(1769-1815)
[Footnote 3: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Michel Ney. [TN]]
Among the marshals of the great Napoleon, Ney has always held in my
mind the place of honor. "The Bravest of the Brave" was the sobriquet
bestowed on him by the men of his own nation and his own time; and the
briefest record of his life cannot fail to prove how well the title
was deserved. I could wish for a larger canvas on which to paint his
portrait; but the space allotted to me here will at least suffice to
reveal his character, and chronicle the main events of his career.
Michel Ney was born on January 10, 1769, in the small town of
Sarre-Louis, in Lorraine, which province had at that time only
recently been annexed to France. He was in reality, therefore, more
German than French. His father was a working cooper by trade, but he
wished his son to be something better, and arranged for him to study
law. Life at a desk, however, had no interest for the future marshal,
who, even then, had no doubt as to what should be his future career.
In 1787 he enlisted, at Metz, as a private hussar. His rise was rapid
from the first. He greatly distinguished himself in the Netherlands,
where revolutionary France, under Dumouriez and others was holding her
own against allied Europe. He became lieutenant in 1793, and captain
in 1794. In 1796, after a brilliant conflict under the walls of
Forchheim, which resulted in the taking of that town, and on the field
of battle, he was made General of Brigade.
Next year, in trying to save a gun from capture, he was taken prisoner
by the Austrians; but General Hoche, who was then commanding the army
of the Sambre and Meuse, soon effected his exchange. In 1798 he served
with great distinction under Massena, in Switzerland, and was made
general of division.
In 1799 he was transferred to the army of the Rhine, which he
commanded for some time, fighting with varying success, but with
unvarying energy and courage. He fought under Moreau at the famous
battle of Hohenlinden, and at the peace of Luneville was appointed
inspector-general of the cavalry.
In 1802 Napoleon having discovered that Switzerland "could not settle
her intestine divisions except by the interposition of France," sent
Ney, with 20,000 men, to dissolve the Diet and disband its forces.
This mode of settling intestine divisions did not commend itself to
the Swiss. It is generally admitted, however, that Ney acted with as
much moderation as his odious task permitted; and he doubtless
welcomed his recall to take a command in the army which was being
collected at Boulogne, ostensibly for the invasion of England.
When Napoleon was proclaimed emperor Ney was made a marshal, "for a
long succession of heroic actions," and when the army, instead of
crossing the Channel, turned back to crush Austria and the coalition,
Ney commanded the sixth corps. By October 14, 1805, Napoleon had
surrounded Mack and his army in Ulm, and on that day Ney carried the
heights of Elchingen after a terrific combat. It was from this
achievement that his title of Duke of Elchingen was derived. After the
capitulation of Ulm Ney had, at Innsprueck, the proud satisfaction of
restoring to the seventy-sixth regiment the flags of which they had
been despoiled. He was sent into the Tyrol in pursuit of the Archduke
John, whose rear-guard he caught and cut to pieces at the foot of
Mount Brenner, at the same time that Napoleon, at Austerlitz, brought
the war to a close.
After the peace of Presburg Ney remained in Suabia until the rupture
with Prussia. The day of Jena found him so anxious for the fray that
he attacked the enemy without waiting for orders, and brought the
whole Prussian cavalry upon his small division of some three thousand
men, and held them at bay until Napoleon sent him assistance. Though
Prussia was practically annihilated by the battles of Jena and
Auerstadt, Russia was still to be reckoned with. Napoleon invaded
Poland, and found himself forced into a winter campaign at a
formidable distance from France. Marching and countermarching through
mud and snow the whole army was subjected to horrible suffering; but
even then Ney's impetuous energy was unabated. Napoleon even rebuked
him for "fool-hardiness;" and more than once his only salvation from
destruction was in the slowness and density of the Russians. He took
little part in the dreadful and indecisive battle of Eylau, after
which Napoleon remained for eight days without making any movement;
but it was to him that, at Friedland, Napoleon allotted the post of
honor and of danger, saying, as the marshal went off proud of his
task, "That man is a lion."
Napoleon about this time discovered that "the interposition of France
was necessary in the affairs of Spain;" and after the peace of Tilsit
Ney was only allowed to remain in France long enough to recruit his
forces, before being sent to the Peninsula. A few months later in the
year, when Napoleon visited Spain, Ney was given the command of the
sixth corps there, but he was destined to reap few Spanish laurels,
and it is said that he endeavored to persuade the emperor to
relinquish the hopeless struggle against an entire people. While Soult
was engaged in the difficult task of forcing the English from the
Peninsula by way of Corunna, Ney held Galicia and the Asturias,
destroyed guerilla bands, defeated Sir Robert Wilson, and intercepted
the enemy's convoys; but the whole country was in arms against the
French, who after six months' unceasing struggle, were compelled to
retreat.
