breaking it up into so many scattered units who could not give
each other mutual assistance; that it was not necessary to
compromise the security of France in order to save a some
thousands of sick and wounded, very few of whom would return to
active service, and of whom nearly all died in the hospitals. It
was also said that the regiments of Italians, Poles, and Germans
from the Confederation of the Rhine, which the Emperor mingled
with the garrisons in order to lessen the requirement of French
units, would not be much use; and in fact almost all the foreign
troops fought very badly and ended up by going over to the enemy.
Finally it was claimed that the occupation of the forts gave very
little trouble to the Russian and Prussian armies, which, after
blockading them with an observation force, could continue their
march towards France. Which is what actually happened.
I find myself in agreement with latter of these two opinions,
because it is evident that the forts could be of use to us only
if we overcame the Russian and Prussian armies, which was a
reason for concentrating our disposable manpower rather than
dispersing it.
It might be said that as the enemy would no longer have to
blockade the forts, they would thus have an increase in their
manpower to match ours. But this is not so, for the enemy would
have to leave strong garrisons in the forts which we abandoned,
while we could make use of the men which were at present
immobilised. I may add that the defence of these useless forts
deprived the army in the field of the services of a number of
experienced generals, among others, Marshal Davout, who alone was
worth several divisions. I accept that during a campaign one must
leave behind several brigades to guard places on which the safety
of a country depends, such as Metz, Lille, and Strasbourg, in the
case of France, but the forts situated on the Vistula, the Oder,
and the Elbe, two or three hundred leagues from France, were of
only conditional importance, that is to say dependent on the
success of our army in the field. When this did not come about,
over eighty thousand men whom the Emperor had left in those
garrisons in 1812 were obliged to surrender.
The position of France in the first months of 1813 was extremely
critical, for in the south our armies in Spain had suffered some
very serious reverses due to the weakening of their strength by
the continual withdrawal of regiments, while the English
ceaselessly sent reinforcements to Wellington, who had fought a
brilliant campaign during 1812, and had captured Cuidad-Rodrigo,
Badajoz, and the fort of Salamanca, had won the battle of
Arapiles, occupied Madrid and now threatened the Pyrenees.
In the north, the numerous battle-hardened soldiers whom Napoleon
had led into Russia had nearly all died in action or of cold and
starvation. The still-intact Prussian army had just joined the
Russians, and the Austrians were on the point of following their
example. Finally, the sovereigns, and more importantly, the
people of the Germanic Confederation, stirred up by the English,
were wavering in their allegiance to France. The Prussian Baron
Stein, an able and enterprising man, took this opportunity to
publish a number of pamphlets in which he appealed to all Germans
to shake off the yoke of Napoleon and regain their liberty. This
appeal was readily received, as the passage, the accommodation,
and the maintenance of the French troops who had occupied Germany
since 1806 had occasioned great expense, to which was added the
confiscation of English merchandise, as a result of Napoleon's
continental blockade. The Confederation of the Rhine would have
defected if the rulers of the various states of which it was
composed had decided to listen to the wishes of their subjects;
but none of them dared budge, so ingrained was their habit of
obedience to the French Emperor, and so great their fear of
seeing him arrive at any moment, to head the considerable forces
which he was organising with such speed and building up
constantly in Germany.
The greater part of the French nation still had the greatest
confidence in Napoleon. Those who were well-informed blamed him,
no doubt, for having the previous year led his army to Moscow,
and in particular for having awaited the winter there, but the
mass of the people, who were used to considering the Emperor as
infallible and had no notion of the events of this campaign nor
of the losses suffered by our men, saw only the glory which the
occupation of Moscow reflected on our arms, and were more than
willing to give the Emperor the means to heap victories round his
eagles. Every department and every town gave patriotic gifts of
horses, though the numerous levies of conscripts and money soon
cooled this enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the nation complied with
reasonably good grace, and battalions and squadrons seemed to
rise out of the ground, as if by some enchantment. It was
remarkable that after all the levies of conscripts which had been
made over the last twenty years, we had never recruited a finer
body of men. There were several explanations for this.
