Part 30

"As his majesty commands his army in person," says Napoleon, in a private order, dated Camp of Schoenbrunn, 9th of July, 1809, "to him belongs the exclusive right of assigning the degree of glory which each merits. His majesty owes the success of his arms to the French troops, and not to strangers. Prince Ponte Corvo's order of the day, tending to give false pretensions to troops, at best not above mediocrity, is contrary to truth, to discipline, and to national honour. The corps of the Prince of Ponte Corvo did not remain immovable as iron. It was the first to retreat. His majesty was obliged to cover it by the corps of the Guard and the division commanded by Marshal Macdonald, by the division of heavy cavalry commanded by General Nautsonby, and by a part of the cavalry of the Guard. _To Marshal Macdonald belongs the praise which the Prince of Ponte Corvo arrogates to himself._ His majesty desires that this testimony of his displeasure may serve as an example to every marshal not to attribute to himself the glory which belongs to others."[27]

After Wagram he commanded in the duchy of Gratz, and maintained in his army a discipline so severe in repressing plunder and outrage, that on his departure at the peace with Austria, before his division began its homeward march for France, the States prayed him to accept an offering of two hundred thousand francs, but he resolutely declined them.

"Messieurs," said he, "I am a soldier--I have done but my duty."

Then the deputies offered him a jewel-box of great value, as a bridal gift for one of his daughters; and to the bearers he made the following reply:--

"Gentlemen, if you believe that you owe me anything, you shall have the means of repaying me amply, by the care you will take of three hundred poor invalid soldiers, whom I shall leave in your city."

Napoleon was now in the zenith of his power; his marriage with Maria Louisa--an espousal more politic than honourable--had been celebrated at the close of the year of Wagram; and in the year following, Holland, the Valais, and the Hanse Towns were annexed to France; territories which, with those of Rome, gave to the new empire an augmentation of nearly 5,000,000 of subjects.

The war was now raging in the Peninsula, and there the feeble measures of Augereau in Catalonia made Napoleon resolve to supersede him. The Duke of Tarentum was named his successor, and, as such, he soon restored order among the Catalans. In their mountainous province, more than in any other part of Spain, military talent and energy were required; as the entire population--a brave, resolute, and hardy race--were in arms against the invaders. Augereau's losses in the desultory warfare maintained by the Guerillas were so severe that they more than counterbalanced his success in the sieges he undertook; and these losses were so indicative of mismanagement that they ensured his recal to France. He marched for the frontier laden with the plunder of Barcelona, and of all the officers who formed its escort, General Chabran was the only one--as the Catalan journals remarked--who did not pillage the house in which he had been quartered; but returned to the Patron de Caza the silver spoons he had used at table.

At this time rapine was the order of the day in the French army; a hammer and a small saw invariably formed a portion of a soldier's accoutrements, that he might have tools at hand to break open every lock-fast place, when the work of pillage began.

In Catalonia, Macdonald found himself at the head of 17,000 men; in the adjoining province of Aragon, Suchet led 16,000; and the Spanish corps of O'Donnel were the only regular troops opposed to them both.

On Suchet laying siege to Tortosa, a fortified city on the left bank of the Ebro, Macdonald marched with 12,000 men to secure the entrance of a convoy of provisions into Barcelona; and this he achieved in triumph, defeating a vigorous attempt of the Spaniards to intercept it.

O'Donnel, general of the Spaniards, now directed his main efforts to relieve Tortosa, where the Conde de Alacha Miguel Lili, with 7800 brave fellows, who had survived or escaped from the battle of Tudela, made a stout resistance. O'Donnel left nothing undone to impede the operations of the besiegers and raise the blockade; till Macdonald, to distract his attention and favour the operations of Suchet, marched upon Tarragona, a seaport near the mouth of the Francoli. It is picturesquely situated upon a hill, and is surrounded by old Moorish walls, having turrets at intervals. As it is a place of importance, the Spaniards were anxious to preserve it, and pressed Macdonald so severely that he was forced to take up a position in sight of the town, in a plain so near the sea that one of his flanks was exposed to a cannonade from a British frigate. Finding this position untenable, after a sharp encounter, and reaping no other advantage from his march than the plunder of Reus, a wealthy little manufacturing town, he retreated across the plains of Tarragona, harassed on both flanks by the troops of Sarsfield and Ibarrola, who slew 300 of his soldiers, captured 130, and retook most of the pillage found in Reus and elsewhere.

