but it was too late; the essential object now was to get out of
the situation with the least harm possible. With this aim in
view, I kept out of the way of the Emperor as long as he was on
horseback, in case he went back to the bivouac of the Chasseurs,
where their shortage of numbers striking him anew would give the
lie to my report. I craftily did not return to the imperial
quarters until night was approaching and Napoleon, having
dismounted had gone to his apartment. Brought before him in order
to make my report, I found him lying at full length on an immense
map which was spread on the floor. As soon as he saw me, he
called out "Well now! Marbot, how many Chasseurs are there in my
guard? Are there twelve hundred as Morland claims?" "No sire" I
replied."I counted only eleven hundred and twenty, that is a
shortfall of eighty." "I was sure that there was a lot missing."
said the Emperor, in a tone of voice which made it plain that he
had expected a much larger deficit; and to be sure if there were
no more than eighty men missing from a regiment of twelve hundred
which had just come five hundred leagues in winter, sleeping
almost every night in bivouac, that was a very small loss. So
when, on going to dinner, the Emperor passed through the room
where the senior officers of the guard were gathered, all he said
to Morland was, "Now you see...you are short of eighty troopers;
that is almost a squadron. With eighty of these men one could
stop a Russian regiment! You must take care to see that men do
not drop behind." Then, passing to the commander of the foot
guards, whose numbers were also much reduced, Napoleon gave him a
sharp reprimand. Morland, who thought himself lucky to have got
away with no more than a few observations, came over to me, as
soon as the Emperor was seated at table, and thanked me warmly.
He told me that some thirty troopers had just arrived, and that a
courier from Vienna had met more than a hundred between Znaim and
Brunn, and many more this side of Hollabrunn, which meant that
within forty-eight hours the regiment would have made up most of
its deficiency. I wished for this as fervently as he did, for I
was well aware of the difficult spot I had landed myself in out
of my consideration for Fournier. I could not sleep that night
for fear of the justifiable wrath of the Emperor, if he found out
that I had lied to him.
I was even more dismayed the next day when Napoleon, in the
course of his usual visit to his troops, started off in the
direction of the Chasseur's bivouac, for a simple question put to
an officer could expose everything; but just when I thought that
I was done for, I heard the sound of the band of the Russian
force, camped on the high ground of the Pratzen half a league
from our position. I urged my horse forward towards the head of
the numerous staff by whom the Emperor was accompanied, and
getting as close to him as possible, I said in a loud voice, "I
am sure there is something going on in the Russian camp, their
band is playing a march".... The Emperor, who heard my remark,
suddenly left the path which led to the Chasseur's bivouac, and
headed towards Pratzen to see what was happening in the enemy
advance-guard. He stayed a long time watching, and as night was
approaching, he went back to Brunn without visiting the
Chasseurs. For several days I was in a mortal panic, although I
learned of the arrival of successive detachments of men, but at
last the coming battle and the many preoccupations of the Emperor
drove from his mind the idea of making the check which I so much
feared. But I had learned my lesson; so when I became a colonel
and was asked by the Emperor how many men were present in the
squadrons of my regiment, I always gave the exact number.
Chap. 26.
If Napoleon was often deceived, he also used deception himself to
further his projects, as can be shown by the tale of this
diplomatic-military comedy, in which I played a part.
In order to understand this affair, which will give you the key
to the intrigues which, the following year, gave rise to the war
between Napoleon and the King of Prussia, we have to go back two
months to the time when the French troops, having left the coast,
were proceeding by rapid marches to the Danube. The shortest
route which the first corps, commanded by Bernadotte, could take
to reach Hanover, on the upper Danube, lay through Anspach. This
little country belonged to Prussia, but as it was quite a long
way from there, from which it was separated by a number of minor
principalities, it had always been regarded in previous wars as
being neutral territory, through which either party could pass,
provided that they paid for any goods they required and refrained
from any hostile action.