[Illustration: Marshal Ney returning the captured Colors.]
When Massena was sent to Portugal with orders from Napoleon to drive
the "English leopards and their Sepoy general into the sea," Ney,
acting under his directions, took Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. At
Busaco, on September 27, 1810, he differed from his commander-in-chief
as to the advisability of attacking the English position in front,
which was strong. Massena suffered a severe repulse; and Ney was
undoubtedly right, since the fact remains that after the battle
Wellington's position was easily turned, and he was compelled to fall
back. He retreated upon the famous lines of Torres Vedras, before
which Massena sat helplessly for months, until famine forced him to
break up his camp. Ney was intrusted with the command of the
rear-guard, and the universal opinion of military critics is that his
management of this retreat was one of his most splendid feats of arms.
On one occasion he confronted, with 5,000 men, Wellington and his army
of 30,000, and delayed them for many hours, while the sick and
wounded, the baggage wagons, and the main body of the French army made
good their retreat. While Ney was in front of him Wellington knew no
repose, nor, for all his efforts, did he succeed, during the whole
pursuit, in capturing an ammunition wagon or even a single gun. But
when Massena--with a view to saving his military reputation, which had
been gravely compromised by his want of success--proposed again to
advance upon Lisbon, Ney flatly refused to obey him, and after a
violent quarrel, was ordered by Massena to relinquish his command and
retire into the interior of Spain to await the decision of the
emperor. Napoleon recalled him to France, and gave him the command of
the third corps of that avalanche of men--men of so many nations and
kindreds and peoples--which he was preparing to hurl upon Russia.
The Grand Army crossed the Niemen in June, 1812, and followed an
ever-retreating foe to Smolensk, where the Russian general, Barclay de
Tolly, had received positive orders from Alexander to give battle, and
where he had placed a garrison of 30,000 men. On August 14th Ney
cleared the neighboring town of Krasnoi at the point of the bayonet,
and during the next two days the Russians were slowly forced back
under the walls of Smolensk. On the 17th a general attack was ordered,
and Ney was directed to take the citadel. But so obstinate was the
Russian defence that when night came no entrance had been effected.
However, an hour after midnight the Russian general set fire to the
town, and abandoned it, having lost 12,000 men in the defence. At a
council of war which followed the capture of the place, Ney strongly
recommended that the Grand Army should establish itself upon the banks
of the Dwina and the Dnieper, and occupying Smolensk and its environs
with a vanguard, there await the Russian attack. His advice was
overruled, however, and he was forced to follow the retreating foe
upon the road to Moscow. But Russia was thoroughly dissatisfied with
the way in which the war had so far been carried on, and Barclay de
Tolly was at this juncture superseded by Kutusof, who, having
intrenched himself strongly near the little village of Borodino,
prepared to dispute the farther progress of the invaders. The battle
which followed, on September 7th, was one of the most obstinate and
sanguinary of modern times. It lasted from early morning till late at
night, and more than eighty thousand men were killed or wounded. Ney
fought like a common soldier in the very thickest of the conflict. The
Russian positions were at last carried, and Ney sent to the emperor
for reinforcements with which to complete the victory. The emperor had
only his guard in reserve, and refused this request. "If there should
be another battle to-morrow," he said, "with what am I to fight it?"
"Let him go back to Paris, and play at emperor, and leave fighting to
us," cried Ney, scornfully, when he heard this message. Had his
request been granted, and the Imperial Guard been hurled into the
conflict at the right moment, it seems probable that the Russian army
would have been entirely destroyed. As it was, they drew off in good
order, under cover of night, and Kutusof even had the effrontery to
claim a victory. For his services during this memorable day Ney
received the title of Prince of the Moskowa.
