The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

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Major Massy and I left this pestilential spot as soon as we
could, and went on to Znaim, where, four years later I was to be
wounded; and at last we reached the Emperor at Brunn (Brno), on
November 22nd, ten days before the Battle of Austerlitz.

The day after our arrival, we completed our mission and handed
over the flags with the ceremony laid down by the Emperor for
solemn occasions of this kind; for he missed no opportunity of
displaying to the troops anything which could raise their morale
and enthusiasm.

The procedure was as follows:--Half an hour before the daily
parade,--which took place at eleven o'clock outside whatever
residence was serving as the Emperor's palace,--General Duroc,
the Grand Marshal, sent to our billet a company of Grenadiers of
the Guard, with bandsmen and drummers. The town of Brunn was full
of French troops, and the soldiers, as we passed, celebrated with
much cheering the victory of their comrades of 7th Corps. All the
guard-posts accorded us military honours, and on our entry to the
courtyard of the Emperor's quarters, the units formed up for the
parade beat a salute, presented arms, and cried repeatedly "Vive
L'Empereur!"

The aide-de-camp on duty came to receive us and to present us to
Napoleon, to whom we were introduced, accompanied always by the
N.C.O.s carrying the Austrian flags. The Emperor examined these
various trophies, and after dismissing the N.C.O.s. he questioned
us closely about the various actions which had been fought by
Marshal Augereau and on all we had seen or learned on our long
journey through a countryside which had been the theatre of war.
Then he told us to await his instructions, and to join the
imperial suite. The Grand Marshal Duroc took charge of the
flags, for which he gave us a receipt in the regular manner,
informed us that horses would be placed at our disposal and
invited us, for the duration of our stay, to the table over which
he presided.

The French army was now massed around and before Brunn. The
Russian advance-guard occupied Austerlitz, while the bulk of
their army was positioned round the town of Olmutz, where were
also the Emperor Alexander of Russia and the Emperor of Austria.
A battle seemed inevitable, but both sides being well aware that
the outcome would have an immense bearing on the destiny of
Europe, each hesitated to make a decisive move. Napoleon, usually
so swift to act, waited for eleven days at Brunn before launching
a major attack. It is, however, true that every day of waiting
increased his forces by the arrival of great numbers of soldiers
who had lagged behind because of illness or fatigue, and who
having now recovered, hastened to rejoin their units. I recall
that, in these circumstances, I told a white lie which could have
ruined my military career.

Napoleon usually treated his officers with kindness, but there
was one point on which he was perhaps too strict, for he held
colonels responsible for keeping their units up to full strength,
something it is very difficult to do during a campaign. It was in
this matter that the Emperor was most often deceived, for the
corps commanders were so afraid of displeasing him that they
risked being committed to facing an enemy force disproportionate
to their own numbers, rather than admit that sickness, fatigue
and the need to forage for food had caused many soldiers to drop
out. So Napoleon, in spite of his authority, never knew the exact
number of combatants available to him on the day of battle.

Now it so happened that the Emperor, in the course of one of the
endless trips he made to visit the various corps of the army, saw
the mounted Chasseurs of his guard, who were moving to a
different position. He was particularly fond of this regiment, of
which his "guides" from Italy and Egypt formed the nucleus. The
Emperor, whose experienced eye could estimate very exactly the
strength of a column, noticing that their numbers were much
reduced, took out of his pocket a little notebook, and, calling
for General Morland, the commander of the mounted Chasseurs, he
said to him in a stern voice, "Your regiment is down in my notes
as having 1200 men, and although you have not been in action, you
have no more than 800; what has happened to the others?" General
Morland was a fine, brave fighting soldier, but he did not have a
ready tongue, and being quite nonplussed, he said in his
Franco-Alsatian dialect that he was short of only a small number
of men. The Emperor maintained that he was about four hundred
short, and to get to the truth of the matter he wanted to have an
immediate count; but knowing that General Morland was very much
liked by the officers of the imperial staff, he feared a
cover-up, and thought he would be more likely to discover the
truth by choosing an officer who did not belong to his entourage
nor to the Chasseurs; so, seeing me, he ordered me to count the
Chasseurs and to deliver to him personally a record of their
numbers; having said which, he made off at the gallop. I began my
task, which was made more easy because the troopers were riding
past four abreast at walking pace.