To begin with, each of the eight hundred departments which then
existed had, for several years, maintained a company of so-called
departmental infantry, a sort of praetorian guard for the
Prefects, who made a point of selecting men of a high physical
standard for this duty. These men never left the principal towns
of the department, where they were very well housed, fed, and
clad, and as they had very few duties to perform, they were able
to build up their physical strength, for most of them led this
life for six or seven years, during which time they were
exercised regularly in the handling of arms, and in marches and
manoeuvres. They lacked only the "baptism of fire" to become
complete soldiers. These companies, depending on the importance
of the department, were of 150 to 250 men. The Emperor sent them
all to the army, where they were absorbed into the line
regiments.
In the second place there was called into service a great number
of conscripts from previous years, who had by protection,
cunning, or temporary illness obtained deferment, that is to say
permission to remain at home until further orders. These older
men were nearly all strong and vigourous.
These measures were legal; but what was not was the call-up of
those who had already taken part in the ballot for conscription
and whose names had not been drawn. These people, to whom this
lottery had given the legal right to remain civilians, were
nevertheless compelled to take up arms if they were less than
thirty years old. This levy produced a large number of men fit
to support the hardships of war. There was some objection raised
to this measure, mainly in the Midi and the Vendee, but the
greater part of the contingent fell into line, so great was the
habit of obedience. This meekness on the part of the populace
enticed the government into practices even more illegal and more
dangerous withal, in that they struck at the upper class; for
after forcibly enlisting men who had been exempted by lot, the
same measure was applied to those who had quite legally paid for
a replacement, and they were forced into the army, although some
families had been financially strained and even ruined in an
attempt to save their sons, for at that time replacements cost
from 12 to 20,000 francs, which had to be paid in cash. There
were even young men who had been replaced two or three times, but
who were still forced to go, and it was not unknown for one to
find himself serving in the same company as the man he had paid
to be his substitute! This injustice was the result of advice
given by Clarke, the Minister for War and Savary, the Minister of
Police, who persuaded the Emperor that to prevent any disturbance
during the war, it was necessary to remove the sons of
influential families from the country and put them in the army,
to serve, in some respects, as hostages!... To reduce somewhat
the odium felt by the upper class towards this imposition, the
Emperor created, under the name of "Guards of Honour," four
regiments of light cavalry, specially reserved for young
gentlemen of good family. These units, which were given a
brilliant Hussar's uniform, were commanded by general officers.
To these more or less legal levies, the Emperor added the men
produced by an early conscription and a number of battalions
formed from the seamen, sailors, and gunners of the navy, all
trained men, used to handling arms and bored with the monotonous
life in port, keen to join their comrades in the army. There were
more than thirty thousand of these seamen, and it did not take
long for them to become first class infantry soldiers. Finally
the Emperor, obliged to use every means to rebuild his army, of
which the greater part had perished in the frozen wastes of
Russia, further weakened his forces in Spain by taking not only
several thousands of men to make up his guard, but several
brigades and entire divisions composed of old soldiers,
accustomed to hardship and danger.
For their part, the Russians, and particularly the Prussians,
were preparing for war. The indefatigable Baron de Stein
travelled the provinces, preaching a crusade against the French,
and organising his "Tugenbond" whose members swore to take up
arms for the liberation of Germany. This society, which stirred
up so many enemies against us, operated openly in Prussia, which
was already at war with the Emperor, and insinuated itself into
the states and armies of the Confederation of the Rhine, despite
the opposition of some sovereigns and with the tacit permission
of others, to such an extent that almost the whole of Germany
was, in secret, our enemy, and the contingents which were joined
to our military forces were prepared to betray us at the first
opportunity, as events would shortly show. These events would not
have taken so long to come about if the German's natural laxity
and sloth had not prevented them from acting sooner than they
did, for the debris of the French army which crossed the Elbe in
1812 stayed peacefully in cantonment on the left bank of the
river for the first four months of 1813, without being attacked
by the Russians and Prussians who were stationed on the opposite
bank, and who did not feel themselves strong enough to do so,
although Prussia had mobilised its landwehr, made up of all fit
men, and Bernadotte, forgetting that he was born a Frenchman, had
declared war on us, and had joined his Swedish troops to those
belonging to the enemies of his native country.
