PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--Bonaparte is now the knight of more Royal Orders than any other
Sovereign in Europe, and were he to put them on all at once, their
ribands would form stuff enough for a light summer coat of as many
different colours as the rainbow. The Kings of Spain, of Naples, of
Prussia, of Portugal, and of Etruria have admitted him a
knight-companion, as well as the Electors of Bavaria, Hesse, and Baden,
and the Pope of Rome. In return he has appointed these Princes his grand
officers of HIS Legion of Honour, the highest rank of his newly
instituted Imperial Order. It is even said that some of these Sovereigns
have been honoured by him with the grand star and broad riband of the
Order of His Iron Crown of the Kingdom of Italy.
Before Napoleon’s departure for Milan last spring, Talleyrand intimated
to the members of the foreign diplomatic corps here, that their presence
would be agreeable to the Emperor of the French at his coronation at
Milan as a King of Italy. In the preceding summer a similar hint, or
order, had been given by him for a diplomatic trip to Aix-la-Chapelle,
and all Their Excellencies set a-packing instantly; but some legitimate
Sovereigns, having since discovered that it was indecent for their
representatives to be crowding the suite of an insolently and proudly
travelling usurper, under different pretences declined the honour of an
invitation and journey to Italy. It would, besides, have been pleasant
enough to have witnessed the Ambassadors of Austria and Prussia, whose
Sovereigns had not acknowledged Bonaparte’s right to his assumed title of
King of Italy, indirectly approving it by figuring at the solemnity which
inaugurated him as such. Of this inconsistency and impropriety
Talleyrand was well aware; but audacity on one side, and endurance and
submission on the other, had so often disregarded these considerations
before, that he saw no indelicacy or impertinence in the proposal. His
master had, however, the gratification to see at his levee, and in his
wife’s drawing-room, the Ambassadors of Spain, Naples, Portugal, and
Bavaria, who laid at the Imperial and royal feet the Order decorations of
their own Princes, to the nor little entertainment of His Imperial and
Royal Majesty, and to the great edification of his dutiful subjects on
the other side of the Alps.
The expenses of Bonaparte’s journey to Milan, and his coronation there
(including also those of his attendants from France), amounted to no less
a sum than fifteen millions of livres--of which one hundred and fifty
thousand livres--was laid out in fireworks, double that sum in
decorations of the Royal Palace and the cathedral, and three millions of
livres--in presents to different generals, grand officers, deputations,
etc. The poor also shared his bounty; medals to the value of fifty
thousand livres--were thrown out among them on the day of the ceremony,
besides an equal sum given by Madame Napoleon to the hospitals and
orphan-houses. These last have a kind of hereditary or family claim on
the purse of our Sovereign; their parents were the victims of the
Emperor’s first step towards glory and grandeur.
Another three millions of livres was expended for the march of troops
from France to form pleasure camps in Italy, and four millions more was
requisite for the forming and support of these encampments during two
months, and the Emperor distributed among the officers and men composing
them two million livres’ worth of rings, watches, snuff-boxes, portraits
set with diamonds, stars, and other trinkets, as evidences of His
Majesty’s satisfaction with their behaviour, presence, and performances.
These troops were under the command of Bonaparte’s Field-marshal,
Jourdan, a general often mentioned in the military annals of our
revolutionary war. During the latter part of the American war, he served
under General Rochambeau as a common soldier, and obtained in 1783, after
the peace, his discharge. He then turned a pedlar, in which situation
the Revolution found him. He had also married, for her fortune, a lame
daughter of a tailor, who brought him a fortune of two thousand
livres--from whom he has since been divorced, leaving her to shift for
herself as she can, in a small milliner’s shop at Limoges, where her
husband was born in 1763.
Jourdan was among the first members and pillars of the Jacobin Club
organized in his native town, which procured him rapid promotion in the
National Guards, of whom, in 1792, he was already a colonel. His known
love of liberty and equality induced the Committee of Public Safety, in
1793, to appoint him to the chief command of the armies of Ardennes and
of the North, instead of Lamarche and Houchard. On the 17th of October
the same year, he gained the victory of Wattignies, which obliged the
united forces of Austria, Prussia, and Germany to raise the siege of
Maubeuge. The jealous Republican Government, in reward, deposed him and
appointed Pichegru his successor, which was the origin of that enmity and
malignity with which Jourdan pursued this unfortunate general, even to
his grave. He never forgave Pichegru the acceptance of a command which
he could not decline without risking his life; and when he should have
avenged his disgrace on the real causes of it, he chose to resent it on
him who, like himself, was merely an instrument, or a slave, in the hands
and under the whip of a tyrannical power.
After the imprisonment of General Hoche, in March, 1794, Jourdan
succeeded him as chief of the army of the Moselle. In June he joined,
with thirty thousand men, the right wing of the army of the North,
forming a new one, under the name of the army of the Sambre and Meuse. On
the 16th of the same month he gained a complete victory over the Prince
of Coburg, who tried to raise the siege of Charleroy. This battle, which
was fought near Trasegnies, is, nevertheless, commonly called the battle
of Fleurus. After Charleroy had surrendered on the 25th, Jourdan and his
army were ordered to act under the direction of General Pichegru, who had
drawn the plan of that brilliant campaign. Always envious of this
general, Jourdan did everything to retard his progress, and at last
intrigued so well that the army of the Sambre and the Meuse was separated
from that of the North.
