The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot

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The losses suffered by the Grande Armee were enormous, but they
have been exaggerated. I have already said that I have seen a
situation report, covered with notes in Napoleon's hand, which
gives the figure of those who crossed the Nieman as 325,000, of
whom 155,000 were French. Reports issued in February 1813 gave
the number of French who returned across the Nieman as 60,000,
added to this figure can be that of 30,000 prisoners returned by
the Russians after the peace of 1814. Giving a total loss of
French lives of 65,000.

The loss inflicted on my regiment was, in proportion, much
smaller. At the beginning of the campaign we had 1018 men in the
ranks and we received 30 reinforcements at Polotsk, so that I
took into Russia 1048 troopers. Of this number I had 109 killed,
77 taken prisoner, 65 injured and 104 missing. This amounted to a
loss of 355 men, so that after the return of the men whom I had
sent to Warsaw, the regiment, which from the bank of the Vistula
had been sent beyond the Elbe to the principality of Dessau, had
in the saddle 693 men, all of whom had fought in the Russian
campaign.

When he saw this figure, the Emperor, who from Paris was
supervising the reorganising of his army, thought it was a
mistake, and sent the report back to me with an order to produce
a corrected version. When I returned the same figure once more,
he ordered General Sebastiani to go and inspect my regiment and
give him a nominal roll of the men present. This operation having
removed all doubt, and confirmed my report, I received a few days
later a letter from the Major-general couched in the most
flattering terms and addressed to all officers and N.C.O.s and
particularly to me, in which Prince Berthier stated that he had
been directed by the Emperor to express his Majesty's
satisfaction at the care we had taken of our men's lives, and his
praise for the conduct of all our officers and N.C.O.s.

After having had this letter read out before all the squadrons, I
had intended to keep it as a precious memento for my family, but
on further consideration, I decided that it would not be right to
deprive the regiment of a document in which was expressed the
Emperor's satisfaction with all its members, so I sent it to be
included in the regimental archive. I have frequently repented of
this, for scarcely a year had passed before the government of
Louis XVIII was substituted for that of the Emperor, and the 23rd
Chasseurs was combined with the 3rd. The archives of the two
regiments were collected together, badly cared for, and after the
total disbanding of the army in 1815, they disappeared into the
yawning gulf of the war office. I tried in vain, after the
revolution of 1830, to recover this letter, which was so
flattering to my old regiment and to me, but it could not be
found.

Chap. 22.

The year 1813 began very badly for France. The remains of our
army, returning from Russia, had scarcely crossed the Vistula and
started to reorganise,when the treachery of General York and the
troops under his command forced us to retire beyond the Elbe, and
shortly to abandon Berlin and all of Prussia, which rose against
us, helped by the units which Napoleon had imprudently left
there. The Russians speeded up their march as much as possible,
and came to join the Prussians, whose King now declared war on
the French Emperor.

Napoleon had in northern Germany no more than two divisions,
commanded, it is true, by Augereau, but consisting mainly of
conscripts. As for those French troops who had fought in Russia,
once they were well fed and no longer slept on the snow, they
recovered their strength, and could have been used oppose the
enemy; but our cavalry were almost all without horses, very few
infantrymen had kept their weapons, we had no artillery, the
majority of the soldiers had no footwear, and their uniform was
in rags. The government had employed part of the year 1812 in
making equipment of all sorts, but owing to the negligence of the
war department, then in the hands of M. Lacuee, Comte de Cessac,
no regiment received the clothing allotted to it. The conduct of
the administration in these circumstances deserves some comment.

When a regimental depot had got together, at great expense, the
numerous items required by its active battalions or squadrons,
the administration arranged with forwarding agents the transport
of the supplies as far as Mainz, which was then part of the
Empire. These goods were in no danger while crossing France to
the bank of the Rhine; however, M. de Cessac ordered a detachment
of troops to escort them as far as Mainz. There they were handed
over to foreign agents, who were supposed to forward them to
Magdeberg, Berlin, and the Vistula, without any French
supervision. This undertaking was carried out with so much bad
faith and delay that the packages containing the supplies of
clothing and footwear took six to eight months to go from Mainz
to the Vistula, a distance they should have covered in forty
days.

