Part 29
His order of the day, issued on the 4th March, 1799, amply details the many dangers which surrounded him, and the wise measures he took to guard against them. He threatened to make the clergy responsible for the violence of the populace; but concluded by declaring his reverence for, and attachment to, religion, and his determination to protect all pastors and magistrates who conformed to the laws of the new republic. Five days after this, being informed that King Ferdinand had an intention of landing again, he published a proclamation, in which he somewhat oddly invited the people of Naples to rise against their native prince, and unite with France. Acting in concert with the Commissioner Abrial, he lowered the taxes levied on the people; and, filled by a just admiration for the memory of Tasso, he saved from destruction the poet's native town, Sorrento, on the southern side of the Gulf of Naples, where an insurrection had taken place. After this, the provisional government made him a rash and pompous offer of forty thousand auxiliaries.
In April, he generously released and sent to Captain Trowbridge, a British officer and eleven seamen, who had been cast ashore at Castellamare, during a tempest. He had treated them with every kindness as his countrymen. They were the crew of a prize, the _Championnet_, privateer.
The entire command of the army in Italy was now bestowed upon General Sherer; and when that officer was defeated between the Lake of Garda and the Adige, on the 26th of March, he sent a despatch to Macdonald, desiring him to form a junction with his troops in northern Italy by forced marches. On hearing of the battle near the Adige, the Neapolitans again rose in arms; and the massacres of the French by wandering bands were again of daily occurrence; but, in spite of every natural and human obstacle, Macdonald effected the junction according to his orders. As his retreat from Naples would have been dangerous without an attempt to overawe the armed masses who hovered on the mountains, he attacked and took Lacava, Castella, and the gloomy little town of Avellino, before his departure. On the 26th May, he was in Tuscany, and united with the divisions detached by General Moreau. There were not wanting those who blamed him for losing time in combining his force with that of Moreau; but those who did so were ignorant of the nature of the country he had to traverse with his trains of artillery and baggage.
"General Macdonald has been here since the 5th instant," says a French letter from Florence. "We deem him the saviour of the French in Italy, and our confidence in him will not be disappointed. His army, which has advanced by forced marches, assembled here yesterday. It is full of ardour, and its zeal, which a few reverses have only fired anew, is a happy presage in our favour."
On the 13th June, he attacked Modena, and in less than two hours dispersed the Austrian division of Count Hohenzollern, which was in position upon the glacis of the place; and two thousand prisoners were taken by his French grenadiers. In an account of this affair, General Sarrazen, who led these grenadiers, mentions that when Macdonald was pressing on with the infantry of the line against the _cavalry_, he said to him--
"Macdonald, I shall remain with my grenadiers, and think you had better do the same."
"Do you not see, M. Sarrazen, that I have them all, as if caught in a mousetrap," replied the commander, joyously; and, when within a hundred paces of the Austrian horse, he required them to surrender.
"We yield," replied an officer, sheathing his sabre and riding confidently forward. Macdonald continued to approach until within pistol-shot of their line, when the treacherous German suddenly exclaimed, while unsheathing his weapon,--
"Draw sabres--charge!"
He threw himself at full speed upon Macdonald, who was far from anticipating a movement so sudden, and, after receiving three sword-cuts on the head, was thrown from his horse covered with blood. This was all done in a moment, and the German officer mingled with his squadron, which instantly took to flight. They were, however, overtaken and captured, and their leader, a youth of eighteen, was slain. Macdonald was at first supposed to be dead, for he lay stunned on the ground, having three deep wounds, with a contusion by the fall from his horse; yet he was in his saddle, and at the head of his column on the 17th, when the advanced guard of the Russians, under Suwarrow, forced the French into position on the right bank of the Trebia, so celebrated for the victory of Hannibal over the forces of the consul Sempronius; and there, on this classic ground, ensued one of the bloodiest battles of the Italian campaign.
Macdonald had advanced by Reggio and Modena, to effect a junction with the army of Moreau, or to relieve Mantua; but being without pontoons, he found the passage of the Po impossible, as that river was swollen by recent rains, and, moreover, was defended by General Kray, with 10,000 irregulars, and twice that number of armed peasantry. On the 17th, his advanced guard was at Placentia; next day, he attacked and repulsed General Ott, near San Giovanni; but the advance of the Russians, under Suwarrow, changed the fortune of the field.
General Sarrazen states Macdonald's force at 40,000 strong; M. de Segur gives it at 28,000. On the bank of that stream, the most rapid and impetuous in Cisalpine Gaul, the contest was fierce and desperate; but the daring attempts of Macdonald to cross, at the head of his troops, were repulsed.
