difficult; for how could I, without a single infantryman and with
cavalry packed between two high mountains and an uncrossable
torrent, fight troops on foot whose scouts, climbing up the
rocks, would shoot us at close range? I sent at once to warn the
divisional general, but Exelmans could not be found. However I
had been ordered to advance and I could not stop the divisions
which were following me, so I continued my march until at a bend
in the valley my scouts told me that they were in sight of a
detachment of enemy Hussars.
The Austro-Bavarians had made the same mistake as our leaders;
for if the latter had sent cavalry to attack a long and narrow
pass where no more the ten or twelve horsemen could ride abreast,
our enemies had sent cavalry to defend a position where a hundred
sharpshooters could hold up ten regiments of cavalry! I was
highly delighted to see that the enemy had no infantry, and as I
knew from experience that when two opposing columns meet at a
narrow spot, victory always goes to the one which, hurling itself
at the head of the enemy, drives it back into the troops behind
it, I launched at the gallop my elite company, of which only the
leading platoon could engage the enemy; but they did so with such
elan that the head of the Austrian column was overwhelmed and the
rest thrown into such complete confusion that my troopers had
only to take aim. We continued the pursuit for more than an hour.
The enemy regiment in front of us was that of General Ott. I had
never seen such well turned out Hussars. they had come from
Vienna, where they had been fitted with completely new uniforms,
Their outfit, although a little theatrical, looked very handsome:
the pelisse and dolman in white and the trousers and the shako in
lilac; all clean bright and shining. One might have thought they
were going to a ball, or to play in a comedy! This brilliant
appearance contrasted somewhat with the more modest toilette of
our Chasseurs, many of whom were still dressed in the worn
clothing in which they had bivouacked for eighteen months, in
Russia, Poland, and Germany, and whose distinguishing colours had
been dimmed by the smoke of cannon and the dust of battlefields.
However, under those threadbare garments were brave hearts and
sturdy limbs. So the white pelisses of Ott's Hussars became
horribly bloodstained, and this pretty regiment lost in killed
and wounded more than 200 men, without one of our Chasseurs
having the smallest sabre cut, the enemy having always fled
without ever turning to fight. Our Chasseurs took a large number
of excellent horses and gold-braided pelisses.
Up until then everything had gone well, but as I galloped after
the victors who pursued the vanquished, I was a bit worried about
the end of this strange encounter, for the diminishing height of
the mountains which bordered the Kinzig indicated that we were
nearing the end of the valley, and it was likely that we would
find ourselves in a small plain, full of infantry whose volleys
and cannon fire would make us pay dearly for our success: but
happily there was no such thing, and as we emerged from the pass
we saw not a single infantryman, but only some cavalry, part of
which comprised the main body of that section of Ott's regiment
of Hussars, which we had so roughly manhandled and who in their
panic continued their headlong flight, taking with them some
fifteen squadrons, who retired to Hanau.
General Sebastiani then deployed his three divisions of cavalry
which were soon supported by the infantry of Marshals Macdonald
and Victor, and several batteries. Then the Emperor with part of
his guard, appeared and the rest of the French army followed.
It was now the evening of the 29th of October; we established our
bivouacs in a nearby wood; we were only a league from Hanau and
the Austro-Bavarian army.
Chap. 32.
Here now are the reasons why Exelmans dropped behind when we were
going through the pass. Before we entered the valley, the scouts
had brought to him two Austrian soldiers who, absent from their
unit, were scrounging and drinking in an isolated village.
Exelmans was having them questioned in German by one of his
aides, when he was surprised to hear them reply in fluent French.
One of these men, half-drunk, and thinking it would do him good,
announced that they were Parisians. As soon as he uttered these
words, the general, furious that Frenchmen should take up arms
against their fellow countrymen, ordered them to be immediately
shot. The poor lad who had boasted of being French was about to
be put to death, when his companion, sobered by this fearful
spectacle, protested that neither of them had ever set foot in
France, but having been born in Vienna to parents who, although
they came from Paris, were naturalised Austrians, they were
regarded as Austrian subjects and had been forced to join the
regiment assigned to them. To prove this he showed his army
record which confirmed the fact. Exelmans, yielding to the advice
of his aides-de-camp, agreed to spare the innocent man.
