countryside, which favoured our movements; Augereau's second
division, making a diversionary attack, advanced from Jena via
Muhlthal on the road to Weimar. As the enemy believed that this
was the only way by which we could come from Jena, they had
placed a considerable force there; but while they prepared to
conduct a vigourous defence of this pass, Napoleon, bringing down
from the Landgrafenberg the troops which he had accumulated there
during the night, drew them up in battle order on the plain. A
light breeze having dispersed the mist, which was followed by
brilliant sunshine, the Prussians were stupefied to see the lines
of the French army deployed opposite them and advancing to engage
them in battle. They could not understand how we had got there
when they thought we were down in the valley of Jena, with no
other means of reaching them but the road to Wiemar, which they
were guarding so thoroughly.
The battle began immediately and the first lines of the Prussians
and Saxons, commanded by Prince Hohenlohe, were forced to
retreat. They advanced their reserves, but we received a
powerful reinforcement. Marshal Ney's corps and Murat's cavalry
which had been held up in the pass, burst out into the plain and
took part in the action. However a Prussian army corps commanded
by General Ruchel stopped our columns for a time; but charged by
French cavalry it was almost entirely wiped out and General
Ruchel was killed.
Marshal Augereau's 1st division, coming down from the
Landgrafenberg, joined with the 2nd, arriving from Muhlthal, and
with the troops of Marshals Lannes and Soult, they proceeded down
the road to Wiemar, capturing enemy positions as they went.
The Prussian infantry, whose poor composition I have already
described, fought very badly, and the cavalry not much better.
One saw them on several occasions advance, with loud shouts,
towards our battalions; but, intimidated by their calm bearing,
they never dared charge home; at a distance of fifty paces from
our line they shamefully turned about, amid a hail of bullets and
the jeers of our men.
The Saxons fought with courage; they resisted Marshal Augereau's
corps for a long time, and it was not until after the retreat of
the Prussian troops that, having formed themselves into two large
squares, they began to withdraw while continuing to fire. Marshal
Augereau admired the courage of the Saxons, and to prevent
further loss of life, he had just sent an envoy to persuade them
to surrender, since they had no longer any hope of relief, when
Prince Murat arrived with his cavalry and mounted an attack with
his Cuirassiers and dragoons, who charging impetuously the Saxon
squares, overwhelmed them and forced them to lay down their arms.
The next day, however, the Emperor set them at liberty and
restored them to their sovereign, with whom he hastened to make
peace.
All the Prussian troops who had fought before Jena, retreated in
a complete rout along the road to Weimar, at whose gates the
fugitives, their baggage and artillery had piled up, when
suddenly the squadrons of the French cavalry appeared! At the
sight of them, panic spread through the crowd of Prussians, who
fled in utter disorder, leaving us with a great number of
prisoners, flags, guns and baggage.
The town of Weimar, called by some the new Athens, was inhabited
at this period by a great number of scholars, artists and
distinguished authors, who had gathered there under the patronage
of the ruling duke, an enlightened protector of the arts and
sciences. The noise of guns, the passage of the fugitives and
the entry of the victors caused a great stir in this peaceful and
studious population; but Marshals Lannes and Soult maintained a
firm discipline, and apart from having to provide food for the
soldiers, the town suffered no outrage. The Prince of Weimar
served in the Prussian army, nevertheless his palace, where the
princess, his wife, was living, was respected and none of the
marshals took up residence there.
Marshal Augereau's headquarters were established at the town
gates, in the house of the prince's head gardener. All the
inhabitants of the house having taken flight, the general staff
found nothing to eat, and had to sup on some pineapples and plums
from the hot-houses. This was a very light diet for people who,
without food for twenty-four hours, had spent the preceding night
on foot and all day fighting! But we were the victors, and that
magical word enabled us to support all our privations.
