The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

O >> Oliver C. Colt >> The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47

Finally the staff was completed by Dr. Raymond, who helped me
greatly at Eylau, and Colonel Augereau, a half-brother of the
general; a very quiet man, who later became a lieutenant general.

Chap. 20.

The greater part of the generals who made a name for themselves
in the early wars of the revolution having sprung from the lower
ranks of society, it has been supposed, wrongly, that they had
received no education, and that they owed their success solely to
their fighting ability. Augereau, in particular, has been very
badly judged. He has been represented as boastful, hard, noisy
and nasty. This is an error, for although he had a stormy youth,
and fell into some political misconceptions, he was kind, polite
and affectionate, and I can assure you that of the five marshals
under whom I have served, it was he who did most to lessen the
evils of war, who was most considerate toward the local populace
and who treated his officers best, among whom he lived like a
father among his children. It is true that he had a most
irregular life, but before passing judgement you must consider
the conditions which existed at the time.

Pierre Augereau was born in Paris in 1757. His father had an
extensive business in the fruit trade and had acquired a large
fortune, which allowed him to give his children a good education.

His mother was born in Munich, and she had the good sense to
speak nothing but German to her son, who, as a result spoke it
perfectly; something he found most useful in his travels, and
also during the wars.

Augereau was good-looking, large and well built. He loved all
physical activities, at which he excelled. He was a good horseman
and a fine swordsman. When he was seventeen his mother died, and
one of her brothers who worked in the office of Monsieur (the
king's brother) arranged for him to join the Carabiniers, of whom
Monsieur was colonel in chief.

He spent several years at Saumur, where the Carabiniers were
usually garrisoned, and where his efficiency and good conduct
soon raised him to the rank of sergeant. Sadly, there was at this
time a craze for duels. The reputation which Augereau had as an
excellent swordsman compelled him to engage in several, for it
was a great point among duelists not to accept that anyone was
their superior; gentlemen, officers and soldiers fought for the
most futile of reasons. It so happened that when Augereau was on
leave in Paris, the celebrated fencing master Saint-George,
seeing him pass, said, in the presence of several swordsmen,
there is one of the finest blades in France. Upon this, a
sergeant of Dragoons named Belair, who claimed to be next to
Saint-George in ability, wrote to Augereau saying that he would
challenge him to fight unless he recognised the writer's
superiority. Augereau having replied that he would do nothing of
the sort, they met on the Champs-Elysees where Belair received a
penetrating sword-thrust. He subsequently recovered and having
left the service, he married and became the father of eight
children, for whom he was unable to provide. So in the first days
of the Empire it occurred to him to approach his old adversary,
now a marshal. This man, whom I knew, was something of an
original character; he presented himself before Augereau with a
little violin under his arm, and said that as he had nothing to
give his eight children for dinner, he would make them dance a
quadrille to cheer them up, unless the marshal could put him in
the way of providing a more substantial meal. Augereau recognised
Belair, invited him to a meal, gave him some money and a few days
later arranged for him to have a good job in the transport
department. He also placed two of his sons in school. Conduct
which requires no commentary.

Not all the duels which Augereau fought ended like this. As a
result of an absurd custom, there existed an inveterate hatred
between some units, the cause for which was buried in the past
and often hardly known, but which, handed down from age to age,
resulted in duels every time the units met. In this way the
Gendarmes of Luneville and the Carabiniers had been at war for
half a century, though they had not seen one another in this long
period of time. At last, at the beginning of the reign of Louis
XVI, they found themselves in the same camp at Compiegne;
whereupon, to show themselves no less brave than their
forefathers, the Carabiniers and the Gendarmes decided to fight,
and their determination was such that the officers thought it
wiser to look the other way. However, to avoid too much
bloodshed, it was agreed that there would be only one duel; each
unit would select a combatant who would represent them, and after
that there would be a truce. The Carabiniers chose their twelve
best swordsmen, among whom was Augereau, and it was agreed that
the defender of the regimental honour should be chosen by lot.
On that day fate was more blind than usual, for it selected a
sergeant by the name of Donnadieu, who had five children.
Augereau observed that the name of a father of a family should
not have been included in the draw, and asked if he might replace
his comrade. Donnadieu declared that as his name had been chosen
he would go forward. Augereau insisted, and this battle of
generosity was ended only by the members of the meeting accepting
Augereau's proposal. The name of the combatant chosen by the
Gendarmes would soon be known and after that it was merely a
matter of arranging for the two adversaries to meet, when a
simulated quarrel would serve as a motive for the encounter.