"On the 18th and 19th," says a journal of the time, "the battles were very murderous. The French formed a square four men deep and fought desperately, till a column of Russians passed the river up to their necks in the water, broke through with the bayonet, and made a dreadful carnage among them. On the whole, the French are supposed to have lost, since the 11th instant, 15,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Macdonald himself has received two sabre-wounds from a Hungarian hussar. Among the prisoners taken are 4 generals and 700 officers. Our loss consists of 4000 men killed and wounded, and 400 prisoners; but the latter were rescued in the pursuit, and 40 waggons with French wounded were taken at the same time."
The fury of the Russian advance threw Macdonald's centre into confusion. Sabre in hand, he strove to enforce order under a heavy fire of cannon and musketry; but was swept away with the panic-stricken mass of the 5th regiment of light infantry, among whom he became entangled, and who were flying in disorder, abandoning their muskets, knapsacks, canteens, and blankets in their eagerness to escape. By them he was hurried into the current of the Trebia, and narrowly escaped being drowned. This confusion was caused by a brilliant charge of 500 Cossacks, who rushed with their lances in the rest through a cloud of dust. A terrified French chasseur exclaimed,--
"The whole Russian cavalry are upon us--fly!"
Then it was that the 5th gave way, and the centre was broken, but still the flanks fought desperately; and had the division of Moreau been in the field, it must have been won for France; but on that day he was attempting to raise the siege of Tortosa. Three standards were laid at the feet of Suwarrow.
At Trebia, according to M. de Segur, who once served on Macdonald's staff, "during three days of a battle, the most desperate in our annals, twenty-eight thousand French withstood fifty thousand Russians, held the fortunes of the day in balance, and gave vainly to Moreau the time to strike a blow for France. The victory remained finally with Suwarrow; but, in his astonishment, the rude Muscovite exclaimed,--
"One more such success, and we shall lose the Peninsula!"
Meanwhile, Macdonald had been deceived in his expectations; his army was exhausted; he was severely wounded, and when it was necessary that he should retire, a torrent of foes behind opposed his retreat. Beyond this torrent, other foes awaited him. The courage of his soldiers failed; _but_ he, calm and serene, encouraged them, saying,--
"Be of good cheer, for nothing is impossible to the brave!"
With the remains of his shattered army he retired towards Tuscany and Bologna; and at Piacenza a great quantity of his ammunition and baggage fell into the hands of his pursuers. In the Directory there were men who now reproached him with having wished to gain a battle alone, or at least without the participation of Moreau; but it was by the express command of that general, on whose part he fully expected assistance, that he attempted to force the passage of the Trebia, and break the left wing of the Austro-Russian army. Notwithstanding the desperation of his circumstances, he was not without hopes of making another stand; but, on being deserted by General Lahoz, a Cisalpiner, and his corps, which united with twenty thousand insurgents to gall his flight, Macdonald relinquished all idea of again giving battle, and continued his retreat towards the mountains of Genoa, followed by the troops of Generals Ott, Klenau, Lahoz, and Count Hohenzollern, and by hordes of brigands and guerillas, who murdered his men on all hands, and massacred them in the mountain passes.
With a flag of truce, he sent an officer to the Austrian general Melas, praying that he would treat with mercy the wounded Frenchmen whom he had been compelled to abandon in Piacenza.
"The request is needless," replied Melas; "Austrian soldiers know too well the duties of humanity to require such advice."
Wounds and fatigue had so severely impaired Macdonald's health, that he was fain to ask Suwarrow's permission to visit the baths of Pisa. This, the Russian with chivalry and courtesy granted at once; but, instead of visiting the celebrated Bagni di Pisa, the general returned to France, relinquishing the command of his column, after uniting it to the army of Moreau; and immediately on his arrival in Paris he was entrusted by Napoleon with the command at Versailles.
By this time the French had abandoned the whole coast of the Adriatic, and lost their conquests in Naples, where nothing remained of them but the graves of the slain.
During the past hostilities the domestic relations of the Republic had not improved in character or in spirit; and the feeble condition of the Directory afforded an admirable path by which the ambition of Napoleon might lead to a newer and firmer form of government. Returning hastily from his unsuccessful Egyptian campaign, he had reached Paris; and entering at once into the schemes of Talleyrand and his friend Sieyes, a military conspiracy was formed to remodel the Republic as a Consulate, of which _he_ should be the head. Whatever may have been the motives, or secret ambitions, which led the military chiefs to revolutionize France again, it cannot be denied that she benefited thereby; and the energy with which the essay was made, and the success it had, were a sure guarantee for the decision of future affairs.
Macdonald was in command at Versailles while these plans were maturing, and when Napoleon arrived at the Palace of St. Cloud. Though not actually in the conspiracy, he was in the secret, and knew that opposition to Napoleon would neither be for the interests of France, the army, or himself; thus he took the lead in the matter, and by suddenly closing or dispersing the political club at Versailles, made the inhabitants aware that he, at least, deemed the time had come, "when a just administration should obliterate the horrors of the last few years, and the fatal vacillation of the weak Directory."