Poor General Morland, who knew how close Napoleon's estimate was
to the reality, was in a state of great agitation, for he foresaw
that my report would call down on his head a severe reprimand. He
hardly knew me, and did not dare to suggest that I might
compromise myself to get him out of trouble. He was then sitting
silently on his horse beside me, when, fortunately for him, his
adjutant came to join him. This officer, named Fournier, had
started his military career as an assistant surgeon, then, having
become a surgeon-major, he felt that he had more of a vocation
for the sabre than for the lancet, and had asked for and obtained
permission to join the ranks of the combatant officers, and
Morland, with whom he had served previously, arranged for him to
join the Guard.

I had known Captain Fournier very well when he was still
surgeon-major, and I was very much obliged to him, for not only
had he dressed my father's wound when it was inflicted, but he
had gone, like him, to Genoa, where, as long as my father lived,
he had come several times a day to care for him: if the doctors
charged with the duty of fighting the typhus epidemic had been as
assiduous and zealous as Fournier, my father, perhaps, would not
have died. I had often thought this, so I gave the warmest of
welcomes to Fournier, whom I did not at first recognise in the
pelisse of a captain of Chasseurs.

General Morland, seeing the pleasure we had in meeting one
another, thought he might profit from our mutual friendship to
persuade me not to reveal to the Emperor by how many men he was
short. He took his adjutant aside and conferred with him for a
time; then Fournier came, and in the name of our former
friendship, he begged me to extricate General Morland from a most
unpleasant situation by concealing from the Emperor the extent to
which the regiment was under strength. I refused firmly and
continued to count. The Emperor's estimate was very close, for
there were only a few over eight hundred Chasseurs present, four
hundred were missing.

I was about to leave to make my report, when General Morland and
Captain Fournier renewed their pleas pointing out that the
greater part of the men who had dropped behind for various
reasons would rejoin them very shortly, and that it was not
likely that Napoleon would engage in battle before the arrival of
the divisions of Friant and Gudin, who were still at the gates of
Vienna, thirty-six leagues from us and would take several days to
reach us. In the interval more laggards would rejoin the unit.
They added that the Emperor would be too busy to check my report.
I could not pretend to myself that I was not being asked to
deceive the Emperor, which was very wrong, but I felt also that I
was under a great obligation to Captain Fournier for the truly
tender care he had given to my dying father, I allowed myself
therefore to be swayed and promised to conceal a large part of
the truth.

I was scarcely alone when I realised the enormity of my error,
but it was too late; the essential object now was to get out of
the situation with the least harm possible. With this aim in
view, I kept out of the way of the Emperor as long as he was on
horseback, in case he went back to the bivouac of the Chasseurs,
where their shortage of numbers striking him anew would give the
lie to my report. I craftily did not return to the imperial
quarters until night was approaching and Napoleon, having
dismounted had gone to his apartment. Brought before him in order
to make my report, I found him lying at full length on an immense
map which was spread on the floor. As soon as he saw me, he
called out "Well now! Marbot, how many Chasseurs are there in my
guard? Are there twelve hundred as Morland claims?" "No sire" I
replied."I counted only eleven hundred and twenty, that is a
shortfall of eighty." "I was sure that there was a lot missing."
said the Emperor, in a tone of voice which made it plain that he
had expected a much larger deficit; and to be sure if there were
no more than eighty men missing from a regiment of twelve hundred
which had just come five hundred leagues in winter, sleeping
almost every night in bivouac, that was a very small loss. So
when, on going to dinner, the Emperor passed through the room
where the senior officers of the guard were gathered, all he said
to Morland was, "Now you see...you are short of eighty troopers;
that is almost a squadron. With eighty of these men one could
stop a Russian regiment! You must take care to see that men do
not drop behind." Then, passing to the commander of the foot
guards, whose numbers were also much reduced, Napoleon gave him a
sharp reprimand. Morland, who thought himself lucky to have got
away with no more than a few observations, came over to me, as
soon as the Emperor was seated at table, and thanked me warmly.
He told me that some thirty troopers had just arrived, and that a
courier from Vienna had met more than a hundred between Znaim and
Brunn, and many more this side of Hollabrunn, which meant that
within forty-eight hours the regiment would have made up most of
its deficiency. I wished for this as fervently as he did, for I
was well aware of the difficult spot I had landed myself in out
of my consideration for Fournier. I could not sleep that night
for fear of the justifiable wrath of the Emperor, if he found out
that I had lied to him.