As a central point, from whence he could cover Suchet's operations against Tortosa, and command a space of country capable of supplying the troops with food and forage, Macdonald chose a strong position near Cervera, in sight of the Mediterranean. Finding him secure here, O'Donnel, instead of attacking him, turned the attention of his own troops against the French elsewhere, and cut off several of their small garrisons, until he received a wound which disabled him.

On the 13th December, Macdonald received a welcome reinforcement of ten thousand men; but, notwithstanding, Eroles, Sarsfield, and Campoverde, at the head of the Spanish regiments of the line and Guerillas of Catalonia, fought him successfully in almost every instance. Yet his movements so completely covered the siege of Tortosa that, after five months' delay, Suchet was able to break ground before it, and the Conde Lili surrendered at discretion; for which sentence of death was pronounced against him by the Spanish authorities; and with great solemnity, in the market-place of Tarragona, the head was struck from his _effigy_ by the public executioner.

In 1811, Macdonald possessed himself of Figueras, a small Catalonian town situated in a fertile plain, not far from the frontier of France. On an eminence it has a magnificent castle, with bomb-proof towers and undermined approaches. This important strength had been taken by the French three years before; but on the night of the 10th April, 1811, some Catalonians who had been forced into the ranks of a French regiment, finding themselves, by a lucky coincidence, all on guard together, resolved to have their revenge. They opened a sally-port to their countrymen, who entering the castle sword in hand, made the garrison, to the number of four thousand men, prisoners, without a shot being exchanged. On the 19th of the following August, Macdonald, after meeting with a determined resistance from these Catalonians, retook the castle of Figueras, by capitulation, and garrisoned it again for Joseph Bonaparte.

After this recapture, Catalonia seemed to be subjugated to the yoke of France; yet, for some reason unknown, Macdonald was withdrawn from the command of the army there, and it was bestowed upon General Decaen. It is supposed that Napoleon, who disliked that any one should assume the part of monitor or judge of his soldiers, was piqued at the tenor of an obscure passage in Macdonald's report, in which he detailed to Marshal Berthier the recapture of Figueras. It ran thus:--

"_I please myself in rendering justice_ to the army, in the hope that the Emperor will view with an eye of favour these brave fellows, entreating your excellency _to cause it to be remarked_ to his Majesty that his army in Catalonia is a stranger to the event which has re-united it in this place."

"How happens it," said General Sarrazen, "that Macdonald, who does not want for good sense, should have permitted himself to use such awkward observations?"

In the disastrous invasion of Russia he had command of the 10th Corps, of which the Prussians formed a part. The details of that terrible winter campaign are too well known to all the world to require recapitulation in these memoirs.

The Emperor led his army to Smolensko, on the great road to Moscow, and crossed the Niemann on the 27th of June.

Macdonald crossed the same river, on the same day, at Tilsit, by a bridge of boats, and at the head of his French and Prussians (the Corps d'Yorck) seized Dunabourg, while Kowno, in Lithuania, fell without a struggle, and the great army of the Empire marched through it in splendid order, with all its bands playing and colours flying. How different was the aspect of the few surviving fugitives of that army when they repassed Kowno in December following!

