wheel it was which subjected these two
names to the same punishment!
Lanjuinais and Boissy-d'Anglas marked their return to the Assembly by
this decree.
On the 6th, Fouquier Tinville and fifteen judges or members of the
ancient Revolutionary Tribune were executed _en Grève_ in Paris. Do you
understand the significance of that term _en Grève?_ Public order was
now restored, for had not the scaffold itself resumed its place?
Notwithstanding all that had happened, means for defending France, as
we have seen, had sprung up on all sides as if by miracle. France,
which scarcely had an army in 1789, had had six in 1792, ten in 1793,
and fourteen in 1795.
On the 3rd October 1793, Carnot drew up a report for the Convention,
wherein he advocated the setting up of workshops, and suggested that
measures should be taken to facilitate as rapidly as possible the
formation of divers and formidable means of defence against the enemy.
Science, in fact, placed herself at the disposition of the Committee of
Public Safety; she took her part in the Revolution in busying herself
about the provision of special methods of defence. She was confronted
with almost insoluble problems, and she succeeded in solving them.
France was short of gunpowder, of guns, and of cannons. In nine months
the scientific Commission had extracted soil out of France which
yielded 900,000 pounds of gunpowder per annum--12,000,000 pounds of
gunpowder.
Before the French Revolution there were but two foundries for making
pieces of bronze ordnance and four for making iron gunnery; these six
foundries turned out 900 cannon annually.
Fifteen foundries were built to turn out bronze cannon, and thirty for
iron ones.
The former produced 7000 cannon per annum, and the latter 13,000. An
enormous firearms factory had even been improvised at Paris, which
made 140,000 muskets per annum, that is to say, more than all the
other factories together were capable of turning out previous to the
Revolution. There was only one manufactory for side arms before the war.
Twenty factories were now opened and directed their attention to fresh
processes.
A manufactory of rifles was founded and set to work; these arms were
unknown in France; air-balloons and the telegraph became organs of war.
And, thanks to a new process, hides, which ordinarily took several
years to be cured, were made fit for use in a week.
Thus, whilst the Convention was evolving its fourteen armies, science
was providing the material for their use; and the members of the
Committee of Public Safety boasted loudly.
"These fresh triumphs, and all those which signalised the immortal
campaign of 1794, belong to us. They are the outcomes of measures for
which we have been reproached as though they were crimes, it is with
these successes we pay back to you all the blood we have shed."
These terrible words, so profoundly true, were not uttered by an Attila
nor a Genseric, but were pronounced by Carnot.
Yes, you terrible heroes of the Convention, you have wielded the hammer
of God and made the sword which was to deliver the world!
What a dark and melancholy creed you formidable Titans reared; you who
from 1793 to 1795 piled up June upon August, September on January,
Prairial on Thermidor, and who, from the height of the ruins of the
monarchical Olympus which you scaled, have confounded all Europe!
CHAPTER VII
My father at Villers-Cotterets--He is called to Paris to carry out
the 13th Vendémiaire--Bonaparte takes his place--He arrives the
next day--_Buonaparte's_ attestation--My father is sent into the
district of Bouillon--He goes to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and to
the Army of the Rhine, and is appointed Commandant at Landau--He
returns as Divisional General in the Army of the Alps, of which he
had been Commander-in-Chief--English blood and honour--Bonaparte's
plan--Bonaparte appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy--The
campaign of 1796.
Such are the events which took place in the period which elapsed
between my father's marriage and his return to Villers-Cotterets, after
his resignation as commander-in-chief of the Army of the coast near
Brest.
He was very happy, very comfortable, and hoped to be left in peaceful
oblivion by the side of his young wife, when, on the morning of the
14th Vendémiaire, he received this letter:--
"PARIS, _13 Vendémiaire of the Year IV of the French
Republic, one and indivisible._
"The Representatives of the People in charge of the Army of
Paris and of the Army of the Interior
"Order General Dumas to present himself at once at Paris to
receive instructions from the Government.
"J. J. B. DELMAS,
"LAPORTE."
What, then, had happened in Paris?
We must explain.
The 13th Vendémiaire had taken place. Bonaparte had fired grapeshot on
the rebels on the steps of the church of Saint-Roch.
The Convention had settled on my father to defend it, my father was not
in Paris. Barras proposed Bonaparte, and Bonaparte was accepted.
That momentous hour that comes, so people say, once at least in the
life of every man, and decides his future, had struck inauspiciously
for him.
My father accepted the position instantly, but he did not arrive till
the 14th. He found the rebels conquered, and Bonaparte general of the
Army of the Interior.
This is the certificate that was given my father; we have copied this
precious document from the original.
"LIBERTY--JUSTICE--EQUALITY.
"We, general officers and others, certify and attest that
citizen Alexandre Dumas, general in the army, arrived in
Paris on the 14th of Vendémiaire, and that he immediately
joined his brothers-in-arms in defence of the National
Convention against the attack of the rebels; who have this
day laid down their arms.
"PARIS, _14th Brumaire, Year IV of the French Republic._
_"Signed_:
J. J. B. DELMAS; LAPORTE; GASTON; BERNARD, Aide-de-Camp;
HUCHÉ, General of Division; TH. ARTEL, Captain
Adjutant--General; BERTIN, Brigadier-General; PAREIN,
General of Division; ROINAY, _Commissaire-Ordonnateur._
Then, at the bottom of all these signatures, in his illegible writing,
every letter of which was like a Gordian knot, the man who was going to
weld the Revolution by bloodshed wrote these three lines:--
"Certified correct.
"BUONAPARTE, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Interior."
He dropped the _u_ which Italianised his name three months later, and
then signed himself _Bonaparte._
It was doubtless during these three months that he had his Macbeth-like
apparition, when the three witches addressed him, "Hail! thou shalt
become commander-in-chief; Hail! thou shalt become First Consul; Hail!
thou shalt become Emperor."
The Convention which Bonaparte saved, ended its three years' session
on the 26th October (1792), by a decree of amnesty for all the
Revolutionary misdemeanants who had not been concerned in theft or
assassination.
Then, when it had delivered 8370 decrees, it dissolved or rather
reorganised itself, to reappear under the triple form of Council of
Elders, Council of Five Hundred, and the Directory.
The five directors were: La Reveillère-Lepaux, Letourneur de la Manche,
Rewbell, Barras, and Carnot.
They were, every one of them, members of the Convention.
Each of them had voted for the death of the king.
These Revolutionist appointments caused a rising in the district
of Bouillon. On the 23rd Brumaire, year IV, my father was again in
active service, and was sent to repress this insurrection--an end he
accomplished without the shedding of blood.
From Bouillon my father rejoined the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and the
Army of the Rhine. He was made commandant at Landau, on the 21st
Nivôse, year IV, returned to Villers-Cotterets on furlough in the month
of Ventôse, and finally, on the 7th Messidor, he returned to the Army
of the Alps as general of division. This army, of which he had formerly
been commander-in-chief, was intended to guard the frontier and to keep
a watch on Piedmont, with which we were at peace.
My father at first wanted to decline the post. In times of war he was
always ready, even to act a common soldier's part; but in times of
peace he was not in his element.
"Nevertheless, accept it, General," Dermoncourt advised him. "You will
be close to Italy. From Chambéry to Suze there is only Mont Cenis to
cross."
"In that case," replied my father, "I had better take it."
And he went.
At this time, as we have said, war had ceased between us and Spain,
Prussia, Tuscany, Piedmont, and Holland; we were only at war with our
two eternal enemies, Austria and England.
On the 17th November 1795, the English, who were vainly expected at
Quiberon, evacuated l'Ile Dieu. Sombreuil and twelve hundred French
emigrants were condemned to military executions. The rattle of this
fusillade echoed as far as London, where Pitt exclaimed: "At least no
English blood has been spilled."
"No," retorted Sheridan, "but English honour oozed out at every pore."
We continued warfare with Austria in the north and south
simultaneously. Masséna won the battle of Loano in the south, and
Bernadotte gained one in the north, at Crutznach.
Nevertheless, nothing seemed to be gained by these victories. Using
Barras as an intermediary, Napoleon submitted a gigantic plan to the
Directory, which was carried.
The war of la Vendée was tending towards its conclusion, and Hoche had
shot Stofflet and Charette. France, therefore, freed from her internal
strife and completely settled within her own borders, was now able to
concentrate all her energies upon Germany and Italy.
This was the plan laid before the Directory.
When la Vendée was quelled, the forces were immediately to assume
the offensive. Our armies of the Rhine were to blockade and besiege
Mayence, to subjugate the princes of the empire one after another,
to transfer the theatre of war into the Hereditary States, and to
establish themselves in the noble valleys of the Mein and Necker.
From this time forward the armies would not cost France anything, the
war would defray the expenses of the war.
As for Italy, a great victory was needed to force the King of Piedmont
to make peace, or to compel him to give up his kingdom. This end
achieved, the kingdom of Piedmont wiped off the map of Italy and joined
to France under the title of the department of the Po, they would
cross the river, skirt Pavia, wrest Milan from Austria, then break
through into Lombardy, and penetrate up to the very gates of Vienna by
way of the Tyrol and Venice.
As in the case of Germany (and certainly as well able to do it as
Germany), Italy would feed our armies.
In consequence of this scheme, and in order to put it into execution,
Hoche was to unite under his command the three armies of the coasts of
Cherbourg, the shores of Brest, and of the West, a hundred thousand men
all told, to achieve the pacification of la Vendée.
Jourdan was to keep the command of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse.
Moreau was to replace Pichegru on the Rhine.
And Bonaparte was appointed commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy.
On the 21st March 1796, Bonaparte left Paris, taking with him in
his carriage two thousand louis. It was all he had been able to get
together, and it included his own fortune, the contributions of his
friends, and the subsidies of the Directory.
Alexander took seven times more when he set out to conquer the Indies.
It should be stated that each louis d'or, in the time of Bonaparte, was
worth seven thousand two hundred francs in assignats.
Why did Bonaparte prefer the 25,000 naked and famished soldiers of
the coastline of Genoa to those grand armies of the Rhine, to those
80,000 well-armed, well-equipped men who had been put under the orders
of Jourdan and Moreau, whose command could have been his, had he
wished it? Because Italy is Italy--the country of wonderful memories;
he chose rather the Éridan and the Tiber to the Rhine and the Meuse,
the Milanese country to the Palatinate; he preferred to be a Hannibal
rather than a Turenne or the Marshal of Saxony.
When he reached Nice, he found an army minus food, minus clothing,
minus shoes, striving with great difficulty to keep to its posts,
facing 60,000 Austrian troops and the most famous generals of the
empire.
The day after his arrival Bonaparte distributed the sum of four louis
to each general, in respect of his entry upon the scene; then, pointing
to the plains of Italy, he said to the soldiers, "Comrades, you starve
among these rocks! Cast your eyes over those fertile plains which
spread out below your feet; they belong to you, take them."
Hannibal had made a similar remark nineteen hundred years before to
his Numidian troops, as they crouched like sphinxes on the highest
pinnacles of the Alps and gazed with eager eyes down into Italy; and
during those nineteen hundred years there had only risen two men--Cæsar
and Charlemagne--worthy to be compared with these two.
Bonaparte, as we have stated, had nearly 60,000 men against him: 22,000
were stationed at Céva, on the other side of the mountains, under
Colli; Beaulieu, he of the boy's courage beneath his white hairs, had
advanced with 38,000 upon Genoa by the passes of Lombardy.
Bonaparte moved his army to Albenga, and on the 11th April he made a
dash against Beaulieu, near Voltri.
From this concussion flashed the spark which before eleven days had
elapsed set fire to Italy; the young commander-in-chief beat his
enemy five times--at Montenotte, at Millesimo, at Dego, at Vico,
and at Mondovi. In eleven days the Austrians were cut off from the
Piedmontese, Provera was taken, the King of Sardinia was forced to sign
an armistice in his own capital, to surrender the three fortresses
of Coni, Tortona, and Alexandria, and Bonaparte issued the following
proclamation to his soldiers:--
"Soldiers, in fifteen days you have won six victories, taken
twenty-one flags, fifty-five pieces of cannon, several
fortified places, and have conquered the richest half of
Piedmont. You have taken 15,000 prisoners, killed or wounded
more than 10,000 men; your courage would have overcome the
sterile rocks, had we not deemed the sacrifice useless
to the country; your services, to-day, equal those of the
armies of the Rhine and of Holland. Deprived of everything,
you have managed without anything; you have won battles
without cannons, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced
marches without shoes on your feet, bivouacked without your
allowance of spirits, often without bread; the phalanxes of
the Republic and the soldiers of Liberty alone were capable
of suffering what you have suffered. All thanks are due to
you, soldiers! The country owes a debt of gratitude to you
for her prosperity. Conquerors of Toulon if you foreshadowed
the immortal campaign of 1793, your actual victories predict
still finer things to come. The two armies which recently
had the effrontery to attack you, fled before you in terror;
wicked men, who mocked at your misery and rejoiced in their
hearts at the thought of your enemies triumphing over you,
have been put to shame, and they tremble before you. But,
soldiers, whilst there still remains something not yet
accomplished, your duties are not at an end. Neither Turin
nor Milan are ours. The ashes of the conquerors of Tarquin
are still being scattered by the assassins of Basseville!
I have heard it whispered that there are those among you
whose courage is ebbing, who would rather return across
the Apennines and Alps. But I cannot believe it--no, the
conquerors of Montenotte, of Millesimo, of Dego, and of
Mondovi are burning to carry the glory of the French people
still farther afield."
Bonaparte next advanced to Northern Italy, and, predicting his future
successes by those of the past, he wrote to the Directory:--
"To-morrow I march upon Beaulieu. I shall compel him to
recross the Po, I shall cross it forthwith, I shall take
possession of the whole of Lombardy, and before a month is
past I hope to be on the mountains of the Tyrol, there to
join forces with the Army of the Rhine, and in conjunction
with it to carry the war into Bavaria."
