rapidly, and all the sovereign heads of Europe feared the
introduction of these new principles into their states, and were
suspicious of everything French. Augereau has often assured me
that during his stay in Portugal he never said or did anything
which could alarm the government, nevertheless, he was arrested
and incarcerated in the prison of the Inquisition.
He had been languishing there for several months, when Madame
Augereau, his wife, a woman of courage, saw come into the harbour
a ship flying the tricolour. She went on board to give the
captain a letter, informing the French government of the
arbitrary arrest of her husband. The captain, although not a
naval officer, went boldly to the Portuguese ministry and
demanded the release of his compatriot; failing which, he said
that he would declare war in the name of France. Whether the
Portuguese believed this, or whether they realised that they had
acted unjustly, they set Augereau free, and he and his wife went
back to Havre in the ship of the gallant captain.
On his arrival in Paris, Augereau was designated captain, and was
sent to the Vendee, where by his advice and example he saved the
army of the incompetent General Ronsin, which gained him the rank
of battalion commander. Sick of fighting his fellow Frenchmen,
Augereau asked to be posted to the Pyrenees, and was sent to the
camp at Toulouse commanded by my father, who, recognising his
ability, made him adjutant-general, (That is colonel of the
general staff), and showed him many marks of affection, something
which Augereau never forgot. Having become general, he
distinguished himself in the wars in Spain and Italy, and in
particular, at Castiglione.
On the eve of this battle, the French army, beset on all sides,
found itself in a most critical position, and the
commander-in-chief, Bonaparte, called a council of war; the only
one he ever consulted. All the generals, even Massena, proposed
a retreat, but Augereau, having explained what, in his opinion,
could be done to get out of the situation, said, "Even if you all
go, I shall stay here and will attack the enemy, with my
division, at dawn." Bonaparte, impressed by the arguments which
Augereau had put forward, then said that he would stay with him.
After which there was no more talk of retreat, and the next day a
brilliant victory, due in large part to the courage and tactical
skill of Augereau, established, for a long time, the position of
the French army in Italy. Bonaparte was always mindful of this
day, and when, as Emperor, he created a new nobility, he named
Augereau Duc de Castiglione.
When General Hoche died, Augereau replaced him in the army of the
Rhine. After the establishment of the consulate, he was put in
charge of an army composed of French and Dutch troops which
fought the campaign of 1800 in Franconia, and won the battle of
Burg-Eberach.
When peace had been declared, he bought the estate and chateau of
La Houssaye. I may say, in regard to this purchase, that there
has been much exaggeration of the fortunes of some generals of
the army of Italy. Augereau, after having held for twenty years
the rank of commander-in-chief, or of marshal, and having enjoyed
for seven years a salary of two hundred thousand francs, and an
award of twenty-five thousand francs, due to his Legion of
Honour, left at his death an income of no more than forty-eight
thousand francs.
There was never a man more generous, unselfish and obliging. I
could give a number of examples, but will limit myself to two.
General Bonaparte, after his elevation to the consulate, created
a large unit of Guards, the infantry portion of which was placed
under the command of General Lannes. Lannes was a distinguished
soldier, but had no understanding of administration. Instead of
conforming to the tariff laid down for the purchase of clothing,
fabrics and other items, nothing was too good for him; so that
the suppliers of clothing and equipment to the guards, delighted
to be able to deal by mutual agreement with the manufacturers,
(in order to get back-handers,) and believing that their
malversations would be covered by the name of General Lannes, the
friend of the First Consul, made uniforms in such luxurious style
that when the accounts were drawn up, they exceeded by three
hundred thousand francs the sum allowed by the ministerial
regulations. The First Consul, who had resolved to restore order
to the finances, and to compel commanders not to go beyond the
permitted expenditure, decided to make an example. In spite of
his affection for Lannes, and his certainty that not a centime
had gone into his pocket, he held him responsible for the deficit
of three hundred thousand francs, and gave him no more than eight
days to pay this sum into the Guard's account, or face
court-martial.