This had been no more than a serious inconvenience when the
French armies were in peaceful occupation of Germany and Poland,
but it became a calamity after the Russian campaign. More than
two hundred barges laden with supplies for our regiments were
ice-bound in the Bromberg canal, near Nackel, when we passed this
point in January 1813, but as there was, in this immense convoy,
no French agent, and as the Prussian bargees already considered
us as enemies, no one told us that these vessels were loaded with
goods. The next day the Prussians took possession of this huge
quantity of clothing and footwear and used it to equip several of
the regiments they sent against us. Although the result of this
was that the increasing cold killed a large number of French
soldiers, there are those who boast of our efficient
administration!

The lack of order in the French army's line of march as it went
through Prussia was due principally to the ineptitude of Murat,
who had assumed command after the departure of the Emperor, and
later to the feebleness of Prince Eugene de Beauharnais, the
Vice-Roi of Italy.

When the time came for us to re-cross the Elbe and enter the
territory of the Confederation of the Rhine, the Emperor, before
removing his troops from Poland and Prussia, wanted to facilitate
a return to the offensive by leaving strong garrisons in the
fortresses which could assure the crossing of the Vistula, the
Oder and the Elbe, such as Thorn, Stettin, Magdeberg, Danzig,
Dresden, etc.

This major decision on the part of the Emperor may be looked at
in two ways. So it has been praised by some knowledgeable
military observers and condemned by others.

The first party say that the need to provide a place of rest and
safety for the numerous sick and wounded, which the army brought
back from Russia, compelled the Emperor to occupy these
fortresses, which, in addition, could store a massive amount of
military equipment and foodstuffs. They add that these fortresses
hindered enemy movements and by investing them, the enemy reduced
the number of troops which could be actively employed against us;
and finally that if the reinforcements which Napoleon was
bringing from France and Germany enabled him to win a battle, the
possession of the forts would help to ensure a new conquest of
Prussia, which would bring us to the banks of the Vistula and
force the Russians to return to their country.

In reply to this it is claimed that Napoleon weakened his army by
breaking it up into so many scattered units who could not give
each other mutual assistance; that it was not necessary to
compromise the security of France in order to save a some
thousands of sick and wounded, very few of whom would return to
active service, and of whom nearly all died in the hospitals. It
was also said that the regiments of Italians, Poles, and Germans
from the Confederation of the Rhine, which the Emperor mingled
with the garrisons in order to lessen the requirement of French
units, would not be much use; and in fact almost all the foreign
troops fought very badly and ended up by going over to the enemy.
Finally it was claimed that the occupation of the forts gave very
little trouble to the Russian and Prussian armies, which, after
blockading them with an observation force, could continue their
march towards France. Which is what actually happened.

I find myself in agreement with latter of these two opinions,
because it is evident that the forts could be of use to us only
if we overcame the Russian and Prussian armies, which was a
reason for concentrating our disposable manpower rather than
dispersing it.

It might be said that as the enemy would no longer have to
blockade the forts, they would thus have an increase in their
manpower to match ours. But this is not so, for the enemy would
have to leave strong garrisons in the forts which we abandoned,
while we could make use of the men which were at present
immobilised. I may add that the defence of these useless forts
deprived the army in the field of the services of a number of
experienced generals, among others, Marshal Davout, who alone was
worth several divisions. I accept that during a campaign one must
leave behind several brigades to guard places on which the safety
of a country depends, such as Metz, Lille, and Strasbourg, in the
case of France, but the forts situated on the Vistula, the Oder,
and the Elbe, two or three hundred leagues from France, were of
only conditional importance, that is to say dependent on the
success of our army in the field. When this did not come about,
over eighty thousand men whom the Emperor had left in those
garrisons in 1812 were obliged to surrender.

The position of France in the first months of 1813 was extremely
critical, for in the south our armies in Spain had suffered some
very serious reverses due to the weakening of their strength by
the continual withdrawal of regiments, while the English
ceaselessly sent reinforcements to Wellington, who had fought a
brilliant campaign during 1812, and had captured Cuidad-Rodrigo,
Badajoz, and the fort of Salamanca, had won the battle of
Arapiles, occupied Madrid and now threatened the Pyrenees.

