our families. But the happiness which I enjoyed was lessened by
the thought of my imminent departure. I was due to join the 1st
Chasseurs … Cheval as a squadron commander with the rank of
Major. The chagrin which I felt at not having been promoted to
Colonel, which I thought I deserved, was somewhat relieved when,
having gone to the Tuileries to pay my new year respects, the
Emperor sent an aide-de-camp to command my presence in his
private quarters, where I found General Mouton, Comte de Lobau,
who had always been on my side.
Napoleon appeared and told me in the most friendly manner that he
had intended to give me a regiment, but that there were certain
reasons which had led him to nominate Major Barain. He said that
having promoted three of Massena's aides to Colonel he could not
accord any more promotions to one general staff, but that he had
not forgotten me and although he could not give me the nominal
command, he would put me in the position of being, in effect, a
regimental commander. "The commanding officer of the 23rd Mounted
Chasseurs, M. de La Nougarede, has become so afflicted by gout
that he can hardly mount a horse", the Emperor said, "but he is
an excellent officer who has fought several campaigns with me,
and I have a high regard for him. He has begged me to let him try
to go once more on campaign and I do not wish to remove him from
his regiment. However, I hear that this fine unit is going down
hill in his hands so I am sending you as "Coadjutor" to M. de La
Nougarede. You will be working for yourself, for if the Colonel
recovers his health I shall promote him to general, and if not I
shall transfer him to the gendarmes. In either case he will leave
his regiment and you will become their colonel; so I repeat you
will be working for your own benefit." This promise gave me
renewed hope, and I was making ready to leave when the minister
for war extended my leave until the end of March, which I found
very acceptable.
The 23rd Chasseurs were stationed in Swedish Pomerania, so I had
an enormous distance to travel, and as I wished to arrive before
the expiration of my leave, I left Paris on the 15th of March,
parting with much regret from my dear wife. I had bought a good
barouche, in which, at the request of Marshal Mortier, I gave a
seat to his nephew, Lieutenant Durbach, who belonged to the
regiment which I was about to join. As my former servant,
Woirland, had asked if he might stay in Spain, where he hoped to
make his fortune running a canteen, I had replaced him, on my
leaving Salamanca, by a Pole named Lorentz Schilkowski. This man,
at one time an Austrian Uhlan, was not lacking intelligence, but,
like all Poles he was a drunkard, and unlike the soldiers of that
nation, he was as timid as a hare. Lorentz, however, as well as
his native language, spoke passable French and fluent German and
Russian, and for this reason he was most valuable to me in my
travelling and campaigning in the north. I was nearing the
Rhenish provinces, when on leaving Kaiserslauten at night, the
postilion tipped my barouche into a pothole, where it was
damaged. No one was hurt, but both M. Durbach and I agreed that
this was a bad omen for soldiers who were about to face the
enemy. However, after spending a day waiting for repairs to be
made, we were able to get under way once more. Unfortunately the
accident had so weakened the springs and the wheels that they
broke six times during our journey, which delayed us
considerably, and on occasions forced us to walk for several
leagues in the snow. We arrived at last at the shores of the
Baltic sea, where the 23rd Chasseurs were in garrison at
Stralsund and Greifswald.
I found Colonel de La Nougarede to be an excellent officer,
well-informed and capable, but so prematurely aged by gout that
he was hardly able to sit on a horse, and went everywhere in a
carriage, a most unsuitable method of transport for the commander
of a regiment of light cavalry! He gave me an enthusiastic
welcome, and after explaining the reasons which, in the interest
of his career, made him stay with the regiment, he showed me a
letter in which the Comte de Lobau informed him of the motives
which had led the Emperor to attach me to him. M. de La
Nougarede, far from being offended, saw this as another kindness
on the part of the Emperor, and looked forward to being promoted
to general or heading the gendarmerie. He counted, with my help,
on completing at least part of the campaign, and on the
realisation of his hopes at the first imperial revue. To make it
clear that I shared the command, which was not in keeping with my
rank as Major, he called together all the officers, in front of
whom he provisionally delegated all his powers to me, until such
time as he recovered his health, and instructed them to obey my
orders without referring to him, since his illness often made it
impossible for him to follow the regiment sufficiently closely to
command it in person. An order of the day was issued along these
lines, and from that day forward, except for the rank,I was
virtually the commander of the regiment, and the regiment soon
got into the habit of looking on me as their real leader.