This uncompromising ruling had an excellent effect in putting an
end to the extravagance which had got into unit accounting, but
General Lannes, although he had recently married the daughter of
a senator, had no hope of making this payment. When General
Augereau heard of the fix in which his friend found himself, he
went to his lawyer, drew out the sum required, and instructed his
secretary to pay it into the Guard's account, in the name of
General Lannes. When the First Consul heard of this, he warmly
approved of what Augereau had done, and to put Lannes in a
position to pay him back, he had him sent to Lisbon as
ambassador, a very lucrative post.
Here is another example of Augereau's generosity. He was not a
close friend of General Bernadotte, who had bought the estate of
Lagrange, for which he expected to pay with his wife's dowry; but
there was some delay in the transfer of this money, and his
creditors were pressing him, so he asked Augereau to lend him two
hundred thousand francs for five years. Augereau having agreed to
this, Madame Bernadotte took it on herself to ask what rate of
interest he would expect. He replied that although bankers and
businessmen required interest on money which they lent, when a
marshal was in the happy position of being able to help a
comrade, he should not expect any reward but the pleasure of
being of service. That is the man whom some have represented as
being hard and avaricious. At this moment, I shall say nothing
more about the life of Augereau, which will unroll itself in the
course of my story, which will show up his faults as well as his
fine qualities.
Chap. 21.
Let us now go back to Bayonne, where I had just joined Augereau's
staff. The winter, in this part of the country, is very mild;
which allowed us to train and exercise troops in preparation for
an attack on the Portuguese. However, the court of Lisbon having
conceded all that the French government required, we gave up the
idea of crossing the Pyrenees, and General Augereau was ordered
to go to Brest and take command of the 7th army corps, which was
earmarked for an invasion of Ireland.
General Augereau's first wife, the Greek, being in Pau, he wished
to visit her and take his leave of her, and he took with him
three aides-de-camp, of which I was one.
Normally, a commander-in-chief had a squadron of "Guides", a
detachment of which always escorted his carriage, as long as he
was in a part of the country occupied by troops under his
command. Bayonne did not yet have any "Guides," so they were
replaced by a platoon of cavalry at each of the post-houses
between Bayonne and Pau. These came from the regiment which I had
just left, the 25th Chasseurs; so that from the carriage in which
I was taking my ease, beside the Commander in Chief, I could see
my former companions trotting beside the door. I did not take any
pride in this, but I must admit that when we came to Puyoo, where
you saw me arrive two years previously on foot, bedraggled and
in the hands of the gendarmerie, I was weak enough to put on an
air, and to make myself known to the worthy mayor, Bordenave,
whom I presented to the commander-in-chief to whom I had told the
story of what had happened to me in this commune in 1801; and as
the brigade of gendarmes from Pyrehorade had joined the escort to
Pau, I was able to recognise the two who had arrested me. The
old mayor was sufficiently malicious to inform them that the
officer whom they saw in the commander-in-chief's fine carriage
was the same traveller whom they had taken for a deserter,
although his papers were in order, and the good fellow was, at
the same time, very proud of the judgement he had given on this
occasion.
After a stay of twenty-four hours at Pau, we returned to Bayonne,
from where the general despatched me and Mainville to Brest, in
order to prepare his headquarters. We took seats in the
mail-coach as far as Bordeaux; but there, owing to the lack of
public transport, we were forced to take to the hacks of the
posting houses, which of all means of travelling, is surely the
most uncomfortable. It rained. The roads were appalling. The
nights pitch dark; but in spite of this, we had to press on at
the gallop, as our mission was urgent. Although I have never
been a very good horseman, the fact that I was accustomed to
riding, and a year spent in the riding school at Versailles, gave
me enough assurance and stamina to drive on the dreadful screws
which we were forced to mount. I got well enough through this
apprenticeship in the trade of courier, in which, you will see
later, I had to perfect myself; but it was not so with Mainville,
so we took two days and two nights to reach Nantes, where he
arrived bruised and worn out and incapable of continuing to ride
at speed. However we could not leave the commander-in-chief
without lodgings when he arrived at Brest, so it was agreed that
I would go on ahead, and that Mainville would follow later by
coach.
