The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

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General Bellavene sent an unfeeling message to my mother, saying
that if she wished to see her son, she must come immediately, for
he was dying. My mother was so distressed by this news, that she
was unable to make the journey. I posted there as quickly as I
could, but on my arrival I was told that my brother was dead.
Marshal Augereau did all that he could for us, in these unhappy
circumstances, and the Emperor sent the marshal of the palace,
Duroc, to convey his condolences to my mother.

All too soon another source of sadness would come to afflict her;
I would be forced to leave her, as war was about to break out on
the continent.

At a time when it might have been thought that the Emperor had
the greatest need to be at peace with the continental powers, in
order to execute his design for the invasion of England, he
issued a decree whereby he annexed the state of Genoa to France.
This was greatly to the advantage of the English, who profited
from this decision to frighten all the peoples of the continent,
to whom they represented Napoleon as aspiring to become the
master of the whole of Europe. Austria and Russia declared war
on us, Prussia, more circumspect, made preparations, but as yet,
said nothing.

The Emperor had no doubt foreseen these reactions, and a wish to
see hostilities break out perhaps underlay his seizure of Genoa;
for, despairing of ever seeing Villeneuve in control of the
channel, he wanted a continental war to deflect the ridicule to
which his proposed invasion, threatened for three years, but
never put into action, might have exposed him by displaying his
impotence in the face of England. The new coalition extricated
him nicely from an awkward situation.

Three years under arms had had an excellent effect on our
soldiers. France had never had an army so well trained, so well
organised, so keen for action, nor a leader in control of so much
power and such moral and material resources, who was so skillful
in their employment. So Napoleon accepted the outbreak of war
with pleasure, so confident was he of conquering his enemies, and
of making use of their defeat to strengthen his position on the
throne; for he knew the enthusiasm which the prospect of military
triumph always stirred up in the martial French spirit.

Chap. 23.

The great army which the Emperor was about to set in motion
against Austria, now had its back to that Empire, since the
forces deployed on the coasts of the North Sea, the Channel and
the Atlantic were facing England. On the right wing the 1st
Corps, commanded by Bernadotte, occupied Hanover; the 2nd, under
the orders of Marmont, was in Holland; the 3rd under Davout was
in Bruges; the 4th, 5th and 6th commanded by Soult, Lannes and
Ney, were encamped at Boulogne and in the surrounding district,
while finally the 7th commanded by Augereau was in Brest, and
formed the extreme left.

To break up this long cordon of troops and form them into a large
body which could march toward Austria, it was necessary to effect
an immense turn round from front to back. Each army had to make
an about turn, in order to face Germany, and form columns, to
march there by the shortest route. Thus the right wing became the
left, and the left the right.

Obviously, to go from Hanover or Holland to the Danube, the 1st
and 2nd Corps had a much shorter distance to travel than those
who came from Boulogne, and they in turn were nearer than
Augereau's corps, which, in order to go from Brest to the
frontiers of Switzerland on the upper Rhine, had to cross the
whole of France, a journey of some three hundred leagues. The
troops were on the road for two months, marching in several
columns; Marshal Augereau was the last to leave Brest, but he
then went on ahead, and stopped first at Rennes and then
successively at Alon‡on, Melun, Troyes and Langres, at which
stops he inspected the various regiments, whose morale was raised
by his presence. The weather was superb: I spent the two months
travelling endlessly in an open carriage, from one column to
another, carrying the marshal's orders to the generals, and was
able to stop twice at Paris to see my mother. Our equipment had
gone on in advance. I had a mediocre servant, but three excellent
horses.

While the Grande Armee was wending its way towards the Rhine and
the Danube, the French troops stationed in northern Italy, under
the command of Massena, concentrated in the Milan area in order
to attack the Austrians in the region of Venezia.

To transmit his orders to Massena, the Emperor was obliged to
send his aides-de-camp through Switzerland, which remained
neutral. Now it so happened that while Marshal Augereau was at
Langres, an officer who was carrying Napoleon's despatches was
thrown out of his carriage and broke his collar-bone. He was
taken to Marshal Augereau whom he told that he was unable to
continue his mission. The marshal, knowing how important it was
that the Emperor's despatches should arrive in Italy without
delay, entrusted me with the task of delivering them, and also of
going through Huningue, where I was to pass on his order to have
a bridge built over the Rhine at this spot. I was delighted to
have this mission, as it meant that I would have an interesting
journey and would be sure of rejoining 7th Corps before they were
in action against the Austrians.