Since that time, I have commanded several cavalry regiments,
either as colonel or general. And I was for a long time inspector
of this branch of the service; I can say with certainty that if I
have seen units as good as the 23rd Chasseurs, I have never seen
one better. It was not that the unit contained any outstanding
personalities, such as I have seen sometimes in other regiments,
but if there was not in the 23rd any one of remarkable talents,
there was no one who did not maintain a high standard in carrying
out his duties. There were no peaks, but there were no troughs;
everyone kept in step. The officers were intelligent, well
trained and well behaved. They lived together as true
brothers-in-arms. The same applied to the N.C.O.s. And the
troopers followed this good example. They were almost all old
soldiers, veterans of Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram, a fine
body of men who came mostly from Normandy, Alsace, Lorraine and
Franche-comte, provinces known for their martial spirit and their
love of horses. The build and strength of these men was noticed
by General Bourcier, who was in charge of remounts, and he
supplied the regiment with horses which were bigger and more
lively than the usual issue. A period of several years spent in
the fertile land of Germany, had left both men and horses in
splendid condition, and the regiment, when I took over, consisted
of a thousand officers and men, well disciplined, calm and quiet
in the face of the enemy.
I did not yet have a horse, so I went to Stralsund in the isle of
Rugen, where they have excellent horses, and I bought several; I
got some others from Rostock and ended with a stable of seven
good beasts, which was not too many, as war with Russia appeared
imminent. I had already forecast this during the summer of 1811,
when I saw the great number of old soldiers whom the Emperor was
taking from the regiments in the peninsula to reinforce his Old
Guard. I had been confirmed in this opinion during my stay in
Paris. There were, at first, some distant rumours of a rupture,
which vanished quickly amid the entertainments and festivities of
winter, but soon returned with increased insistence; and became
almost certainties as a result of a serious event, the echoes of
which reverberated throughout Europe.
The Emperor Alexander had had, since boyhood, a companion who was
a young Russian nobleman, named Czernicheff, of whom he was very
fond, and whom, when he came to the throne, he took as
aide-de-camp.
In 1809, when Alexander, who was then an ally of Napoleon, was
pretending, without actually doing so, to make war against
Austria, whose country Napoleon had invaded, there arrived in
Vienna Colonel the Comte de Czernicheff, on the ostensible
mission to cement good relations between Napoleon and Alexander,
but in reality to inform his sovereign of our success or failure,
so that he could continue or break off his alliance with France
according to circumstances.
Alexander's favourite received the friendliest of welcomes from
Napoleon, whose side he never left during the parades and
manoeuvres which preceded the battle of Essling, but when this
bloody affair appeared to be in the balance, and a hail of
bullets descended on the imperial general staff, M. de
Czernicheff turned tail rapidly, and crossing the bridges over
the Danube, he sought the safety of the palace of Schoenbrunn;
and the day after the battle he took to the road for Petersburg,
to announce, no doubt, the failure of our enterprise. Napoleon
thought this behaviour most unbecoming, and made some jeering
comments on the "bravery" of the Russian colonel. Nevertheless,
after peace had been made with Austria, M. de Czernicheff came
very often to Paris, where he spent part of the years 1810 and
1811. Handsome, courteous, likeable, highly deceitful and
exquisitely polite, his title of aide-de-camp to the Russian
emperor gave him entry not only to the court but also to the
salons of high society, where he never discussed politics, and
appeared to be interested only in the pursuit of women, where he
was said to have considerable success. But toward the end of
1811, when new rumours of war began to circulate, the Paris
police were informed that while appearing to be solely interested
in pleasure, the Russian colonel was mixed up in some dubious
political schemes, and he was put under close surveillance, when
it was discovered that he had frequent meetings with M. X..., an
employee of the ministry for war who had special responsibility
for the situation reports concerning all the personel and
material of the army, which were given to Napoleon every ten
days. Not only had M. de Czernicheff been seen walking after
midnight in the most secluded part of the Champs-Elysees with
this man, but he had been observed, plainly dressed, slipping
into the place where M. X... lived and spending several hours
there.
