Napoleon's Marshals

The Marshal returned to Paris and witnessed the capitulation and second abdication. Thereafter he had thoughts of withdrawing to Switzerland or to America. But unfortunately he considered himself safe under the terms of the capitulation, and, anxious to clear his name for the sake of his children, he remained hidden at the château of Bessonis, near Aurillac, waiting to see what the attitude of the Government would be. There he was discovered by a zealous police official, who caught sight of the Egyptian sabre Napoleon had presented to him in 1801. He was at once arrested and taken to Paris. The military court appointed to try him declared itself unable to try a peer of France. Accordingly the House of Peers was ordered to proceed with his trial, and found him guilty by a majority of one hundred and sixty-nine to nineteen. The Marshal's lawyers tried to get him off by the subterfuge that he was no longer a Frenchman, since his native town, Sarrelouis, had been taken from France. But Ney would hear of no such excuse. "I am a Frenchman," he cried, "and will die a Frenchman." Early on the following day, December 7, 1815, the sentence was read to the prisoner. The officer entrusted with this melancholy duty commenced to read his titles, Prince of Moskowa, Duke of Elchingen, &c. But the Marshal cut him short: "Why cannot you simply say 'Michel Ney, once a French soldier and soon to be a heap of dust'?" At eight o'clock in the morning the Marshal, with a firm step, was conveyed to the place of execution. To the officer who prepared to bandage his eyes he said, "Are you ignorant that for twenty-five years I have been accustomed to face both ball and bullet?" Then, taking off his hat, he said, "I declare before God and man that I have never betrayed my country. May my death render her happy. Vive la France!" Then, turning to the soldiers, he gave the word, "Soldiers, fire!"

Thus, in his forty-seventh year, the Prince of Moskowa, a peasant's son, but now immortal as the "Bravest of the Brave," expiated his error. Pity it was that he had not the courage of his gallant subordinate at Lons la Saulnier, who had broken his sword in pieces with the words, "It is easier for a man of honour to break iron than to infringe his word." Looking backward, and calmly reading the evidence of the trial, it is clear that Ney set out in March, 1815, with every intention to remain faithful to the King. But his moral courage failed him; and the glamour of his old life, and the contact with the iron will of the great Corsican, broke down his principles. To some the punishment meted out to him seemed hard; but when the Emperor heard of his execution he said that he only got his deserts. "No one should break his word. I despise traitors. Ney has dishonoured himself." And the Duke of Wellington refused to plead for the Marshal, for he said "it was absolutely necessary to make an example." But the clearest proof of the justice of the penalty was the fact that from the fatal day at Lons la Saulnier the Marshal was never himself again, and he who, during those terrible days in Russia, had been able to sleep like a little child, never could sleep in peace.

Among the Marshals of Napoleon, Ney, with his title of the "Bravest of the Brave," and his magnificent record of hard fighting, will always appeal to those who love romance. But, great fighter as he was, he was not a great general. At times, at St. Helena, Napoleon, remembering his mistakes at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, used to say that he ought not to have made him a Marshal, for he only had the courage and honesty of a hussar, forgetting his words in Russia, "I have three hundred millions francs in my coffers at the Tuileries; I would willingly have given them to save Marshal Ney." But, cruel as it may seem, perhaps the Emperor expressed his real opinion of him when he said, "He was precious on the battlefield, but too immoral and too stupid to succeed." In action he was always master of himself, but as Jomini, his old chief of the staff, wrote of him, "Ney's best qualities, his heroic valour, his rapid coup d'œil, and his energy, diminished in the same proportion that the extent of his command increased his responsibility. Admirable on the battlefield, he displayed less assurance not only in council, but whenever he was not actually face to face with the enemy." In a word, he lacked that marked intellectual capacity which is the chief characteristic of great soldiers like Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon, and Wellington.