Augereau had a fearsome opponent, an excellent swordsman, a
professional duelist, who as a warm-up, awaiting the contest, had
killed two sergeants of the Guards, on the days previously.
Augereau, without allowing himself to be intimidated by the
reputation of this bravo, went to the cafe where he knew he was
to appear, and while awaiting him sat down at a table. The
Gendarme arrived, and when his opponent had been pointed out to
him, he pulled aside his coat-tails, and sat down insolently on
the table, his backside not a foot from Augereau's face. Augereau
was drinking a cup of very hot coffee at the time and he gently
eased back the opening, called the ventouse, which existed then
at the back of a cavalryman's leather breeches, and poured the
steaming liquid onto the the buttocks of the impudent Gendarme,
who turned round in a fury! The quarrel having now been engaged
upon, they went outside, followed by a crowd of Gendarmes and
Carabiniers. As they went along, the ferocious Gendarme, to mock
the man whom, he felt confident, would be his victim, asked
Augereau, in a bantering tone, whether he would prefer to be
buried in the town or in the country. "The country" replied
Augereau, "I have always liked the open air." "Fine," said the
gendarme, and, turning to his second, he said, "Put him with the
other two I killed yesterday and the day before." This was not
very encouraging, and anyone but Augereau might have been put
out, but determined to sell his life dearly, he defended himself
with such skill that his adversary lost his temper and made a
false move, which allowed Augereau, who had remained calm, to run
him through, saying that it was he who would be buried in the
country.

The camp being ended, the Carabiniers returned to Saumur, where
Augereau was peacefully continuing his military service when a
disastrous event precipitated him into a life of high adventure.

A young officer of exalted birth, but with a very nasty temper,
having found something to complain about concerning the grooming
of horses, rounded on Augereau, and in an access of rage offered
to strike him with his riding whip in front of the whole
squadron. Augereau indignantly seized the officer's whip and
threw it away, whereupon the latter, in a fury, drew his sword
and confronted Augereau, saying, "Defend yourself!" Augereau
restricted himself at first merely to parrying, but having been
slightly wounded, he made a riposte and the officer fell dead.

The general, Comte de Malseigne, who commanded the Carabiniers in
the name of Monsieur, was soon told of this affair, and although
eye-witnesses agreed in saying that Augereau, provoked by the
most unjustifiable attack, had legitimately defended himself, the
general, who favoured Augereau, thought it would be wiser to get
him out of the way. To do this he called on a Carabinier named
Papon, a native of Geneva whose term of service was due to expire
in a few days, and invited him to give his travel permit to
Augereau, promising to give him another one later. Papon agreed
to this, and Augereau was always most grateful to him, for when
he arrived in Geneva, he learned that the court-martial, in spite
of the evidence of the witnesses, had condemned him to death for
raising his sword against an officer.

The Papon family had a business which exported a large number of
watches to the east. Augereau decided to go with a representative
whom they were sending there, and travelled with him to Greece,
to the Ionian islands, to Constantinople and the shores of the
Black Sea.

He was in the Crimea when a Russian colonel, guessing from his
bearing that he had been a soldier, offered him the rank of
sergeant.

Augereau accepted, and served for several years in the Russian
army, which the famous Souwaroff commanded in a war against the
Turks, and was wounded in the assault on Ismailoff.

When peace was made between the Porte and Russia, the regiment in
which Augereau was serving was ordered to go to Poland; but he
did not wish to stay any longer with the semi-barbarous Russians,
so he deserted and went to Prussia, where he served at first in
the regiment of Prince Henry, and then, on account of his height
and good looks, he was posted to the famous guards of Frederick
the Great. He was there for two years, and his captain had led
him to hope for promotion, when one day the king, who was
reviewing his guards stopped in front of him and said, "There is
a fine looking Grenadier!....Where does he come from?" "He is
French sire," came the reply. "Too bad," said Frederick, who had
come to detest the French as much as he had once liked them. "Too
bad. If he had been Swiss or German we could have made something
of him".