On the 18th Brumaire, the attempt was to be made; and Napoleon, accompanied by Macdonald, De Bournouville, and Moreau, inspected in the gardens of the Tuileries ten thousand chosen soldiers on whose faith they could depend, and there Augereau, the future Duke of Castiglione, joined them.
"M. le General," said he, embracing Napoleon, "you have not called for _me_, but I have come to join you."
"You are welcome," replied Napoleon.
It was a perilous task they had undertaken, to overthrow the political incubus that had pressed so long upon France; and while the startled Directory, who had already discovered the designs of those without, were debating about their own safety, and while Moulins urged that a battalion should be sent to seize Napoleon, the latter suddenly appeared, sword in hand, at the door of the hall, and entered with his grenadiers, three deep, at a time when the projected Consulate was being discussed by some of the Directory with very little chance of success. He decided the matter at once, by ordering his drummers to beat a _pas de charge_, and by dismissing the judges with a promptitude worthy of Cromwell, and with a courage which evinced that, on his part, nothing would be wanting to retain the power he had won.
When an army was formed for the re-conquest of Naples, in 1800, Napoleon offered Macdonald the command of the _corps de reserve_. He did this to testify his pleasure for his adherence to the revolution of the 18th Brumaire; but the general, who felt piqued by the offer of a command so subordinate, in a country where he had before led an army, urged illness and wounds as a reason for remaining in France. The penetration of Napoleon, was too keen for the true sentiments of Macdonald to escape him; thus on the 24th of August, in the same year, he was appointed to command the army of Switzerland, which was destined to penetrate into the Tyrol, to second the operations of the army of Italy and favour the columns of Moreau (who was then warring in Germany) by compelling the Austrians to employ at least thirty thousand of their best men among the Tyrolean mountains--the bulwark of the German empire.
Macdonald marched from Bearn in September, with forty thousand men,[26] towards Helvetia, accompanied by General Matthew Dumas, chief of the staff, a soldier who used his pen better than his sword. His first desire was that a corps of Helvetians should be formed to co-operate with the French against the Austrians; but this request the Swiss government declined; and he soon found his campaign to consist of a series of arduous marches among the mountains, where, as the season advanced and the winter drew on, his soldiers endured every misery that, toil, hunger, and cold could inflict.
In the passage of the Alps, when one of his columns, composed of the 80th Regiment, with some cavalry, artillery, sappers, and guides, under Laboissiere, attempted to cross the Splugen, in the country of the Grisons, a dreadful avalanche suddenly came thundering down from the mountains to bar their march, and swept forty-two of the 10th Dragoons, with their horses, over a precipice. His other columns met with equal difficulties. A letter in the Paris papers, dated "Head-quarters, Chicavenna, 7th December, 1800," relates:--
"It was necessary to traverse the Splugen and Mount Carduiet. These mountains, even in July, present all the horrors of winter; judge what they are in December! Threatening and inaccessible rocks, seas of snow on all sides, torrents of avalanches falling with a noise equally terrible. Since our first march, two hundred men, with their horses, have been swallowed up. After unheard-of labour, we succeeded in disengaging all of them except three. There was not the least trace of a road; but by labour and constancy we opened a narrow path, bordered by precipices which the eye could not fathom nor the foot always avoid."
Two-thirds of the pass, which leads towards Como had been traversed, the troops in front, with muskets slung, digging a path for their comrades in the rear, till the column, exhausted by cold and fatigue, began to retire without orders, though the dangers behind--snow, hunger, and avalanches--were the same as those in front. Macdonald galloped towards his sinking soldiers, and his presence had an immediate effect on them. They halted; he entreated and threatened; but they listened in sullen silence.
Then he dismounted, seized a shovel, and proceeded to dig the snow, exclaiming--
"My comrades, I would rather perish in the abyss than stoop to turn my steps on perils such as these!"
"Vive M. le General!" cried the soldiers of the 80th. Confidence was inspired anew; again the muskets were slung, the shovels resumed, and after three days of labour, danger, and toil, the passage was achieved, and the troops of Macdonald debouched from that terrible gorge, where the frozen precipices seemed to hang from heaven, and where whirlwinds of hail, tempests of snow, with death in its most frightful form, had been encountered.
The resistance he experienced from the Austrian troops was trivial; and on the 7th of January, 1801, he made himself master of the circle and city of Trent; but the armistice concluded at Treviso on the 16th of the same month put an end to the war. After this he remained for some time at Isola, suffering from an illness caused by the fatigues he had undergone at Splugen, and Delmas commanded in the interim.