Things having been established on this footing, Austrian and
French armies had often passed through the Margravate of Anspach,
since the time of the Directory, without informing Prussia and
without the latter raising any objection. Napoleon then, taking
advantage of this convention, ordered Bernadotte to go through
Anspach, which he did. However, the Queen of Prussia and her
court, who detested Napoleon, on hearing of this, raised an
outcry, claiming that Prussian territory had been violated, and
took advantage of this event to rouse the nation and call loudly
for war. The King of Prussia and his minister, Count Haugwitz,
alone resisted the general clamour for action. This was in
October 1805, when hostilities were about to break out between
France and Austria, and the Russian armies were on their way to
reinforce the latter. The queen and the young Prince Louis, the
king's nephew, in an attempt to persuade the king to make common
cause with the Austrians and Russians, arranged for the Emperor
Alexander to come to Berlin, in the hope that his presence would
influence Frederick-William.
Alexander arrived in the capital of Prussia on the 25th October.
He was greeted with enthusiasm by the queen, Prince Louis and the
supporters of war against France. The king, besieged on all
sides, allowed himself to be persuaded, but only on the
condition--advised by the old Prince of Brunswick, and Count
Haugwitz--that his army should not be committed to a campaign
until the outcome of the conflict between the French and the
Austrians on the Danube had been determined. This partial
adherence to their cause pleased neither Alexander nor the queen,
but for the time being they could obtain nothing more explicit. A
melodramatic scene was played out at Potsdam, where the Emperor
of Russia and the King of Prussia, having descended, by the light
of torches, into the sepulchral vaults of the palace, swore, in
the presence of the court, eternal friendship, on the tomb of
Frederick the Great; (an oath which did not prevent Alexander
from incorporating into the Russian Empire, eighteen months
later, one of the Prussian provinces, which Napoleon awarded him
under the treaty of Tilsit, and this in the presence of his
friend Frederick-William.) The Russian Emperor now went back to
Moravia, to place himself at the head of his army, for Napoleon
was advancing rapidly towards Vienna, which he shortly occupied.
When he heard of the King of Prussia's reluctance and the compact
made at Potsdam, Napoleon, in order to deal with the Russians
before the Prussians had made up their minds, installed himself
for the encounter with the former in Brunn, where we now were.
It is said, quite rightly, that ambassadors are privileged spies.
The King of Prussia, who heard daily of fresh victories won by
Napoleon, was anxious to find out what the true position was
between the warring parties; so he decided to send Count
Haugwitz, his minister, to the French headquarters, with
instructions to assess the situation. Now it was necessary to
find an excuse for doing this, so he entrusted Count Haugwitz
with a reply to a letter which Napoleon had sent to him,
complaining about the agreement concluded between the Prussians
and the Russians at Potsdam. Count Haugwitz arrived at Brunn some
days before the Battle of Austerlitz, and would dearly have liked
to stay there until he knew the result of the major engagement
which was in prospect, in order to advise his sovereign to do
nothing if we were victorious, or to attack us if we should be
defeated. You do not have to be a soldier to see from a map what
damage a Prussian army, coming from Breslau in Silesia, could do
by going through Bohemia to fall on our rear around Regansberg.
As Napoleon knew that Count Haugwitz sent a courier every evening
to Berlin, he decided that it would be by this means that he
would inform the Prussians of the defeat of Field-marshal
Jellachich's army corps, news of which had not yet reached them.
This is how it was done.
