Napoleon's Marshals

During the winter the Marshal was fully occupied in forcing Prussia to drain to the last dregs her cup of humiliation: extorting from her the immense ransom Napoleon had laid on her, and crushing her attempts at regeneration by hounding out of the country the patriotic Stein and his band of fellow-workers. From his cantonments round Berlin Davout was summoned in 1809 to take part in another struggle with Austria. The campaign opened disastrously for the French. The Archduke Charles commenced operations earlier than Napoleon had calculated, and accordingly the Grand Army found itself under the feeble command of the chief of the staff. Berthier, in blind obedience to the Emperor, who had misread the situation, was compelled to neglect the first principles of war and to attempt to block all possible lines of advance instead of concentrating in a strategic position. In consequence of this, the Duke of Auerstädt, in spite of his official protests, found himself at Ratisbon, isolated from the rest of the army, with no support within forty miles. From this dangerous position he was saved by the arrival of the Emperor at headquarters, who, recognising his own mistakes, immediately ordered a concentration on Abensberg. The retreat, or rather the flank march, in the face of eighty thousand Austrians under the Archduke Charles, was successfully carried out, thanks to the stubborn fighting of the troops and the lucky intervention of a tremendous thunderstorm, which forced the enemy to give up their attack at the critical moment when the French were crossing a difficult defile. Two days later the Emperor once again tested Davout's stubborn qualities, entrusting him with the duty of containing the main Austrian force while he disposed of the rest of the enemy. The result was the three days' fighting at Eckmühl; during the first two, Davout, unaided, held his own till on the third the Emperor arrived with supports and gave the Austrians the coup-de-grâce, but rewarded the Marshal for his tenacity by bestowing on him the title of Prince of Eckmühl.

Though his corps was not actually engaged at the battle of Aspern-Essling the Marshal had a large share in preventing a complete catastrophe. As soon as he heard of the breaking of the bridge he set about to organise a flotilla of boats, and it was thanks to the supplies of ammunition thus ferried across that the French troops on the north bank were able to hold their own and cover the retreat to the Isle of Lobau. While both sides were concentrating every available man for the great battle of Wagram, Davout was entrusted with the task of watching the Archduke John, whose army at Pressburg was the rallying point for the Hungarians. The moment the French preparations were complete, the Marshal, leaving a strong screen in front of the Archduke, swiftly fell back on the Isle of Lobau, and by thus hoodwinking the Archduke gave the Emperor an advantage of fifty thousand troops over the enemy. The Prince of Eckmühl's duty at the battle of Wagram was to turn the left flank of the enemy and, while interposing his corps between the two Archdukes, at the same time to threaten the enemy's rear and give an opportunity to the French centre to drive home a successful attack. It was a most difficult and dangerous operation, for at any moment the Archduke John might appear on the exposed right flank. Whilst Davout was marching and fighting to achieve his purpose, the main battle went against the French. The left and centre were thrown back, and it seemed as if the Austrians were bound to capture the bridge at Enzerdorff. Amid cries of "All is lost!" the French reserve artillery and baggage trains fled in confusion. But relief came at the critical moment, for the Prince of Eckmühl, hurling his steel-clad cuirassiers on the unbroken Austrian foot, losing nearly all his generals in the desperate hand-to-hand fighting on the slopes of the Neusiedel, at last gained the top of the plateau and forced the enemy to throw back his left flank and weaken his centre. The moment the Emperor saw the guns appear on the summit of the Neusiedel, he launched Macdonald's corps against the Austrian centre and sent his aide-de-camp to Masséna to tell him "to commence the attack … the battle is gained." But Davout was unable to pursue his advantage over the enemy's left, for at the moment he gained the top of the plateau news arrived that Prince John's advance guard was in touch with his scouts; accordingly he halted and drew up in battle formation, ready at any moment to face the Hungarian troops should they attempt to attack his rear. Fortunately for the French the Archduke John forgot that an enemy is never so weak as after a successful attack, and instead of hurling his fresh troops on the weakened and disorganised French, he halted, and withdrew after dark towards Pressburg. When, during the pursuit of the battle, the Archduke Charles sent in a flag of truce offering to discuss terms, the Emperor called a council of war. There was a certain amount of difference of opinion, but Davout was for continuing the fight, pointing out that "once master of the road from Brünn, in two hours it would be possible to concentrate thirty thousand men across the Archduke's line of retreat." The Marshal's arguments seemed about to prevail when news arrived that Bruyère, commanding the cavalry, was seriously wounded. Thereon the Emperor changed his mind, crying out, "Look at it: death hovers over all my generals. Who knows but that within two hours I shall not hear that you are taken off? No; enough blood has been spilled; I accept the suspension of hostilities."