It did not take me long to reach Huningue and Basle; I went from
there to Berne and on to Rapperschwill, where I left my carriage:
then, on horseback and not without some danger, I crossed the
Splugen pass, at that time almost impracticable. I entered Italy
at Chiavenna, and joined Marshal Massena near Verona. I went off
again without any delay, for Massena was as impatient to see me
go with his replies to the Emperor as I was to rejoin Marshal
Augereau before there was any fighting. However my return journey
was not as rapid as my journey out, because a very heavy fall of
snow had covered not only the mountains but also the valleys of
Switzerland; it had begun to freeze hard, and horses slipped and
fell at every step. It was only by offering 600 francs that I was
able to find two guides who were prepared to cross the Splugen
with me. It took us more than twelve hours to make the crossing,
walking through snow sometimes up to our knees. The guides were
on the point of refusing to go any further, saying that it was
too dangerous, but I was young and venturesome, and I knew the
importance of the despatches which the Emperor was awaiting.

I told my guides that even if they turned back, I would go on
without them. Every profession has its code of honour; that of
the guides consists principally in never abandoning the traveller
committed to their care. Mine then went forward, and after some
truly extraordinary exertions, we arrived at the large inn
situated at the foot of the Splugen as night was falling. We
would have undoubtedly died if we had been trapped on the
mountain, for the path, which was barely discernable, was edged
by precipices which the snow prevented us from seeing clearly. I
was exhausted, but a sleep restored my strength, so I left at
daybreak to reach Rapperschwill, where there were carriages and
passable roads.

The worst of the journey was over; so, in spite of the snow and
bitter cold, I reached Basle and then Heningue, where the 7th
Corps was stationed, on the 19th October. The next day we began
to cross the Rhine over a bridge of boats built for that purpose;
for although there was, less than half a league away in the town
of Basle, a stone bridge, the Emperor had ordered Marshal
Augereau to respect the neutrality of Switzerland, a neutrality
which they themselves broke, nine years later, by handing the
bridge to the enemies of France in 1814.

Here I was then, involved once more in a war. It was now 1805, a
year which for me heralded a long series of battles which lasted
continuously for ten years, for it did not end until ten years
later at Waterloo. However numerous the wars of the Empire might
be, nearly all French soldiers enjoyed one or even several years
of respite, either because they were in a garrison in France, or
they were stationed in Italy or Germany when we were at war with
Spain; but, as you will see, this did not happen to me; I was
continually sent from north to south, and south to north,
everywhere where there was fighting. I did not spend a single one
of these ten years without coming under fire and without shedding
my blood in some foreign country.

I do not intend to give, here, a detailed account of the campaign
of 1805. I shall limit myself to recalling the principal events.

The Russians, who were marching to the aid of Austria, were still
far away, when Field-marshal Mack, at the head of eighty thousand
men, advanced, unwisely, into Bavaria, where he was defeated by
Napoleon, who forced him to retreat to the fortress of Ulm, where
he surrendered with the greater part of his army, of which only
two corps escaped the disaster.

One of these, commanded by Prince Ferdinand, managed to reach
Bohemia; the other, commanded by the elderly Field-marshal
Jellachich, escaped into the Vorarlberg near Lake Constance,
where, flanked by neutral Switzerland, it guarded the narrow
passes of the Black Forest. It was these troops which Marshal
Augereau was about to attack.

After crossing the Rhine at Huningue, 7th Corps found itself in
the country of Baden, whose sovereign, along with those of
Bavaria and Wurtemberg, had just concluded an alliance with
Napoleon; so we were received as friends by the population of
Brisgau. Field-marshal Jellachich had not dared to oppose the
French in such open country, but awaited us beyond Freiburg, at
the entrance to the Black Forest, the passage through which he
expected us to effect only at the cost of much bloodshed. Above
all, he hoped to stop us at the Val d'Enfer, a very long and
narrow pass, dominated on both sides by sheer cliffs, and easy to
defend. But the men of 7th Corps had now heard of the successes
achieved by their comrades at Ulm and in Bavaria, and anxious to
emulate them, they advanced through the Black Forest with such
elan that they crossed through it in three days, in spite of the
natural obstacles, the enemy resistance and the difficulty in
finding food in this dreadful wilderness. The army finally broke
out into fertile country and made camp around Donauschingen, a
very pleasant town where there is the magnificent chateau of the
ancient line of the princes of Furstenburg.