At this stage, hearing the sound of firing, the General wished to
reach the head of the column which I was commanding; but on his
arrival at the mouth of the pass, he found it impossible to get
through and take a place in the ranks because of the speed with
which the two regiments were galloping after the enemy. After
trying many times he was so jostled that he fell with his horse
into the Kinzig and nearly drowned.
The Emperor, who was preparing for battle, took advantage of the
night to reduce the amount of wheeled transport by sending all
the baggage off to the right, in the direction of Coblentz,
escorted by some battalions of infantry and the cavalry of
Lefebvre-Denouettes and Milhau. This was a great relief to the
army.
On the morning of the 30th, the Emperor had at his disposal only
the infantry Corps of Macdonald and Victor, amounting to 5000
men, supported by Sebastiani's cavalry division.
In the direction from which we were coming, a large forest,
through which the road runs, covers the approach to Hanau. The
tall trees of this forest allow movement without much difficulty.
The town of Hanau is built on the other side of the river Kinzig.
General de Wrede, although not lacking in military skill, had,
however, made the serious mistake of placing his army where it
had the river at its back, which deprived it of the support which
it could have received from the fortifications of Hanau, with
which the Bavarian general could not communicate except by the
bridge of Lamboy, which was his only road of retreat. It is true
that the position he occupied barred the way to Frankfort and to
France, and he felt certain that he could prevent us from forcing
a passage.
On the 30th of October at dawn, the battle began, like a great
hunting party. Some grape-shot and some small-arms fire from our
infantry, together with a charge in open order by Sebastiani's
cavalry, scattered the first line of the enemy, somewhat
unskillfully placed at the extreme edge of the wood; but as one
penetrated a little further, our squadrons could not operate
except in the few clearings which they came across, only the
Light Infantry followed in the steps of the Bavarians, whom they
pursued from tree to tree to the end of the forest. At that point
they had to stop, faced by an enemy line of forty thousand men,
whose front was covered by eighty guns!
If the Emperor had had with him all the troops which he brought
from Leipzig, a vigorous attack would have made him master of the
Lamboy bridge, and General de Wrede would have paid dearly for
his temerity, but Marshals Mortier and Marmont, and General
Bertrand, as well as the artillery, were held up by various
passes, mainly that of Gelnhausen, and had not yet arrived.
Napoleon had no more than ten thousand troops. The enemy should
have taken advantage of this to attack us in force, but they did
not dare, and this hesitation gave time for the artillery of the
Imperial Guard to arrive.
As soon as General Drouet, their commander, had fifteen pieces in
the field, he began firing, and his line grew in size until he
had fifty cannons, which he advanced, firing continuously,
although he still had very few troops behind him to give support;
however it was not possible for the enemy to see through the
thick smoke from the guns, that the gunners had little to back
them up. Eventually the infantry Chasseurs of the Imperial Old
Guard appeared, just as a gust of wind blew away the smoke.
At the sight of their busbies, the Bavarian infantry recoiled in
fear. General de Wrede, wishing to stop this disorder at all
costs, ordered all his cavalry, Austrian, Bavarian, and Russian,
to charge our artillery, and in an instant our battery was
surrounded by a swarm of horsemen!... But at the voice of their
commander, General Drouet, who, sword in hand, set them an
example in resistance, the French gunners, taking their muskets,
remained calmly behind their guns, from where they fired
point-blank at the enemy. Nevertheless, the great number of the
latter would have eventually triumphed, had not, on the Emperor's
order, all Sebastiani's cavalry, along with all that of the
Imperial Guard, mounted Grenadiers, Dragoons, Chasseurs,
Mamelukes, Lancers, and Guards of Honour, hurled themselves
furiously on the enemy cavalry, killing a great number and
dispersing the rest.
Then, falling on the Bavarian infantry squares, they broke them
and inflicted tremendous losses, at which stage the Bavarian
army, put to rout, fled to the bridge over the Kinzig and to the
town of Hanau.