After the evacuation of the conquered territories the Marshal was appointed to command the Army of Germany. His duties were to enforce the continental system and to keep a stern eye on Prussia. The marriage with Marie Louise for the time being relieved tension in Central Europe, and accordingly in 1810 Davout was able to enjoy long periods of leave. He was present as colonel-general of the Guard at the imperial wedding, and at the interment of Lannes's remains in the Panthéon, and he did his turn of duty as general in attendance on the imperial household. His letters to his wife throw an interesting light on the imperial ménage. The officers in attendance were supplied with good, comfortable rooms and food, but had to find their own linen, plates, wax candles, firewood, and kitchen utensils; in a postscript he adds, "Not only must you send me all the above, but add towels, sheets, pillow-cases, &c.; until these arrive I have to sleep on the bare mattress."

In 1811 the growing hostility of Russia required the attendance of the Prince of Eckmühl at the headquarters of his command. Napoleon knew well that nobody would be quicker to discern any secret movement hostile to his interests than the man who in 1808 had done so much to check the regeneration of Prussia by enforcing his orders, playing on the Prussian King's fears and exposing the cleverness of the proposals of the patriotic Stein. The Marshal reached his headquarters at Hamburg early in February, and soon found his hands full. It was no longer a question of so disposing the corps committed to his care that he might cripple the English, "who since the time of Cromwell have played the game of ruining our commerce," but of preparing a mixed force of French, Poles, and Saxons, amounting to one hundred and forty thousand, for the contingencies of a war with Russia, or for the absolute annihilation of Prussia. To no other of his Marshals did the Emperor entrust the command of one hundred and forty thousand troops, and consequently the old enmities and jealousies broke out with renewed force. It was whispered that the Marshal's income from his investments, pay, and perquisites was over two million francs a year; that nobody in the imperial family had anything like as much, and people said it was better to be a Davout than a Prince Royal. The Prince disregarded all the annoying scandal his wife sent him from Paris, and quietly busied himself with preparing transport and equipping magazines for the coming war, diversified by an occasional thundering declaration informing the King of Prussia that his secret schemes were well known to the French authorities. But the subterranean jealousies bore their fruit. Nobody had a good word to say for Davout, and there was nobody to take his part. Most disastrously for the Grand Army the misunderstanding which existed between Berthier and Davout prevented their co-operation; and thus during the Russian campaign the rash empty-headed Murat had greater weight with Napoleon than Davout, the cautious yet tenacious old fighter. Accordingly at the battle of Moskowa, when Napoleon had his last chance of annihilating the Russians, he refused to listen to the Marshal, who pleaded to be allowed to turn the Russian left during the night. "No," said the Emperor, "it is too big a movement; it will take me too much off my objective and make me lose time." Davout, sure of the wisdom of this advice, once again renewed his arguments, but the Emperor rudely interrupted him with "You are always for turning the enemy; it is too dangerous a movement." So the battle of Moskowa was a disastrous victory, opening as it did the gates of Moscow without the annihilation of the Russian armed forces in the field. But it was greatly due to the Marshal that it was a victory at all, for the Russians fought with the greatest stubbornness; nearly all the French generals were wounded or killed, and at one moment a panic seized the troops. Then it was that the Prince of Eckmühl himself rallied the broken battalions and led them to the charge. In spite of a wound in the pit of his stomach, with bare head and uniform encrusted with mud and blood, he forced his weary soldiers against the foe and, as at Auerstädt, by sheer indomitable courage, compelled his troops to beat the enemy. His corps bore its share in the horrors of the retreat from Moscow, forming for some time the rear guard.