During the period which we spent on the left bank of the Elbe,
although the army received continual reinforcements, there was
still very little in the way of cavalry except for some
regiments, one of which was mine, so we had been allotted as
cantonments several communes and the two little towns of Brenha
and Landsberg, in pleasant country near Magdeberg. While we were
there I had a great disappointment. The Emperor wished to speed
the organisation of the new levies and thought that for this
purpose the temporary presence of unit commanders at their
regimental depots would be useful. So he decided that all
colonels should return to France except those who had a certain
number of men in their unit, the number fixed for the cavalry was
four hundred, and I had more than six hundred mounted men!... I
was therefore forced to stay behind, when I so much longed to
embrace my wife and the child which she had given me during my
absence.
To the disappointment which I felt was added another vexation,
the good General Castex, whom I had held in such high regard
during the Russian campaign, was to leave us and join the mounted
Grenadiers of the Guard. His brigade, and that of General
Corbineau, who had been given the position of aide-de-camp to the
Emperor, were both put in charge of General Exelmans. General
Wathiez was to replace Castex, and General Maurin to replace
Corbineau. These three generals had, however, gone to France
after the Russian campaign and I was the only colonel left, so
General Sebastiani, to whose corps the new division was to be
attached, ordered me to take over the command, which added a
great deal of work to my regimental duties, for I had to make
frequent visits, in appalling weather, to the cantonments of the
other three regiments. The wound to my knee, although it had
healed, was still painful and I did not know if I would be able
to remain on duty until the end of the winter, when after a month
General Wathiez returned to take up the command of the division.
A few days later, without my having asked, I was ordered to go to
France to organise the large number of recruits and horses which
had been sent to my regimental depot. The depot was in the
department of Jemmapes, at Mons in Belgium, which was then part
of the Empire. I left immediately and travelled quickly. I
realised that as I was authorised to go to France on duty, it
would not be acceptable for me to request even the shortest
period of leave to go to Paris, so I welcomed the offer made by
Mme. Desbrieres, my mother-in-law, to bring my wife and my son to
Mons. After a year of separation, during which I had experienced
so many dangers, it was with the greatest pleasure that I once
more saw my wife, and held in my arms our little Alfred, now
eight months old. This was one of the happiest days of my life!
The joy which I felt on holding my little son was increased by
the recollection that he very nearly became an orphan on the day
of his birth.
I spent the end of April and the months of May and June at the
depot, where I was extremely busy. Many recruits had been sent to
the 23rd, men of good physique and from a warrior race, for they
mostly came from the neighbourhood of Mons, the former province
of Hainault, from where the Austrians used to draw their finest
cavalrymen, at the time when they possessed the low countries.
These are people who love and care well for horses, but as the
horses which come from this district are a little too heavy for
Chasseurs, I obtained permission to buy some in the Ardennes,
from where we obtained a fair selection.
I found at the depot some good officers and N.C.O.s, several of
whom had been in Russia and had gone to the depot to recover from
injuries or illness, and the ministry sent me some young officers
from the school of cavalry at Saint-Cyr. From this material I
made up various squadrons, which, although not perfect, could
mingle without difficulty with the old cavalrymen from Russia
whom I had left on the banks of the Elbe, and throughout whom
they would be spread on their arrival. As soon as a squadron was
ready it was sent off to join the army.
Chap. 23.
While I was busily engaged in rebuilding my regiment, as were
many other colonels, mainly from the cavalry, who were in France
for the same reason, hostilities broke out on the Elbe, which had
been crossed by the allies.
The Emperor left Paris, and on the 25th of April he was at
Naumbourg, in Saxony, at the head of 170,000 men, of whom only a
third were French, a detachment of troops which had been sent to
Germany having not yet arrived. The other two thirds of his army
was formed of units from the Confederation of the Rhine, the
majority of which were very reluctant to fight on his behalf.