I was even more dismayed the next day when Napoleon, in the
course of his usual visit to his troops, started off in the
direction of the Chasseur's bivouac, for a simple question put to
an officer could expose everything; but just when I thought that
I was done for, I heard the sound of the band of the Russian
force, camped on the high ground of the Pratzen half a league
from our position. I urged my horse forward towards the head of
the numerous staff by whom the Emperor was accompanied, and
getting as close to him as possible, I said in a loud voice, "I
am sure there is something going on in the Russian camp, their
band is playing a march".... The Emperor, who heard my remark,
suddenly left the path which led to the Chasseur's bivouac, and
headed towards Pratzen to see what was happening in the enemy
advance-guard. He stayed a long time watching, and as night was
approaching, he went back to Brunn without visiting the
Chasseurs. For several days I was in a mortal panic, although I
learned of the arrival of successive detachments of men, but at
last the coming battle and the many preoccupations of the Emperor
drove from his mind the idea of making the check which I so much
feared. But I had learned my lesson; so when I became a colonel
and was asked by the Emperor how many men were present in the
squadrons of my regiment, I always gave the exact number.

Chap. 26.

If Napoleon was often deceived, he also used deception himself to
further his projects, as can be shown by the tale of this
diplomatic-military comedy, in which I played a part.

In order to understand this affair, which will give you the key
to the intrigues which, the following year, gave rise to the war
between Napoleon and the King of Prussia, we have to go back two
months to the time when the French troops, having left the coast,
were proceeding by rapid marches to the Danube. The shortest
route which the first corps, commanded by Bernadotte, could take
to reach Hanover, on the upper Danube, lay through Anspach. This
little country belonged to Prussia, but as it was quite a long
way from there, from which it was separated by a number of minor
principalities, it had always been regarded in previous wars as
being neutral territory, through which either party could pass,
provided that they paid for any goods they required and refrained
from any hostile action.

Things having been established on this footing, Austrian and
French armies had often passed through the Margravate of Anspach,
since the time of the Directory, without informing Prussia and
without the latter raising any objection. Napoleon then, taking
advantage of this convention, ordered Bernadotte to go through
Anspach, which he did. However, the Queen of Prussia and her
court, who detested Napoleon, on hearing of this, raised an
outcry, claiming that Prussian territory had been violated, and
took advantage of this event to rouse the nation and call loudly
for war. The King of Prussia and his minister, Count Haugwitz,
alone resisted the general clamour for action. This was in
October 1805, when hostilities were about to break out between
France and Austria, and the Russian armies were on their way to
reinforce the latter. The queen and the young Prince Louis, the
king's nephew, in an attempt to persuade the king to make common
cause with the Austrians and Russians, arranged for the Emperor
Alexander to come to Berlin, in the hope that his presence would
influence Frederick-William.

Alexander arrived in the capital of Prussia on the 25th October.
He was greeted with enthusiasm by the queen, Prince Louis and the
supporters of war against France. The king, besieged on all
sides, allowed himself to be persuaded, but only on the
condition--advised by the old Prince of Brunswick, and Count
Haugwitz--that his army should not be committed to a campaign
until the outcome of the conflict between the French and the
Austrians on the Danube had been determined. This partial
adherence to their cause pleased neither Alexander nor the queen,
but for the time being they could obtain nothing more explicit. A
melodramatic scene was played out at Potsdam, where the Emperor
of Russia and the King of Prussia, having descended, by the light
of torches, into the sepulchral vaults of the palace, swore, in
the presence of the court, eternal friendship, on the tomb of
Frederick the Great; (an oath which did not prevent Alexander
from incorporating into the Russian Empire, eighteen months
later, one of the Prussian provinces, which Napoleon awarded him
under the treaty of Tilsit, and this in the presence of his
friend Frederick-William.) The Russian Emperor now went back to
Moravia, to place himself at the head of his army, for Napoleon
was advancing rapidly towards Vienna, which he shortly occupied.