When Napoleon deserted the relics of the Grand Army at Vilma the Marshal's difficulties naturally increased, for his enemy Murat was now in command, and, as he wrote to his wife earlier in the campaign, "I am worth ten times as much when the Emperor is present, for he alone can put order into this great complicated machine." But the King of Naples did not long retain his command: he had not Davout's confidence in Napoleon and was disgusted with the ill-success of the campaign and afraid of losing his crown. The Marshal, ever loyal to the Emperor, would listen to none of the Gascon's diatribes, and told him plainly, "You are only King by the grace of Napoleon and by the blood of brave Frenchmen. You can only remain King by Napoleon's aid, and by remaining united to France. It is black ingratitude which blinds you." So Murat went off to Italy to plan treason, and Davout returned to Germany to place his life and reputation at the Emperor's service.

It fell to the Marshal's lot in 1813 to hold Northern Germany as part of the plan of campaign whereby the advance of the Allies was to be checked. The Emperor had determined to make an example of the town of Hamburg, to teach other German cities the fate to be expected by those who deserted him. His orders were that all those who had taken any share in the desertion were to be arrested and their goods sequestrated, and that a contribution of fifty million francs was to be paid by the towns of Lübeck and Hamburg. The Marshal carried out his orders. Hamburg writhed impotent at his feet and the "heavy arm of justice fell on the canaille." Only in the case of the contribution did he make any deviation from the Emperor's wishes, as it was inexpedient to drive all the wealthy people out of the state. In pursuance of the Emperor's plans, by the winter of 1813 Davout had made Hamburg impregnable. He had laid in huge supplies, and built a bridge of wood two leagues long joining Haarburg and Hamburg. With a garrison of thirty thousand men, danger threatened from within rather than from without, for Napoleon's bitter punishment of Hamburg, ending as it did with the seizure of eight million marks from the funds of the city bank, had made the name of France stink in the nostrils of the inhabitants. The Marshal was determined to hold the town to the last. In December, when provisions began to fail, the poor were banished from the city; those who refused to go were threatened with fifty blows of the cane. "At the end of December people without distinction of sex or age were dragged from their beds and conveyed out of the town." During the siege the Russian commander, Bennigsen, attempted by means of spies and proclamations to raise a rebellion in the fortress, but Davout's grip was too firm to be shaken, and a few executions cooled the ardour of the spies. It was not till April 15th that the Marshal was informed by a flag of truce of the fall of the Empire; not certain of the truth of the news, he refused to give up his command. At last, on April 28th, official news arrived from Paris, and on the following day the fifteen thousand men who remained of the original garrison of thirty thousand swore allegiance to the Bourbons and mounted the white cockade.

On May 11th General Gerard arrived to relieve Davout of his command. On his arrival in France the Prince of Eckmühl found himself charged with having fired on the white flag after being informed of Napoleon's abdication, of appropriating the funds of the Bank of Hamburg, and of committing arbitrary acts which caused the French name to become odious. His reply was first that until he had received official information of the fall of the Empire it was his duty to take measures to prevent Hamburg being surprised; that the appropriation of the funds of the bank was the only means of finding money to hold Hamburg; that he was not responsible for the continental system, and as a soldier he had only obeyed commands; that as a matter of fact he had contrived to have the heavy contribution lightened, and lastly, that during the siege he had only had two spies shot and one French soldier executed for purloining hospital stores. But in spite of his defence and the prayers of his fellow Marshals Louis refused to allow Davout to take the oath of allegiance, and accordingly when, in 1815, Napoleon returned from Elba, the Prince of Eckmühl alone of all the Marshals could hasten to the Emperor without a stain on his honour.

Immediately on his return the Emperor made a great call on the faithfulness of his friend, and told him he had chosen him as Minister of War. The Marshal begged for service in the field, but the Emperor was firm; Davout alone had held to him and all others had the Bourbon taint. Still the Marshal refused, pleading his brusque manners and well-known harshness; but at last the Emperor appealed to his pity, pointing out that all Europe was against him, and asking him if he also was going to abandon his sovereign. Thereon the Marshal accepted the post. It was no light burden that he had undertaken, prince of martinets though he was, to regenerate an army scattered to the winds. Everything was lacking – men, horses, guns, transports, stores, and ammunition. Yet he worked wonders, and by the beginning of June the Emperor had a field army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, with another quarter of a million troops in formation in France. On the return of the Emperor to Paris after the disaster at Waterloo the Marshal in vain besought him to dissolve the assemblies and proclaim a dictatorship, but Napoleon's spirit was broken and the favourable moment passed by. Meanwhile, the Emperor remained in idleness at Malmaison, and by the 28th of June the Prussians arrived near Paris with the intention of capturing him; but the Prince of Eckmühl warded off the danger by barricading or burning the bridges across the Seine and manœuvring sixty thousand troops in front of Blücher. Thanks to this Napoleon escaped to Rochfort, and owed his safety to Davout, for Blücher had sworn to catch him, dead or alive.