Beaulieu was, in fact, overtaken. He returned in vain to try to oppose
the passage of the Po; the Po was crossed; so he returned to shelter
behind the walls of Lodi. A battle, lasting three hours, chased him
from his position; and he formed a line of battle along the left bank,
defending with all his artillery the bridge he had not had time to
destroy. The French army, drawn up in serried columns, dashed at the
bridge, scattering all before it, dispersed the Austrians, and went
on its way over what was left of the enemy's army. Pavia was the next
to submit, Pizzighitone and Cremona fell, the castle of Milan opened
its gates, the King of Sardinia definitely accepted peace; the dukes
of Parma and of Modena followed his example, and Beaulieu only just
managed to shut himself up in Mantua.
It was at this moment that news of Wurmser's advance reached him: he
came with 60,000 men, 30,000 taken from the Army of the Rhine, 30,000
drawn from the interior of Austria.
These 60,000 men advanced through the Tyrol.
Let us now examine the state of the French army and of its adversaries.
The French army had entered Italy with a strength of 30,000 to 32,000
men, of which they had lost 2000; nearly 9000 men had joined from the
Army of the Alps, 4000 or 5000 had been added from the military centres
of Provence and the Var. The army therefore numbered 44,000 to 45,000
men--disposed about the Adige or grouped round Mantua.
In addition to these, two divisions could be reckoned on, drawn from
the Army of the West, now that la Vendée was pacified. But these two
divisions had yet to journey across France.
The Austrian army comprised from 10,000 to 12,000 men, not including
the sick and wounded shut up in Mantua; 12,000 or 15,000 men, the
remnants of the various battles fought since the commencement of the
campaign and dispersed through Northern Italy, and 60,000 men headed by
Wurmser.
The fame of this 60,000 men was spread abroad, and rumour boldly
doubled its numbers. This time, so rumour had it, Bonaparte was not
only going to encounter an army four times stronger than his own, but
a general who was a match for him. Hannibal was to meet his Scipio;
people repeated the old proverb, _L'Italia fu e sarà sempre il
sepolcro dei Francesi._
Italy had been, and always would be, the grave of the French.
That is what people said.
Wurmser then, as we have said, had 60,000 men; of these 60,000 men he
had detached 20,000, whom he had given to Quasdanovitch, with orders to
march by the road which runs along by the lake of Garda, by the tiny
lake of Idra and, after crossing the Chiesa, comes out at Salo.
The remaining 40,000 he took with him, dividing them between the two
roads which run by the Adige--one portion marched on Rivoli, the others
were directed towards Verona.
In this way the French army, concentrated round Mantua, would be
surrounded, attacked in front by Wurmser's army, attacked in the rear
by Beaulieu's garrison and by the remaining scattered 10,000 men which
were being rallied together.
The whole of this stratagem of Wurmser's was revealed to Bonaparte by
its very execution.
Step by step he learnt:
That Quasdanovitch had attacked Salo and routed General Sauret, and
that General Guyeux was left there isolated, in an ancient building
into which he had withdrawn himself with a few hundred men;
That the Austrians had stormed Corona between the Adige and Lake Garda;
Finally, that they were in front of Verona.
On the morrow they were at Brescia. From all these points they would
cross the Adige.
Whether doubtful of his chances, or whether on the contrary he wished
to show the superiority of his genius, Bonaparte called together a
council of his generals; all of whom advised a retreat. Augereau alone,
the Parisian soldier, a son of the faubourg St. Antoine, declared that
the rest might do what they liked, but that neither he nor his division
would fall back a step.
Bonaparte knit his eyebrows, for from the first that had been his own
intention; how did it happen that Augereau was of his opinion? Was it
boldness or genius? He looked at his head, finely carved but depressed
at the temples and enlarged at the back. It was simply and solely from
temerity.
Bonaparte dismissed this council of war without openly deciding
anything, but, when alone, his mind was made up.
Bonaparte's headquarters were at Castelnovo, almost at the end of the
lake of Garda; he gathered as large an army round him as possible,
raising the siege of Mantua; he abandoned the Lower Mincio and the
Lower Adige, concentrating all his forces at Peschiera, to beat
Quasdanovitch and Wurmser separately before they had accomplished their
junction.
He began with Quasdanovitch, who was the nearest and weakest.
On the 21st Thermidor (July 31), while Serrurier was abandoning the
siege of Mantua, burning his watch-towers, spiking his guns, burying
his projectiles, and throwing his powder into the water, Bonaparte
crossed the Mincio at Peschiera, and defeated Quasdanovitch at Lonato,
whilst Augereau entered Brescia without striking a blow, and General
Sauret, ascending as far as Salo, relieved Guyeux, who had been
fighting for two days without bread or water, in his old building.
Quasdanovitch, who thought to surprise and beat us, was himself
surprised and beaten; he stopped, dismayed, and decided not to engage
in another battle until he knew what had become of Wurmser.
Bonaparte also pulled up: Wurmser was the real enemy to be wary of.
Wurmser must be confronted: his rear-guard must become his van-guard,
and _vice versâ_; it was high time to reverse the position.
Wurmser's generals had crossed not only the Adige, but also the Mincio,
in order to effect their conjunction with Quasdanovitch at Peschiera:
Bayalist advanced on the road to Lonato, and Lilpay drove General
Varelle out of Castiglione; whilst Wurmser moved towards Mantua, which
he believed was still blockaded, with his two divisions of infantry and
two of cavalry.
When he reached General Serrurier's quarters, he found the watch-towers
in ashes and the guns spiked.
Bonaparte was afraid, he had fled. To the Austrian general's mind the
calculations of genius looked like fear.
But Bonaparte, whom Wurmser thought had flown, was engaged in cutting
Bayalist's army in two at Lonato, forcing one portion upon Salo, which
Junot pursued and scattered, himself pursuing the other, which he drove
on Castiglione. The Austrian fugitives were caught between two fires,
General Sauret being at Salo, and General Augereau at Castiglione.
They took 3000 prisoners at Salo and 1500 prisoners at Castiglione,
they killed and wounded 3000 or 4000 men, they took twenty pieces of
cannon, and Bayalist's fugitives were thrown amongst Quasdanovitch's.
Wurmser saw his mistake when he had scarcely got into Mantua: he rushed
off with 15,000 men at the noise of the firing, managed to rally 10,000
of Bayalist's and Lilpay's forces, and drew up in line of battle.
Bonaparte accepted the challenge, but he needed all his troops; he
galloped off to Lonato; in three days he personally inspected and
organised everything; he rode five horses to death in those three
days. He arrived at Lonato; a portion of the troops in that town
were to advance on Salo and on Gavado to settle with Quasdanovitch;
whatever troops besides were unengaged he took with him to Castiglione;
he gave the command for the various troops to march forth, each to
its destination; he remained at Lonato with 1000 men; he took a few
moments' rest, and at night he intended to set out for Castiglione to
fight a battle with Wurmser at break of day.
Bonaparte had just dismounted from his horse and sat down to table when
news was brought to him to the effect that Lonato was surrounded by
4000 men, and that an Austrian bearer of a flag of truce was waiting to
demand him to surrender.
With his 1000 men Bonaparte might manage to face 4000, and perhaps to
conquer them. But he was urgently needed elsewhere, and he had resource
to another method. He gave orders to the whole of his general staff to
mount on horseback, caused the envoy to be brought in, and then ordered
his eyes to be unbandaged.
The envoy, who little knew with whom he was dealing, was amazed to find
himself before a general staff, when he expected but to find a few
officers; nevertheless, he delivered his message.
"So, my poor fellow," Bonaparte said to him when he had finished,
"you neither know who I am nor where you are? I am Bonaparte,
commander-in-chief, and you and your 4000 men have fallen right into
the midst of my army; go back to those who sent you and tell them I
give them five minutes to surrender, and if they refuse I shall put
every one of them to the sword, to punish them for the insult offered
me."
A quarter of an hour later, the 4000 men had laid down their arms.
When night fell, Bonaparte was at Castiglione.
On the following day Wurmser was defeated, and left 2000 men on the
field of battle, where our soldiers, worn out with fatigue, slept
pell-mell among the dead.
In five days' time Bonaparte with 30,000 men had beaten 60,000; Wurmser
had lost 20,000 men, killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. He had
recaptured the Rivoli road between the Adige and the lake of Garda,
which was the key to the Tyrol.
Bonaparte collected 28,000 men and dashed in pursuit of Wurmser, who,
gaining Quasdanovitch's force, had still 40,000 men left; he won the
battle of Roveredo, entered Trent, the capital of the Tyrol, left
Vaubois to guard it and threw himself into the gorges of the Tyrol in
pursuit of Wurmser; he chased 30,000 men before him with his 18,000,
covering twenty leagues in two days, caught up Wurmser upon the banks
of the Brenta, gave him battle at Bassano, took 4000 of his men
prisoners, took all his war-material, drove him back upon the Adige,
and left him and his remaining 14,000 men no other resource but to
retire for shelter within the walls of Mantua, the blockade of which he
had essayed to raise with 60,000 men.
This was the third Austrian army that Bonaparte had destroyed since he
entered Italy.
Wurmser entered Mantua resolved to defend it to the last extremity,
and, to add to his provender, he slew and salted his 7000 cavalry
horses, converting the cavalrymen into foot-soldiers.
Then, infuriated at the way his men had been led, he condemned his
officers as a punishment to parade the streets of Mantua for three
months with distaffs in their hands instead of walking-sticks.
The officers obeyed this singular punishment without a murmur.
Bonaparte allowed Serrurier to blockade Mantua, and, turning back to
Milan, he awaited fresh supplies from the Directory, employing his time
until they came in founding the Cis-Alpine Republic.
CHAPTER VIII
My father in the Army of Italy--He is received at Milan by Bonaparte
and Joséphine--Bonaparte's troubles in Italy--Scurvy--The campaign is
resumed--Discouragement--Battle of Arcole.
Whilst these wonders were being performed in Upper Italy my father
was still commanding a division of the Army of the Alps: as we have
pointed out, since it was a post of observation, he had placed the
brigadier-generals Dufresne and Pailloc respectively at the foot of
Mont Cenis, and at St. Pierre d'Albigny in the Tarantaise, whilst
he established his own headquarters at la Chambre, a little village
comprising a dozen houses, situated at the base of a chain of peaks
which abounded in chamois. Herein lay his predilection for la Chambre,
where, besides, he knew he would meet again one of his old guides from
Mont Cenis, a most ardent hunter, with whom he spent days and nights on
the mountains.
One night, on his return after three days' grand sport, my father found
a letter commanding him to go to Italy and put himself at the disposal
of General Bonaparte. This order was dated 22 Vendémiaire (October
14th).
Bonaparte no longer signed himself "Buonaparte."
It was exactly what my father had been hoping for, although to
some extent he shared the same dislike felt by his colleagues, who
considered themselves experienced generals at the age of thirty-two
and thirty-four years, and who objected to serve under a general aged
twenty-six; yet the roar of the cannons and the sound of many battles
had been ringing in his ears for a year, until he was quite ready to
ask for service in Italy, no matter in what rank.
My father reached Milan, October the 19th, 1796.
Bonaparte gave him a cordial welcome, and Joséphine an even warmer
reception; she had just joined her husband, and, as a Creole, was
passionately attached to anything that recalled her beloved Colonies.
He found Bonaparte in a state of great uneasiness, and very angry
because of the conduct of the Directory, which had deserted him. The
Austrian generals were beaten, but Austria herself was not beaten.
The troops at the emperor's disposition in Poland, thanks to the
promises Catherine had given him, were able to march to the Alps; many
troops, too, were stationed to watch over the Danube and to keep an eye
on Turkey; moreover, all the reserves of the Austrian monarchy were
being prepared for Italy; a new and splendid army therefore was being
equipped in Friuli, made up of the remnant of Wurmser's troops, those
from Poland and Turkey, with reserves and recruits. Marshal Alvintzy
was charged to take command of this fourth army, intended to avenge the
honour of Colli, Beaulieu and Wurmser.
Bonaparte had not more than 25,000 men of the troops which had
accompanied him to Italy, or had joined him there, with which to meet
this new army; for the Austrian cannon had made great gaps in our
ranks, in spite of their defeats. Some battalions had reached him from
la Vendée, but they were greatly reduced by desertion; Kellermann,
who had just despatched my father, sent word by him that he could not
weaken the line of the Alps, as he was compelled to keep a watch on
Lyons and the banks of the Rhone, where the Compagnies de Jésus were
given over to all kinds of brigandage. Bonaparte clamoured vehemently
for the 40th and the 83rd brigades with their 6000 men, and, if they
should arrive, he would be equal to anything.
He wrote thus to the Directory:--"I am unwell, I can hardly sit
my horse; there is nothing left me but courage, and that alone is
not enough for the position I am in: our prestige is regarded as
evaporated; send troops or Italy is lost."
Indeed, my father found Bonaparte very ill. The malady of which he
complained was scurvy, which he had caught at Toulon in doing a very
heroic act, in himself cleaning out a gun with the sponge of an
artillery-man who had just been killed; he had neglected the disease,
and it was wearing him out; he was frightfully thin, he looked like a
walking skeleton with nothing alive about him but his eyes.
Nevertheless, he did not despair; he recommended my father to exercise
the utmost vigilance and incessant industry; and, informing him of
his next plan of campaign, he sent him to take command of the first
division before Mantua.
So, eleven days later, the campaign re-opened.
The fourth hydra-head was scotched; Marshal Alvintzy had thrown bridges
over the Piave and advanced to Brenta with 40,000 men.
The struggle was terrible. It lasted from the 1st to the 17th of
November; Bonaparte, with 20,000 men, attacked 50,000; once his army
was reduced to 15,000; once Bonaparte, discouraged by the indecisive
battles of Bassano and Caldiero, addressed the following cry of
distress to the Directory.