General Wittgenstein, who had gained some celebrity following our
disaster at the Beresina, although the weather did us far more
harm than his manoeuvres, was in overall command of the Russian
and German troops, a combined force of 300,000 men, which faced
Napoleon's army on the 28th of April, in the region of Leipzig.
On the 1st of May there was a sharp engagement at Poserna, in an
area where Gustavus Adolphus had died, during which Marshal
Bessieres was killed by a cannon-ball. The Emperor regretted his
death more than did the army, which had not forgotten that it was
the advice given to Napoleon by the Marshal in the evening of the
battle for Moscow which had deterred him from achieving victory
by committing his guards to the action, which had he done, it
would have changed the outcome and led to the complete
destruction of the Russian force.
The day after Bessieres' death, while Napoleon was continuing his
march towards Leipzig, he was attacked unexpectedly on the flank,
by the Russo-Prussians, who had crossed the river Elster during
the night. In this battle, which was given the name of the Battle
of Lutzen, there was some fierce fighting, in which the troops
newly arrived from France showed the greatest courage, the marine
regiments being particularly notable. The enemy, soundly beaten,
withdrew towards the Elbe, but the French, having almost no
cavalry, were able to take few prisoners and their victory was
incomplete. Nevertheless it produced a great moral effect in
Europe, and above all in France, for it showed that our troops
had retained their fighting qualities, and that only the frosts
of Russia had overcome them in 1812.
The Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia, after being
present at Lutzen and witnessing the defeat of their armies, had
gone to Dresden, from where they had to withdraw on the approach
of the victorious Napoleon, who took possession of the town on
the 8th of May, where he was shortly joined by his ally, the King
of Saxony. After a brief stay in Dresden, the French crossed the
Elbe and pursued the Prusso-Russians, whose rear-guard they
caught up with and defeated at Bischofswerda.
The Emperor Alexander, dissatisfied with Wittgenstein, assumed
personal command of the allied armies, but having been defeated
in his turn by Napoleon at Wurtchen, it seems likely that he
recognised his lack of ability in this field, for he soon
relinquished the position.
The Russo-Prussians having come to a halt and dug in at Bautzen,
the French emperor ordered Ney to outflank their position, which
resulted in a victory on the 21st of May, which lack of cavalry
once more rendered incomplete though the enemy lost 18,000 men
and fled in disorder.
On the 22nd, the French, in pursuit of the Russians, made contact
with their rear-guard at the pass of Reichenbach. What little
cavalry Napoleon had was commanded by General Latour-Maubourg, a
most distinguished soldier, who led it with such elan that the
enemy were overwhelmed and abandoned the field after heavy
losses. Those suffered by the French, though fewer, were most
painful. The cavalry general, Bruyere, a fine officer, had both
his legs carried away and died of this dreadful injury; but the
saddest event of the day was the result of a cannon-ball which,
after killing General Kirgener (brother-in-law of Marshal
Lannes), mortally wounded Marshal Duroc, the grand marshal of the
palace, a man liked by everyone, and Napoleon's oldest and best
friend. Marshal Duroc survived for a few hours following his
injury, and the Emperor who was at his side showed every sign of
the deepest grief. Those who witnessed this melancholy scene,
noted that the Emperor, who was forced to leave his friend by the
demands of duty, parted from him in tears, having given him a
rendez-vous in "A better world!"
The French army now pressed on into Silesia, whose capital,
Breslau (Wroclaw) it occupied on the 1st of June. The allies, and
in particular the Prussians, much alarmed, realised that in spite
of their boasts, they were unable, without help, to stop the
French, and wanted to gain a respite in the hope that the
Austrians would end their hesitation and join forces with them.
They sent out envoys, given the task of soliciting an armistice
which, subject to the mediation of Austria, would lead, they
said, to a peace treaty. Napoleon thought that he should agree
to this armistice, and so it was signed on the 4th of June, to
last until the 10th of August.