The marshal and his aides-de-camp were billeted in the chateau,
in the courtyard of which is the source of the Danube; this great
river demonstrates its power at the moment of its birth, for at
the spot where it issues from the earth it already bears a boat.

The draught-horses for the guns and the supply wagons had been
greatly fatigued by the passage through the rough and mountainous
passes of the Black Forest, which a coating of frost had made
even more difficult. It was therefore necessary to give them
several days of rest; during which period the Austrian cavalry
came from time to time to probe our outposts, which were
positioned two leagues from the town; but this amounted to no
more than some ineffectual fire which kept us on our toes, gave
us some exercise in skirmishing, and allowed us to learn to
recognise the various uniforms of the enemy. I saw, for the
first time, the Uhlans of Prince Charles, Rosenberg's Dragoons
and Blankenstein's Hussars.

The horses having recovered their strength, the army continued
its march, and for several weeks we had a series of engagements
which left us masters of Engen and Stockach.

Although I was very much involved in these various actions, I had
only one accident, which, however, might have been serious. The
ground was covered by snow, particularly round Stockach, where
the enemy defended their position fiercely. The marshal ordered
me to go and reconnoitre a spot to which he wanted to direct a
column; I left at the gallop; the ground looked to me to be quite
level, the snow, driven by the wind having hidden all the
hollows, but suddenly my horse and I fell into a deep gully, up
to our necks in snow. I was trying to get out, when two enemy
Hussars appeared at the edge and fired their muskets at me.
Fortunately, the snow in which my horse and I were floundering
about prevented them from taking an accurate aim, and I came to
no harm; but they were about to fire once more when some
Chasseurs, which Marshal Augereau had sent to my aid, forced them
to depart hurriedly. With some help I was able to get out of the
ravine, but we had a great deal of difficulty in extricating my
horse. As we were both unhurt, my comrades had a laugh at the
strange appearance I presented after my bath of snow.

After we had gained control of the Vorarlberg, we captured
Bregen,and drove Jellachich's Austrian corps to Lake Constance
and the Tyrol. The enemy now sought the protection of the
fortress of Feldkirch and its celebrated gorge, behind which they
could defend themselves with advantage. We expected to have to
fight a murderous battle to take this position when, to our
astonishment, the Austrians offered to capitulate, an offer which
Marshal Augereau was quick to accept.

During the meeting between the two marshals, the Austrian
officers, humiliated by the reverse which their arms had just
suffered, took malicious pleasure in giving us some very bad news
which had been concealed up till this day, but which the Russians
and Austrians had learned of from English sources. The
Franco-Spanish fleet had been defeated by Lord Nelson on October
20th not far from Cadiz, at Cape Trafalgar. Villeneuve, our
infelicitous admiral, who had failed to carry out the precise
orders of Napoleon at a time when the appearance of a combined
fleet in the Channel could have secured a safe passage for the
troops assembled at Boulogne, learning that he was about to be
replaced by Admiral Rosily, passed suddenly from an excess of
circumspection to an excess of audacity. He left Cadiz and
engaged in a battle which, had it turned out in our favour, would
have been virtually useless, since the French army, instead of
being at Boulogne to take advantage of such a success to embark
for England, was two hundred leagues from the coast, fighting in
Germany.

After a most desperate struggle, the fleets of France and Spain
had been defeated by that of England, whose admiral, the famous
Nelson, had been killed; taking to his grave a reputation as the
finest seaman of the epoch. On our side we lost Rear-admiral
Magon, a very fine officer. One of our vessels blew up;
seventeen, as many French as Spanish, were captured. A severe
storm which arose toward the end of the battle, lasted all night
and the days following, and was on the verge of overwhelming both
victors and vanquished, so that the English, concerned for their
own safety, were forced to abandon nearly all the ships which
they had captured from us; which were mostly taken back to Cadiz
by the remains of their brave but unfortunate crews, though some
were wrecked on the rock-bound coast.