It was the 14th November; on the 13th Bonaparte had reached Verona
after ten days of struggle, not only against the Austrians, but against
mud, rain, and hail.
"All our superior officers," he wrote, "are _hors de
combat_; the Army of Italy, reduced to a mere handful, is
exhausted; the heroes of Millesimo, of Lodi, of Castiglione
and of Bassano have died for their country or are in the
hospital; there is nothing left the corps but their pride
and their reputation; Joubert, Lannes, Lamart, Victor,
Murat, Charlet, Dupuis, Rampon, Pigeon, Menard, Chabadon are
wounded; we are abandoned in the heart of Italy; the brave
men who remain to us have to face inevitable death in the
very midst of continual hazards and with inferior numbers.
Perhaps the fatal hour for the brave Augereau and the
dauntless Masséna is on the point of striking; then, then
what is to become of these brave men? This thought keeps me
back. I dare no longer court death to the discouragement
of those I value so highly; had I only received the 83rd
and been strengthened by 3500 tried men, I would have dared
anything; perhaps in a few days 40,000 men will not suffice
to save us.
"To-day our troops are resting; to-morrow, subject to the
movements of the enemy, we will take action."
Here we have the complaints, or rather the gloomy predictions,
of a tired-out, discouraged, and depressed man: the strongest of
constitutions succumb to such moments of doubt, and experience these
hours of despair: after great fatigue the body overrides the mind, the
sheath tarnishes the blade.
Two hours after having penned this letter Bonaparte had devised a new
plan.
The battle of Roneo took place on the following day, being the
beginning of the famous battle of Arcole, which lasted three days.
By the third day the Austrians had lost 5000 men as prisoners, 8000
or 10,000 killed or wounded, and, although still 40,000 strong, they
withdrew to the mountains, pursued by 15,000 French.
They retreated into the capital of the Tyrol: 15,000 French had
accomplished the gigantic undertaking of fighting against and
conquering 50,000 men.
But they had only repulsed the army of Alvintzy, they had not destroyed
it, as they had destroyed the three others.
Bonaparte advised Serrurier to continue the blockade of Mantua, to
harass Wurmser as he had harassed Beaulieu (Cauto d'Irles), and took up
his winter quarters at Milan, a centre for negotiations with all the
little princedoms of Italy, which through fear alone became our allies.
About three weeks after, an event occurred during the blockade which
was to have a great influence on the course of events of this terrible
campaign.
One night--either the 23rd or 24th December, which corresponded to that
of the 2nd or 3rd Nivôse--my father was awakened by the visit of three
or four soldiers, who brought a man before him who had been captured by
one of our advanced sentinels just as he was going to leap over the
first barricade at Mantua.
My father was at Marmirolo.
The colonel in command of our outposts at St. Antoine sent this man to
my father with the message that he was a Venetian spy and he believed
he carried important intelligence.
The man's replies were astonishing. He was in the Austrian service, and
one of the garrison of Mantua, which town he had left on account of a
love affair; he was just returning when he was challenged and arrested
by the sentinel, who had heard the noise of his footsteps on the frozen
snow.
Although he was searched all over, nothing was found on him.
But, in spite of the apparent frankness of his answers and his ease of
manner during his examination, my father thought he detected certain
quick glances, certain nervous twitches, which denoted a man who was
not quite sure of his ground. Moreover, the word "spy" when used before
him confused him, and made the reasons he gave for his going out and
returning hard to believe. Furthermore, when a general is watching' a
town of the importance of Mantua, and hopes he has caught hold of a
spy, he does not easily renounce his hopes.
But there seemed nothing further to be said: the man's pockets were
perfectly empty, and his replies mathematically precise.
Favourite books of my father's were Polybius and Cæsar's
_Commentaries._ A volume of the _Commentaries_ of the conqueror of
Gaul lay open on the table near his bed, and the passage my father had
just been re-reading before going to sleep was where Cæsar relates
how, in order to pass his lieutenant through to Labienus with valuable
information, he had enclosed his letter in a little ivory ball about
the size of a child's toy; how the messenger when he came to the
enemy's pickets, or to any place where he feared being taken prisoner,
was to carry the ball in his mouth, and to swallow it if he were pushed
to extremes.
This passage from Cæsar flashed across my father's mind as a ray of
light.
"Very well," said my father; "since this man lies, he must be taken out
and shot."
"What! General," the Venetian exclaimed in terror. "Why am I to be
shot?"
"To cut open your stomach and find the despatches you have swallowed,"
said my father with as much certainty as though the matter had been
revealed to him by his familiar spirit.
The spy trembled.
The men hesitated.
"Oh! it is not a joke," said my father to the soldiers who had taken
the prisoner; "if you wish it, I will give you a written order."
"No, General," replied the soldiers; "if you are serious--"
"Perfectly serious; take him away and shoot him."
The soldiers moved forward to lead off the spy.
"One moment!" he said, seeing that matters had taken a grave turn.
"Will you confess?"
"Yes, yes, I confess," said the spy, after a moment's hesitation.
"You confess you have swallowed your despatches?"
"Yes, General."
"And how long ago did you do that?"
"About two hours and a half ago, General."
"Dermoncourt," said my father to a young aide-de-camp who slept in the
next room to his, and who had been listening and looking on since the
beginning of this scene with the greatest attention, not seeing what it
was going to lead to.
"Here I am, General."
"You have heard?"
"What, General?"
"That this man has swallowed his despatches?"
"Yes."
"Two and a half hours ago?"
"Two and a half hours ago."
"Very well, go and find the chemist of the village and ask him whether
it is a purgative or an emetic that should be given to a man to make
him get rid of what he has taken two hours and a half ago; he is to
tell you which will have the quickest result."
Five minutes later Dermoncourt returned, his hand at the salute and,
with wonderful command of his features, he replied:
"A purgative, General."
"You have brought one with you?"
"Yes, General."
They gave the purgative to the spy, who swallowed it with a grimace;
then they took him to Dermoncourt's room, where two soldiers kept
him in view, whilst Dermoncourt passed a very bad night, being waked
up by the soldiers each time they thought the medicine was going to
take effect. At last, towards three in the morning, he was delivered
of a tabloid of wax, as large as a filbert. This little ball of wax
was washed in one of those irrigating canals which are to be found in
thousands in the meadows round Mantua, steeped in a liquid the spy
carried for the purpose in a tiny flask hidden in his waistcoat pocket
which the soldiers had not thought necessary to take from him, and
handed to my father; he passed it on to be opened by Dermoncourt, who,
in his capacity of secretarial aide-de-camp, had to open despatches.
One fear alone remained to them--the despatch might be in German, and
not a single man in the general's quarters could speak German.
In the meantime, Dermoncourt was performing the Cæsarian operation on
the wax pellet with his pen-knife; and he drew from it a letter written
on vellum in such small characters that, when rolled between the
fingers, the letter was not larger than a big pea.
Great was the delight of the two operators when they perceived that the
letter was written in French; one might almost have said the emperor
and his commander-in-chief had foreseen the possibility of this letter
falling into my father's hands.
I give the tenor of the letter, which I take from a copy in my father's
handwriting; the original, as we shall see presently, was sent to
Bonaparte:--
"TRENT, _15th December 1796._
"I have the honour to transmit to your Excellency His
Majesty's commands, dated 5th of the month, literally, and
in the same language in which I received them.
"You will take care to advise Field Marshal Vurmser without
delay not to discontinue his operations; you will inform
him that I am expecting him valorously and zealously to
defend Mantua to the last extremity; that I know him, and
the brave officers of his staff who are with him, too
well to fear they will give themselves up as prisoners;
moreover, he must try to transport the garrison into France
rather than to send it back into my realm; I desire that
in the event of his being reduced to the last extremity
and without means of subsistence, he will take measures to
destroy as far as possible anything in Mantua that would be
serviceable to the enemy, and, in leading out the portion of
his troops that are fit to follow him, to make for and to
cross the Po, and then to march to Ferrara or to Bologna,
holding himself ready, if the need arises, to go towards
Rome or into Tuscany; he will find very few of the enemy in
those regions, which are _favourably disposed_ towards the
provisioning of his troops, on whose behalf, if needful, he
must use force, as he would to surmount any other obstacle.
"FRANÇOIS.
"A reliable man, a cadet from the Straroldo regiment, brings
this important despatch to your Excellency. I would add
that the actual situation and the requirements of the army
do not allow of attempting any fresh operations for _three
weeks or a month_, without exposing it anew to the danger of
non-success.
"I cannot too strongly urge upon your Excellency to hold
on in Mantua as long as you possibly can, His Majesty's
commands acting as your general instructions; whatever
happens, I beg of your Excellency to send me news by some
safe means, in order that I may keep in touch with you.
"ALVINTZY.
"_P.S._-In all probability the next action I am arranging
will take place on the 13th or 14th January. I shall march
with 30,000 men to the plateau of Rivoli, and I shall
despatch Provera with 10,000 men along the Adige to Legnago,
with a considerable convoy. When you hear firing, make a
sortie to cause a diversion in favour of his movement."
CHAPTER IX
The despatch is sent to Bonaparte--Dermoncourt's reception--Berthier's
open response--Military movements in consequence of the
despatch--Correspondence between my father and Serrurier and
Dallemagne--Battle of St. Georges and La Favorite--Capture of
Mantua--My father as a looker-on.
My father's joy was great, and so was Dermoncourt's; the despatch
was clearly of the greatest importance. For one thing it proclaimed
Tuscany and the Venetian and Pontifical States as countries _favourably
disposed._ Moreover, it revealed Alvintzy's intention of taking no
action _for three weeks or a month._
The despatch must be taken to Bonaparte post haste.
Dermoncourt instantly mounted his horse and rode off to Milan.
He reached there the next day but one, at seven in the morning,
and dismounted at the steps of the hôtel Serbelloni, where General
Bonaparte lodged. He had made part of his journey on horseback and part
in a kind of _calessino_ called a _sediollo._
But here Dermoncourt met an unexpected difficulty: the aide-de-camp
on duty had received instructions that no one was to be admitted to
Bonaparte until nine o'clock.
Dermoncourt grew angry.
"But, monsieur," he said, "you can see clearly by my muddy condition
that I have not come from a ball, and why I insist on seeing the
commander-in-chief is because I have important news to give him."
The aide-de-camp persisted in his refusal. Dermoncourt grew furious
in his wish to see Bonaparte; the aide-de-camp barred the passage;
Dermoncourt was a bulldog of the Republican school; he took the
aide-de-camp by both shoulders, twisted him round, and passed in; but
all this scuffle had not been accomplished quietly, and Dermoncourt
found Bonaparte standing at the door of his room.
"Now, what is the matter?"asked Bonaparte, frowning.
"Upon my word, General," replied Dermoncourt, "it is not very pleasant
after travelling thirty leagues in twenty-six hours to have to force
one's way across the bodies of your aides-de-camp to get at you."
"But what if those were the given orders?"
"If those were the orders given, General," Dermoncourt replied lightly,
"have me shot for transgressing orders; only, I entreat of you not to
send for the picket before you have read this despatch."
Bonaparte read the despatch.
Then turning to his aide-de-camp he said, "You have forgotten,
monsieur, that the order is not meant for any officer attached to the
staff who may arrive from Mantua, and that no matter whether they come
at noon or at midnight the door is open. Place yourself under arrest."
The aide-de-camp saluted and went out.[1]
"How did Dumas get hold of this despatch?" Bonaparte demanded.
Dermoncourt related the incident with full details.
"Berthier! Berthier!" shouted Bonaparte.
Berthier appeared with his accustomed air of importance and gravity.
"Here, Berthier," exclaimed Bonaparte, handing the despatch to him,
"smell that and tell me what the scent is."
"Why, General," said Berthier, "it smells of dung."
"Not so bad that; you have not minced matters. Now read it." Berthier
read.
"Oh! oh!" he exclaimed.
"Do you see, Berthier? The next battle will be called the battle
of Rivoli, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, it will decide the
campaign. At all events, as Alvintzy says, we have quite three weeks
before us."
"And as one man forewarned is worth two," said Dermoncourt, "and as
even when you are not forewarned you are worth a hundred, there is
surely cause for laughter."
"Meanwhile," said Bonaparte, "as you are probably hungry, you had
better just brush the mud off you,--don't bother to do more than
that,--and you shall breakfast with us. Have you met Joséphine?"
"No, General, I have not had that honour."
"Very well, I will introduce you to her: go and come back quickly."
Dermoncourt did not wait to be told twice. He breakfasted and dined
with Bonaparte, who insisted that he should stay and sleep at the
palace.
Next morning he sent a letter by him to my father loaded with
compliments, and told him he might set off when he liked, a carriage
being at his disposal. Dermoncourt entered the carriage in the
courtyard; Bonaparte and Joséphine were at one window, and Berthier at
the next.
"A good journey to you!" cried Bonaparte to Dermoncourt.
"Thank you, General," he replied; "do not forget the 13th of January,
and be careful with those delicacies of Capua."
"Rest easy," cried the commander-in-chief; "I will not act as Hannibal
did."
Here is Bonaparte's letter to my father:--
"ARMY OF ITALY--THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.
"_Liberty--Equality._
"FROM THE HEADQUARTERS AT MILAN, 7 _Nivôse_ (_Sunday, 28th
December_), _Year V of the Republic, one and indivisible._
"BONAPARTE, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy, to
GENERAL DUMAS.
"I am in receipt of the letter brought[2] me by your
aide-de-camp; it would have been impossible to have
acquired more opportune or more valuable information. You
will receive an order to the effect that all the inhabitants
of the countryside are to be sent a league away from Mantua;
I do not doubt that you will faithfully carry out this
order; although somewhat harsh, it is extremely necessary.
"I give this order because precautions are being taken on
the other side of the Po; this project from the Court of
Vienna seems to me very mad. I beg you to send the spy you
have arrested under a good escort to Milan.