General de Wrede was a brave man, so, before admitting himself
beaten by forces half as numerous as his, he resolved to make
another effort, and gathering all the troops remaining to him, he
made a surprise attack on us. Suddenly a fusillade broke out and
the forest rang once more to the sound of artillery; cannon-balls
whistled through the trees, from which great branches fell with a
crash... The eye sought in vain to pierce the depths of the wood;
one could hardly see the flash of the guns, which lit, at
intervals, the shade cast by the foliage of the huge beeches,
beneath whose canopy we fought.
Hearing the noise made by this attack, the Emperor sent, from his
position, the infantry Grenadiers of his Old Guard, led by
General Friant who soon overcame this last effort of the enemy,
who now hastily left the field of battle to re-group under the
protection of the fort of Hanau, which they abandoned during the
night, leaving behind a great number of wounded. The French
occupied the fort.
We were no more than two short leagues from Frankfort, a
considerable town, with a stone bridge across the Main. The
French army would need to go along the bank of this river to
reach Mainz and the frontier of France, which was a day's march
from Frankfort; so Napoleon detached Sebastiani's corps and a
division of infantry to go and occupy Frankfort, and to take over
and destroy the bridge. The Emperor and the bulk of the army
bivouacked in the forest.
The main road from Hanau to Frankfort runs along the right bank
of the river Maine. General Albert, a friend of mine, who
commanded the infantry which accompanied us, had been married,
some years previously, at Offenbach, a charming little town built
on the left bank exactly opposite the spot where, after emerging
from the woods of Hanau, we rested our horses, on the immense and
beautiful plain of Frankfort.
Finding himself so close to his wife and their children, General
Albert was unable to resist the temptation to have news of them,
and to reassure them of his well-being after the dangers he had
encountered at the battles of Leipzig and Hanau. To do this he
exposed himself to more risk, perhaps, than he had run during
either of these sanguinary affairs, for, advancing on horseback
and in uniform, to the edge of the river, he hailed, in spite of
our warnings, a boatman who knew him; but while he was chatting
with this man, a Bavarian officer ran up with a picket of
infantry, who aiming their weapons, prepared to shoot at the
French general. However, a large body of citizens and boatmen
crowded in front of the soldiers and prevented them from firing,
for General Albert was very well liked in Offenbach.
As I looked at this town, to where I had come while fighting for
my country, I did not dream that one day it would be my refuge
from the proscription of a French government, and that I would
spend three years there in exile!...
After leaving the forest of Hanau to go on his way to Frankfort,
the Emperor had hardly gone two leagues when he learned that
fighting had broken out once more behind him. This was because
the Bavarian general, who, following his defeat the day before,
had expected to be chased, with the Emperor at his heels, had
taken reassurance from seeing the French army more concerned to
reach the Rhine than to pursue him, and had launched a brisk
attack on our rear-guard. However Macdonald, Marmont, and
Bertrand, who with their troops had occupied Hanau during the
night, having allowed the Bavarians to attack them on that side
of the Kinzig, received them with their bayonets, overwhelmed and
massacred them! General de Wrede was seriously injured, and his
son-in-law, Prince d'Oettingen was killed.
The command of the enemy army then devolved onto the Austrian
General Fresnel, who ordered a retreat, and the French army
continued on its way peacefully towards the Rhine. We recrossed
the river on the 2nd and 3rd of November 1813, after a campaign
which included brilliant victories and disasterous defeats, the
main cause of which, as I have said, was the mistake made by
Napoleon when, instead of making peace in June, following the
victories of Lutzen and Bautzen, he quarreled with Austria, which
involved the Confederation of the Rhine, that is to say all of
Germany, so that he soon had the whole of Europe ranged against
him.
After we had returned to France, the Emperor spent only six days
at Mainz, and then went to Paris, preceded by twenty-six flags
taken from our enemies. The army disapproved of this rapid
departure on the part of Napoleon. It was accepted that there
were important political reasons which called him to Paris, but
it was thought that he should have divided his time between his
capital and the need to re-organise his army, and that he should
have gone from one to the other to encourage the activity of
each, for he should have learned by experience that in his
absence little or nothing was done.