The result of the battle of Borodino was to leave Moscow at the mercy
of the invaders, and a barren prize indeed it proved to them. In the
horror of the fearful retreat from the ruined city the fame of Ney
reached its highest point. Nothing in all history surpasses the record
of his indomitable courage and cheerfulness in the most hopeless
situations, and amid the most frightful hardships. As in Spain, he had
the command of the rear-guard, and the soldiers, preyed upon alike by
the Cossacks and the cold, died in the path like flies. Without
artillery and without cavalry, they yet succeeded, day after day, in
obstructing their pursuers. Ney was on foot in the midst of them,
carrying a musket and fighting like the humblest private. But at
Smolensk--where the army expected to find everything, and really found
nothing--they stayed too long, and on resuming their march found the
Russians barring their path. Napoleon and the Imperial Guard cut their
way through. The first and fourth corps succeeded, after a desperate
conflict, in evading their enemies, but Ney, who had received orders
to blow up the fortifications of Smolensk before leaving the town,
found himself with some eight thousand men cut off from the main body
of fugitives by an army of 50,000 Russians. He attacked them as though
the numbers were equal, lost in a short time nearly half his little
force, and was obliged to fall back. Being called upon to surrender,
he answered, proudly, "A Marshal of France never surrenders," and gave
the order, as night approached, to retreat toward Smolensk, which was
indeed the only way open to him. The soldiers were in despair. Ney
alone did not lose heart. In the gathering dusk they came upon a small
rivulet. The marshal broke the ice and watched the flow of the current
beneath. "This must be a feeder of the Dnieper," he said. "We will
follow it, and put the river between us and our enemies." This they
succeeded in doing; but were obliged to leave their wounded, their
artillery, and their baggage upon the other side. Ney had left
Smolensk on November 17th, with about eight thousand men. On the 20th
he joined Napoleon, who had given him up for lost--with somewhere
about one thousand. Napoleon, hearing that he was come, fairly leaped
and shouted for joy, exclaiming, "I have three hundred millions of
francs in the Tuileries--I would have given them all rather than have
lost such a man."
A few days afterward Ney was fighting madly on the shores of the fatal
Beresina to clear the way for the surging and almost frenzied crowd of
soldiers, stragglers, women and children, who, under the merciless
fire of the Russian batteries were streaming across the river on the
rickety bridges improvised by the French engineers. The Grand Army was
by this time only a crowd of wretched and undisciplined fugitives. Ney
managed to preserve the semblance of a rear-guard, and if it had not
been for his unceasing efforts it seems probable that hardly a single
soldier would ever have seen again the shores of France. As it was,
when he crossed the Niemen on December 13th, himself the last man to
leave Russian territory--his rear-guard had vanished, and he had with
him only his aides-de-camp, while of about five hundred thousand men
who had crossed the river five months before scarcely fifty thousand
returned.
No sooner did this catastrophe become known than Europe--so long
ground under his heel--rose against Napoleon, who at once called upon
France for fresh levies. Ney was given the command of the first Corps.
On April 29, 1813, he drove the allies from Weissenfels toward
Leipsic. On May 1st he again compelled a retrograde movement; and on
May 2d he commanded the French centre at the battle of Lutzen, where,
indeed, he bore the brunt of the fighting. The allies were compelled
to retire, but they did not consider themselves beaten, and they
fought again at Bautzen a few days afterward. Lutzen and Bautzen were
both dubious victories, but at Dresden the allies were defeated with
great loss.
This victory, however, was annulled by the defeat of Vandamme, who was
taken prisoner in Bohemia, after losing 10,000 men. When Napoleon
heard of this disaster he at once sent Ney to replace Oudinot in the
command of the Northern army, with the object of pushing on to Berlin;
but for once Ney's evil stars were in the ascendant, for on September
5th he was totally defeated by Bernadotte, at Dennewitz, losing 10,000
prisoners and eighty guns. "The Bravest of the Brave" was
inconsolable. For some days he took no food, and scarcely spoke. He
wished to give up his command and fight as a grenadier. "If I have not
blown out my brains," he said, "it is only because I want to rally my
army before dying."
And now came the catastrophe at Leipsic--the three days' battle of the
Nations--where, on the first day, Ney was defeated by Bluecher, after a
desperate struggle in which he lost 4,000 killed and wounded, and
upward of two thousand prisoners. On the third day, after the
defection of the Saxons, he held out for five hours with 5,000 men
against 20,000, and retired fighting to the end. Through the whole of
the succeeding campaign of France, he was at the emperor's side; and
when, in spite of all the genius of Napoleon, and all the bravery of
his soldiers, Paris capitulated, Ney was one of three marshals sent by
the defeated Emperor of the French to negotiate with the Emperor of
Russia for his abdication in favor of his son, the King of Rome.