"I congratulate you on your good fortune and augur better to
come. BONAPARTE."
It will be seen that, though a year had hardly elapsed, after the
battles of Montenotte, Millesimo, Dego, Mondovi, Lonato, Castiglione,
and Arcole, Bonaparte recognised so clearly that his fate was bound up
with that of France that he suppressed the _u_ in his name.
Dermoncourt reached my father's camp, and gave him the
commander-in-chief's letter; my father read it, and probably the
observation we make in the light of to-day did not then occur to him,
namely, that by suppressing the _u_ Bonaparte had suppressed that which
gave an Italian flavour to his name.
The same day that Dermoncourt left Milan, the French army received the
order to occupy the positions of Montebaldo, Corona, and Rivoli.
On the 5th of January, General Alvintzy left Bassano.
On the 6th, Bonaparte occupied Bologna with 7000 men.
On the 11th, Bonaparte advanced to the walls of Mantua.
On the 12th, the Austrian army gave battle at Saint-Michel and Corona,
and encamped at Montebaldo.
On the 13th, Joubert evacuated Corona and took up his position at
Rivoli, whilst the Austrians occupied Bevilacqua.
Finally, on the 14th, Bonaparte visited the plateau of Rivoli, which he
reached at two o'clock in the morning.
Here it was that the final battle took place, as he had predicted.
We know the results. At eight in the morning 45,000 Austrians invited
battle.
At five in the evening they were nowhere to be seen; it was as though
an earthquake had swallowed them up; Alvintzy had been wiped out at a
single stroke.
There was still Provera to be dealt with.
Provera followed the plan indicated in the letter intercepted by my
father; he slipped away from Augereau and threw a bridge over Anghiari,
a little above Legnago. He marched on Mantua, which he intended to
reinforce with nine or ten thousand men.
Augereau had obtained knowledge of his crossing; falling upon his rear,
he took 2000 of his men prisoners; but Provera continued his march with
the remaining 7000.
Luckily, Bonaparte learnt these details at Castelnovo. He was about the
same distance from Mantua, he had Frenchmen under his command, and he
would therefore reach it before Provera.
If he did not arrive, and if the garrison attempted the sortie Wurmser
had been ordered to take in Alvintzy's letter, the blockading corps
would be caught between two fires.
Masséna's division received orders to march at double quick pace to
Mantua, where it should arrive the same evening. The reserves from
Villa-Franca were to take the same route and march at the same speed.
Finally, Bonaparte himself galloped off to reach Mantua before
nightfall.
Now let us see from General Serrurier's letters to my father what was
going on round Mantua, and what action was taking place in the French
camp.
"HEADQUARTERS AT ROVERBELLA,
"_20 Nivôse, Year V._[3]
"SERRURIER, General of Division, in command of the blockade,
to GENERAL DUMAS, in command of the 2nd Division.
"MY DEAR GENERAL,--I have just received a letter from
Divisional-General Augereau, dated from Porto-Legnago,
on the 19th inst.; wherein he informs me that the enemy
attacked his outposts with a force greatly superior to
his own, and that Adjutant-General Duphot has abandoned
the Castle of Bevilacqua, to prevent himself from being
outflanked. He will write and tell me the various movements
of the enemy that night. All our troops are thoroughly on
the alert; but I do not believe the enemy at Mantua will
undertake any big action unless its army has a very marked
advantage, or unless they try to slip away. As soon as I
receive news from General Augereau I will let you know
it.--Yours, with all good wishes, SERRURIER."
Provera was the enemy referred to who was attacking Augereau, in
carrying out his instructions to march on Mantua.
"HEADQUARTERS AT ROVERBELLA,
"_22 Nivôse._
"SERRURIER, etc.
"In consequence of the letter you sent me yesterday,
General, relative to the disembarking carried out by the
enemy, I believe the means for the
defence of the Mincio. I have therefore just written off to
General Victor to send to-day a battalion of his reserve to
Formigosa, to be held in readiness to send immediately where
help is most needed; although I have asked this general
to communicate with me direct, I have at the same time
requested him to keep you and General Dallemagne informed of
all important news.
"The remainder of the 57th battalion, to which you
previously referred, will stay in reserve at Goïto.--Yours,
etc. SERRURIER."
"_23 Nivôse._
"SERRURIER, etc.
"This is to inform you, General, that the enemy has attacked
our lines; they began fighting at nine in the morning. I
do not doubt that the garrison of Mantua will aid them by
some movement; as we are ready to receive them, we shall
send them back pretty quickly within their walls. In event
of any emergency, I beg you to communicate with me and with
the generals near you; it may possibly be that some part
of the line of army will be compelled to yield ground; for
this reason it is more than ever necessary to watch the
approaches, to prevent any troop or convoy entering the
town.--Yours faithfully, SERRURIER."
At ten o'clock on the morning of the 25th Nivôse my father received
this letter:--
"HEADQUARTERS AT ROVERBELLA,"
_25 Nivôse._[4]
"SERRURIER, etc.
"I have to advise you, General, that the enemy crossed the
Adige last night at Anghiari, near Porto Legnago; I do not
know in what strength; but we must be prepared, for it is
quite likely we shall be attacked to-night: do not forget,
I beg you, to warn General Miollis; tell him to send out a
reconnoitring party by Castellaro--or at all events near
Due-Castelli.--Faithfully yours, SERRURIER."
"I have ordered the commandant of the 64th, who is at
Formigosa, to fall back on General Miollis, if he cannot
hold out. In case of need I shall withdraw to Goïto."
Two hours later my father received another letter:--
"SAINT-ANTOINE, "_25 Nivôse._
"SERRURIER, etc.
"I hazard the opinion, General, that there will be no sortie
on General Dallemagne's side.[5] I believe the enemy mean
to present themselves in force on Governolo and Formigosa,
to make sure of those two bridges and to secure the Po, in
order to relieve Mantua. It is quite certain they will not
have so far to march if they go there, instead of coming
here. But I think we must protect ourselves on all sides;
that will not prevent us from availing ourselves of any
opportunity that may arise.
"General Beaumont has no cavalry left. I withdrew them all
to-night to send to Castelnovo.--Yours, SERRURIER.
"I am counting greatly on General Miollis and on a battalion
I have sent to Governolo. On second thoughts, to save time,
I am returning to Roverbella, where I hope to receive news
from the commander-in-chief."
My father sent on copies of these two letters to General Miollis, who
was at St. Georges.
The day was employed in keeping a strict look-out. My father spent the
night at the outposts.
At nine o'clock on the morning of the 26th, he received this despatch:--
"GENERAL SERRURIER, etc.
"I advise you that the enemy is appearing on the
Due-Castelli side.
"Issue your orders in accordance with this.--Yours,
"SERRURIER.
"ROVERBELLA, _26 Nivôse._"
Two hours later he received this second letter:--
"SERRURIER, etc.
"It is imperative, General, that you should prevent the
enemy from disembarking: to effect this, take as many as
1500 men to that quarter.
"We are not short of troops at present, so do not be
anxious.--Yours, SERRURIER.
"_26 Nivôse_, ROVERBELLA."
If 1500 men had to be taken to the place appointed by General
Serrurier, it was necessary to have that number to take. My father
therefore wrote to his friend Dallemagne at Montanara to spare as many
men from his division as he could and to send them him.
Dallemagne replied immediately:--
"MONTANARA, _26 Nivôse, Year V._
"DALLEMAGNE to his friend DUMAS.
"Although I do not expect to be attacked, my dear friend,
yet the means at my disposal are too weak to allow of my
sending much of a force to Formigosa; a third of my division
is unable to get on its feet, and its whole strength is but
2000 men. Judge therefore, my dear fellow, if I have any
to spare. Nevertheless, directly I got your letter I gave
orders to General Montant to hold a few troops ready to
march. Moreover, I must inform you that General Serrurier
gave me notice in his letter of last night that he was about
to give orders to destroy the bridge at Formigosa. If,
therefore, he executes this order, it will be impossible for
me to send you aid; furthermore, if the enemy, which has
crossed the Adige, succeeds in the attack on St. Georges,
the sortie from Mantua is certain to take place, and we
shall be forced to succumb in spite of all our efforts to
withstand the shock, because the enemy will engage without
running great risks where he has the stronger force.
Good-bye, my dear friend. Rely upon it that I shall always
eagerly seek every opportunity to serve you, as to serve my
country.--With affectionate regards,
"DALLEMAGNE."
Nevertheless, the worthy Dallemagne was very reluctant to refuse my
father the men he asked for, for he knew that, if he asked for them, it
was because he believed himself to be hard pressed.
So, towards noon, he wrote him from Casanova:--
"GENERAL DALLEMAGNE to GENERAL DUMAS.
"I have just heard, General, that the bridge of Formigosa
is still standing; so I have given General Montant orders
to start off for Formigosa with 500 men and two pieces of
artillery, and have given him the necessary instructions
to take the enemy in the rear, in the event of your being
attacked.--Yours, DALLEMAGNE."
The following copy, which was attached to this letter, explains why the
bridge at Formigosa had not been destroyed:--
"Copy of the letter written by CITIZEN DORÉ, Head of the 1st
Battalion of the 64th Demi-Brigade, to GENERAL DALLEMAGNE.
"I have to inform you, General, that in accordance with the
instructions I received last night from General Serrurier,
I went this morning to Governolo with my battalion; the
general had instructed me to break the bridge at Formigosa
before I left Governolo.
"When I began to carry out his order, the commandant of
a detachment of the 45th demi-brigade, who occupied that
position, opposed the execution of this order, as being
contrary to the instructions you gave him, saying that we
ought at all events to make sure the enemy was in sight
first. I yielded to his argument, which seemed to me
reasonable.
"_Signed_: DORÉ.
"Authenticated copy. DALLEMAGNE."
At six o'clock my father received this third letter:--
"HEADQUARTERS AT MONTANARA,
"_26 Nivôse, 4.30 o'clock._
"GENERAL DALLEMAGNE to GENERAL DUMAS.
"Fearing that General Montant and his 500 men have not yet
reached Formigosa, I have just written to him to hasten
his march. As General Serrurier notifies me that in case
of attack we must hold out to the last extremity, if the
enemy attacks me, as I quite expect he will, and you see
that those 500 men will not be of much use to you, do me
the kindness to send them back to me; so that if the enemy
attacks us we shall be better able to meet them.--Ever yours,
"DALLEMAGNE."
We see how anxious this worthy Dallemagne was at the thought of my
father incurring any danger.
But it was Miollis who was to bear the brunt throughout that day, not
my father.
Provera had marched straight before him, and, by way of Cevea,
Sanguinetto, Torre, and Castellaro, had drawn up in front of St.
Georges, where Miollis was in command.
The Austrian general knew what a bad state the fortifications of St.
Georges were in, so he was in good hopes that Miollis would not even
attempt to dispute his passing, therefore he simply asked him to
surrender.
Miollis replied by a terrible cannonading. My father not only heard the
firing at St. Antoine, but he could even see the smoke of it.
My father despatched Dermoncourt in hot haste to obtain definite news.
Dermoncourt was very young, thoroughly active and full of courage; he
rode across hedge and ditch till he reached St. Georges, where he
found General Miollis facing both Provera and Wurmser at the same time.
Just as he got up to Miollis, through the firing, and saluted, a bullet
carried the general's cap off.
"Ah! is it you, my lad?" said Miollis. "Have you come from Dumas?"
"Yes, General; he heard your cannonade, and, knowing the rotten
condition of your fortifications, he was very uneasy about you."
"Very good. Tell him not to worry about me; I have made my headquarters
here in the citadel, and, if there is one thing more certain than
another, it is that the enemy will have to pass over my grave if they
enter the citadel."
"But what about Provera?" asked Dermoncourt.
"Bah! Provera is in a trap. My friend Augereau, who let him pass by, is
following him, and, while I stay here, he has gone to drive him into a
corner. So tell Dumas that to-morrow will see Provera despatched."
Dermoncourt had seen enough; he returned to St. Antoine, which my
father had made his headquarters so as to be more within reach of the
enemy.
He arrived there at five o'clock, and reported that all was going
forward satisfactorily. Victor had rejoined my father with his brigade
and he was dining with him, when Dermoncourt entered.
This was the third sleepless night they had passed. My father and
Victor flung themselves clothed as they were upon their beds.
Dermoncourt remained up to draw out the report to General Serrurier of
his excursion to St. Georges. He was in the full tide of his narrative
when he felt someone place a hand on his shoulder.
He turned; it was Bonaparte; he had arrived.
"Well!" he said, "we have won the battle of Rivoli; here I am; the head
of Masséna's division is following me at top speed. What is Miollis
doing? Where is Provera? From what I hear, Augereau let him slip by.
Surely he followed him? What is Wurmser doing? Has he attempted any
move? Do you hear? Speak."
"General," Dermoncourt replied, as laconically as Bonaparte had
interrogated him, "Augereau was overpowered, but he fell back on
Provera's rear, and took two thousand prisoners and twelve pieces of
cannon."
"Good."
"Provera is now before St. Georges, which Miollis has held all day
long, and means to hold until he and his men are exterminated."
"Good."
"Wurmser has tried to make sorties, but he has been forced back into
Mantua."
"Good. Where is Dumas?"
"Here I am, General," replied my father, appearing at his bedroom door.
"Ah! there you are, monsieur," said Bonaparte, who looked rather black
at him.
My father could not pass by such a look without asking an explanation
of it.
"Yes, it is I! Well, what is wrong?"
"General Serrurier wrote two letters to you yesterday, monsieur."
"Well! what then?"
"In the first he notified you that in certain events he should withdraw
to Goïto."
"Yes, General."
"Did you reply to that letter?"
"Certainly."
"What did you reply?"
"Do you wish to know?"
"I should like to hear what you said."
"Very well! I replied, 'Retreat to the devil, if you like; I don't
care; but I'll shoot myself rather than retire.'"
"Do you know that if you had written me such a letter as that I would
have had you shot?"