The intimacy of someone so highly placed with a poor devil of
clerk in the ministry for war being clear evidence that the
former had seduced the latter to betray state secrets, the
Emperor, highly indignant, ordered the arrest of M.Czernicheff,
but Czernicheff, warned, it is said, by a woman, fled from Paris,
and reached a nearby "relais" from where, taking unfrequented
roads, he managed to reach the frontier, avoiding Maintz and
Cologne to where the telegraph had transmitted the order for his
seizure. As for the wretched clerk, he was apprehended at the
moment when he was counting out the 300,000 francs which he had
received for his act of treason. Compelled by the evidence to
admit to his crime, he stated that another employee had also
given information to the Russian, this man too was arrested, and
the two of them were tried, convicted and shot. They died cursing
Czernicheff, who they claimed had come to their attics to tempt
them with a heap of gold which he increased whenever they
hesitated. The Emperor had published in all the French newspapers
a virulent denunciation of M. de Czernicheff, with some wounding
observations which, although indirect, pointed to the emperor of
Russia himself, for they recalled that the assassins of his
father, Paul I, had not been punished by Alexander.
After these events, it was no longer possible to doubt that war
was imminent, and although it had not been declared, both sides
were openly preparing for it. The conduct of M. de Czernicheff
was, in general, loudly denounced, but it had its secret
supporters among the diplomatic community, who recalled that
although Napoleon justly punished French citizens who sold their
country's secrets to its enemies, he was not above corrupting
foreign nationals who could give him useful information,
particularly of a military nature.
Marshal Lannes told me,that in Vienna,in 1809, when hostilities
were about to break out between France and Austria, whose armies
were to be commanded by the Archduke Charles, this prince was
warned anonymously that a Major-general for whom he had a high
regard and whom he was about to take on to his staff, had been
bought by the French ambassador, General Andreossi, with whom he
had frequent night-time meetings in a lonely house in the vast
suburb of Leopoldstadt, the number of which was disclosed. Prince
Charles thought so highly of this officer that he dismissed as an
infamous calumny the anonymous accusation, and took no measures
to determine the truth. The French ambassador had already asked
for his passport and was due to leave Vienna in forty-eight hours
time, when a second anonymous note informed the archduke that his
assistant chief-of-staff, after working alone in his office,
which contained the order of battle for the army, was going to
have, on the following night, a last meeting with General
Andreossi. The archduke, who wished to clear his mind of any
suspicions which he might have, in spite of himself, about an
officer of whom he was fond, decided that he would prove beyond
doubt that he was innocent. So, dressed very simply and
accompanied by only one aide-de-camp, he waited, after midnight,
in the darkest part of the lane where the house in question was
situated. After a short time the prince and his aide saw, with
sadness, a man who in spite of his disguise was easily recognised
as the assistant chief-of-staff, for whom, after an agreed
signal, the door was opened. Soon he was followed by General
Andreossi, who was admitted in the same way. The meeting lasted
for some hours, during which the archduke, no longer able to
doubt the treachery of his assistant chief-of-staff, waited
patiently outside the house, and when the door opened for General
Andreossi and the Austrian general, who, came out together, they
found themselves face to face with Prince Charles, who said
aloud, "Good evening, Mr.Ambassador", and refraining from
speaking to the assistant chief-of-staff, he shone the light from
a lantern in his face.
The ambassador hurried away without saying a word, and as for the
assistant chief-of-staff, seeing that he was caught in the act
and knowing the fate which awaited him, he went to his house and
blew his brains out with a pistol shot. This tragic event was
hushed up by the Austrian government and not many people knew
about it; it was announced that the assistant chief-of-staff had
died of apoplexy. The French ambassador was said to have paid
him two million.
