Napoleon's Marshals

Brune returned to the capital in 1794 in time to witness the fall of his patron, Danton; but fortunately for him Barras took him under his protection, and in October, thanks to his influence, he became commandant of Paris. For a whole year the General held this post, and on October 5th commanded the second column while Bonaparte with the first column ended the reaction of the Terror with a few rounds of grape shot. Still under the patronage of Barras, Brune spent the year 1796 in pacifying the Midi, and his work there has been admirably portrayed in Alexandre Dumas' "Les Compagnons de Jéhu," where he figures as General Rolland. From this vexatious and wearisome struggle against hostile countrymen he was summoned to Italy at the beginning of 1797, and was present with Masséna's division at the battle of Rivoli. Under Masséna, he fought through the campaign which ended at Leoben, and attracted the notice of Bonaparte by his courage and goodwill: in reward for his services he was created general of division. From Italy the general, with his division, was sent in October to join the Army of England; while marching north it was suggested that he should take the post of ambassador at Berlin; but when the troops heard of this offer they asked the adjutant-general to write to their commander, saying, "Listen general: your division charges me to tell you not to give up fighting; the division will bring you honour, and that is much better than an embassy." However, there was to be no question of an embassy, for on February 7, 1798, the Directors sent him to take over the command of the French troops whose duty it was to annex Switzerland to France. This was the general's first independent command; and though the campaign added to his military reputation, unfortunately it left a stain on his honour. The war was entered on merely with the desire of capturing the Swiss treasury at Berne, and thus providing funds for Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition. Brune had learned his lesson in Italy, so the campaign was short, in spite of the difficulty of the country and the patriotism of the Swiss. Writing to Bonaparte, the general explained the cause of his success: "From the moment I found myself in a situation to act, I assembled all my strength to strike like lightning: for Switzerland is a vast barrack, and I had everything to fear from a war of posts. I avoided it by negotiations which I knew were not sincere on the part of the Bernese, and since then I have followed out the plan which I traced to you. I think always I am still under your command." The crushing of the Swiss peasantry and the capture of Berne were followed by the hour of spoliation; no less than one million seven hundred thousand pounds were wrung from the wretched Swiss. Brune himself kept his own hands clean and was, as he wrote, "constantly paring the nails of rascals and taking the public treasure from them"; but the fact that he was officially responsible for the spoliation and that his own share of the plunder was thirty-two thousand pounds caused his name to be loathed throughout the length and breadth of Switzerland, and "to rob like a Brune" became a proverb, which was eagerly seized on by his detractors.

The Directors, pleased with his operations in Switzerland, despatched Brune, on March 31, 1798, to take command of the Army of Italy. His task was a difficult one, for at Rome and Mantua the starving troops had mutinied, while the contractors and agents of the Directors were amassing huge fortunes. To complicate the situation the general was encumbered by a civil Commission, whose duty it was to supervise the governments of the Cisalpine Republic. Trouvé, the moving spirit of the Commission, had but one idea, to curb the growing democratic spirit of the Piedmontese. The commander-in-chief, whose love of freedom had not yet been blunted, violently opposed Trouvé, and at last forced his views on the Directory, and Trouvé was replaced by Fouché. But it was too late; the mischief had been done. The Piedmontese would no longer bear the French control: "This then," they cried, "is the faith, the fraternity, and the friendship you have brought us from France!" In spite of Brune's efforts to restore confidence they had lost all faith in French honour, and on December 6th his successor found himself forced to expel, at the point of the bayonet, all senators opposed to the French interest.