On my arrival, I rented the town house of M. Pasquier, the
banker, brother of the Pasquier who had been chancellor and
president of the house of peers. Mainville and several of my
comrades came to join me a few days later, and helped to make the
necessary arrangements for the commander-in-chief to maintain the
sort of state expected of him.
We began the year 1804 at Brest. The 7th Corps was made up of two
divisions of infantry and a brigade of cavalry; as these troops
were not encamped but were billeted in the neighbouring communes,
all the generals and their staffs stayed in Brest, where the
anchorages and the harbour were packed with vessels of all sorts.
The admirals and senior officers of the fleet were also in the
town, and other officers came there every day, so that Brest
afforded a most animated spectacle. Admiral Truguet and the
commander-in-chief held a number of brilliant receptions, scenes
that have often been the prelude to war.
In February General Augereau left for Paris, to where the First
Consul had summoned him to discuss with him the plan for the
invasion of Ireland. I went with him.
On our arrival in Paris, we found a very tense political
situation. The Bourbons, who had hoped that in taking the reins
of government, Bonaparte would support them, and would be
prepared to play the part that General Monk had once played in
England, when they discovered that he had no intention of
restoring them to the throne, resolved to overthrow him. To this
end they concocted a conspiracy which had as its leaders three
well known men, although of very different character. These were
General Pichegru, General Moreau and Georges Cadoudal.
Pichegru had taught Bonaparte mathematics at the college of
Brienne, but he had left there to join the army. The revolution
found him a sergeant in the artillery. His talent and courage
raised him rapidly to the rank of general. It was he who achieved
the conquest of Holland, in the middle of winter, but ambition
was his downfall. He allowed himself to be seduced by agents of
the Prince de Conde, and entered into correspondence with the
Prince, who promised him great rewards and the title of
"Constable" if he would use the influence which he had with the
troops to establish Louis XVIII on the throne of his forefathers.
Chance, that great arbiter of human destiny, decreed that
following a battle in which French troops, commanded by Moreau,
had defeated the division of the Austrian General Kinglin, the
latter's supply wagon was captured, which contained letters from
Pichegru to the Prince de Conde. It was taken to Moreau, who was
a friend of Pichegru, to whom he owed some of his promotion, and
who concealed his discovery as long as Pichegru retained his
influence; but Pichegru having become a representative of the
people in the house of elders, where he continued to favour the
Bourbons, was arrested with several of his colleagues. Whereupon
Moreau hurriedly sent to the directorate the documents which
incriminated Pichegru, and led to his deportation to the wilds of
Guyana.
Pichegru contrived to escape from Guyana to America, from whence
he went to England; where having no longer any need for secrecy,
he put himself openly in the pay of Louis XVIII and aimed at the
overthrow of the consular government. However, he could not
pretend that, deprived of his rank, banished and absent from
France for more than six years, he could any longer wield as much
influence over the army as General Moreau, the victor of
Hohenlinden, and on this account, very popular with the troops,
of whom he was the inspector-general. Pichegru, then, out of
devotion to the Bourbon cause, agreed to forget the reasons he
had for disliking Moreau, and to unite with him for the triumph
of the policy to which he was committed. Moreau, who was born in
Brittany, was studying law at Rennes when the revolution of 1789
broke out. The students, young and turbulent, elected him as
their leader, and when they formed a battalion of volunteers,
they named Moreau as their commander. Having made his debut in
the profession of arms as a senior officer, he proved himself
both courageous and competent, and was rapidly promoted to
general and army commander. He won several battles, and
conducted, in the face of Prince Charles of Austria, a justly
celebrated retreat. But though a good soldier, Moreau lacked
civic courage. We have seen him refuse to put himself at the head
of the government, while Bonaparte was absent in Egypt, however,
though he had helped the latter on the 18th Brumaire, he became
envious of his power when he saw him raised to the position of
First Consul, to the extent that he sought by all means to
supplant him; driven on, it is said, by the jealousy felt by his
wife and mother-in-law towards Josephine. Given this situation,
it would not be difficult to persuade Moreau to conspire with
Pichegru to overthrow the government.