In the north, the numerous battle-hardened soldiers whom Napoleon
had led into Russia had nearly all died in action or of cold and
starvation. The still-intact Prussian army had just joined the
Russians, and the Austrians were on the point of following their
example. Finally, the sovereigns, and more importantly, the
people of the Germanic Confederation, stirred up by the English,
were wavering in their allegiance to France. The Prussian Baron
Stein, an able and enterprising man, took this opportunity to
publish a number of pamphlets in which he appealed to all Germans
to shake off the yoke of Napoleon and regain their liberty. This
appeal was readily received, as the passage, the accommodation,
and the maintenance of the French troops who had occupied Germany
since 1806 had occasioned great expense, to which was added the
confiscation of English merchandise, as a result of Napoleon's
continental blockade. The Confederation of the Rhine would have
defected if the rulers of the various states of which it was
composed had decided to listen to the wishes of their subjects;
but none of them dared budge, so ingrained was their habit of
obedience to the French Emperor, and so great their fear of
seeing him arrive at any moment, to head the considerable forces
which he was organising with such speed and building up
constantly in Germany.

The greater part of the French nation still had the greatest
confidence in Napoleon. Those who were well-informed blamed him,
no doubt, for having the previous year led his army to Moscow,
and in particular for having awaited the winter there, but the
mass of the people, who were used to considering the Emperor as
infallible and had no notion of the events of this campaign nor
of the losses suffered by our men, saw only the glory which the
occupation of Moscow reflected on our arms, and were more than
willing to give the Emperor the means to heap victories round his
eagles. Every department and every town gave patriotic gifts of
horses, though the numerous levies of conscripts and money soon
cooled this enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the nation complied with
reasonably good grace, and battalions and squadrons seemed to
rise out of the ground, as if by some enchantment. It was
remarkable that after all the levies of conscripts which had been
made over the last twenty years, we had never recruited a finer
body of men. There were several explanations for this.

To begin with, each of the eight hundred departments which then
existed had, for several years, maintained a company of so-called
departmental infantry, a sort of praetorian guard for the
Prefects, who made a point of selecting men of a high physical
standard for this duty. These men never left the principal towns
of the department, where they were very well housed, fed, and
clad, and as they had very few duties to perform, they were able
to build up their physical strength, for most of them led this
life for six or seven years, during which time they were
exercised regularly in the handling of arms, and in marches and
manoeuvres. They lacked only the "baptism of fire" to become
complete soldiers. These companies, depending on the importance
of the department, were of 150 to 250 men. The Emperor sent them
all to the army, where they were absorbed into the line
regiments.

In the second place there was called into service a great number
of conscripts from previous years, who had by protection,
cunning, or temporary illness obtained deferment, that is to say
permission to remain at home until further orders. These older
men were nearly all strong and vigourous.

These measures were legal; but what was not was the call-up of
those who had already taken part in the ballot for conscription
and whose names had not been drawn. These people, to whom this
lottery had given the legal right to remain civilians, were
nevertheless compelled to take up arms if they were less than
thirty years old. This levy produced a large number of men fit
to support the hardships of war. There was some objection raised
to this measure, mainly in the Midi and the Vendee, but the
greater part of the contingent fell into line, so great was the
habit of obedience. This meekness on the part of the populace
enticed the government into practices even more illegal and more
dangerous withal, in that they struck at the upper class; for
after forcibly enlisting men who had been exempted by lot, the
same measure was applied to those who had quite legally paid for
a replacement, and they were forced into the army, although some
families had been financially strained and even ruined in an
attempt to save their sons, for at that time replacements cost
from 12 to 20,000 francs, which had to be paid in cash. There
were even young men who had been replaced two or three times, but
who were still forced to go, and it was not unknown for one to
find himself serving in the same company as the man he had paid
to be his substitute! This injustice was the result of advice
given by Clarke, the Minister for War and Savary, the Minister of
Police, who persuaded the Emperor that to prevent any disturbance
during the war, it was necessary to remove the sons of
influential families from the country and put them in the army,
to serve, in some respects, as hostages!... To reduce somewhat
the odium felt by the upper class towards this imposition, the
Emperor created, under the name of "Guards of Honour," four
regiments of light cavalry, specially reserved for young
gentlemen of good family. These units, which were given a
brilliant Hussar's uniform, were commanded by general officers.