VIII

LOUIS NICOLAS DAVOUT, MARSHAL, DUKE OF AUERSTÄDT, PRINCE OF ECKMÜHL

There was an old saying in Burgundy that "when a Davout comes into the world, another sword has leaped from the scabbard"; but so finely tempered a weapon as Louis Nicolas had never before been produced by the warrior nobles of Annoux, though the line stretched back in unbroken descent to the days of the first Crusades. Born at Auxerre on May 18, 1770, the future Marshal was destined for the service, and at the age of fifteen entered the Royal Military School at Paris. In the fatal year 1789 he received his commission in the Royal Champagne regiment of cavalry stationed at Hesdin, but his period of service with the royal army was short. From his boyhood, young Davout was one of those whom it was impossible to drive, who, while they submit to no authority, are as clay in the hands of the master mind who can gain their affections. His turbulent spirit had early become captivated by the specious revolutionary logic of a brilliant young lawyer, Turreau, who, a few years later, became his stepfather. Full of burning zeal for his new political tenets, chafing under the dull routine of garrison life, despising his mediocre companions, the young sub-lieutenant soon found himself in trouble, and was dismissed from the service for the part he took in aiding the revolutionaries in their attempts to seduce the privates and non-commissioned officers from their allegiance to their sovereign. His return to civil life was but brief, for, when in 1791 the Prussian invasion summoned the country to arms, Louis Nicolas enlisted in the Volunteers of the Yonne, and owing to his former military training was at once elected lieutenant-colonel.

The Volunteers of the Yonne formed part of the corps opposed to the Austrians in the Low Countries, and owing to the stern discipline of their lieutenant-colonel, became distinguished as the most reliable of all the volunteers raised in 1791. Davout adopted the same plan which proved so effective among the Scotch regiments during the eighteenth century: keeping in close communication with the local authorities of the Yonne, and rewarding or punishing his men by posting their names with their records in the various cantons from which they were drawn. After fighting bravely under Dumouriez, it fell to the lot of the battalion to attempt to capture that general, when, after the battle of Neerwinden, he tried to betray his army to the Austrians. Soon after this the lieutenant-colonel had to throw up his command when the Convention decreed that no ci-devant noble could hold a commission; but Davout's record was so strongly republican that his friend Turreau had little difficulty in getting him reinstated in his rank, and sent to command a brigade of cavalry in the Army of the Moselle. Except for two years during which he was at home on parole, after the capture of Mannheim, the general was on active service in the Rhine valley till the peace of Campo Formio in 1797. During these years he steadily added to his reputation as a stern commander and a stubborn fighter, and as such attracted the attention of Desaix, who introduced him early in 1798 to Bonaparte. The future Emperor saw at a glance that this small, stout, bald-headed young man had qualities which few others possessed. Accordingly he took him with him to Egypt. Like all who met the young Napoleon, Davout fell entirely beneath his spell. In spite of the fact that he was not included among the few friends whom Bonaparte selected to return with him in 1800, his enthusiasm for the First Consul increased day by day. Returning to France with Desaix, just before the Marengo campaign, he at once hastened to Paris to congratulate the new head of the Government. Davout's republicanism had received many shocks. Like all other honourable men, he had hated and loathed the Terror. Moreover, he had seen on service how little the preachers of the equality of man carried out their doctrine in practice. As early as 1794 we find him writing to a friend: "Ought we to be exposed to the tyranny of any chance revolutionary committee or club?.. Why are not all Frenchmen witnesses of fraternity and of the republican virtues which reign in our camps; we have no brigands here, but have we not plenty at home?" Bonaparte knew well that Davout was not only his enthusiastic personal follower, but also thoroughly approved of the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire, and in his desire for peace and stability at home would warmly back him up in his scheme of founding a tyranny under the guise of an Imperial Republic. Accordingly the First Consul published a most flattering account of him in the official Moniteur, and gave him command of the cavalry of the Army of Italy, under General Brune. In June, 1801, after the treaty of Lüneville, in pursuance of his plan of congregating his friends at headquarters, he recalled him to Paris as inspector-general of cavalry.

It was while thus employed that Davout met his wife, Aimée Leclerc. Aimée, a sister of that Leclerc who married Pauline Bonaparte, had been educated at Madame Campan's school in Paris, along with the young Beauharnais and Bonapartes, and was the bosom friend of Caroline and Hortense. From many points of view the marriage was extremely appropriate; for although the Davouts belonged to the old nobility, and Aimée's father was only a corn merchant of Poitou, he had prospered in his business, and had been able to give his daughter an excellent education. The marriage brought Davout into close connection with the First Consul's family, and was successful from a worldly and a domestic point of view. The future Marshal was deeply attached to his wife, and spent every moment with her which he could snatch from his military duties. When absent on service scarcely a day passed on which he did not write to her, and his happiness was completely bound up in her welfare and that of his large family. The year following their marriage the Davouts bought the beautiful estate of Savigny-sur-Orge for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. This was a great strain on their rather limited resources, and for some years they had to practise strict economy.