Leaving Italy in November, Brune found himself sent at the beginning of 1799 to Holland, where danger was threatening: it was evident that England was going to make an effort to regain for the Prince of Orange his lost possessions. In spite of this knowledge, as late as August the French commander could only concentrate ten thousand men under General Daendals to oppose an equal force of English under Abercromby when they landed on the open beach at Groete Keten. Though as strong as the enemy, General Daendals made the most feeble attempt to oppose the landing. Day by day English and Russian reinforcements poured into Holland, till at last they numbered forty-eight thousand. But the Duke of York, the English commander-in-chief, had a hopeless task. With no means of transport, no staff, and an army composed of hastily enrolled militia recruits and insubordinate drunken Russians, his only chance of success lay in a general rising of the Dutch; for early in September the French forces were numerically as strong as his own. Abercromby's opinion was that defeat would mean utter disaster: "Were we to sustain a severe check I much doubt if the discipline of the troops would be sufficient to prevent a total dissolution of the army": while the English opinion of the Russians was that they were better at plundering than at fighting. As a militiaman wrote, "The Russians is people as has not the fear of God before their eyes, for I saw some of them with cheeses and bitter and all badly wounded, and in particklar one man had an eit day clock on his back, and fiting all the time which made me to conclude and say all his vanity and vexation of spirit." In spite of this the English had some considerable tactical success, and drove the French back towards Amsterdam; but lack of provisions compelled them at the beginning of October to fall back on their entrenched position on the Zype. Fortunately Brune, who had been much impressed by the fighting powers of the enemy, did not understand how difficult it would have been for them to re-embark their forces if he pressed an attack. He allowed some of his staff officers to throw out hints of an armistice and convention, which were eagerly accepted, for on October 20th the English had only three days' provision of bread. With Masséna's victory at Zurich and the embarkation of the Allies after the convention of Alkmaar, the ring of foes which had so gravely threatened France was snapped asunder, and Brune, although he had shown but little resource or initiative during the fighting in Holland, and had failed to diagnose the extremity of the enemy, was hailed, along with Masséna, as the saviour of the country, and his tactical defeats were celebrated as the victory of Bergen.

From Holland the conqueror of the English was despatched, early in 1800, by the First Consul to quell the rising in La Vendée, where his former experience of guerilla warfare in Switzerland stood him in good stead, and he soon brought the rebels to their knees. During the Marengo campaign he commanded the real Army of Reserve at Dijon, but in August, when Bonaparte found it necessary to replace Masséna, he despatched Brune to take command of the Army of Italy. Unfortunately the future Marshal's genius was more suited to the details of administration and the direction of small columns than to the command of large forces in the field. Though at the head of a hundred thousand men, and supported admirably by Murat, Marmont, Macdonald, Suchet and Dupont, he failed conspicuously as a commander-in-chief. His movements at the crossing of the Mincio were hesitating and slow, and he neglected to seize the opportunity which Dupont's successful movements presented to him. At Treviso, as in Holland, he showed only too clearly his limitations: he held the enemy in the hollow of his hand, but, failing to see his advantage, he once again signed an armistice which permitted the foe to escape out of his net.

On his return to France the First Consul regarded him with suspicion. His well-known republican opinions did not harmonise with Bonaparte's schemes of self-aggrandisement. The First Consul had a very poor estimate of his military ability, but the people at large still hailed him as the saviour of Holland and France. Bonaparte treated him like all those whom he suspected but whom he could not afford to despise, and under the pretext of a diplomatic appointment he practically banished him to Constantinople. Diplomacy was not Brune's forte, and after eighteen months' residence in Turkey he was obliged to quit the Porte, which had fallen entirely under Russian influence.

The general was still abroad when the Emperor created his Marshals: his appointment of Brune, like his appointment of Lefèbvre, was part of his scheme for binding the republican interest to his dynasty, for his opinion of the Marshal's talent was such that he scarcely ever employed him in the field. From 1805 to 1807 Brune was occupied in drilling the troops left at Boulogne. In May, 1807, he was appointed to command the reserve corps of the Grand Army, and when in July the King of Sweden declared war on Napoleon, he was entrusted with the operations round Stralsund, and captured that fortress and the island of Rügen. During this short campaign the Marshal had an interview with Gustavus of Sweden, and tried to point out to him the folly of fighting against France. A garbled account of this interview, full of unjust insinuations, came to Napoleon's ears. In anger the Emperor sent for Brune and taxed him with the false accusations. The Marshal, furious that his good faith should be suspected, refused any explanation and merely contented himself with repeating: "It is a lie." The Emperor, equally furious at his obstinacy, deprived him of his command. The result of this quarrel was that for the next five years Brune lived at home in disgrace. On the Restoration he made his submission to Louis XVIII., and received the cross of St. Louis. But in 1815, on the return from Elba, he answered the Emperor's summons, for Napoleon could no longer afford the luxury of quarrelling with generous Frenchmen who were willing to serve him. Remembering the Marshal's talent for administration and a war of posts, he offered him the command of the Midi. Brune hesitated; Napoleon had treated him disgracefully, but in his generosity he was ready to overlook all that; still, he knew well that the Empire was not the Republic: yet he preferred Napoleon's régime to that of the Bourbons, and at last he accepted, but set out for his new duties depressed and not at all himself. The difficulties he had to contend with were enormous; the Austrians and Sardinians were massing on the frontiers, the allied fleet commanded the Mediterranean, while Provence was covered by bands of brigands who called themselves royalists. Marseilles, the fickle, which had given France and the Republic the "Marseillaise," was now red-hot Legitimist. So the news of Waterloo and of Napoleon's abdication came as a relief to the harassed Marshal, who was only too glad on July 22nd to hand over Toulon to the English. Thereon, in obedience to the command of the King, he set out for Paris.