The Emperor went back to sleep at Jena, where he learned of a
success no less great than that which he had just achieved
himself. The battle of Jena was a double battle, if one may use
the expression, for neither the French nor the Prussian armies
were united at Jena, they were each divided into two parts and
fought two different battles: so that while the Emperor, at the
head of the corps of Augereau, Lannes, Soult and Ney, his guard
and the cavalry of Murat, was defeating the corps of Prince
Hohenlohe and General Ruchel. The King of Prussia, at the head of
his main army, commanded by the celebrated Prince of Brunswick,
Marshals Mollendorf and Kalkreuth had left Weimar, and on their
way to Naumburg had settled for the night at the village of
Auerstadt, not far from the French corps of Davout and
Bernadotte, who were in the villages around Naumburg. In order to
rejoin the Emperor, who was at Apolda, in the plain beyond Jena,
Davout and Bernadotte had to cross the Saale before Naumburg and
traverse the narrow hilly pass of Kosen. Although Davout thought
that the King of Prussia with the main body of his army was
facing the Emperor, and not so close to him at Auerstadt, this
vigilant warrior secured, during the night, the Kosen pass and
its steep slopes which the King of Prussia and his marshals had
neglected to occupy, thus making the same mistake as Prince
Hohenlohe made at Jena in failing to guard the Landgrafenberg.
The combined forces of Bernadotte and Davout did not amount to
more than forty-four thousand men, while the King of Prussia had
eighty thousand at Auerstadt.
From daybreak on the 14th, the two French marshals realised that
they had to face much superior numbers; it was their duty then to
act in unison. Davout, aware of this necessity, volunteered to
put himself under the command of Bernadotte, but the latter
jibbed at the idea of a shared victory, and unwilling to
subordinate his personal interests to the welfare of his country,
he decided to act on his own; and on the pretext that the Emperor
had ordered him to be at Dornburg on the 13th, he decided to make
his way there on the 14th, although Napoleon had written to him
during the night to say that, if he was still in Naumburg, he
should stay there and support Davout. Not finding the situation
to his liking, Bernadotte left Davout to defend himself as best
he could and, going down the Saale, he settled himself at
Dornburg where, although he came across no enemies, he could see
from the elevated position which he occupied, the desperate
battle being fought by the gallant Davout some two leagues away.
Meanwhile he ordered his men to set up their bivouacs and to
start preparing a meal. His generals complained to him in vain at
this culpable inaction; Bernadotte would not budge, so that
Marshal Davout, with no more than twenty-five thousand men,
comprising the divisions of Friant, Morland and Gudin, faced
almost eighty thousand Prussians animated by the presence of
their king.
The French, after emerging from the narrow pass of Kosen, formed
up near the village of Hassenhausen; it was here that the real
battle took place, because the Emperor was mistaken when he
thought that he had before him at Jena the king and the bulk of
the Prussian army. The action fought by Davout's men was one of
the most terrible in our annals. His divisions, having
successfully resisted all the attacks of the enemy infantry,
formed into squares and repelled numerous cavalry charges, and
not content with this, they advanced with such resolution that
the Prussians fell back at every point leaving the ground strewn
with dead and wounded. The Prince of Brunswick and General
Schmettau were killed, Marshal Mollendorf was seriously wounded
and taken prisoner.
The King of Prussia and his troops at first carried out their
retreat towards Weimar in reasonably good order, hoping to rally
there behind the forces of Prince Hohenlohe and General Ruchel,
whom they supposed to have been victorious, while the latter,
having been defeated by Napoleon, were for their part, on their
way to seek support from the troops led by the king. Those two
enormous masses of soldiers, beaten and demoralised, met on the
road to Erfurt; it needed only the appearance of some French
regiments to throw them into utter confusion. The rout was total,
and was a just punishment for the bragging of the Prussian
officers. The results of this victory were incalculable, and made
us masters of almost all Prussia.
The Emperor showed his great satisfaction with Marshal Davout and
with the divisions of Morand, Friant and Gudin by an order of the
day, which was read out to all companies and even in the
ambulances carrying the wounded. The following year Napoleon
created Davout Duke of Auerstadt, although he had fought less
there than in the village of Hassenhausen; but the King of
Prussia had had his headquarters at Auerstadt, and the Prussians
had given this name to the battle which the French called the
battle of Jena.
