The Memoirs of General Baron de Marbot Part 21

My dear Marbot, I send you the service order which I have received on your behalf. I asked for promotion for you, as you are aware, and I am doubly disappointed that you did not obtain this and that I am also to lose you. I have been very satisfied with your services; a satisfaction which you are ent.i.tled to feel, regardless of any rewards which this may bring. Your record will always do you credit in the eyes of those under whose orders you may find yourself. Please believe, my dear Marbot, in my appreciation, my regrets and my sincere good wishes for you.

Ma.s.sena.

I had not expected to meet Ma.s.sena again, but his wife wrote to me saying that she wished to meet my wife, and inviting us both to dinner. I had always had the highest regard for the conduct of Madame Ma.s.sena, particularly at Antibes, her home territory, where I met her for the first time, on my return from Genoa. So I accepted the invitation. Ma.s.sena came up to me and once more expressed his regrets, and suggested that he might ask for my nomination as an officer of the Legion of Honour. I replied that as he had been unable to do anything for me when I was on his staff, and wounded before his eyes, I would not like to expose him to any further embarra.s.sment, and that I would now seek advancement by my own efforts; then I lost myself in the crowd of guests.

This was my last contact with Ma.s.sena, though I continued to visit his wife and his son, both of them my firm friends.

Chap. 2.

I shall now give you some details of Ma.s.sena's career. Andre Ma.s.sena was born on the 6th of May 1758 at La Turbie, a village in the little state of Monaco. His paternal grandfather was a respected tanner who had three sons: Jules, the father of the marshal, Augustin and Marcel. The first two of these went to Nice, where they set up a soap-works. Marcel went to France where he enlisted in the Royal-Italian regiment. When Jules died, leaving very little money and five children, three of them, amongst whom was the young Andre, were taken in charge by their uncle Augustin, who having taught them no more than to read and write, employed them in soap-making.

Andre, who was active and adventurous, could not adjust to the monotonous and laborious work of the factory, and at the age of thirteen he abandoned his uncle's home and embarked, secretly, as a cabin-boy, in a merchant ship; accompanied by one of his cousins named Bavastro, who became, during the wars of the empire, the most celebrated corsaire of the Mediterranean. As for Andre, having spent two years at sea and even made a voyage to America, he rebelled against the hard life and harsh treatment which were the lot of the seaman, and enlisted as a private soldier in the Royal-Italian regiment, under the auspices of his uncle Marcel, who had reached the rank of sergeant-major, and was soon to be commissioned. This Marcel Ma.s.sena, whom I met in 1800, when he was commandant of the fortress at Antibes, was a serious and capable man, highly thought of by his Colonel, M. Chauvet d'Arlon. To help his nephew, he had him taught to speak and write reasonable French, and, in spite of some escapades, had him promoted to the rank of warrant-officer. He even held out some hope of a commission in the mounted constabulary, but Andre, tired of waiting, left at the end of his engagement.

Having gone back to civilian life, without any money, Andre joined forces once more once more with his cousin Bavastro, and taking advantage of the close proximity of the frontiers of France, Piedmont, the State of Genoa, and the sea, they embarked on smuggling on a grand scale, not only along the coast but across the mountains, the various pa.s.ses through which he got to know extremely well; knowledge which he later found most useful when he was in command of troops in this part of the country. Hardened by the rough trade of smuggling, and compelled always to keep one jump ahead of the customs officers, Ma.s.sena acquired, without being aware of it, an understanding of the principles of warfare, as well as the vigilance and activity without which one cannot become a good officer. Having by this means got together some capital, he married a French woman, Mlle. Lamarre, the daughter of an Antibes surgeon, and settled in this town, where he had built up a small business in olive oil and dried Provencal fruit, when the Revolution of 1789 broke out.

Influenced by his taste for arms, Ma.s.sena left his wife and his shop and enrolled in the 1st battalion of volunteers from Var. His practical and theoretical knowledge of military matters earned him the rank of captain, and shortly after, that of major. Fighting soon broke out, and the courage and skill displayed by Ma.s.sena elevated him rapidly to the ranks of colonel and brigadier-general. He was put in command of a camp called "the camp of a thousand pitchforks,"

in part of which was the 4th artillery company, commanded by Captain Napoleon Bonaparte, under whose orders he would serve later in Italy.

Entrusted with the command of a column at the siege of Toulon, he distinguished himself by the capture of the forts Lartigues and Sainte-Catherine, which led to his promotion to divisional general.

After the town had fallen, he joined his troops to the army of Italy where he was prominent in all the engagements which took place in the area between the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean and Piedmont; country which he knew so well. Intelligent, ceaselessly active, and of boundless courage, Ma.s.sena, after some years of success, had already a high reputation, when a grave mistake nearly brought his career to an end.