On the evacuation of Paris the Marshal withdrew westwards with the remnant of the imperial army, now called the Army of the Loire. But as soon as Louis had once again ascended the throne he relieved Davout, making Gouvion St. Cyr Minister of War and Macdonald commander of the Army of the Loire. The Marshal spent some months in exile, but was allowed to return to France in 1816. However the mutual distrust between him and the Bourbons could not be overcome, and, although he took the oath of allegiance and received the cross of St. Louis, he never attempted to return to public life, and died of an attack of pleurisy on June 1, 1823.

The causes of the success of the Prince of Eckmühl are easy to ascertain: acute perception, doggedness of purpose, and a devotion which never faltered or failed, are gifts which are bound to bring success when added to an exceptional run of good fortune. Among the Marshals there were many, no doubt, who had as quick a perception and as vivid an imagination as Davout, but there was no one who had his massive doggedness and determination, and Bessières alone perhaps surpassed him in personal devotion to the Emperor. Much as we may see to blame in his untiring hounding down of the patriot Stein in Prussia, in his cruel exactions in Hamburg, and in the remorseless way he treated spies and deserters, we must remember that he did it all from motives of patriotism. Moreover, we cannot fail to admire a man who made it a principle, when he had received rigorous orders, to accept all the odium arising from their performance because he considered that, since the sovereign is permanent and the officials are changeable, it is important that officials should brave the temporary odium of measures which are but temporary. In his opinion the phrase, "If the King only knew," was a precious illusion which was one of the foundation-stones of all government: thus it was that in carrying out severe orders the Marshal never attempted to shield himself behind the name of the Emperor.

It was therefore from a spirit of patriotism, as the servant of the French Emperor, that Davout pressed relentlessly on those who tried to shake off the yoke of France. Stern as his nature was, he did not disguise from himself that his policy bore hardly on the conquered, for when Napoleon asked him, "How would you behave if I made you King of Poland?" he replied, "When a man has the honour to be a Frenchman, he must always be a Frenchman," but he added, "From the day on which I accepted the crown of Poland I would become entirely and solely a Pole, and I would act in complete contradiction to your Majesty if the interests of the people whose chief I was demanded that I should do so." As a soldier and an administrator, though he is rightly called the prince of martinets, yet nothing was more abhorrent to his eyes than red tape. Efficiency was everything, and efficiency he considered was only to be gained by personal inspection of detail considered in relation to existing conditions, and not by blind obedience to hard and fast rules. It was this habit of mind and readiness for all contingencies which won for him his titles of Duke of Auerstädt and Prince of Eckmühl, and made him the right-hand man of the great Emperor, who confessed that, "If I am always prepared, it is because before entering on an undertaking, I have meditated for long and foreseen what may occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unforeseen by others: it is thought and meditation."