To these more or less legal levies, the Emperor added the men
produced by an early conscription and a number of battalions
formed from the seamen, sailors, and gunners of the navy, all
trained men, used to handling arms and bored with the monotonous
life in port, keen to join their comrades in the army. There were
more than thirty thousand of these seamen, and it did not take
long for them to become first class infantry soldiers. Finally
the Emperor, obliged to use every means to rebuild his army, of
which the greater part had perished in the frozen wastes of
Russia, further weakened his forces in Spain by taking not only
several thousands of men to make up his guard, but several
brigades and entire divisions composed of old soldiers,
accustomed to hardship and danger.

For their part, the Russians, and particularly the Prussians,
were preparing for war. The indefatigable Baron de Stein
travelled the provinces, preaching a crusade against the French,
and organising his "Tugenbond" whose members swore to take up
arms for the liberation of Germany. This society, which stirred
up so many enemies against us, operated openly in Prussia, which
was already at war with the Emperor, and insinuated itself into
the states and armies of the Confederation of the Rhine, despite
the opposition of some sovereigns and with the tacit permission
of others, to such an extent that almost the whole of Germany
was, in secret, our enemy, and the contingents which were joined
to our military forces were prepared to betray us at the first
opportunity, as events would shortly show. These events would not
have taken so long to come about if the German's natural laxity
and sloth had not prevented them from acting sooner than they
did, for the debris of the French army which crossed the Elbe in
1812 stayed peacefully in cantonment on the left bank of the
river for the first four months of 1813, without being attacked
by the Russians and Prussians who were stationed on the opposite
bank, and who did not feel themselves strong enough to do so,
although Prussia had mobilised its landwehr, made up of all fit
men, and Bernadotte, forgetting that he was born a Frenchman, had
declared war on us, and had joined his Swedish troops to those
belonging to the enemies of his native country.

During the period which we spent on the left bank of the Elbe,
although the army received continual reinforcements, there was
still very little in the way of cavalry except for some
regiments, one of which was mine, so we had been allotted as
cantonments several communes and the two little towns of Brenha
and Landsberg, in pleasant country near Magdeberg. While we were
there I had a great disappointment. The Emperor wished to speed
the organisation of the new levies and thought that for this
purpose the temporary presence of unit commanders at their
regimental depots would be useful. So he decided that all
colonels should return to France except those who had a certain
number of men in their unit, the number fixed for the cavalry was
four hundred, and I had more than six hundred mounted men!... I
was therefore forced to stay behind, when I so much longed to
embrace my wife and the child which she had given me during my
absence.

To the disappointment which I felt was added another vexation,
the good General Castex, whom I had held in such high regard
during the Russian campaign, was to leave us and join the mounted
Grenadiers of the Guard. His brigade, and that of General
Corbineau, who had been given the position of aide-de-camp to the
Emperor, were both put in charge of General Exelmans. General
Wathiez was to replace Castex, and General Maurin to replace
Corbineau. These three generals had, however, gone to France
after the Russian campaign and I was the only colonel left, so
General Sebastiani, to whose corps the new division was to be
attached, ordered me to take over the command, which added a
great deal of work to my regimental duties, for I had to make
frequent visits, in appalling weather, to the cantonments of the
other three regiments. The wound to my knee, although it had
healed, was still painful and I did not know if I would be able
to remain on duty until the end of the winter, when after a month
General Wathiez returned to take up the command of the division.