In September, 1803, the general was summoned to Bruges to command a corps of the Army of the Ocean, which later became the third corps of the Grand Army. There, in close communication with his great chief, he began to show those traits which made him respected as the most relentless and careful administrator of all the Marshals of France. His energy was indefatigable; everything had to undergo his personal scrutiny, be it the best means of securing the embarkation of a company in one of the new barges or the careful inspection of the boots of a battalion: for Davout, like Wellington, knew that a soldier's marching powers depended on two things, his feet and his stomach, and every man in the third corps had to have two pairs of good boots in his valise and one on his feet. Secrecy also, in his eyes, was of prime importance; he was quick to give a lesson to all spies, or would-be spies, in Belgium, and it was with stern exultation in his duty that he wrote to the First Consul, "Your orders for the trial of the spy (Bülow) will be carried out, and within a week he will be executed." Day by day, as he gained experience, the indefatigable soldier drew on him the approbation of the First Consul, and it was with no sense of favouritism that Napoleon, when he became Emperor, nominated him among his newly-created Marshals, although in the eyes of the army at large he had not yet done enough to justify this choice.

The campaign of 1805 gave the Marshal his first opportunity of handling large bodies of troops of all arms in the field, and, though it did not bring him into such conspicuous notice as Murat, Lannes, Soult and Ney, it justified Napoleon in his selection of him as worthy of the Marshal's bâton. In the operations round Ulm, Davout proved himself an excellent subordinate, whose corps was ever ready, at full strength, in the field, and at the hour at which it had been ordered, while the Marshal's stern checking of marauding was a new feature in French military discipline, and one which no other Marshal could successfully carry out without starving his troops. But it was Austerlitz which taught the students of war the true capabilities of this rising officer. There the Emperor, relying on his stubborn, methodical character, entrusted him with a duty which eminently suited his genius: he chose his corps as the screen to cover the trap which he set for the Russian left, and all day long it had to fight a stern rear-guard action against overwhelming odds, until it had tempted the enemy into dissipating his forces, and so weakening his centre that his left and right were defeated in detail. After Austerlitz, Davout was entrusted with the pursuit of the left wing of the Allies. Flushed with victory, the third corps pushed the disorganised enemy in hopeless rout, and it seemed as if the annihilation of the Russians was certain. Meanwhile, unknown to the Marshal, the Emperor had accepted the Czar's demands for an armistice. Davout first heard of the cessation of hostilities from the enemy, but, remembering Murat's mistake, he refused to halt his troops. "You want to deceive me," he said to the flag of truce; "you want to make a fool of me… I am going to crush you, and that is the only order I have received." So the third corps pushed on, and it was only the production of a despatch in the handwriting of the Czar himself that caused the victor at last to stay his hand.

Though Davout emerged from the Austrian campaign with the reputation in the army of having at last earned his Marshal's bâton, to the general public he still appeared as "a little smooth-pated, unpretending man, who was never tired of waltzing," but the campaign of 1806 made him nearly the best known of all the Marshals. Auerstädt was a masterpiece of minor tactics. Napoleon, thinking that he had before him at Jena the whole of the Prussian army, summoned to his aid Bernadotte, and thus left Davout with a force of twenty-three thousand men isolated on his right wing, with orders to push forward and try to get astride of the enemy's line of retreat.