"May be; but you would probably never have written me such a letter as
General Serrurier wrote me."
"That is true."
Then, turning to Dermoncourt, he said to him:
"Go and have the troops drawn up in three columns, and come back and
tell me when it is done."
Dermoncourt went out; then, turning to my father, who was about to
return to his room, he said:
"Stay, General; I was obliged to speak to you as I did before your
aide-de-camp; deuce take it, when a man writes such letters to his
chief, he should at least write them himself, and not dictate them
to his secretary. But we will say no more about it. Who are your
commanding officers here?"
"The first column, General, is composed of the 57th demi-brigade,
under its own leader, Victor; the second is under the command of
Adjutant-General Rambaud, our chief staff officer; the third, of
Colonel Moreau, commandant of the 11th demi-brigade."
"Very good. Where is Victor?"
"Oh! he is not far off," said my father; "listen and you will hear him
snoring."
"Go and wake him."
My father went into the room close by and shook Victor, who could not
be induced anyhow to wake up.
"Come, my lad!" said my father, "you must wake up."
"What the deuce do you want?" he growled.
"I want to make you general of division."
"What, me?"
"Yes, Bonaparte is here, and has given you the command of a column in
to-morrow's battle."
"Goodness me!"
Victor shook himself awake and ran out.
Dermoncourt entered at the same time.
"Well?" asked Bonaparte.
"Your orders are executed, General."
"Good. Now go to the outskirts of la Favorite and find out the position
of the enemy."
Dermoncourt went.
It was eight in the evening, and our troops occupied la Favorite.
Dermoncourt went beyond the outposts, and, venturing towards Mantua,
fell up against a sortie which Wurmser was making.
So, three-quarters of an hour after his departure, they heard him
shouting a long way off:
"To horse, General, to horse! The enemy is following me."
Indeed, he narrowly escaped being caught, and feeling himself almost
overtaken, he called out for help.
My father leapt to his saddle, dashed out at the head of the 20th
regiment of dragoons and fell upon the enemy, whom he drove back to
their base, holding them in check till day; whilst Masséna's division,
which was completely disorganised by the forced march and immense
distance it had had to traverse, reached Marmirolo and St. Antoine,
where it re-formed.
Bonaparte's intention in making such speed was to finish off Provera at
a blow, as he had finished Alvintzy.
Indeed, Provera was lost from the moment he had failed to enter Mantua.
Augereau was at his heels, Miollis in front of him, Bonaparte on his
flanks, with Masséna's division.
Bonaparte spent the night in making his plans for the morrow.
My father remained where he was; it was an important post, as he was
deputed to drive Wurmser back into the town with his 15,000 or 20,000
men--a garrison which, without reckoning Provera, was much stronger
than the enemy which blockaded them.
During the night Provera managed to communicate with Wurmser, by means
of a boat, and to plan for the next day a combined attack with that
general upon la Favorite and Montada. No one in Mantua or in Provera's
camp knew that Bonaparte had arrived with the troops that had fought on
the previous day at Rivoli.
Had they been told, it would have sounded to them too incredible for
belief, and they would not have believed it.
My father was attacked by Wurmser at five in the morning; it was a
terrific struggle. After his letter to Serrurier of three days back he
could not, and did not, retreat; he held his ground with two or three
regiments and his own regiment of dragoons, till Bonaparte had time to
send him the 57th demi-brigade under Victor, whose troops cut such a
fearful gap in the enemy's ranks to get to my father's relief that from
that day forth they went by the name of "the _Terrible._"
They found my father with 700 or 800 men, surrounded by dead; he
had had one horse killed under him, a second had been slain by a
cannon-ball, but its rider, whom they took for dead, rose triumphantly
out of his glorious tomb.
Wurmser thus repulsed, fell back upon la Favorite; but la Favorite,
defended by 1500 men, withstood Wurmser's efforts, and even made a
sally. What with this sally, the repeated charges of my father and his
dragoons, and Victor's heroic stubbornness, whose fresh troops fought
with pent-up fury after being condemned to inaction whilst the rest of
the army had been covering itself with glory at Rivoli, Wurmser was
beaten back, and forced to re-enter the town.
From that time Provera, abandoned by his ally, was lost; caught between
Bonaparte, Miollis, Serrurier, and Augereau, he and his 5000 men laid
down their arms,--the rest of his troops had all been killed.
So the battles of Rivoli and la Favorite had been won in two days, two
armies had been destroyed, and 20,000 men taken prisoner. All their
guns and ammunition had been captured, and the Austrians rendered too
demoralised to continue the campaign without raising a fifth army. All
these events had resulted from the lucky chance of my father's taking
the spy, combined with the fertile genius of Napoleon.
My father's brigade alone captured six standards. And on the following
day, 28 Nivôse, my father received this letter from General Serrurier:--
"HEADQUARTERS AT ROVERBELLA,
"_28 Nivôse, Year V of the Republic, one and indivisible._
"SERRURIER, etc. etc., to DUMAS, Divisional General.
"Will you please give orders, General, for the colours which
you took from the enemy yesterday to be brought here to
General Berthier, or if he is away, to me.
"The general-in-chief grants four louis to each man who
takes a standard.--Faithfully yours, SERRURIER."
On the same evening after the battle, my father received a despatch
from General Serrurier, containing a letter for Wurmser.
This letter was virtually a demand for the surrender of Mantua.
General Serrurier's letter was as follows:--
"ROVERBELLA, _27 Nivôse, Year V._
"GENERAL SERRURIER, etc., to DIVISIONAL-GENERAL DUMAS.
"This is to inform you, General, that I have just issued
orders to the 18th and 57th demi-brigades to proceed to
la Favorite, with instructions to put themselves at your
service. I must tell you, however, that these two corps must
not form a permanent part of your division, therefore do not
send them to a distance unless in case of urgent necessity.
"The general-in-chief has been informed that you have
captured a considerable convoy of bullocks and grain; if
so, give orders for it to be taken to Porto Legnago under a
strong escort.
"Also let all the artillery and ammunition waggons
taken from the enemy be forwarded to our artillery park
immediately. See that there is the strictest surveillance
throughout the military stations. It is suspected that
General Wurmser will take advantage of our rejoicings
to make good his escape.--With sincere regards, yours,
SERRURIER.
"_P.S._--I beg you, General, to hand over the enclosed
letter to General Wurmser at Mantua as soon as possible.
"SERRURIER."
The convoy of bullocks and grain was sent off at once to Legnago, and
the letter went to Wurmser the same night.
The army was in great want of that convoy of grain and meat, as we
learn from the following letter which General Serrurier wrote to my
father on the 20th Nivôse:--
"I am informed, General, that you are short of meat; I have
not mentioned it before, because I could not supply the
deficiency. We areas badly off as the troops at Verona. I
have given orders to the army commissariat to deliver rice
instead, until we can supply something better.
"You need never be afraid of wearying me, General, with any
matter concerning the soldiers; those who have served with
me know how interested I am in their welfare.
"I have asked for some fresh equipments of clothing and
outfits; and they have sent word that since my arrival a
thousand _roupes_[6] and some shoes for the whole of the
division are on their way, but nothing has come yet.
"Remind our adjutant-general of the list of officers
I asked for; I must have it before I can fill in the
general-in-chief's inspection list.--Faithfully, etc.,
SERRURIER."
The garrison was, as we can quite understand, in a deplorable condition
with regard to provisions: famine had reached such a pitch that a fowl
cost ten louis, and a cat fifteen; rats might be procured with the
greatest difficulty for two louis.
Wurmser went to confession once a fortnight, and every time he
confessed he sent Canon Cavallini, the priest of the Collegiate Church
of St. André, a joint of horse, at the same time inviting himself to
dinner. These were fête-days, and they lived on the remains of that
dinner the whole week after.
In consequence of the letter my father passed on to Wurmser on the
night of 27th-28th Nivôse, that general decided to capitulate on the
2nd Pluviôse (January 22nd, 1797). But the surrender did not actually
take place until the 14th, and the entry of the French army into the
town was not till the 16th of that month.
He was allowed to go out of Mantua free, with his staff, 200
cavalrymen, 500 persons of his own choice and six pieces of cannon.
The soldiers of the garrison, which was 13,000 or 14,000 strong, were
made prisoners, and taken to Trieste to be exchanged.
Victor was made commander of a division, as my father had
predicted when he woke him, and Adjutant General Vaux was made
brigadier-general. Bonaparte singled out Generals Brune, Vial and Bon
as having especially distinguished themselves, and also chiefs of
brigades Destaing, Marquis, and Tournery.
As to my father, his name was not even mentioned.
It was a known fact that this was Bonaparte's custom, he did not like
his generals to accomplish too much.
Witness the case of Kellermann at Marengo.
Not merely was my father, who had taken the letter which had revealed
Alvintzy's plans, who had kept Wurmser in Mantua, who had captured six
colours from a troop three times the strength of his own, who had had
two horses shot under him--not only was my father not mentioned, but
his divisional rank even was incorporated with Masséna's--and that was
equivalent to disgrace.
My father was furious, and wanted to send in his resignation, but
Dermoncourt would not let him.
My father next discovered that the general commissioned to report upon
the siege had said he merely looked on during the fight at la Favorite.
My father began his defence by obtaining the following testimony:--
"ARMY OF ITALY.
"Division of the blockade of Mantua, 20th regiment of
dragoons.
"We, the undersigned officers of the 20th regiment of
dragoons, certify that Dumas, general of division, had a
horse shot under him in the battle of the 27th of this month
before Mantua, and another struck down by a cannon-ball.
"Written at the bivouac at Marmirolo, the 29th Nivôse, year
V of the French Republic.
"_Signed_:
"BONTEMS, Adjutant; BAUDIN, Adjutant; DUBOIS,
Sub-Lieutenant; L. BONEFROY, Sub-Lieutenant; A. J. BONNART,
Chief of Brigade; LE COMTE, Lieutenant; LEBRUN, Lieutenant;
DEJEAN, Captain; BOUZAT, Lieutenant."
Then he wrote to Bonaparte:--
"GENERAL,--I learn that the silly fool whose business it was
to report to you upon the battle of the 27th states that I
only looked on throughout that battle. I have no wish to
make similar observations concerning him, although he soiled
his trousers.--Respectfully yours, ALEX. DUMAS."
The fact was that the letter sent to incorporate my father in
Masséna's division was curt, and would have wounded a man of much less
susceptible nature than his.
It was dated the very day after the battle in which my father had had
two horses killed under him.
"HEADQUARTERS, ROVERBELLA,
"_28 Nivôse, Year of the Republic, one and indivisible._
"General of Division and Head of the Staff.
"The general-in-chief commands Divisional-General Dumas
to leave Marmirolo, where he will be replaced by General
Chabot, and to proceed to General Masséna's division: he
will serve in the active army at Verona, under the orders of
that general. ALEX. BERTHIER."
This time there was no friendly termination, at length or abridged.
[Footnote 1: This aide-de-camp was Duroc.]
[Footnote 2: I have copied this letter exactly. I shall do the same
with all letters I quote.]
[Footnote 3: Four days previous to the battle of Rivoli.]
[Footnote 4: The day of the battle of Rivoli, which took place at the
same time; it will be seen how well concerted were the movements of the
two generals.]
[Footnote 5: Dallemagne was on the side opposite Montanara, on the road
to Milan.]
[Footnote 6: A letter we have just received from an old officer
informs us that _roupes_ were cloaks similar to the grey cloaks of the
dragoons.]
CHAPTER X
My father's first breeze with Bonaparte--My father is sent to Masséna's
army corps--He shares Joubert's command in the Tyrol--Joubert--The
campaign in the Tyrol.
MY father was the more exasperated because he knew that with all the
will in the world it was impossible for Bonaparte to have believed for
one instant those words _looked on_, since it was by reason of the very
orders he had received from him that my father had made that heroic
defence of the 27th, when he drove the marshal's troop back into Mantua
with a force three times less in numbers.
I give below the orders Bonaparte dictated to Berthier at the very
moment when, after having left him at the presbytery of St. Antoine,
my father had repulsed Wurmser's nocturnal sally at the head of a mere
handful of dragoons.
"HEADQUARTERS OF THE GENERAL STAFF AT ROVERBELLA,
"_26 Nivôse, 8 p.m._
"The general-in-chief orders you to set off immediately,
General, with two pieces of light artillery and all the
cavalry you can collect, and particularly the hundred
dragoons he sent this evening: you are to reconnoitre the
enemy's position,[1] to keep a look-out upon his movements,
and to be quite ready to attack him successfully,
immediately General Dallemagne, to whom the general-in-chief
has transmitted his orders, shall have made his preparations
to fall in like manner upon the enemy.
"The troops which arrived this evening at Roverbella are
worn-out with fatigue, and need two hours' rest. After this
interval they will be ready to start; they will receive the
general-in-chief's orders concerning the movements they
must undertake after the reconnaissance you are about to
make (concerning which you will inform him), as soon as he
receives the reports he momentarily expects with regard to
the reconnaissances he has ordered of the various positions
on the Molinella.
"Whatever happens, you must send everything necessary in the
way of men and provisions into Saint-Georges, to enable that
post to hold out for forty-eight hours. The general-in-chief
has already given you instructions by General Serrurier,[2]
to collect a corps of 1500 of the best men out of your
division, and place them where the enemy has established
his communication with the garrison of Mantua, to be in
readiness, if a favourable chance arises, to begin the
attack, or on the first order you may receive; you need not
be afraid of stripping St. Antoine, your reinforcements must
pass through that place.
"Send a report to the general-in-chief of your
reconnaissance and of all the arrangements you make.
ALEX. BERTHIER."
It was at St. Antoine indeed that Bonaparte, seeing my father beset
by forces four times the strength of his own, sent the famous 57th
demi-brigade to his aid; they found him half buried in the same hole
in which his horse was completely buried, when shattered by the
cannon-ball.