Marshal of the Palace Duroc, after telling us what we were to do,
had all the Austrian flags which we had brought from Bregenz
secretly replaced in the lodgings which Massy and I occupied;
then, some hours later, when the Emperor was in conversation with
Count Haugwitz in his study, we re-enacted the ceremony of the
handover of the flags in exactly the same way as it had been done
on the first occasion. The Emperor hearing the band playing in
the courtyard, feigned astonishment, and went to the windows
followed by the ambassador. Seeing the flags carried by the
N.C.O.s. he called for the duty aide-de-camp and asked him what
was going on. The aide-de-camp having told him that we were two
of Marshal Augereau's aides who had come to hand over to him the
flags of Jellachich's Austrian corps captured at Bregenz, we were
led inside; there Napoleon, without blinking an eyelid, and as if
he had never seen us before, took the letter from Augereau,which
had been re-sealed, and read it, although he had been aware of
its contents for four days. Then he questioned us, making us go
into the smallest details. Duroc had warned us to speak out
loudly, as the ambassador was a little hard of hearing, this
advice was of no use to Major Massy, who was the leader of the
mission, since he was suffering from a cold and had almost
completely lost his voice, so it was I who replied to the
Emperor, and taking a lead from him, I painted in the most vivid
colours the defeat of the Austrians, their despondency, and the
enthusiasm of the French. Then, presenting the trophies one
after the other, I named the Austrian regiments to which they had
once belonged. I laid particular stress on two of them, because I
knew that their capture would have a powerful effect on the
ambassador, "Here," I said "is the flag of the infantry regiment
of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, and there is the standard
of the Uhlans, commanded by the Archduke Charles, his brother."
Napoleon's eyes twinkled, and he seemed to say, "Well done young
man!" At last he dismissed us, and as we left we heard him say to
the ambassador, "You see, monsieur le Comte, my armies are
everywhere triumphant.... The Austrian army is no more, and soon
the same fate will befall the Russians." Count Haugwitz seemed
deeply impressed, and Duroc said to us, after we had left the
room, "The count will write tonight to Berlin, to tell his
government of the destruction of Jellachich's force, which will
put a damper on the war party, and give the king new reasons for
holding off. Which is what the Emperor very much wants."
This comedy having been played out, The Emperor, to be rid of a
dangerous onlooker who could give an account of the disposition
of his forces, suggested to Count Haugwitz that it was not very
safe for him to remain between two armies which were about to
come to blows, and persuaded him to go to Vienna to M. Tallyrand,
his minister for foreign affairs, which he did that same evening.
The following day the Emperor said nothing to us about the scene
which had been enacted the previous evening, but wishing, no
doubt, to give some sign of his satisfaction with the manner in
which we had played our parts, he asked Major Massy, kindly,
about the progress of his cold, and he pinched my ear, which with
him was a sort of caress.
Now the denouement of the great drama was approaching and both
sides were preparing for the coming struggle. Nearly all military
authors so overload their narrative with details that they
confuse the mind of the reader, to the extent that, in most of
the published works on the wars of the Empire which I have read,
I have been unable to understand the description of several of
the battles in which I myself have taken part, and the various
phases of which I know. I think that to preserve clarity in the
description of an action, one needs to limit oneself to
indicating the respective positions of the two armies, prior to
the engagement, and to recounting only the principal and decisive
events in the combat. This is what I shall attempt to do.
The coming battle is known as the Battle of Austerlitz, although
it took place some distance from the village of that name: the
reason for this is that, on the eve of the battle, the Emperors
of Austria and Russia had slept in the Chateau of Austerlitz, out
of which Napoleon drove them.
You will see on the map that a stream, the Goldbach, which rises
on the far side of the road to Olmutz, flows into a pool called
Menitz. This stream, which runs in a little valley with quite
steep banks, separated the two armies. The right of the
Austro-Russian forces lay on a wooded escarpment, situated behind
the post-house of Posoritz, on the far side of the Olmutz road;
their centre occupied Pratzen and the vast plateau of that name,
and their left was near the meres of Satschan and the
neighbouring marshes. The Emperor placed his left flank on a
little hill, very difficult of access, which our men who had been
in Egypt called the Santon (a holy man's grave) because it was
surmounted by a small chapel, the roof of which had the
appearance of a minaret. The French centre was near the pool of
Kobolnitz, and the right was at Telnitz. The Emperor had put very
few troops there in order to tempt the Russians into the marshy
ground, where he had prepared their defeat by concealing in
Gross-Raigern, on the road to Vienna, the corps of Marshal
Davout.