This mission failed of any result--Napoleon went to Elba, and Louis
XVIII. reigned over France in his stead. Ney accepted the new order of
things, and was created a peer of France, knight of St. Louis, and
governor of the sixth Military Division. But the world was for the
time at peace; and Ney's occupation was gone. He had been a fighter
all his life--he could not turn courtier at the end. He had married,
in 1810, Mlle Auguie, who had been brought up in the court of Louis
XVI., was a friend of Hortense Beauharnais, and naturally fond of
gayety and society. The great marshal was a simple and rather
illiterate man, who had had no time to cultivate fashionable graces,
so it happened that when Madame la Marechal gave a banquet or a ball,
Ney used not to appear, but dined by himself, in his own apartments,
as far removed as possible from the noise of the festival. It is said
that outside the field of battle he was one of the timidest of men,
and even submitted quite tamely to the insolence of his own servants.
In January, 1815, he departed for his country-seat of Coudreaux, near
Chateaudun, where he lived in the simplest possible fashion, till on
March 6th, an aide-de-camp of the Minister of War brought him an order
to return at once to the head-quarters of the Military Division of
which he was commander. Instead of going directly to his post, he went
by way of Paris, where he heard for the first time of the landing of
Napoleon.
"It is a great misfortune," said he. "Whom can we send against him?"
Then, having visited the king, and assured him of his devotion to the
monarchy, he went to his command at Besancon. Next morning he heard
that Grenoble had declared for the emperor, and that the occupation of
Lyons was inevitable. He could observe for himself the dissatisfaction
of the troops by whom he was surrounded. On the 12th he was at
Lons-le-Saulnier, organizing his troops, and writing to the minister
of war for ammunition and horses. But he soon saw that resistance was
hopeless. The Bourbons had managed, as usual, to make themselves
hated. The king's brother and Marshal Macdonald had been obliged to
flee from Lyons when Napoleon appeared. All the soldiers were
delighted at the thought of having their "Little Corporal" back again.
On the night of the 13th Ney received an emissary from Napoleon. What
memories must have stirred in his heart, of old perils and old
glories! How could he resist the mighty spell of the past? On the 14th
he announced to his troops that the house of Bourbon had ceased to
reign, and proclaimed Napoleon.
"It was a grievous fault, and grievously did Caesar answer it." From
this moment Ney knew no more peace of mind. So bitter was his remorse
that he could not face his fellow-soldiers, and obtained Napoleon's
permission to retire for a time into the country. When he returned,
Napoleon said, banteringly, "I heard you had emigrated." "Ah, sire,"
answered Ney, "I ought to have done so long ago, but it is too late
now."
The approach of war revived his spirits to some extent, and when, a
few days before the battle of Waterloo, he joined the army in
Flanders, he looked like the Ney of old. At Quatre Bras, on June 16th,
despite an obstinate combat, he failed to drive Wellington from his
position, and the next day he does not appear to have discovered that
the English had fallen back upon Waterloo until some hours after their
departure. At the great battle of Waterloo, on June 18th, he fought
with the same reckless bravery as ever. He had five horses killed
under him, and his clothing was riddled with bullets. Napoleon said,
not without truth, that he behaved like a madman. After his fifth
horse was shot he fought on foot until forced from the field by the
rush of fugitives. He had done his best to die on the field of battle,
but almost miraculously he escaped without a wound.
After the second restoration of the Bourbons Ney retired into the
country, meaning to escape to the United States, and was provided by
Fouche with a passport for this purpose. He delayed, for some reason,
to use it; and on August 3d he was arrested at the house of a
relative. A council of war was appointed to try him, composed of
Marshals Massena, Augereau, Mortier, and three lieutenants. It would
have been better for Ney had he submitted himself to their verdict;
but he unwisely denied their competence, and demanded, as a peer of
the realm, to be tried by his peers, and it was a tribunal which
showed him no mercy. It does not appear that the king desired his
death; but Talleyrand declared that it would be a grand example, and
the royalists generally thirsted for his blood. He was condemned, by a
majority of 139 to 17, to be shot for high treason.
On December 7th his wife and four children were admitted to his prison
in the early morning, to take leave of him. But neither in this
painful ordeal nor at any time afterward, did the condemned marshal
show any sign of weakness. At eight o'clock he was taken in a carriage
to the place of execution, outside the garden gates of the Luxembourg.
The officer who commanded the firing party wished to bandage his eyes,
but Ney said, quietly--"Are you ignorant that for twenty-five years I
have been accustomed to face both balls and bullets?" Then, raising
his voice, he cried, "I protest against my condemnation. I wish that I
had died for my country in battle. But here is still the field of
honor. _Vive la France!_"
The officer in command, to his credit be it said, was dumb. He seemed
incapable of giving the word to fire; and Ney himself, taking off his
hat, and striking his breast, cried, in a loud voice--"Soldiers, do
your duty--fire!"