It was in pursuance of this order that early in the morning of October 14, 1806, the Marshal, at the head of the advance guard of his corps, crossed the river Saale at Kösen and proceeded to seize the defile beyond the bridge through which ran the road to Naumberg. True to his motto of never leaving to another anything which he could possibly do himself, he had personally, on the previous evening, carefully reconnoitred the line of advance, and knew the importance of the village of Hassenhausen at the further end of the defile. Hardly had his advance guard seized this position and the heights commanding the road, when through the fog they saw approaching the masses of the enemy's cavalry; the fiery Prussian commander, Blücher, at once hastened to the attack, and again and again led his horsemen to the charge. Meanwhile Brunswick counter-ordered the retreat of the infantry and artillery. Soon the whole of the Prussian army, forty-five thousand strong, was engaged in the attempt to crush the small French force. But the Marshal was in his element, carefully husbanding his resources only to hurl them into the fray at the critical moment; feinting at his enemy's flanks; utilising every feature of the ground to prolong his resistance; galloping from square to square, his uniform black from powder, his cocked hat carried off by a bullet, encouraging his troops with short, sharp words, crying out, "The great Frederick believed that God gave the victory to the big battalions, but he lied; it is the obstinate people that win, and that's you and your general." From six in the morning the battle raged, but towards mid-day the Prussians, finding that they could make no impression on the enemy, began to slacken their attack. Davout seized the psychological moment to order his whole line to advance. Thereon the King of Prussia commanded his forces to retire, leaving a strong rear guard under Kalkreuth to prevent the French pursuit. But the French were in no condition to carry on an active pursuit, for out of twenty-three thousand men engaged they had lost almost eight thousand killed or wounded. It is quite true that man for man the French soldier in 1806 was superior in intelligence and patriotism to the Prussian, that the French staff was infinitely superior to the Prussian staff, and that there was no comparison between the morale of the two armies; but that alone does not explain how an army half the size of the enemy, caught as it was in the act of deploying from a defile, not only was not beaten absolutely, but actually defeated the superior force. The secret of the French success at Auerstädt lay in the character of their general. It was Davout's careful reconnaissance, his quickness to perceive in Hassenhausen the key of the position, his careful crowning of the heights covering the defile, the masterly way in which, while massing his men in the open to resist Blücher's fierce charges, he at the same time contrived so to expand his line as to threaten the flanks of his vastly superior foe, his indomitable courage in throwing his last reserve into the firing line, and his audacious counter-attack the moment he saw the Prussians wavering, which saved his force from what at the time looked like annihilation, and by sheer downright courage and self-confidence turned defeat into victory.

Pleased as the Emperor was at his lieutenant's victory, and much as he admired the way in which his subordinate had copied his own methods, showing that inflexibility of purpose, absolute disregard of the opinion of others, and unswerving belief in his own capacity which he knew were the factors of his own success, it did not suit his policy that a subordinate should attract the admiration of the army at large. Accordingly in his bulletins he glossed over the part played by Davout and belittled his success, but in his private letters he warmly praised the Marshal's courage and ability. Further, to reward him for lack of official praise, he gave the third corps the place of honour at the grand march past held at Berlin, when the inhabitants of the capital of Frederick the Great saw for the first time, with mingled hatred and surprise, "the lively, impudent, mean-looking little fellows" who had thrashed their own magnificent troops. On the following day the Emperor inspected the third corps, and thanked the officers and men for the great services they had rendered him, and paid a tribute to "the brave men I have lost, whom I regret as it were my own children, but who died on the field of honour." Pleased as the Marshal was with this somewhat tardy acknowledgment of his achievement, he was in no way inflated with pride; as General Ségur says of him: "Those who knew him best say that there was a sort of flavour of a bygone age in his inflexibility; stern towards himself and towards others, and above all in that stoical simplicity, high above all vanity, with which he ever strode forward, with shoulders square, and full intent to the accomplishment of his duty." But though success brought no pride in its train, it brought its burdens: the jealousy of the other Marshals was barely concealed, and as Davout wrote to his wife, "I am more than ever in need of the Emperor's goodwill … few of my colleagues pardon me the good fortune the third corps had in beating the King of Prussia."

A winter spent in Poland amid these jealousies and far from his family was only endurable because of his attachment to the service and person of the Emperor. Immediately on entering the country which he was to govern for the next two years, the Marshal summed up the situation at a glance, and told the Emperor that the nobility would throw cold water on all schemes unless the French guaranteed them their independence.