A Breton, named Lajolais, an agent of Louis XVIII, and a friend
of Moreau, became the intermediary between him and Pichegru; he
travelled frequently between London and Paris, and it soon became
evident to him that Moreau, while agreeing to the overthrow of
Bonaparte, intended to keep power for himself, and not to hand it
to the Bourbons. It was then thought that a meeting between him
and Pichegru might lead him to change his mind, so Pichegru was
landed on the coast of France from an English vessel at a spot
near Trepot, and went to Paris, to where Georges Cadoudal had
preceded him, along with M. de Riviere, the two Polignacs, and
other royalists.
Georges Cadoudal was the youngest son of a miller from Morbihan;
but as there was a bizarre custom, in that part of lower
Brittany, whereby the last-born of a family inherited all the
estate, Georges, whose father was comfortably off, had been given
a certain amount of education. He was a short man, with wide
shoulders and the heart of a tiger, whose audacity and courage
had raised him to the high command of all the groups of "Chouans"
in Brittany.
Since the pacification of Brittany he had lived in London; but
his fanatical devotion to the house of Bourbon did not allow him
any repose as long as the First Consul was at the head of the
government. He formed a plan to kill him. Not by a clandestine
assassination, but in broad daylight, by attacking him on the
road to Saint-Cloud with a party of thirty or forty mounted
"Chouans" well armed and wearing the uniform of the consular
guard. This plan had the more chance of success, since, at this
time, Bonaparte's escort was usually no more than four
cavalrymen.
A meeting was arranged between Pichegru and Moreau; it took place
at night, near the Church of La Madeleine, which was then being
built. Moreau agreed to the deposition, and even the death of the
First Consul, but he refused to consider the restoration of the
Bourbons.
Bonaparte's secret police having warned him that there was
underground plotting going on in Paris, he ordered the arrest of
a number of former "Chouans" who were in the city. One of these
gave some information which seriously compromised General Moreau,
whose arrest was then agreed upon by the council of ministers.
This arrest initially created a very bad impression amongst the
general public, because Cadoudal and Pichegru not having been
arrested, no one believed they were in France, and it was said
that Bonaparte had invented the conspiracy in order to get rid of
Moreau. The government then had the strongest reasons to prove
that Cadoudal and Pichegru were in Paris, and that they had met
Moreau. All the barriers were closed for several days, and the
most drastic punishment was decreed for anyone sheltering the
conspirators. From that moment it became very difficult for them
to find any place of safety, and soon Pichegru, M. de Riviere and
the Polignacs fell into the hands of the police. These arrests
began to convince the public of the reality of the conspiracy,
and the capture of Georges Cadoudal dispelled any remaining
doubts.
Cadoudal having stated in his interrogation that he had come with
the intention of killing the First Consul, and that the
conspiracy was backed by a prince of the royal family, the police
started an investigation to discover the location of all the
princes of the house of Bourbon. They found that the Prince
D'Enghien, the grandson of the great Conde, had been living for
some time at Ettenheim, a little town situated some leagues from
the Rhine, in the country of Baden. It has never been proved that
the Duc D'Enghien was involved in the conspiracy, but he
certainly had, on several occasions, been imprudent enough to
enter French territory. However that may be, the First Consul
sent, secretly, and by night, a detachment of troops led by
General Ordener, to the town of Ettenhiem, where they seized the
Duc D'Enghien. He was taken immediately to Vincennes, where he
was tried, condemned, and shot before the public was aware of his
arrest.
This execution was greeted with general disapproval. It was held
that had the prince been captured on French territory, he could
have been tried under a law which in this case carried the death
penalty, but that to go and seize him beyond the frontiers, in a
foreign land, was a gross infringement of human rights.