Well aware of the disorder in the Midi, the Marshal asked Lord Exmouth, the commander of the British squadron, to take him by sea to Italy, so that he might escape the danger which he knew threatened him from the hatred of the royalists. Unfortunately for the fame of England, Lord Exmouth refused in the rudest terms, calling him "the prince of scamps" and a "blackguard." Accordingly he set off by land, receiving a promise of protection from the royalist commander, but no escort. With his two aides-de-camp he reached Avignon in safety, but there he was set on by the mob, chased into a hotel and shot in cold blood, and his body thrown into the Rhône; a fisherman by night rescued the corpse, and for many years the body of the Marshal reposed in the humble grave where the kindhearted fisherman had placed it. Meanwhile the Government sanctioned the story that he had committed suicide. But at last the persistence of his widow compelled an inquiry, when the truth was revealed, and it was proved without doubt that the murder had been connived at by the authorities. The inquiry further revealed that the real cause of the Marshal's death was not so much the measures he had taken to stamp out the bands of royalists during his command in the Midi, as his old connection with Camille Desmoulins and Danton. In spite of the fact that he was not in Paris during the September massacres, and that he was constantly employed with the army, rumour said that it was Brune who had carried round Paris the head of the Princess Lamballe on a pike, and the cunning revival of this story by the leaders of the White Terror had roused the mob to commit the outrage. The story was absurd. The archives of the War Office proved beyond doubt that he was not in Paris at the time of the execution of the Princess. Strange to say, the Marshal himself years before seems to have foretold his own death when, writing about the Terrorists, he composed the following lines: —

"Against one, two hundred rise,Assail and smite him till he dies.Yet blood, they say, we spare to spill,And patriots we account them still.Urged by martial ardour on,In the wave their victim thrown,Return their frantic joy to fill;Yet these men are patriots still."

Though his faithful wife had forced the authorities to remove the stain of suicide from the Marshal's fair fame, it was not till 1839, the year after her death, that at last a fitting monument was raised at Brives-la-Gaillard to the memory of the Marshal, who, whatever his failings as a commander might be, had lived a staunch friend, a true patriot, a courageous soldier; and had twice received the grateful thanks of the Government, and had twice been acclaimed as the saviour of his country.

XVII

ADOLPHE ÉDOUARD CASIMIR JOSEPH MORTIER, MARSHAL, DUKE OF TREVISO

Édouard Mortier was born near Cambrai on February 13, 1768. His father, a prosperous farmer, gave the future Marshal a fair education. Becoming a man of some importance on the outbreak of the Revolution, he was able in 1791 to secure for his son a commission in the volunteer cavalry of the north. Extremely tall, heavily built, slow of speech, "with a stupid sentinel look," the yeoman captain of 1791 gave the casual observer but little sign of promise. But in spite of those rather weary looking eyes, young Mortier was possessed of a burning enthusiasm and a dauntless courage. From his first engagement at Quiévrain, in April, 1792, where he had a horse killed under him, to the day he and Marmont surrendered Paris in 1814, every skirmish or engagement in which he took part bore testimony to his extraordinary bodily strength and bravery. Nature having also endowed him with a kindly temperament, it was not to be wondered at that his men swore by him, and were ready to follow him anywhere. But in spite of many gallant actions and numerous mentions in despatches, promotion came but slowly; for Mortier spent the first six years of his service with the armies of the Sambre and Meuse and of the Rhine, and had to compete against such men as Soult, Ney, St. Cyr, Kléber, and Desaix, who were on a higher mental plane. Still, he was recognised as one who was bound to rise, and was one of those whom Kléber singled out for commendation when he wrote to the Directory saying, "With such chiefs a general can neglect to count the number of his enemies"; and well he might, for on the day after he wrote his report, Mortier, with a single battalion and four squadrons of cavalry, having been ordered to try and drive two thousand of the enemy out of a strong position on the Wisent, attacked them with such vivacity that, to the surprise of everybody, in an hour he drove them in flight.