The last cannon shots which I heard in 1813 were fired at the
battle of Hanau, where I nearly spent the last day of my life. My
regiment carried out five charges, two on infantry squares, one
on artillery, and two on Bavarian cavalry; but the greatest
danger I ran was when an ammunition wagon, loaded with mortar
bombs, caught fire and exploded close to me. I have told how, on
the Emperor's order, all the cavalry were in action at a
particularly difficult moment. Now, in these circumstances, it
is not good enough for a unit commander to send his troops
blindly forward, a thing I have seen done on several occasions,
but he must pay the closest attention to the ground over which
his squadrons are about to pass, in case he sends them into bogs
and marshes.
I was therefore, a few paces ahead, followed by my regimental
staff and with my trumpeter at my side, who, at a given command,
would signal to the various squadrons the obstacles which they
would find in their way. Although the trees were widely spaced,
the passage through the forest was difficult for the cavalry
because the ground was littered with dead and wounded men and
horses, arms, cannons and ammunition wagons, abandoned by the
Bavarians; and you can understand that in these conditions when
one is galloping through shot and shell to reach the enemy one
cannot always take much care of oneself, and I relied greatly on
the intelligence and suppleness of my excellent and brave Turkish
horse, Azolan! The little group which followed me had been much
reduced by a blast of grape-shot which had wounded several of my
orderlies and I had beside me only the trumpeter, a charming and
good young man, when I heard from all along the line, cries of
"Look out, Colonel!" And I saw ten paces away a Bavarian
ammunition wagon which one of our shells had set on fire.
A huge tree which had been knocked down by cannon-balls barred my
way forward, and to go round it would have taken too long. I
shouted to the trumpeter to duck, and crouching on my horse's
neck, I urged him to jump the tree. Azolan leapt a long way, but
not far enough to clear all the leafy branches in which his legs
became entangled. The wagon was now in flames and the powder
about to catch! I thought I was done for... when my horse, as if
he realised our common danger, started bounding four or five feet
into the air, getting always further from the wagon, and as soon
as he was clear of the branches he galloped off with such speed
that he really seemed to be "Ventre … terre".
I was shaken when the explosion occurred, but it seemed I was out
of range of the bursting shells for neither I nor my horse were
touched.
Sadly it was not so for my poor young trumpeter, for when we
resumed our march after the explosion we saw his body, mutilated
by the shell fragments, and his horse also cut to pieces.
My brave Azolan had already saved my life at the Katzbach. I now
owed him my life for the second time. I made much of him, and as
if to show his pleasure he whinnied at the top of his voice. It
is at times like these that one has to believe that some animals
are more intelligent than is generally thought.
I greatly regretted the death of my trumpeter, who by his courage
and his behaviour had made himself liked by all the regiment. He
was the son of a teacher at the college in Toulouse, and had had
a good education. He delighted in producing Latin quotations, and
an hour before his death, the poor lad, having noticed that
almost all the trees in the forest of Hanau were beeches, whose
branches stretched out to make a sort of roof, had thought it a
suitable occasion to declaim one of Virgil's eclogues, beginning:
"Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi..."
which greatly amused Marshal Macdonald who happened to be passing
and who exclaimed, "There's a jolly lad whose memory isn't upset
by his surroundings; I'll bet it's the first time anyone has
recited Virgil to the sound of enemy cannon fire!"
"Those who live by the sword, perish by the sword" says the
scripture, and if this is not applicable to every soldier, it was
to a great many under the Empire. For example, M. Guindet, who
killed Prince Louis of Prussia in the fighting at Saalefeld, was
himself killed at the battle of Hanau. It was no doubt the fear
of meeting a similar fate which led the Russian General
Czernicheff to run away from danger.
You may remember that in the first months of 1812, this officer,
then a colonel, an aide-de-camp and favourite of the Emperor
Alexander, came to Paris where he abused his position to corrupt
two poor employees in the Ministry of War, who were executed for
having sold to him situation reports on the French army, and that
the Russian Colonel only escaped the penalty of the law by
secretly fleeing the country. On his return to Russia, M. de
Czernicheff, although he was a courtier rather than a soldier,
was given the rank of general officer and the command of a
division of 3000 Cossacks, the only Russian troops who appeared
at Hanau, where their leader played a role which made him a
laughing stock among the Austrians and Bavarians who were present
at this engagement.