IX

JACQUES ÉTIENNE JOSEPH ALEXANDRE MACDONALD, MARSHAL, DUKE OF TARENTUM

Jacques Étienne Joseph Alexandre Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, was the son of a Uist crofter, Macachaim. The Macachaims of Uist were a far-off sept of the Macdonalds of Clanranald. The future Marshal's father was educated at the Scots College in Paris, and was for some time a tutor in Clanranald's household. Owing to his knowledge of French he was entrusted with the duty of helping Flora Macdonald to arrange the escape of Prince Charles. He accompanied the Prince to France, and obtained a commission in Ogilvie's regiment of foot. In 1768 Vall Macachaim, or Neil Macdonald, as he was called in France, retired on a pension of thirty pounds a year. On this pittance he brought up his family at Sancerre. The future Marshal was born at Sedan on November 17, 1765. He was educated for the army at a military academy in Paris, kept by a Scotchman, Paulet, but, owing to bad mathematics, he was unable to enter the Artillery and Engineering School. This failure came as a bitter blow to the keen young soldier, who, after reading Homer, already imagined himself an Achilles. But in 1784 his chance came; the Dutch, threatened by the Emperor Joseph II., had to improvise an army, and Macdonald accepted a pair of colours in a regiment raised by a Frenchman, the Count de Maillebois. A few months later the regiment was disbanded, as the Dutch bought the peace they could not gain by arms. The young officer, thus thrown on his own resources, was glad to accept a cadetship in Dillon's Irish regiment in the French King's service, and at the moment the Revolution broke out he was a sub-lieutenant in that corps. Owing to emigration and the fortune of war, promotion came quickly. Macdonald also was lucky in having a friend in General Beurnonville, on whose staff he served till he was transferred to that of Dumouriez, the commander-in-chief. As a reward for his services at Jemmappes and elsewhere he was made lieutenant-colonel, and early in 1793 his friend Beurnonville, who had become War Minister, gave him his colonelcy and the command of the Picardy regiment, one of the four senior corps of the old French infantry. The young colonel of twenty-eight could not expect to be always so favoured by fortune. Dumouriez's failure at Neerwinden and subsequent desertion to the Allies cast a cloud of suspicion on his protégé at a moment when to be suspected was to be condemned. Luckily, some of the Commissioners from the Convention could recognise merit, but Macdonald spent many anxious months amid denunciations and accusations from those who grudged him his colonelcy. To his intense surprise he was at last summoned before the dread Commissioners and told that, for his zeal, he was to be promoted general of brigade. Overcome by this unexpected turn of fortune, he wished to refuse the honour, and pleaded his youth and inexperience, and was promptly given the choice of accepting or becoming a "suspect" and being arrested. Safe for the moment, Macdonald threw himself heart and soul into his new duties, but still denunciations and accusations were hurled against him. Fresh Commissioners came from the Assembly, and it was only their fortunate recall to Paris that saved the general from arrest. Then came the decree banishing all "ci-devant" nobles. Macdonald, fearing after this order that if he met with the slightest check he would be greeted with cries of treachery, demanded written orders from the new Commissioners confirming him in his employment. These were refused, as also his resignation, with the curt reply, "If you leave the army we will have you arrested and brought to trial." In this dilemma he found a friend in the representative Isore, who, struck by his ability and industry, took up his cause, and from that moment Macdonald had nothing to fear from the revolutionary tribunal.

In November, 1794, he was quite unexpectedly gazetted general of division in the army of Pichegru, and took part in the winter campaign against Holland, where he proved his capacity by seizing the occasion of a hard frost to cross the Vaal on the ice and surprise the Anglo-Hanoverian force at Nimeguen. A few days later, during the general advance, he captured Naarden, the masterpiece of the great engineer Cohorn. Proud of his success, he hastened to inform the commander-in-chief, Pichegru, and was greeted by a laugh, and, "Bah! I pay no attention now to anything less than the surrender of provinces." The blasé commander-in-chief a week or two later himself performed the exploit of capturing the ice-bound Dutch fleet with a cavalry brigade and a battery of horse artillery.

After serving on the Rhine in 1796 Macdonald was transferred in 1798 to the Army of Italy, and sent to Rome to relieve Gouvion St. Cyr. When war broke out between France and Naples, the troops in Southern Italy were formed into the Army of Naples under Championnet. The commander-in-chief overrated the fighting qualities of the Neapolitan troops and thought it prudent to evacuate Rome. Macdonald was entrusted with this duty, and was further required to cover the concentration of Championnet's army. The hard-headed Scotchman had, however, gauged to a nicety the morale of the Neapolitan army, and, although he had but five thousand troops against forty thousand Neapolitans, under the celebrated Austrian general Mack, he engaged the enemy at Cività Castellana, defeated them, followed them up, drove them out of Rome and over the frontier, and practically annihilated the whole force. Unfortunately he wrote a comical account of the operations to his chief, who, having no sense of humour, felt that his evacuation of Rome had, to say the least of it, been hurried and undignified. Championnet therefore greeted his victorious lieutenant with the words, "You want to make me pass for a damned fool," and no explanations could appease his rage. So bitter became the quarrel that Macdonald had to resign his command.