Masséna was acquainted with the reason of this temporary disgrace; so
he received my father with the respect due to a man whose military
qualifications he admired, and not merely as an ordinary comrade.
Consequently, he gave him the command of his van-guard.
While at the head of this van-guard my father took part in the fight at
St. Michel, entered Vicenza, and fought in the battle of Bassano.
In six months, as Bonaparte had himself foretold in his proclamation
of war to the pope, the Army of Italy had taken 100,000 prisoners, 400
pieces of cannon, and demolished five armies.
This pontifical war was a joke. On the 16th Pluviôse, we were masters
of Romagna, of the duchy of Urbino, of the Marche d'Ancona, of Umbria,
and the districts of Perugia and Camerino.
At length, on the 30th Pluviôse (February 19), the French Republic and
the pontifical sovereign signed the treaty of Tolentino, by which the
Holy Father gave up Avignon and the district of Venaissin to France,
renounced the legations of Ferrara and Bologna as well as of Romagna,
and sanctioned the occupation of the town, fortress, and territory of
Ancona. He was, moreover, compelled to contribute immediately thirty
millions to the funds of the Army of Italy, solemnly to disown the
murder of Basseville, and to pay 300,000 francs indemnity to those who
were sufferers by that murder.
Finally, the pope was obliged to restore the objects of art and the
manuscripts mentioned in the armistice of Bologna, and to hand over
intact to the French Republic the palace of the School of Arts, which
was his property.
The treaty of Tolentino terminated the first Italian campaign, during
which the feats of Hannibal and the fortunes of Alexander had been
repeated.
Whilst the French Republic, represented by Bonaparte, was signing
the treaty of Tolentino with the pope, the Austrians were gathering
together among the Tyrolese mountains a sixth army, the command of
which was given by the emperor to Prince Charles, who had just made his
name in the Rhine campaign.
Prince Charles took up the command of this army during February 1797
(Pluviôse, year V).
By the end of February--about the 8th or 9th of Ventôse, that is to
say--the army of the enemy held the following positions.
Its principal position was on the Tagliamento; its right wing, under
Generals Kerpen and Laudon, was situated behind the Lavis and the Nos,
defending the approaches to the Tyrol. Prince Lusignan, who was so well
beaten at Rivoli, occupied the spaces between the two principal arms
with his brigade, and had taken up his stand round Feltre; lastly, the
van-guard, under command of General Hohenzollern, held the Piave.
Bonaparte, on his side, expected a reinforcement of 18,000 men from
the Army of the Rhine, and had mustered four divisions of his army in
the Marche of Treviso. Masséna was at Bassano; General Guyeux occupied
Treviso; Bernadotte, whose troops were beginning to arrive, was to
occupy Padua; Joubert, with his division and those of Generals Baraguay
d'Hilliers and Delmas, was to confront Kerpen and Laudon. Lastly,
Victor and 7500 men waited in the Marche d'Ancona, whilst Kilmaine,
with nearly 6000 men, guarded Lombardy and the frontiers of Piedmont
and Genoa.
The Austrian total amounted to 35,000 men, and the French to 36,000 or
37,000.
Towards the middle of Ventôse my father was ordered to leave Masséna's
army corps for that of Joubert, and to give up Bassano and Trent.
Joubert, to whom he was sent, was one of the most remarkable men of
a time productive of remarkable men. He was one of the fine young
thorough Republicans of the school of Marceau, of Hoche, and, I may
add, of my father. Like Marceau, like Hoche, and like my father, he
died young; but Marceau and he had the good luck to die from Tyrolese
bullets, while Hoche and my father died from poisoning.
Joubert was one of the heroes of Rivoli. Like my father at la Favorite,
he had had his horse killed under him, and, seizing a grenadier's
rifle, he had fought on foot for the rest of the day. That day, during
which he took several pieces of cannon, and turned the enemy head over
heels into the Adige, won him the rank of divisional general.
We have mentioned that Joubert was at the head of nearly 20,000 men
in the Tyrol when my father was sent to him to take command of the
cavalry. He received my father in the most affectionate manner.
"My dear Dumas," said he, "if I leave you the command they have given
you, you will find it but an empty honour, for you will only have two
very incomplete regiments of dragoons, the 5th and 8th, both together
hardly making one regiment. And I am quite sure that was not the
intention of him who sent you to me. I have 20,000 men, so I will
give you 10,000 to command, or rather, we will command the whole army
between us."
My father thanked Joubert. Bonaparte's flagrant injustice was so
obvious that, as in the case of Masséna, Joubert's one idea, when
welcoming him, was to try and make him forget it.
The two generals lodged together; then, as hostilities were about to
begin, they visited the outposts and decided to make an attack next
day, 21st March 1797 (30th Ventôse, year V).
That same day my father received his official instructions from
Joubert, which they had drawn up between them beforehand:--
"LIBERTY--EQUALITY.
"HEADQUARTERS OF TRENT,
"_29 Nivôse, Year V of the French Republic._
"JOUBERT, General of Division, to Divisional-General
DUMAS:--eight o'clock in the morning.
"You will set out to-day, General, to take command of
General Belliard's brigades at Segonzano; he has under his
orders the 22nd light infantry and the 85th of the line;
also the 14th of the main army under General Pelletier.
"You will give General Belliard orders that on leaving the
positions he has occupied with the 85th, he is to proceed at
nightfall to Segonzano: General Pelletier will also proceed
to the same place as soon as the enemy are unable to make
out his movements--that is to say, also at nightfall. You
will muster all the troops in such a manner as to be able to
effect the crossing of the Weiss and to make an attack on
Faver and Limbra two or three hours before daybreak.
"Place all the carabineers and grenadiers at the head of
your columns.
"In accordance with the plan we agreed upon after our
reconnaissance of that point, you must form two columns to
cross the Weiss on the right of Faver, and muster upon the
road at the head of the ravine, a short fifteen minutes'
march to the right of the village, in order to be able to
control it, while our attacking columns are being drawn up
in the green wood above the village; by this means you will
outflank all the enemy's fortifications. When you have taken
possession of Faver, proceed to Limbra, and follow up the
attack with your light infantry, by taking the ravine first
of all, which separates it from Faver.
"Your attention should also be directed to outflanking the
enemy's works on the mountain, in order to drive them down
into the plain or into the village, where your carabineers
and grenadiers, in serried columns, should be ready to
attack them vigorously, your light infantry skirmishers
supported close at hand by the 85th and 14th: it is hardly
necessary to tell you to have a reserve on the road between
Faver and Limbra, opposite the ravine.
"To disguise the real attack between Albian and Segonzano,
you will give orders to Generals Pelletier and Belliard to
cause false attacks to be made by the outposts along the
whole line simultaneously with that at Segonzano, seeking
to cross the torrent in several places, in order to push
forward under the enemy's fire.
"General Baraguay-d'Hilliers will lend you, just for the
attack, the 5th of his main army; this, with the two other
demi-brigades, will make up your reserve. One battalion
should, at night, command the Weiss and Sevignano; the
remainder should be at Segonzano.
"I will also send by him to Bedol a battalion and some
companies of carabineers to make a false attack upon Sovero.
Communicate this to General Belliard, whom I have ordered to
place all the information in his power at your disposal, as
well as the guides needed for this march.
"If, as we may presume, you take Limbra, you must manage
as best you can to take the enemy in the rear, until the
columns shall have arrived from the Weiss. You will also
look out for the reinforcements which should come from
Salurn over the mountains.
"There are three pieces of cannon at Segonzano, under cover
of whose fire you could cross the stream by day, if you had
not succeeded in doing so by night. You ought also to have
60,000 cartridges there; your troops should have three days'
provisions and two rations of brandy with them on setting
out.
"Be very stubborn in your attacks; be careful to
keep the men well together; sternly forbid pillage;
disarm the Tyrolese: such are the instructions of the
general-in-chief--you will remember that I showed you them.
"You will distribute and post up the copies of the
proclamation I send you.--I am, etc., JOUBERT."
My father left Albian, in accordance with Joubert's instructions, on
the 30th Nivôse, at two o'clock in the morning, and posted himself with
the 5th, 14th, and 85th demi-brigades of the main corps, and the 22nd
light infantry, below the castle of Segonzano, ready for crossing the
river Weiss. The first men who tried to cross the torrent had scarcely
put their feet into the water before they perceived how dangerous the
passage would be, owing to the rapidity of the current. The water was
not higher than their waists, but the current was so strong that when
a third of the way across the ford five or six men had lost their
footing, were carried away as by a cataract, and dashed against the
rocks which hemmed in the river.
My father then conceived the idea of making use of these rocks to
form a chain; he took the strongest of his men, placed them under
Dermoncourt's orders, and they succeeded in making a breakwater
entirely across the course of the stream. After that there was no more
danger; for the men who were carried off their feet by the rapidity
of the current were stopped by this living chain. The advance guard,
which was composed, as Joubert had advised, of the grenadiers of the
demi-brigade, with my father and Belliard at their head, soon reached
the other side.
My father was quickly master of all the redoubts held by the enemy
before Segonzano. On reaching the heights above the village of Faver,
they attacked it, and, after a vigorous resistance, they took it by
assault.
After securing Faver, they marched on Limbra, where the enemy were
intrenched with two pieces of cannon. My father had taken care, on
leaving, to send off a column of troops to the mountains which overlook
these two villages.
The enemy defended themselves vigorously, but the mountain column
arrived, and, returning their fire with interest, they were obliged to
make for the plain. My father soon beat back their advance, and one
last struggle decided the victory: their intrenchments were captured,
two pieces of cannon taken, and 2000 men fell into our hands.
My father mentioned General Belliard and Adjutant-Generals Valentin and
Liébaut as having particularly distinguished themselves in this attack.
A major named Martin, belonging to the 25th of the line with only
twenty-five men, charged and took prisoner 200 of the enemy. My father
asked for promotion for this officer, also for the two aides-de-camp,
Dermoncourt and Lambert, and their assistant, Milienk.
Faver and Limbra taken, my father ordered General Belliard to march
with his column to Lesignano, where the enemy occupied a strong
position; he was to try and take them in the rear, while my father
proceeded towards Salurn to protect the movements Joubert was making in
that direction.
Next day my father marched on Castello with his column and
took a hundred prisoners. At night he conferred with General
Baraguay-d'Hilliers, and it was arranged that the villages of Coran,
Altrivo, Castello, and Cavaleza should be attacked on the morrow.
The troops bivouacked: at two in the morning of the 2nd Germinal they
advanced upon the four villages which they had planned to attack, but
the enemy had already evacuated.
General Pigeon was put upon their track by General Baraguay-d'Hilliers,
and he pursued them hotly as far as the village of Tesaro; after which
a descent was made upon Newmark, in accordance with the instructions of
the 30th Nivôse. On the right bank of the Adige the Austrian general,
Laudon, who held the villages of Mote and Caldera, withdrew to Bolzano.
Towards two in the afternoon a major of engineers informed my father
that the enemy were bearing down for the bridge of Newmark, where
they might be harassed in their retreat. This bridge was as important
to us for the attack as it was to the enemy for the defence. My
father commanded General Belliard to march on this bridge with the
85th demi-brigade, which he commanded: when he reached the bridge he
overthrew the enemy and advanced on the village of Mote, which he took
by assault. "I," said my father, "at the head of the 5th dragoons,
charged the enemy's cavalry, which had advanced to meet me, and put
it to flight, although it was superior in numbers. I slashed the
commander's face and the neck of one of his horse-soldiers. My regiment
took, killed, or wounded, a hundred Austrian cavalry. Adjutant-General
Blondeau particularly distinguished himself in this engagement."
We can see how modestly my father referred to any of his own doings.
This charge of the 5th dragoons was a magnificent one. Joubert told
Bonaparte, in his report, that my father had earned the reputation of
being _a terror to the Austrian cavalry_; and this is how Dermoncourt
speaks of it:--
"General Dumas crossed the bridge at the head of his
cavalry, charged several squadrons of the enemy, and killed
with his own hands the commander and a soldier who, seeing
his chief in desperate plight, had run to his assistance;
he drove the infantry into the vineyards, and continued the
pursuit of the cavalry at full gallop with a mere handful of
men, charging us to collect what Austrians he left behind
him. We took 1900 men."
After this brilliant engagement they marched on Bolzano, chasing the
enemy all the time, who kept at a respectful distance; and they entered
the town without striking a blow. My father instructed Adjutant-General
Blondeau to push his reconnaissances as far as the village of Colman;
he left Delmas in position at Bolzano to watch Laudon's troops, and, on
the 4th Germinal, at two o'clock in the morning, he himself marched off
to follow the enemy which had retreated by the road to Brixen.
This is how my father relates the brilliant encounter which won for him
the name of the Horatius Codes of the Tyrol; we shall then see how his
aide-de-camp, Dermoncourt, describes it.
"I found the enemy in force, occupying an almost
unassailable position at Clausen; he was vigorously
attacked, and compelled to abandon the town; our troops
occupied it, and were unsuccessfully attacked by the enemy's
cavalry.
"At the head of the 5th dragoons, which I at once brought
forward, I charged the Austrian cavalry and routed them
completely, leaving many dead and wounded: 1500 of their
foot-soldiers were taken prisoners, and the rest were
pursued as far as Brixen. The remainder of the enemy drew up
for battle, evidently intending to wait for us to come on; I
rallied my van-guard and prepared to attack them, but they
fled at our approach; I followed them with my cavalry more
than a league beyond Brixen.
"I received three sword-cuts in these different charges, and
my aide-de-camp Dermoncourt was wounded by my side.
"_5th and 6th Germinal._
"The troops rested on the 5th.
"You charged General Baraguay-d'Hilliers to attack the enemy
on the 6th, before Michaelbach, where he is intrenched,
and I think I ought to take part in that engagement with
my cavalry. You know, General,--for you found it out for
yourself,--how well the two regiments of dragoons which I
commanded have behaved, and how greatly they contributed to
the day's success.
