shop and enrolled in the 1st battalion of volunteers from Var.
His practical and theoretical knowledge of military matters
earned him the rank of captain, and shortly after, that of major.
Fighting soon broke out, and the courage and skill displayed by
Massena elevated him rapidly to the ranks of colonel and
brigadier-general. He was put in command of a camp called "the
camp of a thousand pitchforks," in part of which was the 4th
artillery company, commanded by Captain Napoleon Bonaparte, under
whose orders he would serve later in Italy. Entrusted with the
command of a column at the siege of Toulon, he distinguished
himself by the capture of the forts Lartigues and
Sainte-Catherine, which led to his promotion to divisional
general. After the town had fallen, he joined his troops to the
army of Italy where he was prominent in all the engagements which
took place in the area between the shores of the Mediterranean
and Piedmont; country which he knew so well. Intelligent,
ceaselessly active, and of boundless courage, Massena, after some
years of success, had already a high reputation, when a grave
mistake nearly brought his career to an end.
At the beginning of the campaign of 1796, General Bonaparte had
just become commander-in-chief of the army, which placed Massena,
once his senior in rank, under his command. Massena, who always
led the advance-guard, having defeated near Cairo (Cairo in
Piedmont, not Cairo in Egypt. Ed.) an Austrian unit, learned that
the enemy officers had planned a celebratory dinner in the inn of
a nearby village which they had been forced to abandon. He
conceived the notion, together with some brother officers, of
taking advantage of this windfall, and left his division camped
on the top of a fairly high mountain.
However the Austrians recovered their nerve, and charging back,
they fell on the French camp at daybreak. Our soldiers, although
taken by surprise, defended themselves bravely, but with no
general in control, they were driven back to the edge of the
plateau where they had spent the night, and, attacked by greatly
superior forces, looked certain to suffer a major defeat when
Massena, having with his sabre cut his way through the Austrian
scouts, ran up a path which he knew of old and appeared in front
of his troops who, in their indignation, received him with
well-deserved cat-calls. The general, without taking too much
notice, resumed command and proceeded to march his division to
rejoin the main body of the army. It was then seen that a
battalion placed the night before on an isolated hillock could
not come down by any practicable route without coming under
enfilading fire from the enemy. Massena scrambled quickly up the
hillside on his hands and knees and went alone to the battalion
where he addressed the men and assured them that he would get
then out of this fix if they would follow his example. Ordering
them to sheathe their bayonets, he sat on the snow at the edge of
slope, and pushing himself by his hands, he slid to the bottom of
the valley....All our soldiers, in fits of laughter, did the
same, and in no time the whole battalion was gathered together,
out of the range of the baffled Austrians. This method of
descent, used by the peasants and mountain guides of Switzerland,
had surely never before been used by a battalion of troops of the
line. I have been assured by generals who were in Massena's
division at the time that this incident actually occurred, and,
nine years later, I was at the chateau of La Houssaye, when
Marshal Augereau entertained the Emperor and all the marshals and
I heard them joking with Massena about the new method of retreat
which he had used on this occasion.
It seems that on the day that Massena was making use of this odd
expedient, which he had often used in the days when he was a
smuggler, Bonaparte, realising that he was very young to be
appointed commander-in-chief, and feeling on that account that he
should come down hard on any officer who failed in his duty,
ordered Massena to be brought before a court-martial and accused
of abandoning his post, which could result in a sentence of death
or at the least cashiering!... But at the moment when the general
was about to be arrested there began the famous battle of
Montenotte, in which Massena's and Augereau's divisions took two
thousand prisoners, four flags and five artillery pieces, and
completely routed the Austrian army. After this triumph, to which
Massena had largely contributed, there could not be any question
of putting him on trial. His misdeeds were forgotten, and he was
able to continue his splendid career.
Massena distinguished himself at Lodi, Milan, Verona, and Arcoli,
in fact everywhere that he was in action, and in particular at
the battle of Rivoli. When the preliminaries of a peace had been
signed at Leoben, Massena who had contributed so much to our
victories, was entrusted with the task of taking the draft treaty
to the government. Paris welcomed him with the most lively
expressions of admiration, wherever he went people crowded round
him to gaze on the features of this famous warrior. But this
triumph was soon eclipsed by his exaggerated love of money, which
was always his principal weakness.