With orders to occupy the line of Riga, and if it was captured, to threaten St. Petersburg, Macdonald marched towards the capital of Livonia, which was occupied by a numerous garrison, whose defensive measures were ably seconded by a British naval force. Napoleon conceived that if the main body of the Russians fell back on St. Petersburg, he would, when following them, be able to effect a junction with the 10th Corps under Macdonald, after which they could push on together; but though the latter burned the suburbs of Riga, his operations against the place were long retarded by the bravery of the besieged. Though not regularly fortified, the town has considerable means of defence, being encircled by an earthen rampart, and having a citadel, while a fortress guards the entrance of the Duna or Dwina.

The project of Napoleon became a failure, when the route pursued by the retreating Russians proved different from the one he anticipated. Thus he was obliged to advance after them to Moscow, while Macdonald remained for a time before Riga, on which he could make no impression, though he fought under its walls a series of bloody conflicts, in futile assaults and repulsing desperate sorties. Suspicion of the faith of his Prussian regiments was not his least source of anxiety. When St. Cyr was alarmed that his flanks might be turned by the Russians from Finland, he wrote an urgent letter to Macdonald requesting him to oppose the march of those troops who were led by Wittgenstien and Steinheil, and whose line of march lay in front of the position before Riga; adding that if he (Macdonald) objected to detach any part of his forces from the blockade, to come and assume command of St. Cyr's division in person, and meet this army from Finland. "But Macdonald," adds Count Segur, "did not conceive himself justified in making so important a movement without express orders. He distrusted Yorck, the Prussian general, whom he suspected of intending to deliver up to the Russians his park of siege artillery. He replied, that to defend it was his first and most indispensable duty, and he declined to quit his station."

Macdonald's suspicions soon proved correct; for on the 13th December, 1812, when in presence of the enemy, he was abandoned by the whole of the Prussians under General Yorck; and was thus compelled to retire, though resisting with indomitable energy the attack of the Russians, who followed him closely, when sword in hand he sought to hew a passage to the rear. By this time all was lost elsewhere.

He survived the perils of that frightful campaign, in which out of 300,000 soldiers, who, in June, passed the Niemann in all the pomp of war and pride of former victories, scarcely 50,000 escaped out of Russia; and of these the greater number had suffered so dreadfully from wounds, hunger and frost, as to be quite unfit for future service.

With 1131 pieces of cannon, there were taken by the Russians 41 generals, 1298 officers. 167,410 sergeants and rank and file. The _rest_ were accounted for by the frost and snow, the Cossack lances, the bullet and the sabre, rendering the paths across the whitened wastes of Russia impassable with the bodies of the dying and the dead. Never in all the annals of war were greater sufferings detailed than those endured by the miserable French on their retreat from flaming Moscow.

In 1813, Macdonald commanded a corps in Saxony, where, on the 29th April, he had the satisfaction of routing at Mercebourg the division of General Yorck, composed of the _same_ Prussians who had abandoned him at Riga during the previous year; and at Lutzen, where, on the 2nd May, the combined forces of Russia and Prussia met the French in battle, led by the Emperor in person, he attacked the Prussian reserve, and after a long and severe engagement cut it to pieces.

"Now," said he, "I have fully avenged the desertion of General Yorck."

After this Napoleon retired and established his head-quarters at Dresden, while Leipzig and Breslau were also occupied by his troops. On being reinforced by the Saxons, whose king he held as a species of hostage for his people, he resolved on attacking the northern allies near Bautzen; and Macdonald hastened with his division across the Spree, to share in the battle which ensued in June. The French triumphed, and their foes had to retreat, but in fine order, into Silesia. Macdonald was despatched by the Emperor in pursuit; but was compelled to fall back, as the roads by which he must have marched were almost inundated.

Nowhere did he attain more distinction than during the horrors of the three days of Leipzig.