"You are also aware, General, that my horse was killed under
me and that I have lost my accoutrements and some very
valuable pistols. My aide-de-camp Lambert performed wonders.
"I will send you to-day the reports from the
brigadier-generals which have not yet reached me.
"BRIXEN, _7th Germinal, Year V of the Republic._
"AL. DUMAS.
"_P.S._--I must really present you with my cloak, I believe
it is enchanted; it is riddled with seven bullets, not one
of which touched me. It will bring you good luck."
[Footnote 1: It was at the head of his dragoons that my father left
the very presence of the commander-in-chief; but Bonaparte took care
that everything which was done, no matter what, should at least seem
to have been done by his orders, and on his initiative. We shall
see an interesting example of the same method in the battle of the
Pyramids. Bonaparte was a clever stage-manager; but we may be permitted
to believe that Providence, who used him as an instrument, as men of
genius are used, had something to do with the success of the pieces he
played.]
[Footnote 2: It has been seen that this order reached my father during
the day, and well before Bonaparte's arrival.]
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
The bridge of Clausen--Dermoncourt's reports--Prisoners on
parole--Lepage's pistols--Three generals-in-chief at the same table.
Now let Dermoncourt speak; from his version we shall really see what my
father's deeds were; for my father always effaced himself in his own
reports, above all when speaking of himself:--
"The army stopped at Bolzano for forty-eight hours, a long
halt for this campaign, which was more like a race than a
war. General Delmas remained at Bolzano to keep an eye on
Laudon's troops, and on the road from Innsbruck. The rest
of the army, with General Dumas at its head, prepared to
march next day for Brixen, to try and catch up with General
Kerpen's army, which had gone in that direction.
"The road we followed skirted a kind of watershed, half
stream, half torrent, which had its source among the Noire
mountains, and which, swollen by the waters of the Riente,
flows into the Adige, below Bolzano. Sometimes the road
ran along the right bank of the river; sometimes, crossing
the stream, it followed the left bank; then, after several
miles, it would cross back to the other side again. The
retreat of the Austrians had been so rapid that they had
not even blown up the bridges. We marched after them at
double quick pace, and we were almost in despair at ever
overtaking them, when our scouts came to tell us that they
had barricaded the bridge of Clausen with carts, and this
time really seemed to intend to dispute our crossing.
"The general at once set off with fifty dragoons, to examine
the nature of the ground: I followed him.
"When we reached the bridge of Clausen, we found it
effectually barred, with infantry and cavalry behind. We
thought that, when the general had examined the position, he
would wait for reinforcements; but he never dreamt of such a
thing.
"I Come on, come on,' he said--'I want twenty-five men on
foot to clear this bridge for me!'
"Twenty-five dragoons threw their horses' bridles into their
comrades' hands, and rushed to the bridge in the very middle
of the fire of the Austrian infantry.
"It was not easy work; for, to begin with, the waggons were
heavy to move, and the bullets fell like hail.
"'Come along, lazy-bones,' the general called out to me;
'aren't you going to lend a hand to these good fellows?'
"I dismounted and put my shoulder to the waggons; but the
general, finding that the bridge could not be cleared
quickly enough, leapt from his horse, and he too came to
help us. In an instant he did more single-handed with his
herculean strength than the twenty-five of us together. When
I say twenty-five I exaggerate; the Austrian bullets had
made their gaps, and five or six of our men were disabled.
Fortunately about sixty foot-soldiers now came up to our
assistance at a run. They distributed themselves on both
sides of the bridge, and opened hot fire, which soon began
to distress the Austrians, and to prevent them from aiming
straight. It ended in our overturning the carts into the
torrent--an easy matter, as the bridge had no parapet.
"Scarcely was the passage free than the general leapt to his
horse and, without waiting to see if he were being followed
or not, he dashed down the village street leading from the
bridge.
"In vain did I shout after him, 'But, General, there are
only the two of us!'
"He did not hear, or rather, he would not hear. Suddenly
we found ourselves face to face with a platoon of cavalry,
upon which the general fell; and, as the men were all in
line, with one single back-handed blow of his sabre he
killed the quartermaster, gashed the soldier horribly who
was next to him, and with the point of the weapon wounded a
third. The Austrians not conceiving it possible that two men
would have the audacity to charge them thus, wheeled to the
right-about; but the horses stumbled, and horses and riders
fell pell-mell. Our dragoons came up at this moment with
the foot-soldiers astride behind them, and the whole of the
Austrian platoon was captured.
"I paid the general a compliment upon his sabre blow,
telling him I had never seen its equal.
"'That is because you are a greenhorn,' he replied, 'but do
your best not to get killed, and before the finish of the
campaign you will have seen plenty like it.'
"We had taken a hundred prisoners. But he soon descried a
considerable body of cavalry climbing a mountain at the
other side of the village. No sooner did the general see
this body than he pointed them out to his dragoons, and,
leaving the prisoners to the care of the infantry, he set
off with his fifty men to pursue the Austrians.
"The general and I were so splendidly mounted that we gained
rapidly on our soldiers. The Austrians believing that they
were being pursued by the whole of our army, fled at top
speed. And again it came about that the general and I found
ourselves alone.
"At length, when we had reached an inn, at a point where the
road curved, I pulled up, and said to him:
"'General, what we are about to undertake, or rather, what
_you_ mean to undertake, is not reasonable. Let us stop and
wait till our men come up. Besides, the look of the ground
indicates that there is a plateau behind the house, and
we shall perhaps find the enemy there drawn up ready for
battle.'
"'All right, my boy; go and see if it is so,' he said. 'Our
horses can get their breath in the meantime.'
"I dismounted and walked round the inn, where I soon
discovered three trim squadrons all drawn up ready for
battle, about two hundred paces off. I returned to tell the
general, who, without a word in reply, set off riding in the
direction of the enemy's squadrons. I remounted my horse and
followed him.
"He had hardly gone a hundred yards before he came within
earshot of the enemy. The commanding officer recognised him,
and addressed him in French.
"'Oh! so it is you, you black devil!' he said to us.
"_Schwartz Teufel_ was the Austrians' nickname for the
general.
"'Come on a hundred paces, you scurvy knave,' said the
general, 'and I shall make it two hundred.'
"And with this reply, he put his horse to a gallop.
"All this time I was yelling like a demon, following the
general, whom I dared not leave, 'Here, dragoons, come on!'
"The enemy accordingly expected to see a considerable force
appear at any moment, and, with their commanding officer at
their head, they turned and fled.
"The general was on the point of pursuing them single-handed,
but I caught hold of his horse by the bridle and compelled
him to wait till our forces could come up and occupy the
position just vacated by the enemy.
"But when we were once more rejoined, there was no holding
the general back, and we set off again to chase the
Austrians. I managed, however, this time to arrange that our
skirmishers should go in front, as the road was very uneven.
"The skirmishers went on ahead, and we made good use of the
time to breathe our horses.
"In an hour's time we heard firing, which indicated that our
men were at close quarters with the Austrians. The general
sent me ahead to see what it meant.
"I returned in ten minutes.
"'Well!' said the general, I what is going on down there?'
"'The enemy is engaging us, General, but one of our soldiers
who speaks German told me it was only a ruse to induce us to
cross the bridge of Clausen. The bridge crossed, the enemy
intends to take its revenge.'
"'Ah! that is his dodge, is it?' said the general. 'Very
well! we will go and have a look. Forward--dragoons!'
"And at the head of our fifty or sixty men we again charged
the enemy.
"We reached the famous bridge; there was only just room
for three horses to cross abreast, and not the slightest
suggestion of a parapet.
"It was as I had told the general: the enemy had merely
made a show of resistance to entice us to pursue them. The
general crossed the bridge convinced that the Austrians
would not dare to turn round upon us. We therefore entered
the principal street, following the steps of our skirmishers
and the dozen dragoons whom the general had sent on to
support them, and we were almost in the middle of the street
when we beheld our skirmishers and our dragoons being
driven back by a whole squadron of cavalry. It was not a
retreat--it was a rout.
"Fear is infectious. It took possession of the dragoons who
were with us, or rather, our dragoons took possession of it;
they all fled after their comrades, scampering off at full
gallop; only about a dozen stayed by us.
"With this dozen of men we checked the enemy's charge, and
soon, whether for good or ill, we found ourselves back
at the bridge again; but here our few remaining dragoons
deserted us, and stampeded as though their salvation lay on
the other side of the bridge.
"To tell how the general and I got back to the bridge would
be a difficult matter; I saw the general raise his sabre,
as a thresher lifts his flail, and each time the sword fell
a man was felled. But I was soon so busy looking after
myself that I was compelled to lose sight of the general;
two or three Austrian cavalrymen made a furious set at me,
determined to take me, dead or alive. I wounded one with
the point of my sword, I cut open the head of another, but
the third dealt me a cut with his sword between the joints
of the shoulder, which made me rein in my horse so sharply
that the beast, whose mouth was very tender, reared and
fell back on top of me into a ditch. This was exactly to my
Austrian's mind: he continued to belard me with sword-cuts,
and would assuredly soon have spitted me altogether, if I
had not managed to draw a pistol out of my holsters with my
left hand. I fired at random; I did not know whether I hit
the horse or the rider, but I know the horse swung round on
his hind legs, set off at a gallop and, when about twenty or
twenty-five yards off me, he rid himself of his rider.
"As no one else engaged my attention, I turned round towards
the general; he was standing at the head of the bridge of
Clausen and holding it alone against the whole squadron;
and as the men could only get at him two or three abreast,
because of the narrowness of the bridge, he cut them down as
fast as they came on.
"I stood there astounded; I had always regarded the story
of Horatius Cocles as a fable, and here I saw the very same
thing being acted before my own eyes. In a short while,
I struggled to extricate myself from under my horse, and
succeeded in dragging myself out of the ditch, then I
shouted with all my might: 'Dragoons, to your general!'
"I was quite past defending him myself, my right arm being
nearly disjointed.
"Luckily, the general's second aide-de-camp, Lambert,
arrived just at that moment with a reinforcement of fresh
troops. He learnt what was happening from the fugitives,
whom he rallied; and together they rushed to the general's
assistance; they only just rescued him in time, as he
himself acknowledged.
"He had killed seven or eight men, and wounded twice that
number, but his strength had begun to wane.
"He had received three wounds, one in the arm, one in the
thigh, and the other on his head.
"This last had broken the iron of his headpiece; but, like
the other two wounds, it only slightly grazed the outer skin.
"The general had, besides, received seven bullets through
his cloak. His horse had been killed under him, but happily
its body acted as a barricade across the bridge, and perhaps
this circumstance had saved him, for the Austrians had begun
to rifle his valise and his holsters, and this gave him time
to catch a riderless horse and to recommence his fight.
"Thanks to Lambert's reinforcement, the general was able to
take up the offensive and to give the cavalry such a hot
chase that we never saw them again throughout the whole
campaign."
My father sent the cloak pierced with seven bullets to Joubert as a
talisman, but it did not suffice to defend him at Novi.
Dermoncourt's wound was pretty serious, and he was obliged to keep his
bed. My father left him at Brixen, and went to lend a hand to Delmas,
who, as we have said, was stationed at Bolzano to oppose Laudon.
Laudon, after having reprovisioned his army and being somewhat
recovered from our dressing down at the crossing of the Weiss, and
from his defeat at Newmark, reinforced also by the Tyrolese peasants,
had recommenced serious operations against Delmas, who was isolated at
Bolzano with a mere handful of men.
Left to his own resources, and cut off from the main army, which was
nine leagues away, Delmas sent a messenger to General Joubert, who
had rejoined my father at Brixen on the 7th Germinal. This messenger
announced that Delmas feared he might be attacked at any moment, and
felt himself too weak to be able to hold out for long.
Joubert showed the despatch to my father, who had hardly dismounted
from his horse. My father suggested he should start at once with his
cavalry, which he thought would be sufficient to extricate Delmas, and
even to settle with Laudon. Joubert accepted his offer, and my father
went, leaving Joubert the commission to recover his pistols, no matter
at what cost. It will be remembered that my father set immense store by
these pistols, which my mother had given him: they had saved his life
in the camp of la Madeleine.
He made such good progress that on the following morning he and all his
cavalry had reached Bolzano.
The cavalry--men and horses--seem to have caught some of their master's
spirit. Their confidence in him had been complete since they had seen
his hand-to-hand struggle with the enemy in previous encounters, and
they were ready to follow-him to the world's end.
As my father and his men had entered Bolzano by night, the enemy did
not know of his arrival, and fancied they had only to deal with Delmas
and the few men who were with him. The two generals therefore resolved
to take advantage of the Austrians' ignorance, and next day to assume
the offensive; so, at daybreak, they attacked the enemy just as they
were preparing to make an attack themselves.
My father held the main road with his cavalry; Delmas and his infantry
from the heights above attacked the enemy's positions one after
another, carrying them all; whilst my father proceeded to cut up the
fugitives.
It was a very hot day, and the Austrians, recognising that they were
well beaten, disappeared from the neighbourhood of Bolzano, and enabled
my father to return to Brixen.
It had taken him but three days to fulfil his mission.
It was quite time he returned, for the peasantry had risen, and had
murdered several marauders who had had the audacity to steal out of
cantonments. Kerpen had returned, owing to this revolt, and it was soon
to be a matter of dealing not only with the regular troops, but also
with the terrible Tyrolean chasseurs, whose bullets had already carried
off Marceau, and were soon to kill Joubert also.
All was soon in battle array. My father was at the head of his
indefatigable cavalry, mounted on a superb steed, the gift of Joubert.
Joubert was himself at the head of his own picked regiment of
grenadiers.
The same things happened over again. My father, encountering the enemy
upon the main road, set to work with the sabre in his usual fashion,
carrying everything before him.
I will again let Dermoncourt describe what happened:--
"It was a grand rout. General Dumas and his men slashed away
for more than two leagues.