Augereau, from then on, was convinced he would get nowhere in
Prussia, since he had heard it from the lips of the king himself,
and so he resolved to leave the country. This was a very
difficult matter, because as soon as the desertion of a soldier
was signalised by the firing of a cannon, the population set off
in pursuit of him, in the hope of obtaining the promised reward,
and the deserter when captured was invariably shot.

In order to avoid this fate and to regain his liberty, Augereau,
who knew that a good one third of the guards, foreigners like
himself, had only one wish, and that was to get out of Prussia,
spoke with some sixty of the most daring, to whom he pointed out
that a single deserter had no chance of escape, since it required
only two or three men to arrest him, so that it was essential to
leave in a body with arms and ammunition for defence. This is
what they did, under the leadership of Augereau.

This determined group of men, attacked on their way by peasants,
and even a detachment of soldiers, lost several of their company,
but killed many of their adversaries, and in one night they
reached a small area of the country of Saxony which is not more
than ten leagues from Potsdam. Augereau went to Dresden, where he
gave lessons in dancing and fencing, until the birth of the first
Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI, an event which the government
celebrated by granting an amnesty to all deserters, which allowed
Augereau not only to return to Paris, but to rejoin the
Carabiniers, his sentence having been quashed, and General de
Malseigne having insisted that he was one of the finest N.C.O.s
in the corps.

In 1788, the King of Naples, feeling the need to put his army on
a good footing, requested the King of France to send him a number
of officers and N.C.O.s to act as instructors, whom he undertook
to promote to a rank above their present one on their arrival.
Augereau was included in this party and was promoted to
sous-lieutenant. He served there for several years, and had just
been promoted to lieutenant, when he fell in love with the
daughter of a Greek merchant. When her father refused his consent
to the union, the two lovers were married in secret, and
embarking on the first vessel they found about to leave, they
went to Lisbon, where they lived peacefully for some time.

It was now the end of 1792; the French Revolution was spreading
rapidly, and all the sovereign heads of Europe feared the
introduction of these new principles into their states, and were
suspicious of everything French. Augereau has often assured me
that during his stay in Portugal he never said or did anything
which could alarm the government, nevertheless, he was arrested
and incarcerated in the prison of the Inquisition.

He had been languishing there for several months, when Madame
Augereau, his wife, a woman of courage, saw come into the harbour
a ship flying the tricolour. She went on board to give the
captain a letter, informing the French government of the
arbitrary arrest of her husband. The captain, although not a
naval officer, went boldly to the Portuguese ministry and
demanded the release of his compatriot; failing which, he said
that he would declare war in the name of France. Whether the
Portuguese believed this, or whether they realised that they had
acted unjustly, they set Augereau free, and he and his wife went
back to Havre in the ship of the gallant captain.

On his arrival in Paris, Augereau was designated captain, and was
sent to the Vendee, where by his advice and example he saved the
army of the incompetent General Ronsin, which gained him the rank
of battalion commander. Sick of fighting his fellow Frenchmen,
Augereau asked to be posted to the Pyrenees, and was sent to the
camp at Toulouse commanded by my father, who, recognising his
ability, made him adjutant-general, (That is colonel of the
general staff), and showed him many marks of affection, something
which Augereau never forgot. Having become general, he
distinguished himself in the wars in Spain and Italy, and in
particular, at Castiglione.

On the eve of this battle, the French army, beset on all sides,
found itself in a most critical position, and the
commander-in-chief, Bonaparte, called a council of war; the only
one he ever consulted. All the generals, even Massena, proposed
a retreat, but Augereau, having explained what, in his opinion,
could be done to get out of the situation, said, "Even if you all
go, I shall stay here and will attack the enemy, with my
division, at dawn." Bonaparte, impressed by the arguments which
Augereau had put forward, then said that he would stay with him.
After which there was no more talk of retreat, and the next day a
brilliant victory, due in large part to the courage and tactical
skill of Augereau, established, for a long time, the position of
the French army in Italy. Bonaparte was always mindful of this
day, and when, as Emperor, he created a new nobility, he named
Augereau Duc de Castiglione.