On the 1st December, the eve of the battle, Napoleon left Brunn
in the morning and spent all day examining the positions; in the
evening he set up his headquarters behind the French centre, at a
spot from where could be seen the camps of both armies and the
area which would form their battlefield the next day. There was
no building in the vicinity but a dilapidated barn, and it was
there that were placed the Emperor's tables and maps, while he
himself took up a position by a huge fire, surrounded by his
numerous staff and his guards. Happily there was no snow,
although it was very cold. I bedded down on the ground and fell
into a deep sleep; but soon we had to remount our horses to
accompany the Emperor, who was about to visit his troops. There
was no moon, and the obscurity of the night was increased by a
thick mist which made progress difficult. The troopers of the
Emperor's escort had the idea of lighting torches made of
pinewood and straw which were most useful. The soldiers, seeing
the approach of a group of mounted men thus illuminated, could
easily distinguish the imperial staff, and in an instant, as if
by magic, one saw all our camp lit up by torches carried by the
men who greeted the Emperor with cheer, made all the louder
because the next day would be the anniversary of his coronation,
a coincidence which seemed to them to be a good augury. The enemy
must have been greatly astonished when, from the height of the
neighbouring slope, they saw in the middle of the night, the
light of sixty thousand torches and heard the repeated cheers of
"Vive l'Empereur!" mingled with the sound of the regimental
bands. All was gaiety, light and movement in our camp, while, on
the Austro-Russian side, all was dark and silent.
The next day, the 2nd December, the cannons were heard at
daybreak. We have seen that the Emperor had deployed few troops
on his right wing; a bait which he dangled before the enemy, who
would see the apparent possibility of taking Telnitz easily, and
then crossing the Goldbach and going on to Gross-Raigern in order
to control the road from Brunn to Vienna and so cut off our line
of retreat. The Austro-Russians fell headlong into the trap, and,
thinning out the rest of their line, they clumsily piled up a
considerable force in the lower part of Telnitz, and in the
narrow, marshy defiles around the meres of Satschan and Menitz.
They thought, for some unknown reason, that Napoleon was
considering withdrawing, without facing a battle, so to hasten
this move they decided to attack us at the Santon on our left and
at our centre before Puntowitz, so that, being defeated at these
two points, and forced to retreat, we would find the road to
Vienna cut by the Russian troops. But on our left Marshal Lannes
not only repelled all the enemy attacks on the Santon, but drove
them back across the Olmutz road as far as Blasiowitz, where the
more level ground allowed Murat's cavalry to make several very
effective charges, which compelled the Russians to retire
hurriedly to the village of Austerlitz.
While our left was achieving this brilliant success, the centre,
consisting of the troops of Marshals Soult and Bernadotte, who
had been placed by the Emperor in the valley of the Goldbach
where they were hidden by a thick mist, advanced towards the
slope on which stood the village of Pratzen. It was at this
moment that the bright "Sunshine of Austerlitz" appeared, the
memory of which Napoleon was pleased so frequently to recall.
Marshal Soult took not only the village of Pratzen but also the
great plateau of that name, which is the high point of the
surrounding country, and, in consequence, the key to the
battlefield. Here took place, before the eyes of the Emperor, a
very sharp engagement in which the Russians were defeated; but a
battalion of the 4th Line regiment, commanded by Prince Joseph,
Napoleon's brother, went too far in pursuit of the enemy and was
charged and over-run by the horse-guards and Cuirassiers of the
Grand-duke Constantin, the brother of Alexander, who captured
their Eagle. A force of Russian cavalry advanced rapidly to
support the momentary success of the horse-guards; but Napoleon
sent against them the Mamelukes, the light cavalry and the
mounted Grenadiers of his guard, led by Marshal Bessieres and
General Rapp, and a most sanguinary melee ensued. The Russian
squadrons were overcome and driven back beyond the village of
Austerlitz with great losses. Our cavalry captured many standards
and prisoners, among whom was Prince Repnin, the commander of the
horse-guards. This regiment, made up of the most glittering youth
of the Russian nobility, suffered many casualties. The boastful
threats which they had made concerning the French were known to
our men, who in reply said that they would give the ladies of St.
Petersburg something to cry about.