When he heard of the King of Prussia's reluctance and the compact
made at Potsdam, Napoleon, in order to deal with the Russians
before the Prussians had made up their minds, installed himself
for the encounter with the former in Brunn, where we now were.

It is said, quite rightly, that ambassadors are privileged spies.

The King of Prussia, who heard daily of fresh victories won by
Napoleon, was anxious to find out what the true position was
between the warring parties; so he decided to send Count
Haugwitz, his minister, to the French headquarters, with
instructions to assess the situation. Now it was necessary to
find an excuse for doing this, so he entrusted Count Haugwitz
with a reply to a letter which Napoleon had sent to him,
complaining about the agreement concluded between the Prussians
and the Russians at Potsdam. Count Haugwitz arrived at Brunn some
days before the Battle of Austerlitz, and would dearly have liked
to stay there until he knew the result of the major engagement
which was in prospect, in order to advise his sovereign to do
nothing if we were victorious, or to attack us if we should be
defeated. You do not have to be a soldier to see from a map what
damage a Prussian army, coming from Breslau in Silesia, could do
by going through Bohemia to fall on our rear around Regansberg.

As Napoleon knew that Count Haugwitz sent a courier every evening
to Berlin, he decided that it would be by this means that he
would inform the Prussians of the defeat of Field-marshal
Jellachich's army corps, news of which had not yet reached them.
This is how it was done.

Marshal of the Palace Duroc, after telling us what we were to do,
had all the Austrian flags which we had brought from Bregenz
secretly replaced in the lodgings which Massy and I occupied;
then, some hours later, when the Emperor was in conversation with
Count Haugwitz in his study, we re-enacted the ceremony of the
handover of the flags in exactly the same way as it had been done
on the first occasion. The Emperor hearing the band playing in
the courtyard, feigned astonishment, and went to the windows
followed by the ambassador. Seeing the flags carried by the
N.C.O.s. he called for the duty aide-de-camp and asked him what
was going on. The aide-de-camp having told him that we were two
of Marshal Augereau's aides who had come to hand over to him the
flags of Jellachich's Austrian corps captured at Bregenz, we were
led inside; there Napoleon, without blinking an eyelid, and as if
he had never seen us before, took the letter from Augereau,which
had been re-sealed, and read it, although he had been aware of
its contents for four days. Then he questioned us, making us go
into the smallest details. Duroc had warned us to speak out
loudly, as the ambassador was a little hard of hearing, this
advice was of no use to Major Massy, who was the leader of the
mission, since he was suffering from a cold and had almost
completely lost his voice, so it was I who replied to the
Emperor, and taking a lead from him, I painted in the most vivid
colours the defeat of the Austrians, their despondency, and the
enthusiasm of the French. Then, presenting the trophies one
after the other, I named the Austrian regiments to which they had
once belonged. I laid particular stress on two of them, because I
knew that their capture would have a powerful effect on the
ambassador, "Here," I said "is the flag of the infantry regiment
of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, and there is the standard
of the Uhlans, commanded by the Archduke Charles, his brother."
Napoleon's eyes twinkled, and he seemed to say, "Well done young
man!" At last he dismissed us, and as we left we heard him say to
the ambassador, "You see, monsieur le Comte, my armies are
everywhere triumphant.... The Austrian army is no more, and soon
the same fate will befall the Russians." Count Haugwitz seemed
deeply impressed, and Duroc said to us, after we had left the
room, "The count will write tonight to Berlin, to tell his
government of the destruction of Jellachich's force, which will
put a damper on the war party, and give the king new reasons for
holding off. Which is what the Emperor very much wants."

This comedy having been played out, The Emperor, to be rid of a
dangerous onlooker who could give an account of the disposition
of his forces, suggested to Count Haugwitz that it was not very
safe for him to remain between two armies which were about to
come to blows, and persuaded him to go to Vienna to M. Tallyrand,
his minister for foreign affairs, which he did that same evening.

The following day the Emperor said nothing to us about the scene
which had been enacted the previous evening, but wishing, no
doubt, to give some sign of his satisfaction with the manner in
which we had played our parts, he asked Major Massy, kindly,
about the progress of his cold, and he pinched my ear, which with
him was a sort of caress.