When General Hoche died, Augereau replaced him in the army of the
Rhine. After the establishment of the consulate, he was put in
charge of an army composed of French and Dutch troops which
fought the campaign of 1800 in Franconia, and won the battle of
Burg-Eberach.

When peace had been declared, he bought the estate and chateau of
La Houssaye. I may say, in regard to this purchase, that there
has been much exaggeration of the fortunes of some generals of
the army of Italy. Augereau, after having held for twenty years
the rank of commander-in-chief, or of marshal, and having enjoyed
for seven years a salary of two hundred thousand francs, and an
award of twenty-five thousand francs, due to his Legion of
Honour, left at his death an income of no more than forty-eight
thousand francs.

There was never a man more generous, unselfish and obliging. I
could give a number of examples, but will limit myself to two.
General Bonaparte, after his elevation to the consulate, created
a large unit of Guards, the infantry portion of which was placed
under the command of General Lannes. Lannes was a distinguished
soldier, but had no understanding of administration. Instead of
conforming to the tariff laid down for the purchase of clothing,
fabrics and other items, nothing was too good for him; so that
the suppliers of clothing and equipment to the guards, delighted
to be able to deal by mutual agreement with the manufacturers,
(in order to get back-handers,) and believing that their
malversations would be covered by the name of General Lannes, the
friend of the First Consul, made uniforms in such luxurious style
that when the accounts were drawn up, they exceeded by three
hundred thousand francs the sum allowed by the ministerial
regulations. The First Consul, who had resolved to restore order
to the finances, and to compel commanders not to go beyond the
permitted expenditure, decided to make an example. In spite of
his affection for Lannes, and his certainty that not a centime
had gone into his pocket, he held him responsible for the deficit
of three hundred thousand francs, and gave him no more than eight
days to pay this sum into the Guard's account, or face
court-martial.

This uncompromising ruling had an excellent effect in putting an
end to the extravagance which had got into unit accounting, but
General Lannes, although he had recently married the daughter of
a senator, had no hope of making this payment. When General
Augereau heard of the fix in which his friend found himself, he
went to his lawyer, drew out the sum required, and instructed his
secretary to pay it into the Guard's account, in the name of
General Lannes. When the First Consul heard of this, he warmly
approved of what Augereau had done, and to put Lannes in a
position to pay him back, he had him sent to Lisbon as
ambassador, a very lucrative post.

Here is another example of Augereau's generosity. He was not a
close friend of General Bernadotte, who had bought the estate of
Lagrange, for which he expected to pay with his wife's dowry; but
there was some delay in the transfer of this money, and his
creditors were pressing him, so he asked Augereau to lend him two
hundred thousand francs for five years. Augereau having agreed to
this, Madame Bernadotte took it on herself to ask what rate of
interest he would expect. He replied that although bankers and
businessmen required interest on money which they lent, when a
marshal was in the happy position of being able to help a
comrade, he should not expect any reward but the pleasure of
being of service. That is the man whom some have represented as
being hard and avaricious. At this moment, I shall say nothing
more about the life of Augereau, which will unroll itself in the
course of my story, which will show up his faults as well as his
fine qualities.

Chap. 21.

Let us now go back to Bayonne, where I had just joined Augereau's
staff. The winter, in this part of the country, is very mild;
which allowed us to train and exercise troops in preparation for
an attack on the Portuguese. However, the court of Lisbon having
conceded all that the French government required, we gave up the
idea of crossing the Pyrenees, and General Augereau was ordered
to go to Brest and take command of the 7th army corps, which was
earmarked for an invasion of Ireland.

General Augereau's first wife, the Greek, being in Pau, he wished
to visit her and take his leave of her, and he took with him
three aides-de-camp, of which I was one.