While Napoleon was complaining bitterly about the means by which
Colonel Czernicheff obtained information about our armies,
General Lauriston, our ambassador in Petersburg, bought not only
the most detailed information about the disposition of the
Russian forces, but also the copper plates on which were engraved
the immense map of the Muscovite empire. In spite of the great
difficulties presented by the transport of this heavy mass of
metal, the betrayal was so well organised and so lavishly paid
for that these plates, stolen from the Russian archives, were
taken from St. Petersburg to France without their disappearance
being discovered by the police or the Russian customs. When the
plates arrived in Paris the minister for war, when all the
writing had been changed from Russian characters into French, had
this fine map printed, and Napoleon ordered a copy to be sent to
all the generals and commanders of light cavalry regiments. It
was in this latter rank that I received one, which I contrived,
with much difficulty to save during the retreat, for it forms a
very big roll. Few people brought theirs back, but I still have
mine.
Chap. 4.
The principal reason which led the Emperor to declare war on
Russia was his desire to see the implementation of the treaty of
Tilsit, whereby the Emperor Alexander agreed to close all the
ports of his country to English traders, an undertaking which had
never been properly carried out. Napoleon thought, rightly, that
he could ruin the English, a manufacturing and trading nation, by
preventing their commerce with the European continent; but the
execution of this gigantic project offered so much difficulty,
that it was only in France that the restrictions were enforced,
and there the use of licences, to which I have referred above,
made an enormous breach in the regulations. As for Italy, Germany
and the Adriatic provinces, although the continental system was
established by imperial decree, it was only implemented in
theory, partly because of the extent of the coastline, and partly
because of connivance and lack of surveillance by those
responsible for the administration of these vast areas. So the
Russian Emperor replied to the demands made by France by pointing
to the state of affairs which was almost universal in Europe. The
true cause, however, of the refusal of Alexander to accede to the
demands of Napoleon, was that he feared that he would be
assassinated in the same manner as his father, the Emperor Paul,
who was accused firstly of having sullied the nation's reputation
by allying himself to France and secondly of having destroyed
Russian trade by declaring war on Britain. Alexander was aware
that he had already given offence by the deference and
friendliness which he had shown towards Napoleon at Tilsit and
Erfurt, and he was anxious not to arouse more anger by cutting
off all trade with England, the sole outlet whereby the Russian
nobility could dispose of the products of their vast estates, and
acquire a monetary income. The death of the Emperor Paul clearly
showed the danger faced by Alexander, if he followed his father's
example. An additional cause of fear was the fact that he was
surrounded by the same officers who had surrounded his father,
amongst whom was his chief-of-staff, Benningsen.
Napoleon did not take sufficiently into consideration these
difficulties, when he threatened Alexander with war, unless he
fell in with his wishes; although, when he learned of the losses
and reverses suffered in Spain and Portugal, he seemed hesitant
to engage in a conflict the outcome of which he deemed uncertain.
According to General Bertrand, Napoleon, on St. Helena said
repeatedly that his only intention, to begin with, was to
frighten Alexander into carrying out the terms of the treaty: "We
were," he said, "like two opponents of equal ability, who are
well able to fight, but being reluctant to do so, menace each
other by threats and sabre-rattling, edging slowly forward, each
hoping that his adversary will retreat rather than do battle."
But the Emperor's comparison was not exact, for one of these
swordsmen had behind him a bottomless pit, ready to engulf him at
the first backward step, so that having to choose between an
ignominious death and a combat in which he might be successful he
had to choose the latter. This was the situation in which
Alexander found himself, a situation made worse by the influence
exerted by the Englishman Wilson on General Benningsen and the
officers of his staff. The Emperor Napoleon was still hesitant
and seemed anxious to consult the sage opinions of Caulincourt,
his former ambassador at St. Petersburg and those of a group of
French officers who had lived for some time in Russia.