This Saxon city, which is situated in a fertile plain, has suffered in many wars, but by none so much as the campaign of 1813. In that year Napoleon made it the general hospital for the sick and wounded of his army; thus its beautiful environs soon became the sad scene of many important events. In several battles and skirmishes the allies had defeated the French during the months of August and September; but Napoleon, who, with his characteristic obstinacy, adhered to Dresden as the centre of his position, found himself out-manoeuvred, when eighty miles _in his rear_ he heard of Marshal Blucher passing the Black Elster, and that Bernadotte, a prince of his own making, but now in arms against him, had arrived, after a long and circuitous march, near the suburbs of Leipzig, while Schwartzenbourg drew near that city from the south-east.

This was in the month of October.

The French numbered 160,000 bayonets and sabres; the allies 240,000. The outposts were soon engaged on the 16th; the following day was spent in skirmishes and manoeuvres till the three allied armies formed a junction, and the stern conflict of the 18th began with all its terrors over an extent of line that covered seven miles. A little village on the French right, where Napoleon had posted himself, was lost and retaken again and again at the bayonet's point under a storm of round and grape shot. Noon arrived, but the battle was still undecided, when all breathless with speed, an officer, with his uniform torn and bloody, rushed towards the Emperor.

"Sire," he exclaimed, "the left wing has given way; the Saxon cavalry and artillery have gone over to the enemy!"

"Silence!" replied Napoleon, sternly; "silence!"

The intelligence was kept secret from the right and centre, and still the strife went on.

By three p.m. came the still more alarming tidings that the Saxon infantry had deserted _en masse_ to the allies. This also was kept a secret from the French troops, though the Imperial Guard was ordered to take their place; but the power thus attained by the allies was no longer to be withstood, and a precipitate retreat towards the Rhine became the first thought of the vanquished Emperor.

At nightfall he gave the order to fall back, leaving the environs of Leipzig strewed with dead and dying; but his order was tardily executed, as all the French fugitives with their baggage, cannon, and wounded, on horseback, on foot, or in waggons, were compelled to take _one_ road, every other being occupied by the cavalry and horse artillery of the victors; consequently, the sufferings and slaughter of the French, even after the field was lost, became dreadful. Napoleon, before retiring, had ordered that the bridge of the White Elster should be undermined, and directed Macdonald and Prince Joseph Poniatowski, with their divisions, to defend a portion of the suburbs that lay between the advancing enemy and the Borna road; and to leave nothing undone to maintain their post to the last, that the retreat of the army and baggage might be fully covered.

Poniatowski was brave as a lion. He was nephew of Stanislaus Augustus, the last King of Poland, and was animated alike by the purest patriotism and hatred of the Russians; hence he served France against them as the oppressors of his house and native country. He had 2000 Polish infantry and a few horse with him; and seeing the desperation of affairs, as the waggons of wounded, dripping with blood, the heavy artillery with their tumbrils, and the masses of fugitive soldiery exhausted by three days of fighting and excitement, pressed in close ranks across the bridge of the Elster, he drew his sabre and turning to his countrymen--

"Gentlemen," said he, "here we must win or lose our honour!--Forward!" and at the head of a few Polish cuirassiers he made a rush towards the enemy. At that moment the bridge of the Elster was _blown up_, and his retreat cut off for ever!

Macdonald was similarly circumstanced, as his troops had manned and enfiladed the suburbs, where they were firing briskly to keep the foe in check from walls, houses, and hedgerows.

According to the _Moniteur_, it was the intention of Napoleon to have the bridge blown up only at the last moment, and when all his troops had passed the stream. General Dussaussoy had remitted this duty to Colonel Montfort, who, in turn, had remitted it to a corporal and four sappers. On the first appearance of the enemy upon the road, and when the cuirassiers of Poniatowski charged, the startled corporal fired the train, and a dark cloud of dust and stones ascending into the air with a mighty roar, announced the destruction of the bridge; while Macdonald and his whole corps, with eighty pieces of cannon, all their eagles, and several hundred carriages laden with powder, baggage, and wounded men, were on the _wrong_ side of the river. A shout of astonishment and dismay arose from those who had crossed; and many an anxious eye was turned back to Leipzig, where the roar of musketry was yet heard in the rear.