At the close of the campaign he returned to Paris, where his opposition to some of the arbitrary measures of the First Consul made that haughty personage resolve on politely getting rid of a troublesome mentor, by sending him on a distant mission. He was accordingly dispatched to Denmark, as Minister Plenipotentiary from France to the Court of Christian VII. There he resided for three years, and there he encountered so many disagreeables, as his presence was unwelcome in Copenhagen, that he frequently solicited his recall; but Napoleon was jealous of Moreau, who was Macdonald's chief friend: thus he was only recalled when the First Consul was about to exchange the consular staff for an imperial sceptre.
It was about this time that the famous conspiracy of General Pichegreu and Georges Cadoudal, and their correspondence with the Prince of Conde, were discovered. In that correspondence Moreau was compromised to a dangerous extent; thus his friend Macdonald was received with greater coldness at the Tuileries.
The high indignation which he had the temerity to express after the mock trial and banishment of his brother soldier Moreau, who fled to America, completed the displeasure of the new Emperor, who withdrew all countenance from Macdonald, and, notwithstanding his past services, bravery, and endurance, his name was omitted from the list of marshals of the Empire who were then created.
He retired to the country, inspired by a mortification which he could not repress; and remained in seclusion, unnoticed, during the early part of the new war against Spain and Austria, and until 1809 would seem to have been forgotten; but he had perhaps the consolation of remembering "that he must not fear who thirsts for glory; and although we often find that true merit is eclipsed for a time, we have never known it to be entirely lost; it bursts at last through the clouds which environ it, and appears resplendent in its bright and genuine colours."
These were the words of Fabius Maximus to Emilius when, with Varro, he went to lead the Roman army; and thus the "true merit," the coolness and intrepidity of Macdonald, were destined to shine again, for he was remembered by Napoleon when that monarch became entangled with the Italian and Peninsula wars--when the great armies of Austria pressed him on one hand and the distant hordes of Russia were gathering on the other; then, but not till then, did he seem to remember the brave soldier whom petty quarrels and court intrigues had compelled him to overlook. This was in that year when the perfidy of Napoleon to the royal family of Spain and to the whole Spanish nation excited such indignation, not only at the Court of Vienna, but throughout the whole of Germany and Europe generally.
Macdonald was now offered the command of a division in that corps of the army of Italy led by Prince Eugene Beauharnois, who was then evincing his usual intrepidity, but was experiencing severe checks from the Archduke John of Austria. This offer he at once accepted, for he had grown weary alike of peace and of retirement. He joined Prince Eugene; and from that period was deemed his mentor rather than his second in command.
At the head of the right wing he crossed the Isola on the 14th and 15th of April, 1809, and drove the Austrians from their strong positions at Goritz, capturing eleven of their guns and much munition of war.
These successes led to those at Raab and at Laybach, both of which were the result of Macdonald's combinations and manoeuvres; and pushing on vigorously, without leisure or delay, with his division, he joined the grand army of the Emperor before the gates of Vienna.
On the 5th and 6th of July he was at the famous battle of Wagram, where he led two divisions of infantry, some of which were battalions of the Garde Imperiale. With these he advanced under a fire, when two hundred pieces of cannon were engaged on both sides, and when the roar of the conflict was the greatest ever heard even by the oldest veteran of these warlike armies. Three-fourths of his column perished under the storm of shot by which it was assailed as he advanced to break the Austrian centre, the task assigned to him by the Emperor.
The fury with which his troops came on was irresistible. He drove back the brigades of the archduke with immense loss, and a total rout of the Austrians ensued, thus terminating a two days' conflict which will ever be remembered in the annals of carnage--for few prisoners were taken on either side, which proved the resolution of both--to conquer or die!
Thirty-six thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three officers and soldiers of both armies lay killed or wounded on the field and round the walls of Vienna; while, as related in the memoir of Count O'Reilly, corpses in every variety of uniform, gashed and bloody, floated in hundreds down the dark waters of the Danube, or were daily thrown upon its shores to feed the wolves or to fester and decay. Such was the field of Wagram, and it was the culminating point in the fortunes of Stephen Macdonald.
Napoleon, though little disposed to view him with favour, when the field was won, sprang from his horse, and embraced him with ardour, exclaiming,--
"Now, Macdonald, we are together for life and death!"
He complimented him before his staff, extolled him in the bulletin, and on the field of battle made him at last a Marshal of the Empire.
Of all the French marshals he was the only one who thus received a baton in the field, and soon after he was created Duke of Tarentum, from a town of that name in Naples.
"Among all the marshals of France," says the editor of Bourienne's _Memoirs_, "there is not one so pure from every stain on the soldier's character--so daringly honest with Napoleon in his prosperity--so lastingly true to him in his adversity, as this, his only Scottish officer."
Napoleon thus bore honourable testimony to the value of his service at Wagram, the glory of which another marshal sought to appropriate to himself.