The painter Gerard, in his picture of the Battle of Austerlitz,
has taken as his subject the moment when General Rapp, leaving
the battle, wounded and covered in his own and the enemies'
blood, is presenting to the Emperor the flags which have been
captured as well as Prince Repnin, his prisoner. I was present at
this memorable scene, which the painter has reproduced with
remarkable exactness. All the heads are portraits, even that of
the brave trooper, who without complaining, though shot through
the body, fell dead at the feet of the Emperor as he presented
the standard which he had just captured. Napoleon, to honour the
memory of this brave Chasseur, ordered the painter to include him
in his composition. One can see also in this picture a Mameluke,
who carries in one hand an enemy flag, and with the other holds
the bridle of his wounded horse. This man, named Mustapha, known
in the guards for his courage and ferocity, had set off, during
the charge, in pursuit of the Grand-duke Constantin, who was only
able to get rid of him by firing a pistol shot which mortally
wounded his horse. Mustapha, grieved at having only a standard to
offer the Emperor, said in his broken French, when he presented
it, "Ah! If me catch Prince Constantin, me cut off head and bring
to Emperor!" Napoleon replied indignantly, "You be quiet! You
wicked savage!"
Let us now finish the story of the battle. While Marshals Lannes,
Soult and Murat attacked the centre and right of the
Austro-Russians and drove them back beyond the village of
Austerlitz, the enemy left, having fallen into the trap which the
Emperor had prepared for them, attacked the village of Telnitz
and took possession of it, then, crossing the Goldbach, they
prepared to occupy the road to Vienna; but they had greatly
underestimated the skill of Napoleon in thinking that he would
neglect to defend his route of retreat in case of misfortune.
Marshal Davout's divisions were concealed in Gross-Regairn and
from that point he fell on the Russians as soon as he saw that
their massed troops were held up in the defiles between the meres
of Telnitz, Menitz and the rivulet.
The Emperor, whom we left on the plateau of Pratzen, free of the
right and centre of the enemy, who were retreating in disorder
beyond Austerlitz, came down from the heights of Pratzen and
hurried with Marshal Soult's corps and all his guard, infantry,
cavalry and artillery, towards Telnitz; where he attacked in the
rear the enemy columns which Marshal Davout was attacking in
front. From this moment, the cumbersome masses of the
Austro-Russians, crammed together on the narrow pathways which
ran alongside the Goldbach, finding themselves between two fires,
fell into indescribable confusion. The ranks broke down and each
man sought his own safety in flight. Some rushed into the marshes
around the meres, but our infantry followed them; others tried to
escape down the road which runs between the two meres, but our
cavalry charged them with fearful slaughter; the largest body of
men, principally Russians, tried to get across the frozen meres,
and already a great number were on the ice of Lake Satschan when
Napoleon ordered his gunners to fire on them. The ice broke in
many places with a loud cracking sound and we saw a host of
Russians with their horses wagons and guns slide slowly into the
depths. The surface of the lake was covered with men and horses
struggling amid the ice and water. A few were saved, helped by
poles and ropes which our men held out to them from the bank, but
many were drowned.
The number of combatants at the Emperor's disposal in this battle
was sixty-eight thousand men. The Austro-Russians had ninety-two
thousand. Our losses in killed and wounded were about eight
thousand, the enemy stated that their losses in killed wounded
and drowned amounted to fourteen thousand. We took eighteen
thousand prisoners and captured one hundred and fifty cannons, as
well as a great number of flags, standards, etc.
After giving orders to pursue the enemy in all directions, the
Emperor went to his new headquarters in the post-house at
Posoritz, on the Olmutz road. He was highly delighted as you may
imagine, although he several times expressed regret that the only
Eagle we had lost was that of the fourth line regiment, of which
his brother, Prince Joseph, was colonel. The fact that this had
been captured by the regiment of the Grand-duke Constantin, the
Emperor of Russia's brother, made the loss even more annoying.
Napoleon soon had a great consolation; Prince Jean of
Lichtenstein came, on behalf of the Emperor of Austria, to
request a meeting, and Napoleon, realising that this would lead
to peace and remove the fear of having the Prussians attack the
French rear before he had rid himself of his present enemies,
readily agreed to the proposal.