At the beginning of the campaign of 1796, General Bonaparte had just become commander-in-chief of the army, which placed Ma.s.sena, once his senior in rank, under his command. Ma.s.sena, who always led the advance-guard, having defeated near Cairo (Cairo in Piedmont, not Cairo in Egypt. Ed.) an Austrian unit, learned that the enemy officers had planned a celebratory dinner in the inn of a nearby village which they had been forced to abandon. He conceived the notion, together with some brother officers, of taking advantage of this windfall, and left his division camped on the top of a fairly high mountain.

However the Austrians recovered their nerve, and charging back, they fell on the French camp at daybreak. Our soldiers, although taken by surprise, defended themselves bravely, but with no general in control, they were driven back to the edge of the plateau where they had spent the night, and, attacked by greatly superior forces, looked certain to suffer a major defeat when Ma.s.sena, having with his sabre cut his way through the Austrian scouts, ran up a path which he knew of old and appeared in front of his troops who, in their indignation, received him with well-deserved cat-calls. The general, without taking too much notice, resumed command and proceeded to march his division to rejoin the main body of the army.

It was then seen that a battalion placed the night before on an isolated hillock could not come down by any practicable route without coming under enfilading fire from the enemy. Ma.s.sena scrambled quickly up the hillside on his hands and knees and went alone to the battalion where he addressed the men and a.s.sured them that he would get then out of this fix if they would follow his example. Ordering them to sheathe their bayonets, he sat on the snow at the edge of slope, and pushing himself by his hands, he slid to the bottom of the valley....All our soldiers, in fits of laughter, did the same, and in no time the whole battalion was gathered together, out of the range of the baffled Austrians. This method of descent, used by the peasants and mountain guides of Switzerland, had surely never before been used by a battalion of troops of the line. I have been a.s.sured by generals who were in Ma.s.sena's division at the time that this incident actually occurred, and, nine years later, I was at the chateau of La Houssaye, when Marshal Augereau entertained the Emperor and all the marshals and I heard them joking with Ma.s.sena about the new method of retreat which he had used on this occasion.

It seems that on the day that Ma.s.sena was making use of this odd expedient, which he had often used in the days when he was a smuggler, Bonaparte, realising that he was very young to be appointed commander-in-chief, and feeling on that account that he should come down hard on any officer who failed in his duty, ordered Ma.s.sena to be brought before a court-martial and accused of abandoning his post, which could result in a sentence of death or at the least cashiering!... But at the moment when the general was about to be arrested there began the famous battle of Montenotte, in which Ma.s.sena's and Augereau's divisions took two thousand prisoners, four flags and five artillery pieces, and completely routed the Austrian army. After this triumph, to which Ma.s.sena had largely contributed, there could not be any question of putting him on trial. His misdeeds were forgotten, and he was able to continue his splendid career.

Ma.s.sena distinguished himself at Lodi, Milan, Verona, and Arcoli, in fact everywhere that he was in action, and in particular at the battle of Rivoli. When the preliminaries of a peace had been signed at Leoben, Ma.s.sena who had contributed so much to our victories, was entrusted with the task of taking the draft treaty to the government.

Paris welcomed him with the most lively expressions of admiration, wherever he went people crowded round him to gaze on the features of this famous warrior. But this triumph was soon eclipsed by his exaggerated love of money, which was always his princ.i.p.al weakness.

General Duphot, the French amba.s.sador in Rome, had been a.s.sa.s.sinated in that city. A part of the army of Italy, under the command of Berthier was ordered to go and exact vengeance; but Berthier was recalled by Bonaparte who wanted to take him to Egypt, and his place as commander of the army in Rome was taken by Ma.s.sena.

Soon after the arrival of this general, who was already accused of procuring a great deal of money during the Italian campaigns of the previous year, the army complained that it was in a state of dest.i.tution, without clothing and almost without bread, while the administration, drawing millions from the Papal states, lived in luxury and abundance. The army turned against him and sent a deputation of one hundred officers to demand from Ma.s.sena an account for the expenditure of this money. Whether he was unable to account for it or whether he refused to do so as a matter of discipline Ma.s.sena would not give any explanation, and as the troops persisted in their demand, he was forced to leave Rome and give up his command.

As soon as he had returned to France, he put out a memorandum justifying his conduct, which was badly received by the public and by his colleagues to whom he had addressed it. What upset him most was that General Bonaparte left for Egypt without replying to a letter which he had written to him concerning the matter.

However, a new coalition of Russia, Austria, and England having declared war on France, hostilities recommenced. In such circ.u.mstances, Ma.s.sena, although he had not cleared himself from the accusations brought against him, could not remain in obscurity; so the Directory, in order to make use of his military talents, hurriedly gave him command of the French army whose duty it was to defend Switzerland. Ma.s.sena at first did very well; but having rashly attacked the dangerous defile of Feldkirch, in the Vorarlberg, he was driven off with losses by the Austrians.