The army expected to see Bernadotte severely punished, but he got
away with a sharp reprimand; Napoleon was afraid of upsetting his
brother Joseph, whose sister-in-law, Mlle. Clary, Bernadotte had
just married. We shall see later how Bernadotte's behaviour
during the battle of Auerstadt served, in a way, as a first step
towards mounting the throne of Sweden.
I was not wounded at Jena, but I was tricked in a way that still
rankles after forty years. At a time when Augereau's corps was
attacking the Saxons, the marshal sent me to carry a message to
General Durosnel, who commanded a brigade of Chasseurs, ordering
him to charge the enemy cavalry. It was my job to guide the
brigade along a route which I had already reconnoitred. I hurried
away and put myself at the head of our Chasseurs, who threw
themselves on the Saxon squadrons. The Saxons put up a stiff
resistance and there was a general melee, but eventually our
adversaries were forced to retreat with losses. Towards the end
of the fighting, I found myself facing an officer of Hussars,
wearing the white uniform of Prince Albert of Saxony's regiment.
I held the point of my sabre against him and called on him to
surrender, which he did, handing me his sword. As the fighting
was over, I generously gave it back to him, as was the usual
practice among officers in these circumstances, and I added that
although his horse, under the conventions of war, belonged to me,
I did not wish to deprive him of it. He gave me many thanks for
this kind treatment and followed me as I returned to the marshal,
very pleased with myself for bringing back a prisoner. But when
we were about five hundred paces from the Chasseurs, this
confounded Saxon officer, who was on my left, drew his sabre,
wounded my horse on the shoulder and was about to strike me if I
had not thrown myself on him. Although I had no sabre in my hand,
our bodies were so close that he did not have room to swing his
sabre at me, so he grabbed my epaulet, and pulled me off balance,
my saddle slipped under my horse's belly and there I was with one
leg in the air and my head hanging down, while the Saxon made off
at full speed to rejoin the remains of the enemy army. I was
furious, partly at the position I was in, and partly at the
ingratitude with which this foreigner had repaid my courtesy. So
when the Saxon army had been made prisoners, I went to look for
my Hussar officer, to teach him a lesson, but he had disappeared.
I have said that the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, our new ally, had
joined his troops to the Emperor's. This brigade had uniforms
exactly like those of the Prussians, so several of their soldiers
were killed or wounded mistakenly during the action. The young
Lieutenant De Stoch, my friend, was on the point of meeting the
same fate, and had already been seized by our Hussars, when,
having seen me, he called out to me and I had him released.
The Emperor rewarded most generously the priest of Jena, and the
elector of Saxony, having become king as a result of the
victories of his ally Napoleon, rewarded him also; so that he
lived very comfortably until 1814 when he took refuge in France
to escape from the vengeance of the Prussians. They, however, had
him taken up and shut away in a fortress where he spent two or
three years. Eventually, the King of Saxony having interceded on
his behalf with Louis XVIII, the latter reclaimed the priest on
the grounds that he had been arrested without proper authority,
and the Prussians having released him, he came to live in Paris.
After the victory at Jena, the Emperor ordered a general pursuit
of our enemies, and our columns took an enormous number of
prisoners.
The King of Prussia had great difficulty in reaching Magdeburg
and getting from there to Berlin, and it was said that the queen
nearly fell into the hands of the scouts of our advance-guard.
It would take too long to detail all the disasters which befell
the Prussian army; it is enough to say that of those troops who
marched to attack the French, not a battalion escaped; they were
all captured before the end of the month. The fortresses of
Torgau, Erfurt and Wittemburg opened their gates to the victors
who, having crossed the Elbe at several points--Augereau's corps
crossing near Dessau--headed for Berlin.
Napoleon stopped at Potsdam, where he visited the tomb of
Frederick the Great; then he went to Berlin where, contrary to
his usual practice, he wished to make a triumphal entry. Marshal
Davout's corps headed the procession; an honour to which it was
entitled as it had done more fighting than the others. Then came
Augereau's corps and then the guard.
Chap. 31.