General Duphot, the French ambassador in Rome, had been
assassinated in that city. A part of the army of Italy, under the
command of Berthier was ordered to go and exact vengeance; but
Berthier was recalled by Bonaparte who wanted to take him to
Egypt, and his place as commander of the army in Rome was taken
by Massena. Soon after the arrival of this general, who was
already accused of procuring a great deal of money during the
Italian campaigns of the previous year, the army complained that
it was in a state of destitution, without clothing and almost
without bread, while the administration, drawing millions from
the Papal states, lived in luxury and abundance. The army turned
against him and sent a deputation of one hundred officers to
demand from Massena an account for the expenditure of this money.
Whether he was unable to account for it or whether he refused to
do so as a matter of discipline Massena would not give any
explanation, and as the troops persisted in their demand, he was
forced to leave Rome and give up his command.
As soon as he had returned to France, he put out a memorandum
justifying his conduct, which was badly received by the public
and by his colleagues to whom he had addressed it. What upset him
most was that General Bonaparte left for Egypt without replying
to a letter which he had written to him concerning the matter.
However, a new coalition of Russia, Austria, and England having
declared war on France, hostilities recommenced. In such
circumstances, Massena, although he had not cleared himself from
the accusations brought against him, could not remain in
obscurity; so the Directory, in order to make use of his military
talents, hurriedly gave him command of the French army whose duty
it was to defend Switzerland. Massena at first did very well; but
having rashly attacked the dangerous defile of Feldkirch, in the
Vorarlberg, he was driven off with losses by the Austrians.
This was a time when our army of the Rhine, commanded by Jourdan,
had just been defeated at Stockach by Prince Charles of Austria,
and the forces which we had in Italy, defeated at Novi by the
Russians under Souvarow, had lost their commander-in-chief,
Joubert, killed on the field of battle. The Austrians, ready to
cross the Rhine, threatened Alsace and Lorraine; Italy was in the
hands of the Russians, whom Souvarow was leading into Switzerland
through the Saint-Gothard pass. France, on the point of being
invaded over both its frontiers, at the Rhine and at the Alps,
pinned all its hopes on Massena, and was not disappointed in her
expectations.
As you already know, the Directory, impatient for action,
threatened Massena with dismissal unless he engaged the enemy;
but he was determined not to do so until circumstances gave him a
superiority, however brief, over his opponent. At last this
moment arrived. The maladroit General Korsakoff, a former
favourite of Catherine II, had unwisely pushed on towards Zurich
at the head of 50,000 Russians and Bavarians to await his
commander-in-chief, Souvarow, who was on his way from Italy with
55,000 men. Before the arrival of Souvarow, Massena pounced like
a lion on Korsakoff, surprising him in his camp at Zurich and
driving him back to the Rhine after inflicting tremendous losses!
Then, turning on Souvarow, whom the heroic resistance of General
Molitor had held up for three days in the Saint-Gothard, he
defeated him as he had defeated his lieutenant, Korsakoff.
As a result of these various engagements 30,000 of the enemy were
killed or taken prisoner, fifteen flags and sixty guns were
captured, the independence of Switzerland was secured, and France
was delivered from an imminent invasion. This was Massena's
finest (and cleanest) hour.
I have already told how Massena took charge of the disorganised
army of Italy, which, after the death of General Championnet, had
been briefly commanded by my father, and described his conduct of
the defence of Genoa, which gave Napoleon the time to collect a
force together, cross the Alps, and fight the battle of Marengo.
After this victory the First Consul, on his return to France,
thought he could not commit the command of the army of Italy to a
more illustrious officer than Massena; but in a few months there
were complaints similar to those made by the army in Rome. The
dissatisfaction was widespread, new taxes were levied and
frequent requisitions made on a variety of pretexts, and yet the
troops were unpaid! The First Consul, when he learned of this
state of affairs, immediately and without explanation withdrew
the command of the army from Massena, who returned to private
life, where he showed his annoyance by refusing to vote in favour
of Napoleon's life-consulship. He also did not present himself at
the new court.