With the spring of 1807 came the last phase of the war. At Heilsberg, Davout fought well, and two days later took his part in the great battle of Eylau, the most bloody of all Napoleon's battles. Bennigsen, the Russian commander, had turned at bay on his pursuers. On the morning of February 8th the French corps came hurrying up from all sides at the Emperor's commands. It was not, however, till mid-day that the third corps arrived on the scene of the action. Heavy snow blizzards obscured the scene, but the struggle raged fiercely on all sides, the Russians fighting like bulls, as the French said. The Emperor, on Davout's arrival, placed his corps on the right and ordered him to advance, but the enemy's cavalry and artillery effectually barred his way. All day long the contest lasted, men fighting hand to hand in a confused mêlée. All day long Davout, with obstinate courage, clung to the village which he seized in the morning, whence he threatened the Russian line of retreat. When night came he still held his position; at last the Emperor, fearing a renewal of the fight on the next day, gave orders at eight o'clock for the third corps to fall back on Eylau. But the Marshal, hearing of the commencement of the Russian retreat, disobeyed the Emperor, and thus, by his bold front, in conjunction with Soult, he was mainly instrumental in causing the enemy to leave the field. If Davout had been less obstinate, the French would have had to fight another battle on the following day, but thanks to him they were spared this fate, and the twenty-five thousand dead and wounded Frenchmen had not spent their blood in vain. The third corps escaped the horrors of Friedland, as it had been detached to intercept the enemy's line of retreat in the direction of Königsberg, and Tilsit saw the end of Davout's second campaign against the Russians.

But peace did not bring the opportunity of returning to his beloved France and the joys of home life; the Emperor in peace, as in war, could not spare the great administrative capacity, the stern discipline, and the rigid probity of the Marshal. "It is quite fair that I should give him enormous presents," said the Emperor, "for he takes no perquisites." So Davout found himself established nominally as commander of the army of occupation, and really as special adviser to the Government of the newly constituted Grand Duchy of Warsaw. It was a situation that required infinite tact, patience, and a stern will. The Poles longed for a restored kingdom of Poland. The Emperor could not grant this without offending his new friend the Czar, who, with the Emperor of Austria, looked with suspicion on the experiment of creating a Grand Duchy. So on one side the Marshal had to try to inspire confidence in the Poles by pretending that the Grand Duchy was merely a temporary experiment in the larger policy of restoring the kingdom, while on the other hand he had to assure the Austrians and Russians that nothing was further from the Emperor's thoughts than creating a power at Warsaw dangerous to them. Meanwhile there was plenty of occupation in getting provisions for his troops in a land always poor and but lately devastated by war, and in attempting to maintain order in a country full of adventurers where police were unknown. It was useless to attempt to get assistance from the Government, for there was no organisation, no division of duties among the different ministers, and nobody knew what his own particular business was. The situation was well summed up in a caricature which showed the ministers nicely dressed in their various uniforms but without heads. It was well for the new Government that they had at their side such a stern, disinterested adviser as Davout, ready to take the initiative and accept the responsibility of any act which he thought good for the community. Under his supervision the ministers' spheres of action were duly arranged: the state was saved from bankruptcy by importing bullion from Prussia and deporting the adventurers who were filling their own coffers by draining the money from the country. The monks who preached against the Government and fanned popular discontent were three times given twenty-four hours' notice to put their houses in order, and then quietly escorted across the frontier. A strong Polish force was raised, armed and equipped by Prince Poniatowski under the Marshal's supervision. As a reward for his labours the Emperor granted Davout three hundred thousand francs to buy a town house in Paris, and followed this up, in May, 1808, by creating him Duke of Auerstädt. But what pleased the Marshal more than all was that the Emperor allowed the Duchess to join him at Warsaw. This was a politic move, for the Emperor, knowing well the secret intention of Austria, could not afford to withdraw the warden of the marches from his outpost at Warsaw; but by sending the Duchess of Auerstädt to Poland he kept his faithful lieutenant content. However, the Duchess's visit to Poland was not a long one. By September, 1808, it became certain that Austria was making immense efforts to recover her possessions, and accordingly Napoleon very wisely began to concentrate his troops in Central Europe, and the Duke of Auerstädt's corps was recalled to Silesia in October, and was incorporated with the French troops in Prussia under the designation of the Army of the Rhine.