"A great number of Austrians and Tyrolese were killed. The
very sight of the general produced on these men the effect
of an army corps; nothing could withstand the _Schwartz
Teufel._
"He was mounted on a magnificent horse which General Joubert
had just given him in place of the one he had lost a week
previously. Again he found himself a quarter of a league
ahead of his squadron, and, cutting his way through without
looking behind him, he reached a bridge, the planks of which
had already been torn up by the enemy, only the cross beams
remaining. It was impossible to proceed farther; his horse
would neither go through the river nor cross the bridge on
the narrow framework. The general drew up in a fury and
began flourishing his sword; and when the Tyroleans were
conscious that they were no longer being pursued, they
turned right about face and began a fearful fire upon this
one lonely man; three balls immediately struck down the
horse, and in its fall it dragged its rider with it, his leg
pinned under it.[1]
"The Tyrolese thought the general was killed, and rushed for
the bridge, crying:
"'Ah! The black devil is dead at last!'
"The situation was grave: with the foot that remained free
the general pushed off the dead body of his horse, to free
his other leg; and when freed he retreated to a little
hillock overlooking the road, upon which the Austrians had
hurriedly thrown up a rough intrenchment, which they had
deserted when they caught sight of the general. It is a
known custom among the Austrians to abandon or to throw down
their arms before flight; and in this improvised redoubt the
general found fifty guns all ready primed. In the general's
present situation these were of more value to him than the
richest of treasure-trove. He sheltered behind a fir-tree
and commenced his solitary fusillade.
"His first care was to pick out the men who had robbed him
of his horse; and so good a shot was he that not a single
aim was lost: the men fell upon one another in heaps; all
who ventured upon those narrow beams fell dead.
"The general's cavalry heard his firing, and as they did
not know what had become of him, they guessed he was the
cause of the shindy which was being raised a quarter of a
league off. Lambert took fifty cavalrymen with twenty-five
foot-soldiers seated behind them, and rushed up to find the
general holding fast his little redoubt.
"In an instant the bridge was carried, the Austrians and
Tyrolese were pursued into the village and a hundred of them
taken prisoners.
"Lambert told me he saw over twenty-five Austrians laid dead
round the horse they had slain, and that not a single man
had had time to cross the space between the bridge and the
slight intrenchment.
"The general returned to Brixen on an Austrian horse which
Lambert had secured him. He re-entered the room where I lay
in bed, looking so pale and exhausted that I exclaimed:
"'Oh, my God! General, are you hurt?'
"'No,' he said, 'but I have killed so many, so many!'
"And then he fainted away. I called for help, and they ran
in; the general had not even had time to reach an armchair
before he fell unconscious on the floor. This faint was
not a dangerous one, it was simply the result of excessive
fatigue; and indeed his sabre was so notched and bent it
would not go down into its sheath by quite four inches.
"With the help of a dram or two, we soon brought him round;
and a bowlful of soup that had been made for me speedily
completed the cure. He had eaten nothing since six in
the morning, and he had been fighting hard till four in
the afternoon. For, quite contrary to the habit of most
soldiers, the general always fought fasting, unless he was
surprised unawares.
"At this juncture General Joubert came in and flung himself
on the general's neck.
"'Really, my dear Dumas,' he said, 'you quite make me
tremble; each time I see you leap on your horse and gallop
off at the head of your dragoons, I say to myself, "He
surely can't avoid coming to grief at that mad pace." It
seems you have been working miracles again to-day! Mind you
take care of yourself; what the deuce should I do if you got
killed? Remember what a distance we have to go yet before we
reach Villach.'[2]
"The general was so weak he could not yet speak, but had to
be content with putting his arms round Joubert's head to
pull his face nearer his own, kissing him as one would kiss
a child.
"On the following day General Joubert asked for a sword
of honour for General Dumas, as his own was worn out with
cutting down the Austrians."
My father was not mistaken; so severe had been the lesson given to the
two Austrian generals that neither of them returned to the charge, and,
eight days later, General Delmas was easily able to rejoin the bulk of
the division stationed at Brixen.
The next day after his arrival the army moved on to Lensk. They had
received no news from Bonaparte, and they did not know what position he
occupied. However, they acted on their own judgment, and they imagined
that if they marched towards Styria they would regain the main army.
They accomplished their march without any other hindrance than was
offered by a few squadrons of dragoons belonging to the Archduke
John, which were following the main army. Every now and again Joubert
detached my father and his dragoons to deal with these gentlemen; and
then the army saw a specimen of those charges which Joubert, a man who
did not easily flinch at anything, said made him _tremble._
During one of these charges my father took an officer prisoner, and,
recognising him as a man of good family, he let him move about freely
on his parole. The Austrian, who spoke French fluently, rode one of
Dermoncourt's horses, trotting by and talking with the officers of
the staff. The day after his capture he caught sight of his regiment
following our rear-guard at about five hundred paces off, doubtless on
purpose to gain an opportunity of falling upon us. He asked my father's
permission to go just near enough to his old comrades to be able to
give them some messages for his family. My father knew he could rely
on his word, and let him know that he was perfectly free to do what
he wished. The officer set off immediately at a gallop, and quickly
covered the space between which separated him from his old comrades
before any one of our officers had even thought of questioning where he
was off to. After having conveyed his messages, he wished his comrades
good-bye and was about to return; but the officer in command of their
advance guard pointed out to him that, since he had fallen into the
hands of the Austrian soldiery, he was no longer a French prisoner, and
invited him to stay with them and to let our troops continue on their
journey.
But the officer's only reply to these insidious suggestions was: "I am
a prisoner on parole."
And, when his old comrades tried to retain him by force, he drew one of
his pistols from his holsters and declared he would blow out the brains
of the first man who laid a hand on him.
Then, wheeling round, he galloped back to the French quarters.
On approaching Dermoncourt, he said, "You did well to place such
confidence in me as to leave your pistols in your holsters, for it was
owing to them I was able to keep my faith with you."
The march continued its same uneventful course, and the two generals
were much puzzled by this inertia on the part of the Austrians, until
they learnt the successes of the grand army marching on Vienna, and
that the heads of the columns of the Army of the Rhine had reached
Lensk.
But once more the army witnessed a fight, or rather shall we call it
a Homeric contest? Our extreme rear-guard, comprised of a corporal and
four men, was caught up by the extreme van-guard of the enemy, composed
of an equal number of men under a captain. A conversation began between
the two commanding officers. The captain commenced a discourse in
French, which our corporal did not find at all to his taste, so he
pretended to take affront, and invited him, there being four seconds
on each side, to settle the quarrel on the spot. The captain, who was
a Belgian, accepted the offer. The two patrols drew up, facing one
another, and the champions fought in the space between.
It chanced that the corporal was a fencing-master while the captain was
a skilled swordsman, and a most interesting exhibition of skill began
between these ably matched rivals. Each blow given was quickly parried,
each thrust led to its riposte: after a few minutes' fighting, the
champions engaged at such close quarters that the swords clashed hilt
to hilt. Then the corporal, who was very active, threw down his sword
and seized the captain round the waist; the captain, who was obliged
to defend himself by the same form of attack, had to throw aside his
weapon also, and to maintain the struggle under the new conditions
thrust upon him. But now the corporal proved himself his rival's
superior. He lifted the captain out of his saddle, but, unseating
himself at the same time by the violence of his exertions, he lost
his balance, and they fell together; only, he fell on the top and the
captain underneath; moreover, the captain, who was already slightly
wounded, dislocated his shoulder in the fall. He could not therefore
hold out longer, and had to surrender; but, faithful to the conditions
of the fight, he commanded his troop not to stir--an order they were
quite disposed to obey, the dragoons with fixed carbines being ready to
fire. Each side withdrew, the Austrians returning minus their chief,
and the French going off with their prisoner.
We had as a matter of fact taken the superior officer of the lieutenant
who was already a prisoner; and the latter, who was on familiar terms
with all our staff, introduced his captain to my father.
My father gave him a cordial welcome, and quickly put him into the
hands of our surgeon-major.
This warm reception, and the care my father took of these two officers,
was to produce consequences which we shall see in due course.
But to return to the main events. The treaty of Léoben was already
being discussed, and an armistice had even been agreed upon, when an
Austrian dragoon officer reached our staff quarters with a safe conduct
from the headquarters of the Rhine army.
This officer was the very same who had turned tail at the farm of
Clausen, inciting my father to fight.
Our two prisoners were officers under his command, and he came to bring
them money and personal effects.
He thanked my father heartily for his great care of these two officers,
and, my father inviting him to dinner, the conversation at table turned
to that adventure on the plateau, when a whole regiment had beaten a
retreat before two men.
My father had not recognised the commandant.
"Upon my word," he said, "I only regret one thing, and that is that the
chief of the squadron who challenged me changed his mind, and did not
think fit to wait for me."
At the first mention of this subject Dermoncourt had noticed the
officer's embarrassment, and, looking at him more attentively, had
recognised him as the commandant with whom my father had had dealings.
He then thought it was about time to cut the conversation short, and
said:
"But, General, do you not recognise this gentleman?"
"Upon my word, I don't," said my father.
"He was the commandant--"
"Well?"
Dermoncourt signed to the officer as much as to say that he had better
continue the conversation himself.
The officer, understanding his meaning, replied, laughing:
"That commandant, General, was myself!"
"Really!"
"But--did you not see him?" Dermoncourt asked my father.
"The deuce, no," he replied; "I was too much beside myself with rage
that day, because I could not manage to cross swords with the person
who had incited me."
"Well! I was the man who incited you, General," said the officer. "I
meant to give you the chance of fighting, but when I saw you bearing
down on me, I remembered the style in which I had seen you _go to
work_, and my courage failed me. I wanted to tell you this yourself,
General, and that is the reason why I asked leave to bring my officers
their money and goods. I wanted to see at close quarters the man for
whom I had conceived such a great admiration that I dared tell him to
his face, 'General, I was afraid of you, and I refused the fight I had
offered you.'"
My father held out his hand.
"Upon my word, Commandant, if that is the case, pray say no more about
it. I prefer that our acquaintance should begin at this table rather
than elsewhere. Your health, Commandant."
They drank, and the conversation then turned upon other subjects.
But the topic still hovered round my father's fine feat of arms at
Clausen; the three officers had heard the story of the bridge; all
thought my father had been killed, even as was his horse, and the news
had made a profound sensation in the Austrian army.
My father then referred to the famous pistols which he so much
regretted, and which he had charged Joubert to regain from the hands of
the Austrians if it were possible; they still remained in the hands of
the enemy, in spite of that commission.
The three officers took particular note of my father's expressions
of regret, each resolving to search for these precious pistols--the
commandant directly he returned to camp, and the two others as soon as
they were free.
Thanks to my father, the two officers had not long to wait for their
liberty: they were exchanged for two French officers of a similar rank.
They took leave of the officers' quarters with many expressions of
gratitude, and one of them, at any rate, did not lose time in giving
proof of this to my father.
A week or so after their departure, an officer came under a flag of
truce to the French camp, and, asking to speak with my father, handed
him the pistols he had mourned for so long. They had been carried to
General Kerpen himself, who, upon the request of the officer whom my
father had wounded and taken prisoner, returned them to him with a
charming letter. The next day but one my father received the following
letter from this officer:--
"MONSIEUR LE GÉNÉRAL,--I hope you have received your pistols
by the officer under flag of truce, who left here the day
before yesterday; Lieutenant-General Baron de Kerpen has
sent them you. I received my cloak, for which I have to
thank you, as well as for many other kindnesses you have
shown me. Be assured, General, that my gratitude is beyond
words, and that my greatest wish is to be able to prove it.
My wounds are beginning to heal, and the fever has abated.
"We hear the strongest rumours of peace. I hope as soon as
it is concluded that I shall be able to come and greet you
before you leave these parts. Frossart,[3] who has lost
his heart to you and to General Joubert, charges me with a
thousand messages for you both.
"Believe me, Monsieur le Général, with sincerest regards,
your very obedient servant, HAT DE LEVIS, Captain.
"LIENTZ, _20th April 1797._"
And that was how my father once more got possession of the famous
pistols, the loss of which he had deplored so deeply.
I hope my reader will forgive me these details. Alas! in the rapid
movement which carries us along through the time of revolutions, our
manners change, become blurred and are forgotten, to be replaced in
their turn by other manners as variable as their predecessors. The
French Revolution stamped a peculiar seal upon our army; when I come
across it I treasure up the impression as one would that of a precious
medal fast being obliterated by rust; anxious to make its worth known
to one's contemporaries, and to hand down its characteristics to
posterity.
And, moreover, we shall misjudge all these men of the Republic if we
judge them only by those who survived the Republic and lived on into
the period of the Empire. The Empire was an epoch of rude pressure, and
the Emperor Napoleon was a rough coiner of new metal. He wanted all
money to be stamped with his own image, and all bronze to be smelted
in his own furnace; even as he himself had, in some measure, set an
example in the transformation of his own character. No one resembled
First Consul Bonaparte less than the Emperor Napoleon, the conqueror of
Arcole less than the conquered of Waterloo.
Thus the men we must look to to form our ideas of Republican manners
are those who by a premature death escaped the birth of the Empire:
such men as Marceau, Hoche, Desaix, Kléber, and my father.
Born with the Republic, these men died with her: they knew no change,
not even in the cut of the clothes beneath which beat their loyal,
brave Republican hearts.
My father, Hoche, and Marceau were all once gathered round the same
table: all of them were commanders-in-chief; my father, who was but
thirty-one, was the oldest among them. The other two were twenty-four
and twenty-six years of age. Their united ages only came to eighty-one.
What a promising future seemed before them! But a bullet killed one of
them, and the other two were poisoned.
[Footnote 1: The painter Lethiers painted a picture of my father,
representing this scene.]
[Footnote 2: Bonaparte's headquarters and rendezvous.]
[Footnote 3: A Belgian officer.]