When Bonaparte mounted the imperial throne and rewarded the
generals who had done most for the country, he included Massena
in the first list of marshals, awarded him the grand cordon of
the Legion of Honour, and created him head of the fourteenth
cohort of the order, which he had just established. These
dignities and the enormous emoluments which were attached to them
overcame the resistance put up by Massena since he was deprived
of the command of the army of Italy. He voted for the empire,
went to the Tuileries and assisted at the coronation ceremony.
When a third coalition menaced France, in 1805, the Emperor gave
Messena the task of defending, with forty thousand men, the
northern part of Ital, against the attacks of the Archduke
Charles of Austria, who had eighty thousand. This was a difficult
operation; but not only did Massena hold Lombardy, but he pushed
the enemy back beyond the Tagliamento, and by forcing Prince
Charles to turn and face him at frequent intervals, he so delayed
the Austrian general's progress that he was unable to arrive in
time to save Vienna, nor to join the Russian army which Napoleon
defeated at Austerlitz. Napoleon, however, did not seem to
appreciate the services rendered by Massena on this campaign; he
reproached him for not having acted with his usual vigour, which
did not prevent him, after the treaty of Presberg, from
instructing him to go and conquer the kingdom of Naples, on whose
throne he wished to place his brother, Prince Joseph.
Within a month the French occupied the whole of the country
except the fortified town of Gaete, which Massena took after a
siege. But while he was directing the attack against this town,
he suffered a loss which rendered him inconsolable. An enormous
sum, which Massena claimed belonged to him, was confiscated by
the Emperor!
Napoleon, who believed that the best way of forcing the English
to ask for peace was to ruin their trade, to prevent their goods
from entering the continent, ordered them to be seized and burned
in all the countries under his control, that is to say more than
half of Europe. But the desire for money is very powerful and
business men are very crafty. A fool-proof system of smuggling
had been devised. English merchants who were in the scheme, sent
off a ship or ships full of merchandise which allowed themselves
to be captured by one of our corsairs, who would then take it to
one of the ports occupied by our troops, from Swedish Pomerania
to the end of the kingdom of Naples. This first act having been
carried out, it remained to get the goods ashore without
confiscation, this had already been arranged. The immensely long
coastline presented by the conquered countries could not be
watched in its entirety by customs officers, so this function was
carried out by soldiers under the command of the generals who
were in charge of the kingdom or province occupied by our troops.
So it required only an authorisation from one of them to permit
the goods to be landed, after which the traders negotiated with
the "protector." This was called a "licence."
The origin of this new form of commerce goes back to the days
when Bernadotte was occupying Hamburg and a part of Denmark. He
made a considerable amount of money in this way, and when he
wanted to reward someone, he would give the person a licence,
which could then be sold to a merchant. This practice spread,
little by little, to all the coasts of Germany, Spain and mainly
to Italy. It even got as far as the Emperor's court, where ladies
and chamberlains were given licences by ministers. Napoleon was
not told of this, but he knew, or suspected, that it went on.
Nevertheless, in order not to interfere too drastically with the
usages of the conquered countries, he tolerated this abuse
outside France as long as it was carried on clandestinely, but if
he discovered that someone had made immoderate profits from the
illicit trade, he made them cough up. For example, when the
Emperor heard that M. Michaux, the administrative head of
Bernadotte's army, had lost, in one evening, 300,000 francs, in a
Paris gaming house, he directed an aide-de-camp to write to him
saying that the Invalides was in need of money, and that he was
ordered to pay 300,000 francs into their account; which Michaux,
who had made so much money from licences, hastened to do.
As you may imagine, Massena was not the last to engage in the
business of selling licences. Together with General Solignac, his
chief of staff, he flooded all the ports of Naples with them.