While Napoleon was going from success to success, Marshal Oudinot
was defeated at Luckau, and lost 1100 men. The Emperor hoped that
during the armistice the numerous reinforcements from France
which he was awaiting, particularly the cavalry which had been
sorely missed, would make their appearance, and would take part
in a new campaign if that became unavoidable. There were,
however, several generals who regretted that the Emperor had not
followed up his victory. They argued that if the armistice
permitted us to build up our reserves, it did the same for the
Russo-Prussians, who hoped that they would be joined by the
Austrians, as well as by the Swedes, who were marching to their
aid. The former were not yet ready, but they would have more than
two months to organise and put into motion their numerous troops.
When at Mons I heard of the victories of Lutzen and Bautzen, I
was sorry not to have been there, but my regrets were diminished
when I found that my regiment had not been involved; it was, in
fact, before Magdeburg on the road to Berlin. M. Lacour, a former
aide-de-camp to General Castex, had been posted as squadron
commander to the 23rd, about the end of 1812, and he took command
of the regiment in my absence. He was a brave man, who had
acquired some education by reading, which gave him pretentions
which were out of place in a military milieu; in addition to
which his lack of experience as a commanding officer, resulted in
the regiment suffering losses which should have been avoided, and
of which I shall speak later. While I was at the depot, I gained
as second squadron commander M. Pozac, a very fine officer in all
respects who had been awarded a "sabre of honour" for his conduct
at the battle of Marengo.
Towards the end of June, all the colonels who had been sent to
France to organise the new forces, having completed this task,
were ordered to return to their posts with the army, although
hostilities would be suspended for some time. I was therefore
forced to leave my family, with whom I had passed so many happy
days, but duty called and I had to obey.
I once more took the road to Germany, and went first to Dresden,
to where the Emperor had summoned all the colonels in order to
question them about the composition of the detachments they had
sent to the army. There I learned something which annoyed me
greatly! At the depot I had organised four superb squadrons of
150 men each. The two first of which (happily the smartest and
best) had joined the regiment; the third had been taken, by
Imperial decision, and sent to Hamburg to be incorporated in the
28th Chasseurs, one of the weakest regiments in the army. This
was a lawful order, and I accepted it without complaint: but it
was not the same when I was told that the 4th squadron which I
had sent from Mons, having been noticed as it passed through
Cassel, by Jerome, the King of Westphalia, this prince had found
it so desirable that he had, on his own authority, enrolled it in
his Guard! I knew that the Emperor, very irritated that his
brother had taken it upon himself to make off with some Imperial
troops, had ordered him to send them on their way immediately,
and I had hopes that I would receive them; but King Jerome got
hold of some of the Emperor's aides, who represented to his
Majesty that as the King of Westphalia's Guard was composed
entirely of Germans, who were not by any means to be relied upon,
it was right that he should have a French squadron on whose
loyalty he could count; in the second place the King had, at much
expense, equipped the squadron with the brilliant uniform of
Hussars of his Guard; and finally, that even without this
squadron, the 23rd would still be the strongest regiment in the
French cavalry. Whatever the reason, my squadron remained in the
Westphalian guard, in spite of my loud protests. I could not get
over this loss, and found it supremely unjust that I should be
deprived of the fruits of my trouble and labour.
I rejoined my regiment not far from the Oder in the region of
Zagan, where it was in cantonment in the little town of
Freistadt, as was Exelman's division, of which it was a part.
During our stay in this area, a curious incident occurred. A
trooper by the name of Tantz, the only bad character in the
regiment, having got thoroughly drunk, threatened an officer who
had ordered him to be put in the police cell. Put before a
court-martial he was found guilty, condemned to death and the
sentence confirmed. Now when the guard, commanded by
Warrant-officer Boivin, went to fetch Tantz to take him to the
place where he was to be shot, they found him in the cell
completely naked, on the pretext that it was too hot.
The warrant-officer, a brave fellow, but one whose brains did not
match his courage, instead of making him dress, told him to wrap
himself in a cloak. However, having arrived on the draw-bridge
across the large moat which surrounded the chateau, Tantz threw
the cloak in the faces of the guard, leapt into the moat which he
swam across, and having reached the other side made off to join
the enemy on the opposite bank of the Oder. We never heard
anything more of him!... I broke the warrant-officer for being
so careless, but he soon regained his rank, by an act of bravery
which I shall describe shortly.