The attention of Napoleon, who had left the city by the road which led by the bridge to Lindenau (the direct route for France) was arrested by the explosion, and one of his aides-de-camp exclaimed,

"Sire--sire--they have blown up the bridge of the Elster, and Macdonald's corps is _yet in Leipzig_!"

"At that time," to quote Bourienne, "Napoleon was accused of having given orders for the destruction of the bridge, immediately _after_ his own passage, to secure his retreat from the active pursuit of the enemy. The English journals were unanimous on this point, and there were few of the inhabitants of Leipzig who doubted the fact."

If this be true, it was a baseness only equalled by the strangulation of Pichegreu, the torture of Captain Wright in the Temple, and the lonely butchery of the hapless Duc d'Enghien.

Finding all lost, and that his retreat was cut off, Macdonald sheathed his sword, and calling on his soldiers to escape as they best could, threw himself into the river, the waters of which were darkening as the night drew on. He swam across, and reached the other side in safety. Poor Poniatowski, though bleeding and severely wounded, imitated his example; but he was pierced by a bullet, from one of the enemy's skirmishers, who had now lined the steep bank of the Elster, and opened a murderous fire upon the mass of unfortunate fugitives, the wreck of Macdonald's corps, who were struggling in the stream. In the dark, the unfortunate prince was swept away with his charger and drowned. Five days after, his corpse was found by a fisherman, and interred on the bank of the stream. A granite sarcophagus, surrounded by acacias and weeping-willows, marks the place where he lies.

Colonel Montfort, the corporal, and the four sappers, were delivered over to a court-martial.

Such was the closing episode of that terrible day at Leipzig, the anniversary of the more glorious events of Ulm and of Jena--a day that cost France nearly forty thousand men.

Napoleon continued his retreat to Mayence, with an army exhausted by toil, crushed by defeat, and savage in spirit, but lacking the stamina to make one more vigorous stand for France, save at Hanau; for French soldiers, more than any other, are the worst to retrieve a disaster.

"The _defensive_ system," to quote the _Memoirs_ of Marshal Ney, "accords ill with the disposition of the French soldier, at least if it is not to be maintained by successive diversions and excursions; in a word, if you are not constantly occupied in that little warfare, inactivity destroys the force of troops who rest continually on the defensive. They are obliged to be constantly on the alert night and day; while, on the other hand, offensive expeditions wisely combined raise the spirit of the soldier, and prevent him from having time to ponder on the real cause of his dangerous situation. It is in the _offensive_ that you find the French soldier inexhaustible in resources. His active disposition and valour in assaults double his power. A general should never hesitate to march with the bayonet against an enemy, if the ground is favourable for the use of that weapon. It is in the _attack_, in fine, that you accustom the French soldier to every species of warfare--alike to brave the enemy's fire, and to leave the field open to the development of his intelligence and courage."

But now the spirit of the French soldiers was almost dead for a time; and so ill was this retreat conducted, that the rear-guard, with 20,000 sick and wounded, fell into the hands of the enemy.

Macdonald was at the battle of Hanau, the last stand made by this discomfited host in Hesse Cassel. There the French were attacked by the Austrians and Bavarians, whom they routed, and then continued retreating, the whole of their cavalry hewing a passage, sword in hand, through the lines of the enemy.

He was now despatched by the Emperor to Cologne, with orders to organize a new army. These instructions he found the impossibility of fulfilling, so he abandoned the Rhine, along the banks of which the bayonets of the allies were glittering everywhere, and falling back into the interior of ancient France, with the war-worn veterans of his shattered column, he formed the left wing of the retreating army; and at its head, during the campaign of 1814, he gave more than one severe repulse to the Prussians, who were pressing towards Paris under Marshal Blucher. These encounters were chiefly on the banks of the Marne, and especially at Nangis, in the north of France, where he fought a severe

## action with the allies on the 17th of February; but these struggles and