It appeared, however, that the First Consul had not intended the
execution of the prince, and had wished only to frighten the
royalists who were conspiring against him; but that General
Savary, the head of the gendarmerie, who had gone to Vincennes,
took custody of the prince after sentence had been pronounced and
in an excess of zeal, had him shot, in order, he said, to save
the First Consul the trouble of ordering his death, or of sparing
the life of so dangerous an enemy. Savary has since denied that
he expressed such sentiments, but I have been assured by people
who heard him that he did. Bonaparte is known to have blamed
Savary for his hastiness, but the deed having been done, he had
to accept the consequences.
General Pichegru, ashamed to be associated with assassins, and
that the conqueror of Holland should stand in the dock with
criminals, hanged himself in prison by his cravat. It has been
claimed that he was strangled by Mamelukes of the Guard, but this
is a fabrication. Bonaparte had no incentive to commit such a
crime. It was more in his interest to have Pichegru disgraced
before a public tribunal than to have him killed in secret.
Georges Cadoudal, condemned to death, along with several
accomplices, was executed. The brothers Polignac, and M. de
Riviere, who received the same sentence, had it commuted to life
imprisonment. They were locked up in Vincennes, but after several
years they obtained permission to live on parole in a nursing
home. However, in 1814, on the approach of the allies, they left
and went to join the Comte d'Artois in Franche-comte; then in
1815 they were most savage in their pursuit of the Bonapartists.
As for General Moreau, he was sentenced to two years detention.
The First Consul pardoned him on condition that he went to the
United States. He lived there in obscurity until 1813, when he
went to Europe to range himself among the enemies of his country,
and died fighting against the French; thus confirming all the
accusations which were made against him at the time of Pichegru's
conspiracy.
The French nation, weary of revolutions, and recognising the
extent to which Bonaparte was needed for the maintenance of good
order, chose to forget what was odious in the affair of the Duc
d'Enghien, and raised Bonaparte to the throne, by declaring him
Emperor on May 25th, 1804.
Almost all nations recognised the new sovereign of France. To
mark the occasion, eighteen generals, selected from the most
notable, were elevated to the dignity of Marshals of the Empire.
Chap. 22.
After the trial of Moreau, we returned to Brest, from where we
shortly came back to Paris, as the marshal had to assist in the
distribution of the decoration of the Legion d'Honneur, an award
which the Emperor had recently instituted for the recognition of
all sorts of meritorious actions. In this connection I recall an
anecdote which was widely circulated at the time. In order to
bestow the award on all these soldiers who had distinguished
themselves in the Republican armies, the Emperor took into
consideration all those who had been given Armes d'Honneur, and
he selected a great number of these for the Legion d'Honneur,
although several of them had returned to civilian life. M. de
Narbonne, a returned emigre, was living quietly in Paris in the
Rue de Miromesnil, in the house next to my mother's, when, on the
day that the medals were distributed, he discovered that his
footman, a former soldier in Egypt, had just been decorated.
Being about to dine, he sent for the footman and said to him, "It
is not right that a recipient of the Legion d'Honneur should hand
round plates; and it would be even less right that you should put
aside your decoration to serve at table. Sit down with me and we
shall dine together, and tomorrow you shall go to my country
estate where you shall be a game-keeper. An occupation which is
not incompatible with wearing your decoration."
When the Emperor was told of this display of good taste, he sent
for M. de Narbonne, whom he had wanted to meet for a long time,
having heard so much about his wit and intelligence, and was so
pleased with him that he made him an aide-de-camp.
After distributing the crosses in Paris, the Emperor went, for
the same purpose, to the camp at Boulogne, where the troops were
drawn up in a semi-circle facing the sea. The ceremony was
imposing. The Emperor appeared for the first time on a throne,
surrounded by his marshals. The enthusiasm was indescribable! The
English fleet who could see what was going on, sent several light
vessels in an attempt to disrupt the event by a cannonade, but
our coastal batteries briskly returned their fire.