Among the latter was Lieutenant-colonel de Ponthon, who had been
among a number of engineer officers who, after the Treaty of
Tilsit had been posted, at the request of Alexander, to Russia,
where they had spent several years. De Ponthon was a highly
competent, but withal a very modest officer, he was attached to
the topographic service, and did not think it was his place to
offer his advice unasked, on the problems which would face an
army at war in the Russian empire; but when he was questioned by
the Emperor he felt it was his duty to tell the whole truth to
the head of state, even at risk of displeasing him, so he
described all the obstacles which would face this enterprise. The
principal ones were the apathy and lack of co-operation between
the Lithuanian states, subject for many years to Russia; the
fanatical resistance to be expected from the people of Moscow;
the scarcity of food and forage; the almost uninhabited areas
which would have to be crossed; roads impassable for artillery
after several hours of rain; but above all he stressed the rigour
of the winter and the physical impossibility of conducting a war
once the snow had begun to fall, which might be as early as the
first days of October. Finally, at risk of giving offence and
jeopardising his career, he begged Napoleon, for the sake of
France and his own reputation, not to undertake this dangerous
expedition, the calamitous outcome of which he now predicted.
Having listened quietly to M. de Ponthon, the Emperor dismissed
him without making any comment. For some days he appeared
withdrawn and contemplative, and the rumour spread that the
undertaking was off, but then M. Maret, duc de Bassano, persuaded
him to go back to his original intention, and assured him that
Marshal Davout would be happy to move his large army of Germany
to the banks of the Nieman, on the frontier of the Russian
empire, in order to galvanise Alexander into action.
From this time on, although M. de Ponthon was in constant
attendance as a member of the cabinet, the Emperor did not
address a word to him during the advance from the Nieman to
Moscow, and when, during the retreat, Napoleon was forced to
admit to himself that the predictions of this admirable officer
had been only too accurate, he avoided catching his eye.
Nevertheless, he promoted him to the rank of colonel.
To return to the preparations which Napoleon was making to force
the Russians, by hook or by crook, to comply with his wishes:
from the month of April, the French troops stationed in Germany,
as well as those of various princes of the Germanic confederation
allied to France, were put into motion, and their march towards
Poland was delayed only by the difficulty of finding forage for
their numerous horses; the grass, and even the corn, being
scarcely out of the ground at this time in these northern
countries. However, the Emperor left Paris on the 9th of May, and
accompanied by the Empress, went to Dresden, where, awaiting him,
were his father-in-law the Emperor of Austria, and almost all the
German princes; attracted there, in some cases by the hope of
having their domains extended, and in others by the fear of
displeasing the arbiter of their destiny. The only absentee was
the King of Prussia, who, not being included in the confederation
of the Rhine, was not invited to this reunion and dared not turn
up without the permission of Napoleon. He humbly requested this,
and when it was obtained he hurried to Dresden to pay court to
the all-powerful conqueror of Europe.
The protestations of fidelity and devotion which were lavished on
Napoleon misled him into making a most serious error in the
organisation of the contingents which were to make up the great
army destined for the war against Russia. Instead of weakening
the governments of Austria and Prussia, his former enemies, by
demanding from them the greater part of their available troops,
which, prudence would suggest should be placed in the van, not
only to spare French lives, but to allow a watch to be kept on
these new and undependable allies, Napoleon required no more than
30,000 men from each of these powers, and placed them on the two
wings of his force. The Austrians under Prince Schwartzenberg on
the right in Volhynie, and the Prussians, to whom he appointed as
commander the French Marshal Macdonald, on the left, near the
mouth of the Nieman. The centre was composed of French troops and
those members of the German federation whose loyalty had been
proved at Jena and Wagram.
There were discerning observers who were dismayed to see the
wings of the army made up of foreigners, who, in the event of a
reverse, could form two hostile armies in our rear, while the
centre was embroiled in the heart of Russia. Not only that,
Austria who had an army of 200,000, placed only 30,000 at the
disposal of Napoleon, and had 170,000 left with which to attack
us in the event of failure, while Prussia, though less powerful,
still had 60,000 men in reserve.
One is astonished that the Emperor was so little concerned about
what he was leaving behind him; but his confidence was so great
that when the King of Prussia requested him to allow his eldest
son to join in the campaign as an imperial aide-de-camp, Napoleon
turned him down, although the young prince would have been a
valuable hostage to ensure the fidelity of his father.