When the Emperor was informed that Massena had deposited the sum
of three million with a banker at Leghorn, who had taken at the
same time 600,000 from General Solignac, he had a request sent to
Massena for a loan of one million, and one for 200,000 francs
from his chief of staff. Just one third of their illegal gains,
which was not fleecing them too greatly. However, at the sight of
this demand, Massena, bellowing as if he were being
disembowelled, replied to Napoleon that as the poorest of the
marshals, with a numerous family and crippling debts, he
profoundly regretted that he could not send him anything! And
general replied in similar terms.
They were congratulating themselves on having evaded these
requests when, during the siege of Gaeta, the son of the Leghorn
banker arrived to say that a French treasury inspector, escorted
by a commissioner of police and a number of gendarmes, had
arrived at his father's establishment and had demanded to see the
accounts in which were recorded the deposits made by the marshal
and general Solignac, stating that these sums belonged to the
army, and had been entrusted to the two officers concerned, and
that the Emperor demanded their immediate return, either in cash
or negotiable bonds, and the cancellation of the receipts given
to Massena and Solignac. A legal endorsement was given to this
seizure which the banker, having nothing to lose, did not oppose.
It is impossible to describe Massena's fury on finding that he
had been deprived of his fortune. It made him quite ill, but he
did not dare to make any complaint when the Emperor, who was then
in Poland, sent for him.
After the peace of Tilsit, the title of Duke of Rivoli and an
award of 300,000 francs of income were a recompense for his
services, but did not console him for what had been taken from
him at Leghorn, for, in spite of his usual caution, he was heard
to say on a number of occasions "I think it cruel that, while I
was fighting in his interest, he had the gall to take the small
savings I had banked at Leghorn!"
The invasion of Spain having sparked off a new war with Austria,
the Emperor, threatened by these considerable forces, hurried
back from the peninsula to go to Germany, to where he had already
sent Massena. I have already described the part played by the
marshal in the campaign of 1809. As a reward for his conduct at
Essling and Wagram, the Emperor created him Prince of Essling and
gave him an additional income of 500,000 francs, which was added
to his previous award of 300,000 francs and his salary of 200,000
as marshal and army commander. The new prince had no more than
that.
The campaigns of 1810 and 1811 in Spain and Portugal were
Massena's last. They were not very happy; his morale had gone
down and the two campaigns, instead of adding to his fame,
lowered his reputation. The "Enfant cheri de la victoire," as he
had been named, suffered reverses where he could and should have
been successful.
Massena was thin and bony, and of less than average height. His
Italian features were full of expression. The bad sides to his
character were hypocrisy, spite, harshness, and avarice. He had
plenty of natural intelligence but his adventurous youth and the
lowly position of his family had not encouraged him to study; he
was totally lacking in what one calls education. In the heyday of
his career he had a keen eye and a decisive mind and was not
dismayed by a reverse. As he aged his caution began to verge on
timidity, so anxious was he not to besmirch the reputation he had
acquired. He hated reading, so he had no idea of what had been
written on the principles of warfare, he acted intuitively, and
Napoleon summed him up accurately when he said the Massena
arrived on the battlefield without knowing what he was going to
do, his actions were determined by circumstances.
It has been wrongly said that Massena was a stranger to flattery,
and spoke his mind fearlessly even to the Emperor. Beneath his
rough exterior Massena was a shrewd courtier. When in the course
of a pheasant shoot, Napoleon had the misfortune to pepper
Massena, injuring one of his eyes, Massena laid the blame on
Berthier, although only Napoleon had fired a shot. Everyone
understood perfectly the discretion of the courtier, and Massena
was overwhelmed by attentions from the Emperor.
Although very miserly, the victor of Zurich would have given half
his fortune to have been born in the France of the "Ancien
Regime" rather than on the left bank of the Var. Nothing
displeased him more than the Italian termination to his name, of
which he transformed the "a" to "e" in his signature. However the
public did not adopt this change, and Massena he remained in
spite of his efforts. The campaign in Portugal had so much
weakened Massena physically and mentally, that he was obliged to
seek rest and recuperation in the gentle climate of Nice, where
he stayed for the whole of 1812; but Napoleon, returning from the
disastrous invasion of Russia, and scouring Europe for further
resources, thought that the name of Massena could still be of
service, particularly in Provence. So he appointed him governor
of the 8th military division.