On my return to Berlin which, when I had left it not long ago,
had been so brilliant, I could not help having some sad
reflections. The populace, then so self-confident, was now
gloomy, downcast, and much afflicted, for the Prussians are very
patriotic: they felt humiliated by the defeat of their army and
the occupation of their country by the French; besides which
almost every family had to mourn a relative or friend killed or
captured in battle. I had every sympathy with their feelings; but
I must confess that I experienced quite a different sentiment
when I saw, entering Berlin as prisoners of war, walking sadly,
dismounted and disarmed, the regiment of the so-called Noble
Gendarmes; those same arrogant young officers who had so
insolently come to sharpen their sabres on the steps of the
French embassy!....Nothing could depict their shame and abasement
at finding themselves defeated by those same Frenchmen whom they
had boasted they would put to flight by their mere presence. They
had asked that they might go round Berlin without entering it, to
avoid the painful experience of filing as prisoners through the
town where they were so well known and where the inhabitants had
witnessed their bragging; but this is precisely why the Emperor
ordered them to pass between two lines of French soldiers, who
directed them down the road in which stood the French embassy.
The inhabitants of Berlin did not disapprove of this little act
of revenge, since they greatly disliked the Noble Gendarmes whom
they accused of having pushed the king into the war.
Marshal Augereau was billeted outside the town, in the chateau of
Bellevue, which belonged to Prince Ferdinand, the only one of
Frederick the Great's brothers who was still living. This
venerable old man, the father of Prince Louis who was recently
killed at Saalefeld, was afflicted by grief made even more bitter
by the fact that, against the opinion of all the court and also
that of the son whom he mourned, he had strongly opposed the war,
and had predicted the misfortunes which it would bring upon
Prussia. Marshal Augereau thought it his duty to visit the
prince, who had withdrawn to a dwelling in the town. He was
received most politely; the unhappy father told the marshal that
he had learned that his young son, Prince Auguste, the only one
left to him, was at the town gate in a column of prisoners, and
that he longed to embrace him before he was sent off to France.
Since Prince Ferdinand's great age prevented him from going to
look for his son, the marshal, sure that Napoleon would not
object, told me to mount my horse right away, to go and find
Prince Auguste, and to bring him back. Which I did.
The arrival of the young prince gave rise to the most moving
scene. His elderly parents could not stop embracing this son, who
recalled to them the loss of the other. To console them as much
as lay within his power, the good marshal went to the Emperor's
quarters and came back with authority for the young prince to
remain, on parole, in the bosom of his family. A favour for which
Prince Ferdinand was infinitely grateful.
The victory at Jena had had the most profound effect. Complete
demoralisation had gripped not only the troops in the field, but
the garrisons of the fortresses. Magdeburg surrendered without
making any attempt at resistance; Spandau did the same; Stettin
opened its gates to a division of cavalry, and the governor of
Custrin sent boats across the Oder to fetch the French troops;
who without this help would not have been able to take the place
without several months of siege. Every day one heard of the
surrender of some unit of the army or the capitulation of some
fortress. The faulty organisation of the Prussian army became
more evident than ever; the foreigners, in particular those who
had been enlisted against their will, took the occasion to
recover their liberty, and deserted in droves, or stayed behind
to give themselves up to the French.
To the conquest of the Prussians, Napoleon added the confiscation
of the states of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, whose duplicity had
earned him this punishment. This prince, who had been requested
some time before the war to declare himself a supporter of either
France or Prussia, lulled both parties with promises, with the
intention of coming down on the side of the victor. An avaricious
sovereign, the Elector had amassed a great fortune by selling his
own people to the English, who used them to fight against the
Americans in the War of Independence, in which many of them
perished. Careless of his people's welfare, he had offered to
join his troops to the French force on condition that the Emperor
would cede to him the French American states. So no one was very
sorry for the Elector, whose precipitous departure occasioned an
event which is still not generally known.
Compelled to leave Hesse in a hurry, to take refuge in England,
the Elector, who was regarded as one of the richest people in
Europe, was unable to take with him all his wealth. So he sent
for a Jew from Frankfurt by the name of Rothschild, a small-time
banker and not well known, but respected for the scrupulous
devotion with which he practised his religion: and it was this
that decided the Elector to confide to his care some fifteen
million in specie. The interest earned on this money was to
belong to the banker, who was obliged to return only the capital.