It was during this battle that my excellent friend France
d'Houdetot received a wound to his thigh which has left him with
a limp. D'Houdetot, scarcely out of childhood was a naval cadet,
and attached to the staff of Admiral Magon, a friend of my
father. After the death of the admiral, the ship "The Algesiras,"
in which he served, was captured after a bloody encounter, and
the English placed on board a prize crew of sixty men. But the
storm separated the ship from the English fleet, and the prize
crew realised that it was very unlikely that they could reach
England, so they agreed to allow the French seamen to take the
ship into Cadiz, with the stipulation that they would not be held
as prisoners of war. The French flag was hoisted to identify the
ship and the badly damaged vessel managed to reach Cadiz, though
not without great difficulty. The ship which bore Admiral
Villeneuve was captured and the unlucky admiral was taken to
England, where he remained a prisoner for three years. Having
been released on exchange, he decided to go to Paris, but,
detained at Rennes, he committed suicide.

When Field-marshal Jellachich felt obliged to capitulate before
the 7th French army corps, this decision seemed the more
surprising since, even if defeated by us, he had the option of
retiring into the Tyrol which was behind him, and whose
inhabitants have for many centuries been greatly attached to the
house of Austria. The thick snow which covered the country no
doubt made movement difficult, but the difficulties presented
would have been much greater for us, enemies of Austria, than for
the troops of Jellachich, withdrawing through an Austrian
province. However, if the old and hide-bound Field-marshal could
not bring himself to campaign in winter, in the high mountains,
his attitude was not shared by the officers under his command;
for many of them condemned his pusillanimity, and spoke of
rebelling against his authority. The most ardent of his opponents
was General the Prince de Rohan, a French officer in the service
of Austria, a bold and competent soldier. Marshal Augereau,
fearing that Jellachich might take the advice offered by the
Prince and retreat into the Tyrol where pursuit would be almost
impossible, hastened to grant him all the conditions which he
requested.

The terms of the capitulation were that the Austrian troops
should lay down their arms, hand over their flags, standards,
cannons and horses, but should not themselves be taken to France,
and could withdraw to Bohemia after swearing not to bear arms
against France for one year.

When he announced the capitulation in one of his army bulletins,
the Emperor seemed a little disappointed that the Austrian
soldiers had not been made prisoners of war; but he changed his
mind when he realised that Marshal Augereau had no means of
retaining them, as escape was so easy. In fact, during the night
preceding the day when the Austrians were to lay down their arms,
a revolt broke out in several brigades against Field-marshal
Jellachich. The Prince de Rohan, refusing to accept the
capitulation, left with his infantry division, and joined by some
regiments from other divisions, he fled into the mountains, which
he crossed, despite the rigours of the season: then by an
audacious march, he bypassed the cantonments of Marshal Ney's
troops, who occupied the towns of the Tyrol, and arriving between
Verona and Venice, he fell on the rear of the French army of
Italy, while this force, commanded by Massena was following on
the tail of Prince Charles, who was retiring towards Friuli. The
arrival of the Prince de Rohan in Venetian territory, when
Massena was already in the far distance, could have had the most
grave consequences; but fortunately a French army, coming from
Naples, under the command of General Saint-Cyr, defeated the
Prince and took him prisoner. He had, at least, submitted only to
force, and was right in saying that if Jellachich had been there
with all his troops, the Austrians might have defeated Saint-Cyr
and opened a route for themselves back into Austria.

When a force capitulates, it is customary for the victor to send
to each division a staff officer to take charge, as it were, and
to conduct it on the day and at the hour appointed to the place
where it is to lay down its arms. Those of my comrades who were
sent to the Prince de Rohan were left behind by him in the camp
which he quitted, for he carried out his retreat from an area
behind the fortress of Feldkirch, and in a direction away from
the French camp, so that he had little fear of being stopped; but
the Austrian cavalry were not in a similar situation. They were
in bivouac on a small area of open ground in front of Feldkirch,
and opposite and a short distance from our outposts. I had been
detailed to go to the Austrian cavalry and lead them to the
agreed rendezvous; this brigade did not have a general, but was
commanded by a colonel of Blankenstein's Hussars, an elderly
Hungarian, brave and crafty, whose name, I regret, I cannot
remember, for I think highly of him although he played me a most
disagreeable trick.