A few days later, without my having asked, I was ordered to go to
France to organise the large number of recruits and horses which
had been sent to my regimental depot. The depot was in the
department of Jemmapes, at Mons in Belgium, which was then part
of the Empire. I left immediately and travelled quickly. I
realised that as I was authorised to go to France on duty, it
would not be acceptable for me to request even the shortest
period of leave to go to Paris, so I welcomed the offer made by
Mme. Desbrieres, my mother-in-law, to bring my wife and my son to
Mons. After a year of separation, during which I had experienced
so many dangers, it was with the greatest pleasure that I once
more saw my wife, and held in my arms our little Alfred, now
eight months old. This was one of the happiest days of my life!
The joy which I felt on holding my little son was increased by
the recollection that he very nearly became an orphan on the day
of his birth.

I spent the end of April and the months of May and June at the
depot, where I was extremely busy. Many recruits had been sent to
the 23rd, men of good physique and from a warrior race, for they
mostly came from the neighbourhood of Mons, the former province
of Hainault, from where the Austrians used to draw their finest
cavalrymen, at the time when they possessed the low countries.
These are people who love and care well for horses, but as the
horses which come from this district are a little too heavy for
Chasseurs, I obtained permission to buy some in the Ardennes,
from where we obtained a fair selection.

I found at the depot some good officers and N.C.O.s, several of
whom had been in Russia and had gone to the depot to recover from
injuries or illness, and the ministry sent me some young officers
from the school of cavalry at Saint-Cyr. From this material I
made up various squadrons, which, although not perfect, could
mingle without difficulty with the old cavalrymen from Russia
whom I had left on the banks of the Elbe, and throughout whom
they would be spread on their arrival. As soon as a squadron was
ready it was sent off to join the army.

Chap. 23.

While I was busily engaged in rebuilding my regiment, as were
many other colonels, mainly from the cavalry, who were in France
for the same reason, hostilities broke out on the Elbe, which had
been crossed by the allies.

The Emperor left Paris, and on the 25th of April he was at
Naumbourg, in Saxony, at the head of 170,000 men, of whom only a
third were French, a detachment of troops which had been sent to
Germany having not yet arrived. The other two thirds of his army
was formed of units from the Confederation of the Rhine, the
majority of which were very reluctant to fight on his behalf.
General Wittgenstein, who had gained some celebrity following our
disaster at the Beresina, although the weather did us far more
harm than his manoeuvres, was in overall command of the Russian
and German troops, a combined force of 300,000 men, which faced
Napoleon's army on the 28th of April, in the region of Leipzig.

On the 1st of May there was a sharp engagement at Poserna, in an
area where Gustavus Adolphus had died, during which Marshal
Bessieres was killed by a cannon-ball. The Emperor regretted his
death more than did the army, which had not forgotten that it was
the advice given to Napoleon by the Marshal in the evening of the
battle for Moscow which had deterred him from achieving victory
by committing his guards to the action, which had he done, it
would have changed the outcome and led to the complete
destruction of the Russian force.

The day after Bessieres' death, while Napoleon was continuing his
march towards Leipzig, he was attacked unexpectedly on the flank,
by the Russo-Prussians, who had crossed the river Elster during
the night. In this battle, which was given the name of the Battle
of Lutzen, there was some fierce fighting, in which the troops
newly arrived from France showed the greatest courage, the marine
regiments being particularly notable. The enemy, soundly beaten,
withdrew towards the Elbe, but the French, having almost no
cavalry, were able to take few prisoners and their victory was
incomplete. Nevertheless it produced a great moral effect in
Europe, and above all in France, for it showed that our troops
had retained their fighting qualities, and that only the frosts
of Russia had overcome them in 1812.

The Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia, after being
present at Lutzen and witnessing the defeat of their armies, had
gone to Dresden, from where they had to withdraw on the approach
of the victorious Napoleon, who took possession of the town on
the 8th of May, where he was shortly joined by his ally, the King
of Saxony. After a brief stay in Dresden, the French crossed the
Elbe and pursued the Prusso-Russians, whose rear-guard they
caught up with and defeated at Bischofswerda.

The Emperor Alexander, dissatisfied with Wittgenstein, assumed
personal command of the allied armies, but having been defeated
in his turn by Napoleon at Wurtchen, it seems likely that he
recognised his lack of ability in this field, for he soon
relinquished the position.