Czernicheff, as he marched towards us, spoke loudly of victory,
believing that he had to face only soldiers who were sick and
disorganised; but he changed his tune when he saw himself in the
presence of the hardy and vigorous troops returning from Leipzig.
General de Wrede had great difficulty in persuading him to enter
the line, and as soon as he heard the fearsome cannonade of our
artillery, he and his 3000 Cossacks trotted bravely off the
field, to the cat-calls of the Austro-Bavarian troops, who
witnessed this shameful conduct. When General de Wrede went
personally to make some scathing observations, M. de Czernicheff
replied that his regiment's horses needed feeding and that he was
taking them for this purpose to nearby villages. This excuse was
regarded as so ridiculous that for some time afterwards the walls
of German villages were decorated by caricatures of M. de
Czernicheff feeding his horses with bunches of laurels gathered
in the forest of Hanau.
Once across the Rhine, the soldiers who made up the remains of
the French army expected to see an end to their hardships as soon
as they set foot on the soil of their motherland; but they were
much mistaken, for the government, and the Emperor himself, had
so much counted on success, and had so little foreseen that we
might leave Germany, that nothing had been made ready at the
frontier to receive and re-organise the troops. So, from the very
day of our arrival at Mainz, the men and the horses would have
gone short of food if we had not spread them out and lodged them
with the inhabitants of nearby villages and hamlets. But they,
since the first wars of the revolution, had lost the habit of
feeding soldiers, and complained vociferously, and it is true
that the expense was too great for the communes.
As it was necessary to guard, or at least to watch over the
immensely long frontier formed by the Rhine from Basle to
Holland, we settled, as best we could, the numerous sick and
wounded in the hospitals of Mainz. All fit men rejoined the core
of their regiments, and the various units of the army, which for
the most part consisted only of a small cadre, were spread along
the river. My regiment, together with what was left of
Sebastiani's cavalry corps, went down the Rhine by short marches;
but although the weather was perfect and the countryside
charming, we were all deeply unhappy, for one could foresee that
France was going to lose possession of this fine land, and that
her misfortunes would not stop there.
My regiment spent some time in Cleves, next a fortnight in the
little town of Urdingen, and then went on to Nimeguen. During
this sad journey we were painfully affected by the sight of the
inhabitants on the opposite bank, the Germans and the Dutch,
tearing down the French flag from their steeples and replacing it
with the flags of their former sovereigns. In spite of these
gloomy reflections, all the colonels tried to re-organise the few
troops which remained to them, but what could one do without
clothing, equipment or replacement of arms?...
The need to provide food for the army compelled the Emperor to
keep it dispersed, whereas to re-organise it would require the
creation of large centres of concentration. We were therefore in
a vicious circle. However, the allies, who should have crossed
the Rhine a few days after us, to prevent our re-organisation,
felt themselves still so weakened as a result of the hard blows
we had delivered during the last campaign, that they needed time
to recover.
They left us in peace for the months of November and December,
the greater part of which I spent on the bank of the Rhine, in
the ghost of the army corps commanded by Marshal Macdonald.
I was eventually ordered, as were the other cavalry colonels, to
take all my dismounted men to my regimental depot for the task of
building up new squadrons. The depot of the 23rd was still at
Mons, in Belgium, and that is where I went. It was there that I
saw the end of the year 1813, so filled with great events and in
which I had had encountered many dangers and undergone so many
trials.
Before I end my chronicle of the year, I ought to summarise
briefly the final events of the campaign of 1813.
Chap. 33.
The German fortresses in which the retreating French had left
garrisons were soon surrounded and in some cases besieged. Almost
all surrendered. Four only were still holding out at the end of
1813.
The first of these was Hamburg, commanded by the intrepid Marshal
Davout, who held on to this important fort until after the
abdication of the Emperor, when the French government recalled
the garrison to France; the second was Magdeburg, where General
Le Marois, an aide-de-camp to the Emperor, also held out until
the end of the war; the third was Wittemburg, defended by the
elderly General Lapoype, and which was taken by assault on the
12th of the following January; and finally Erfurt, which had to
capitulate for lack of food.