When, in 1814, enemy forces invaded France, Massena, who, in any
case, had few troops at his disposal, did nothing to arrest their
progress, and on the 15th April he surrendered to the Duc
d'Angoulˆme, who created him a Commander of Saint Louis, but
would not elevate him to the peerage, on the pretext that he had
been born abroad, and had never become a naturalised French
citizen! ... As if the victories of Rivoli, Zurich, the defence
of Genoa, and a series of other successful actions on the behalf
of France were not worth as much as naturalisation papers, given
often to scheming foreigners for cash. The treatment given to
Massena in these circumstances had a very adverse effect on
sentiment in the public and the army, and was an additional
source of the disenchantment of the nation with the government of
Louis XVIII, which led to the return of the Emperor.
Napoleon disembarked near to Cannes on 1st March 1815 and set off
immediately for Paris at the head of about a thousand Grenadiers
of his Guard. The unexpectedness and swiftness of this invasion
threw Massena into confusion. Nevertheless, he tried to stem the
torrent by calling together some line regiments and activating
the national guard of Marseilles and district; but having learned
that the Duc d'Angoulˆme had surrendered and left the country, he
sent his son to inform Louis XVIII that he could no longer rely
on his support, and rallying to the imperial government, he
hoisted the tricolour throughout the area and locked up the
prefect of Var, who still wanted to resist. By this conduct
Massena alienated both the Royalists and the Bonapartists; so
when the Emperor hurriedly summoned him to Paris, he greeted him
very coolly.
When, soon afterwards, Napoleon made the great mistake of
abdicating for the second time, following the battle of Waterloo,
the Chamber of Representatives seized power and formed a
provisional government whose first act was to invest Massena with
the command of the national guard of Paris. It was hoped that,
although his infirmities prevented him playing any active role,
his name would inspire the populace to support the army in the
defence of the capital, but when a council of war was assembled,
Massena gave it as his opinion that Paris could not be defended!
As a consequence an armistice was agreed with the enemy generals
and the French army withdrew across the Loire, where it was
disbanded.
Once the allies were masters of France, Louis XVIII, to punish
Massena for having abandoned his cause after March 20th, included
him among the judges who were to try Marshal Ney, hoping that out
of enmity he would condemn his former colleague and so besmirch
his good name; but Massena recused himself on the grounds that
there had been disagreements between him and Marshal Ney in
Portugal, and when this measure failed he joined with those
judges who wanted Ney brought before the House of Peers. They had
hoped to save him, but it would have been better if they had had
the political courage to try him and acquit him....They did not
dare! Ney was condemned and shot, but his blood did not pacify
the Royalists, they became more implacable and soon pursued
Massena himself.
The citizens of Marseilles, on whose behalf Massena had used his
influence to obtain the freedom of their port, now denounced him
to the Chamber of Deputies on the grounds of peculation. There
was no evidence to support this charge, as Massena had never
exacted any money in Provence, and the chamber, although known
for its hatred of the leading figures of the empire, rejected the
petition out of hand.
Massena, having escaped from the wave of reaction which was now
sweeping the country, abandoned the stage on which he had played
so brilliant a part, and retired to his chateau of Rueil, which
had once belonged to Cardinal Richelieu, to end his splendid
career in solitude and disgrace. He died on the 4th April 1817,
at the age of fifty-nine.
At his death, the government had not sent the baton which is by
custom placed on the bier of a marshal, so his son-in-law,
General Reille, claimed this insignia from the minister for war,
a fervent Royalist. When he received no reply to this reasonable
request, in an act of courage, rare at the time, he let it be
known to the court that if a baton did not arrive in time for his
father-in-law's funeral, he would place ostentatiously on his
coffin, the baton awarded to him by the Emperor. The government
then decided that they would supply a baton after all.
I have touched on some of the blemishes which mar his career, but
Massena more than compensated for them by the remarkable and
heroic services he rendered to France. He will be remembered as
one of the great captains of an era which produced so many.
Chap. 3.