Now the denouement of the great drama was approaching and both
sides were preparing for the coming struggle. Nearly all military
authors so overload their narrative with details that they
confuse the mind of the reader, to the extent that, in most of
the published works on the wars of the Empire which I have read,
I have been unable to understand the description of several of
the battles in which I myself have taken part, and the various
phases of which I know. I think that to preserve clarity in the
description of an action, one needs to limit oneself to
indicating the respective positions of the two armies, prior to
the engagement, and to recounting only the principal and decisive
events in the combat. This is what I shall attempt to do.

The coming battle is known as the Battle of Austerlitz, although
it took place some distance from the village of that name: the
reason for this is that, on the eve of the battle, the Emperors
of Austria and Russia had slept in the Chateau of Austerlitz, out
of which Napoleon drove them.

You will see on the map that a stream, the Goldbach, which rises
on the far side of the road to Olmutz, flows into a pool called
Menitz. This stream, which runs in a little valley with quite
steep banks, separated the two armies. The right of the
Austro-Russian forces lay on a wooded escarpment, situated behind
the post-house of Posoritz, on the far side of the Olmutz road;
their centre occupied Pratzen and the vast plateau of that name,
and their left was near the meres of Satschan and the
neighbouring marshes. The Emperor placed his left flank on a
little hill, very difficult of access, which our men who had been
in Egypt called the Santon (a holy man's grave) because it was
surmounted by a small chapel, the roof of which had the
appearance of a minaret. The French centre was near the pool of
Kobolnitz, and the right was at Telnitz. The Emperor had put very
few troops there in order to tempt the Russians into the marshy
ground, where he had prepared their defeat by concealing in
Gross-Raigern, on the road to Vienna, the corps of Marshal
Davout.

On the 1st December, the eve of the battle, Napoleon left Brunn
in the morning and spent all day examining the positions; in the
evening he set up his headquarters behind the French centre, at a
spot from where could be seen the camps of both armies and the
area which would form their battlefield the next day. There was
no building in the vicinity but a dilapidated barn, and it was
there that were placed the Emperor's tables and maps, while he
himself took up a position by a huge fire, surrounded by his
numerous staff and his guards. Happily there was no snow,
although it was very cold. I bedded down on the ground and fell
into a deep sleep; but soon we had to remount our horses to
accompany the Emperor, who was about to visit his troops. There
was no moon, and the obscurity of the night was increased by a
thick mist which made progress difficult. The troopers of the
Emperor's escort had the idea of lighting torches made of
pinewood and straw which were most useful. The soldiers, seeing
the approach of a group of mounted men thus illuminated, could
easily distinguish the imperial staff, and in an instant, as if
by magic, one saw all our camp lit up by torches carried by the
men who greeted the Emperor with cheer, made all the louder
because the next day would be the anniversary of his coronation,
a coincidence which seemed to them to be a good augury. The enemy
must have been greatly astonished when, from the height of the
neighbouring slope, they saw in the middle of the night, the
light of sixty thousand torches and heard the repeated cheers of
"Vive l'Empereur!" mingled with the sound of the regimental
bands. All was gaiety, light and movement in our camp, while, on
the Austro-Russian side, all was dark and silent.

The next day, the 2nd December, the cannons were heard at
daybreak. We have seen that the Emperor had deployed few troops
on his right wing; a bait which he dangled before the enemy, who
would see the apparent possibility of taking Telnitz easily, and
then crossing the Goldbach and going on to Gross-Raigern in order
to control the road from Brunn to Vienna and so cut off our line
of retreat. The Austro-Russians fell headlong into the trap, and,
thinning out the rest of their line, they clumsily piled up a
considerable force in the lower part of Telnitz, and in the
narrow, marshy defiles around the meres of Satschan and Menitz.
They thought, for some unknown reason, that Napoleon was
considering withdrawing, without facing a battle, so to hasten
this move they decided to attack us at the Santon on our left and
at our centre before Puntowitz, so that, being defeated at these
two points, and forced to retreat, we would find the road to
Vienna cut by the Russian troops. But on our left Marshal Lannes
not only repelled all the enemy attacks on the Santon, but drove
them back across the Olmutz road as far as Blasiowitz, where the
more level ground allowed Murat's cavalry to make several very
effective charges, which compelled the Russians to retire
hurriedly to the village of Austerlitz.