When the palace of Cassel was occupied by our troops, agents of
the French treasury seized a considerable quantity of valuables,
mainly pictures, but did not find any money. It seemed
impossible, however, that the Elector, in his hurried flight, had
been able to take with him all his immense fortune. Now, as
according to what are called the laws of war, the monies found in
an enemy country belong to the victor, one wished to find out
what had become of the treasure of Cassel. Information gathered
on the subject disclosed that, before his departure, the Elector
had spent a whole day with the Jew Rothschild. An imperial
commission went to the latter's house, where his account books
and his strong-boxes were minutely examined; but in vain, for no
trace could be found of a deposit made by the Elector. Threats
and intimidation produced no result, so the commission, convinced
that no material interest would persuade a man so religious to
perjure himself, wished to put him on oath. This he refused to
accept. His arrest was considered but the Emperor was opposed to
this act of violence because he thought it would be useless.
Resort was then had to less honourable methods; it was proposed
to the banker that he might retain half of the treasure if he
would deliver the other half to the French administration; they
would then give him a receipt for the full amount, accompanied by
an order of seizure, proving that he had given way only to force
and was thus shielded from any claim for restitution; but the
upright Jew rejected this suggestion, and, tired of the struggle,
they left him alone.
So the fifteen million remained in the hands of Rothschild from
1806 to the fall of the empire in 1814. Then, when the Elector
had returned to his state, the Frankfurt banker handed over to
him the exact sum which he had deposited. You may imagine how
much interest might be earned by the sum of fifteen millions left
in the hands of a Jewish Frankfurt banker for a period of eight
years! It is from this time that dates the opulence of the House
of the Brothers Rothschild, who owe to the probity of their
founder the high financial standing which they enjoy today.
The Emperor, who was staying in the palace in Berlin, every day
passed in revue the troops who arrived in succession in the town,
to march from there to the Oder in pursuit of the enemy. It was
while he was in Berlin that he performed a well known act of
magnanimity in pardoning, for the Princess of Hatzfeld, her
husband, who had used his position as burgomaster of Berlin to
give the Prussian generals information about the movement of
French troops; an act of espionage punishable by death. The
generosity displayed by the Emperor on this occasion had a very
good effect on the feelings of the Prussians.
During our stay in Berlin, I was pleasantly surprised by the
arrival of my brother Adolphe, who, on learning of the fresh
outbreak of hostilities on the continent of Europe had asked for
and obtained from General Decaen, who commanded the French troops
in India, permission to return to France, where he joined the
Grande Armee. He was offered a position by General Lefebvre, but,
mistakenly, in my opinion, he chose to serve as a supernumerary
on the staff of Marshal Augereau, of which I was a member, a move
which did neither of us any good.
I had also in Berlin another unexpected encounter. I was walking
one evening with some friends along the Boulevard de Tilleuls,
when I saw coming towards me a group of sous-officiers of the 1st
Hussars. One of them broke away and ran to fall on my neck. It
was my former tutor, the elder Pertelay who, with tears of joy
cried "Te voil…, mon petit!" The officers with whom I was, were
at first astonished to see a sergeant-major so familiar with an
officer; but their surprise vanished when I told them of my
former relations with this old soldier, who, putting his arm
round me, said to his companions, "It is I who made him what you
now see before you!" And the good fellow was really convinced
that I owed my present position to his teaching. So at dinner,
which I stood him the next day, he overwhelmed me with
inconsequential advice, which he believed to be very sensible and
just the thing to perfect my military education. We shall meet
this type of old Hussar again in Spain.
Napoleon, who was still in Berlin, was told of the surrender of
the Prince Hohenlohe who, with sixteen thousand men, had laid
down his arms at Prenzlow before the troops of Marshal Lannes and
the cavalry of Murat. There was no other enemy corps in the field
except that of General Blucher. This general, hard pressed by the
divisions of Marshals Soult and Bernadotte, violated the
neutrality of Lubeck, where he sought refuge; but the French
pursued him, and Blucher, one of the most ardent supporters of
the war against Napoleon, was forced to give himself up as a
prisoner together with the sixteen thousand men under his
command.