On my arrival at the camp, the colonel had offered me the
hospitality of his hut for the night, and we had agreed to set
off at daybreak, to reach the spot indicated on the shore of Lake
Constance, between the town of Bregenz and Lindau, at a distance
of about three leagues. I was most astonished when, at about
midnight, I heard the officers mounting their horses. I hurried
out of the hut and saw that the squadrons were formed up and
ready to move. I asked the reason for this hasty departure, and
the old colonel replied, with cool deceit, that Field-marshal
Jellachich feared that some jeering directed at the Austrian
soldiers by the French, whose camp one would have to pass if one
took the shortest route to the beach at Lindau, might lead to
fighting between the troops of the two nations. Jellachich, in
consultation with Marshal Augereau, had ordered the Austrian
troops to make a long detour to the right so that they would
avoid our camp and the town of Breganz, and would not come into
contact with our soldiers. He added that as the route was very
long and the road bad, the two commanders had advanced the time
of departure by some hours; he was surprised that I had not been
informed of this, but suggested that the written instructions had
been held up at the advance posts, owing to some
misunderstanding; he carried this deception so far as to send an
officer to look for this despatch, wherever it might be. The
explanation given by the colonel of the Blankensteins sounded so
convincing that I did not say anything, although my instinct told
me that this was a little irregular; but, alone in the midst of
three thousand enemy cavalry, what could I do? It was better to
appear confident than to seem to doubt the good faith of the
Austrian brigade. As I was unaware of the flight of the Prince de
Rohan's division, it did not enter my head that the commander of
the cavalry intended to evade the capitulation. I rode alongside
him, at the head of the column. The Austrian had made his
arrangements for the avoidance of the French camps--whose fires
could be seen--so well that we did not pass near any of them. But
what the old colonel had not anticipated, and was unable to
avoid, was an encounter with a flying patrol, which the French
cavalry usually sent out into the countryside at night, some
distance from an encampment: for suddenly there was a challenge,
and we found ourselves in the presence of a large column of
French cavalry, which was clearly visible in the moonlight. The
Hungarian colonel, without seeming the least worried, said to me
"This is work for you, as an aide-de-camp; kindly come with me
and explain the situation to the commander of this French unit."
We went forward. I gave the pass-word, and found myself in the
presence of the 7th mounted Chasseurs, who, knowing that the
Austrian troops were expected for the laying down of arms, and
recognising me as one of Marshal Augereau's aides, made no
difficulty about the passage of the brigade which I was
conducting. The French commander, whose troops had their sabres
drawn, even took the trouble to have them sheathed, as witness to
the good-will existing between the two columns, which went on
their way for some distance, side by side. I closely questioned
the officer in charge of the Chasseurs about the change in the
time at which the Austrians were to move; but he knew nothing at
all about it, something which did not raise any suspicion in my
mind, for I knew that an order of this kind would not be
distributed by the staff down to regimental level. So I continued
to ride with the colonel for the rest of the night, finding,
however that the detour we were making was very long, and the
going very bad.

At last, at daybreak, the old colonel, seeing a patch of level
ground, said to me, in a conversational tone of voice, that
although he would soon be obliged to hand over the horses of the
three regiments to the French, he wished to care for the poor
animals up to the last, and to deliver them in good condition; In
consequence he had ordered that they should be given a feed of
oats. The brigade halted, formed up and dismounted; and when the
horses had been tethered, the colonel, who alone remained on
horseback, gathered in a circle around him the officers and men
of the three regiments, and in a ringing voice which made the old
warrior seem quite superb, he announced that the Prince de
Rohan's division, preferring honour to a shameful safety, had
refused to subscribe to the disgraceful capitulation whereby
Field-marshal Jellachich had promised to hand over to the French,
the flags and the arms of the Austrian troops, and had fled into
the Tyrol; where he too would have led the brigade were it not
for the fact that he feared that in that barren mountain country,
there would not be enough fodder for so many horses. But now they
had open country in front of them and having, by a ruse of which
he was proud, gained a lead of six leagues over the French
troops, he invited all those who had truly Austrian hearts to
follow him across Germany to Moravia, where they could rejoin the
army of their August sovereign, Francis II. Blankenstein's
Hussars responded to this speech by their colonel with a
resounding cheer of approval; but Rosenberg's Dragoons and the
Uhlans of Prince Charles maintained a gloomy silence. As for me,
although I did not yet know enough German to follow the colonel's
words exactly, what I did understand, together with the tone of
the orator and the position in which he found himself, allowed me
to guess what was afoot, and I can promise you that I felt very
crestfallen at having, although unwittingly, furthered the plans
of this diabolical Hungarian.