Normally, a commander-in-chief had a squadron of "Guides", a
detachment of which always escorted his carriage, as long as he
was in a part of the country occupied by troops under his
command. Bayonne did not yet have any "Guides," so they were
replaced by a platoon of cavalry at each of the post-houses
between Bayonne and Pau. These came from the regiment which I had
just left, the 25th Chasseurs; so that from the carriage in which
I was taking my ease, beside the Commander in Chief, I could see
my former companions trotting beside the door. I did not take any
pride in this, but I must admit that when we came to Puyoo, where
you saw me arrive two years previously on foot, bedraggled and
in the hands of the gendarmerie, I was weak enough to put on an
air, and to make myself known to the worthy mayor, Bordenave,
whom I presented to the commander-in-chief to whom I had told the
story of what had happened to me in this commune in 1801; and as
the brigade of gendarmes from Pyrehorade had joined the escort to
Pau, I was able to recognise the two who had arrested me. The
old mayor was sufficiently malicious to inform them that the
officer whom they saw in the commander-in-chief's fine carriage
was the same traveller whom they had taken for a deserter,
although his papers were in order, and the good fellow was, at
the same time, very proud of the judgement he had given on this
occasion.

After a stay of twenty-four hours at Pau, we returned to Bayonne,
from where the general despatched me and Mainville to Brest, in
order to prepare his headquarters. We took seats in the
mail-coach as far as Bordeaux; but there, owing to the lack of
public transport, we were forced to take to the hacks of the
posting houses, which of all means of travelling, is surely the
most uncomfortable. It rained. The roads were appalling. The
nights pitch dark; but in spite of this, we had to press on at
the gallop, as our mission was urgent. Although I have never
been a very good horseman, the fact that I was accustomed to
riding, and a year spent in the riding school at Versailles, gave
me enough assurance and stamina to drive on the dreadful screws
which we were forced to mount. I got well enough through this
apprenticeship in the trade of courier, in which, you will see
later, I had to perfect myself; but it was not so with Mainville,
so we took two days and two nights to reach Nantes, where he
arrived bruised and worn out and incapable of continuing to ride
at speed. However we could not leave the commander-in-chief
without lodgings when he arrived at Brest, so it was agreed that
I would go on ahead, and that Mainville would follow later by
coach.

On my arrival, I rented the town house of M. Pasquier, the
banker, brother of the Pasquier who had been chancellor and
president of the house of peers. Mainville and several of my
comrades came to join me a few days later, and helped to make the
necessary arrangements for the commander-in-chief to maintain the
sort of state expected of him.

We began the year 1804 at Brest. The 7th Corps was made up of two
divisions of infantry and a brigade of cavalry; as these troops
were not encamped but were billeted in the neighbouring communes,
all the generals and their staffs stayed in Brest, where the
anchorages and the harbour were packed with vessels of all sorts.
The admirals and senior officers of the fleet were also in the
town, and other officers came there every day, so that Brest
afforded a most animated spectacle. Admiral Truguet and the
commander-in-chief held a number of brilliant receptions, scenes
that have often been the prelude to war.

In February General Augereau left for Paris, to where the First
Consul had summoned him to discuss with him the plan for the
invasion of Ireland. I went with him.

On our arrival in Paris, we found a very tense political
situation. The Bourbons, who had hoped that in taking the reins
of government, Bonaparte would support them, and would be
prepared to play the part that General Monk had once played in
England, when they discovered that he had no intention of
restoring them to the throne, resolved to overthrow him. To this
end they concocted a conspiracy which had as its leaders three
well known men, although of very different character. These were
General Pichegru, General Moreau and Georges Cadoudal.

Pichegru had taught Bonaparte mathematics at the college of
Brienne, but he had left there to join the army. The revolution
found him a sergeant in the artillery. His talent and courage
raised him rapidly to the rank of general. It was he who achieved
the conquest of Holland, in the middle of winter, but ambition
was his downfall. He allowed himself to be seduced by agents of
the Prince de Conde, and entered into correspondence with the
Prince, who promised him great rewards and the title of
"Constable" if he would use the influence which he had with the
troops to establish Louis XVIII on the throne of his forefathers.

Chance, that great arbiter of human destiny, decreed that
following a battle in which French troops, commanded by Moreau,
had defeated the division of the Austrian General Kinglin, the
latter's supply wagon was captured, which contained letters from
Pichegru to the Prince de Conde. It was taken to Moreau, who was
a friend of Pichegru, to whom he owed some of his promotion, and
who concealed his discovery as long as Pichegru retained his
influence; but Pichegru having become a representative of the
people in the house of elders, where he continued to favour the
Bourbons, was arrested with several of his colleagues. Whereupon
Moreau hurriedly sent to the directorate the documents which
incriminated Pichegru, and led to his deportation to the wilds of
Guyana.