With the former of these armies Jourdan pursued the retreating
confederates, and, after driving them from different stands and
positions, he repulsed them to the banks of the Rhine, which river they
were obliged to pass. Here ended his successes this year, successes that
were not obtained without great loss on our side.
Jourdan began the campaigns of 1795 and 1796 with equal brilliancy, and
ended them with equal disgrace. After penetrating into Germany with
troops as numerous as well-disciplined, he was defeated at the end of
them by Archduke Charles, and retreated always with such precipitation,
and in such confusion, that it looked more like the flight of a
disorderly rabble than the retreat of regular troops; and had not Moreau,
in 1796, kept the enemy in awe, few of Jourdan’s officers or men would
again have seen France; for the inhabitants of Franconia rose on these
marauders, and cut them to pieces, wherever they could surprise or waylay
them.
In 1797, as a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he headed the
Jacobin faction against the moderate party, of which Pichegru was a
chief; and he had the cowardly vengeance of base rivalry to pride himself
upon having procured the transportation of that patriotic general to
Cayenne. In 1799, he again assumed the command of the army of Alsace and
of Switzerland; but he crossed the Rhine and penetrated into Suabia only
to be again routed by the Archduke Charles, and to repass this river in
disorder. Under the necessity of resigning as a general-in-chief, he
returned to the Council of Five Hundred, more violent than ever, and
provoked there the most oppressive measures against his fellow citizens.
Previous to the revolution effected by Bonaparte in November of that
year, he had entered with Garreau and Santerre into a conspiracy, the
object of which was to restore the Reign of Terror, and to prevent which
Bonaparte said he made those changes which placed him at the head of
Government. The words were even printed in the papers of that period,
which Bonaparte on the 10th of November addressed to the then deputy of
Mayenne, Prevost: “If the plot entered into by Jourdan and others, and of
which they have not blushed to propose to me the execution, had not been
defeated, they would have surrounded the place of your sitting, and to
crush all future opposition, ordered a number of deputies to be
massacred. That done, they were to establish the sanguinary despotism of
the Reign of Terror.” But whether such was Jourdan’s project, or whether
it was merely given out to be such by the consular faction, to extenuate
their own usurpation, he certainly had connected himself with the most
guilty and contemptible of the former terrorists, and drew upon himself
by such conduct the hatred and blame even of those whose opinion had long
been suspended on his account.
General Jourdan was among those terrorists whom the Consular Government
condemned to transportation; but after several interviews with Bonaparte
he was not only pardoned, but made a Counsellor of State of the military
section; and afterwards, in 1801, an administrator-general of Piedmont,
where he was replaced by General Menou in 1803, being himself entrusted
with the command in Italy. This place he has preserved until last month,
when he was ordered to resign it to Massena, with whom he had a quarrel,
and would have fought him in a duel, had not the Viceroy, Eugene de
Beauharnais, put him under arrest and ordered him back hither, where he
is daily expected. If Massena’s report to Bonaparte be true, the army of
Italy was very far from being as orderly and numerous as Jourdan’s
assertions would have induced us to believe. But this accusation of a
rival must be listened to with caution; because, should Massena meet with
repulse, he will no doubt make use of it as an apology; and should he be
victorious, hold it out as a claim for more honour and praise.
The same doubts which still continue of Jourdan’s political opinions
remain also with regard to his military capacity. But the unanimous
declaration of those who have served under his orders as a general must
silence both his blind admirers and unjust slanderers. They all allow
him some military ability; he combines and prepares in the Cabinet a plan
of defence and attack, with method and intelligence, but he does not
possess the quick coup d’oeil, and that promptitude which perceives, and
rectifies accordingly, an error on the field of battle. If, on the day
of action, some accident, or some manoeuvre, occurs, which has not been
foreseen by him, his dull and heavy genius does not enable him to alter
instantly his dispositions, or to remedy errors, misfortunes, or
improvidences. This kind of talent, and this kind of absence of talent,
explain equally the causes of his advantages, as well as the origin of
his frequent disasters. Nobody denies him courage, but, with most of our
other republican generals, he has never been careful of the lives of the
troops under him. I have heard an officer of superior talents and rank
assert, in the presence of Carnot, that the number of wounded and killed
under Jourdan, when victorious, frequently surpassed the number of
enemies he had defeated. I fear it is too true that we are as much, if
not more, indebted for our successes to the superior number as to the
superior valour of our troops.
Jourdan is, with regard to fortune, one of our poorest republican
generals who have headed armies. He has not, during all his campaigns,
collected more than a capital of eight millions of livres--a mere trifle
compared to the fifty millions of Massena, the sixty millions of Le
Clerc, the forty millions of Murat, and the thirty-six millions of
Augereau; not to mention the hundred millions of Bonaparte. It is also
true that Jourdan is a gambler and a debauchee, fond of cards, dice, and
women; and that in Italy, except two hours in twenty-four allotted to
business, he passed the remainder of his time either at the
gaming-tables, or in the boudoirs of his seraglio--I say seraglio,
because he kept, in the extensive house joining his palace as governor
and commander, ten women-three French, three Italians, two Germans, two
Irish or English girls. He supported them all in style; but they were
his slaves, and he was their sultan, whose official mutes (his
aides-de-camp) both watched them, and, if necessary, chastised them.