After the campaign in 1798 Jourdan sent up his name for the command of a brigade; but he preferred the colonelcy of the twenty-first regiment of cavalry. However, a few months later, on February 22nd, he was promoted general of brigade. It was in this capacity that he served under Masséna in the celebrated campaign in Switzerland. At the second battle of Zurich he did yeoman service; by a vigorous demonstration he held the enemy near the town while Masséna completed his turning movement; he further distinguished himself by his vigour and resource during the pursuit of the Russians; thus he won his promotion to general of division on September 25, 1799. When Bonaparte became First Consul, Mortier found no cause for dissatisfaction with the change of Government; no politician, he was ready to accept any strong government. Fortunately for him his dogged character and his fighting record attracted the First Consul's attention. Bonaparte saw in him a man without guile, a soldier who would accept any order from his chief, and execute it instantly without questioning. Still, it was a great piece of fortune for the general of division, who had hitherto held no independent command in the field, that he lay with his troops near the Vaal, at the time that the First Consul determined to punish England for her suspicion of him by seizing Hanover. With twenty thousand men General Mortier issued from Holland, fell suddenly on the Hanoverian troops at Borstel on the Weser, and forced Count Walmoden to sign a convention whereby the Hanoverian army was to retire behind the Elbe and not to bear arms against the French as long as the war continued. The English Government refused to ratify it, so Mortier at once called on Walmoden to resume hostilities; but so unequal was the contest, that the Hanoverian general was forced to accept a modified form of the former convention. Thereon Mortier hurriedly occupied Hamburg and Bremen, and closed the Elbe to English commerce. But brilliant as his operations had been in the field, as military governor of the ceded provinces he established a reputation for great rapacity, which followed him throughout his career.

Napoleon, however, winked at his general's peculations so long as they did not affect his treasury, and he showed his approbation of his successful campaign by making him one of the four commandants of the Guard, and including him, in 1804, among the first creation of Marshals. Next year Mortier marched to Germany in command of a division of the Guards. When after Ulm the army was reorganised for the advance on Vienna, a new corps, composed of the division of Dupont and Gazan, was entrusted to the Marshal. The duty he was to perform was difficult; he was to cross the Danube at Linz and, unsupported save by a flotilla of boats, hang on the Russian rear, while the rest of the army marched on Vienna by the right bank of the river. The Emperor impressed on him the necessity for caution, and warned him that he must throw out a ring of vedettes and keep somewhat behind Lannes's corps, which was marching in advance of him on the other side of the river. Unfortunately the Marshal, in his eagerness to inflict loss on the Russians, whom he believed to be flying in complete rout, neglected all warnings and pushed recklessly forward. At Dürrenstein (near the castle where Richard Cœur de Lion was imprisoned by the Archduke of Austria) he fell into a trap. The enemy allowed him to pass the defile of Dürrenstein with Gazan's division, knowing that Dupont was many miles in the rear, and then closed in on him on front and rear. With but seven thousand men, surrounded by thirty thousand Russians, it seemed that the Marshal was lost. But he kept his head, and at once turned about to try and break back and join Dupont, who he knew would hurry to his support. Firing at point-blank range, struggling bayonet against bayonet, the small French force worked its way towards the defile. Darkness fell, but still the fight continued, and at last Dupont's guns were heard at the other side of the gorge. But by then two-thirds of Gazan's division had fallen, three eagles were taken, and Mortier himself, conspicuous by his towering height, owed his safety to his skill with his sabre. His officers had begged him to escape across the river by boat, lest a Marshal of France should become a prisoner in the hands of the despised Russians; this he indignantly refused. "No," he said, "reserve this resource for the wounded. One who has the honour to command such brave soldiers should esteem himself happy to share their lot and perish with them. We have still two guns and some boxes of grape; let us close our ranks and make a last effort." But still the Russians pressed the devoted column, and now all the ammunition was expended and the survivors were preparing to sell their lives dearly, when Dupont's men at last hurled the enemy aside, and amid cries of "France! France! you have saved us!" the undaunted remnant of Gazan's division threw themselves into the arms of their comrades. On the morrow the sorely battered corps was recalled across the Danube, but the Emperor could not lay all the blame on Mortier, for it was his own mistake in strategy in dividing his army by the broad Danube which had really caused the disaster.

In 1806 the Marshal acted independently on the left of the Grand Army, and after occupying Cassel and Hamburg, where his cruel exactions greatly increased his reputation for rapacity, he was entrusted with the operations against the Swedes. In 1807, however, he was called up to reinforce the Grand Army in time to take part in the decisive battle at Friedland. In July, 1808, Napoleon rewarded him by creating him Duke of Treviso. A month later he despatched him to Spain in command of the fifth corps, which was composed of veterans of the Austrian and Prussian campaigns, very different from the recruits of the third corps and other corps in Spain. But in spite of this magnificent material the Marshal did not distinguish himself. The severe reverse he had received at Dürrenstein seemed to have killed his dash. His physical bravery remained the same as ever, but his moral courage had deteriorated, and in Spain his manœuvres were always halting and timid. At Saragossa he did not press the siege with the vehemence Lannes showed when he superseded him; but at the battle of Ocaña he showed that during a combat his nerve was as good as ever. The first lines of the French, broken by the fire of the Spanish battery, had begun to waver; the Marshal was slightly wounded, but at the critical moment he rode up to Girard's division, which was in reserve, and leading it through the intervals of the first line, he caught the victorious enemy at a disadvantage, and completely turned the fortunes of the day. The remainder of the Duke of Treviso's service in the Peninsula was spent under the command of Marshal Soult, either in front of Cadiz or as a covering force to the troops occupied in that siege. From Spain he was recalled in 1812 to command the Young Guard in the Russian campaign. When the French evacuated Moscow the Marshal, at the Emperor's commands, had the invidious duty of blowing up the Kremlin. During his retreat he showed himself worthy of his post of commander of the Young Guard, and in 1813, in the same capacity, he fought throughout the campaign, taking his share in the battles of Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden, Leipzig, and Hanau. After Dresden he incurred, along with St. Cyr, the wrath of the Emperor for not having aided Vandamme. But the fact remains that the blame of the disaster at Külm rests entirely on Napoleon and Vandamme. No orders were sent to Mortier or St. Cyr till after the disaster had occurred, and Vandamme had not taken the most elementary precautions against surprise. In 1814 the Marshal fought gallantly at Montmirail and Troyes, but, like Victor and Ney, he showed but little ingenuity. When Napoleon made his last dash eastward, he left Mortier and Marmont to hold off the Prussians from Paris. The Duke of Treviso, though far senior to the Duke of Ragusa, bowed to his superior genius, and in the operations ending in the surrender of Paris he carried out his junior's ideas with great generosity and without the least show of jealousy.

Like the rest of the Marshals, the Duke of Treviso made his submission to the new Government. On the return of Napoleon he for a time kept true to his oath to the Bourbons. When the Duke of Orleans, who shared with him the command of the north, on leaving Lille, wrote to him, "I am too good a Frenchman to sacrifice the interests of France, because now misfortune compels me to quit it. I go to hide myself in retirement and oblivion. It only remains for me to release you from all the orders which I have given you, and to recommend you to do what your excellent judgment and patriotism may suggest as best for the interests of France," the Marshal, in spite of his decoration of St. Louis and his seat as a peer of France, once again returned to his old allegiance. The Emperor greeted him warmly and created him one of his new peers, and in June sent him to the frontier in command of the Young Guard; but an attack of sciatica forcing him to bed, he escaped the disaster of Waterloo. On the second restoration he lost for the time his honours and dignities, but refused to re-purchase them at the price of sitting as judge on Marshal Ney; however, in 1819 he was reinstated in all of them.