This was a time when our army of the Rhine, commanded by Jourdan, had just been defeated at Stockach by Prince Charles of Austria, and the forces which we had in Italy, defeated at Novi by the Russians under Souvarow, had lost their commander-in-chief, Joubert, killed on the field of battle. The Austrians, ready to cross the Rhine, threatened Alsace and Lorraine; Italy was in the hands of the Russians, whom Souvarow was leading into Switzerland through the Saint-Gothard pa.s.s. France, on the point of being invaded over both its frontiers, at the Rhine and at the Alps, pinned all its hopes on Ma.s.sena, and was not disappointed in her expectations.

As you already know, the Directory, impatient for action, threatened Ma.s.sena with dismissal unless he engaged the enemy; but he was determined not to do so until circ.u.mstances gave him a superiority, however brief, over his opponent. At last this moment arrived. The maladroit General Korsakoff, a former favourite of Catherine II, had unwisely pushed on towards Zurich at the head of 50,000 Russians and Bavarians to await his commander-in-chief, Souvarow, who was on his way from Italy with 55,000 men. Before the arrival of Souvarow, Ma.s.sena pounced like a lion on Korsakoff, surprising him in his camp at Zurich and driving him back to the Rhine after inflicting tremendous losses! Then, turning on Souvarow, whom the heroic resistance of General Molitor had held up for three days in the Saint-Gothard, he defeated him as he had defeated his lieutenant, Korsakoff.

As a result of these various engagements 30,000 of the enemy were killed or taken prisoner, fifteen flags and sixty guns were captured, the independence of Switzerland was secured, and France was delivered from an imminent invasion. This was Ma.s.sena's finest (and cleanest) hour.

I have already told how Ma.s.sena took charge of the disorganised army of Italy, which, after the death of General Championnet, had been briefly commanded by my father, and described his conduct of the defence of Genoa, which gave Napoleon the time to collect a force together, cross the Alps, and fight the battle of Marengo.

After this victory the First Consul, on his return to France, thought he could not commit the command of the army of Italy to a more ill.u.s.trious officer than Ma.s.sena; but in a few months there were complaints similar to those made by the army in Rome. The dissatisfaction was widespread, new taxes were levied and frequent requisitions made on a variety of pretexts, and yet the troops were unpaid! The First Consul, when he learned of this state of affairs, immediately and without explanation withdrew the command of the army from Ma.s.sena, who returned to private life, where he showed his annoyance by refusing to vote in favour of Napoleon's life-consulship. He also did not present himself at the new court.

When Bonaparte mounted the imperial throne and rewarded the generals who had done most for the country, he included Ma.s.sena in the first list of marshals, awarded him the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour, and created him head of the fourteenth cohort of the order, which he had just established. These dignities and the enormous emoluments which were attached to them overcame the resistance put up by Ma.s.sena since he was deprived of the command of the army of Italy. He voted for the empire, went to the Tuileries and a.s.sisted at the coronation ceremony.

When a third coalition menaced France, in 1805, the Emperor gave Messena the task of defending, with forty thousand men, the northern part of Ital, against the attacks of the Archduke Charles of Austria, who had eighty thousand. This was a difficult operation; but not only did Ma.s.sena hold Lombardy, but he pushed the enemy back beyond the Tagliamento, and by forcing Prince Charles to turn and face him at frequent intervals, he so delayed the Austrian general's progress that he was unable to arrive in time to save Vienna, nor to join the Russian army which Napoleon defeated at Austerlitz.

Napoleon, however, did not seem to appreciate the services rendered by Ma.s.sena on this campaign; he reproached him for not having acted with his usual vigour, which did not prevent him, after the treaty of Presberg, from instructing him to go and conquer the kingdom of Naples, on whose throne he wished to place his brother, Prince Joseph.

Within a month the French occupied the whole of the country except the fortified town of Gaete, which Ma.s.sena took after a siege. But while he was directing the attack against this town, he suffered a loss which rendered him inconsolable. An enormous sum, which Ma.s.sena claimed belonged to him, was confiscated by the Emperor!

Napoleon, who believed that the best way of forcing the English to ask for peace was to ruin their trade, to prevent their goods from entering the continent, ordered them to be seized and burned in all the countries under his control, that is to say more than half of Europe. But the desire for money is very powerful and business men are very crafty. A fool-proof system of smuggling had been devised.

English merchants who were in the scheme, sent off a ship or ships full of merchandise which allowed themselves to be captured by one of our corsairs, who would then take it to one of the ports occupied by our troops, from Swedish Pomerania to the end of the kingdom of Naples. This first act having been carried out, it remained to get the goods ash.o.r.e without confiscation, this had already been arranged. The immensely long coastline presented by the conquered countries could not be watched in its entirety by customs officers, so this function was carried out by soldiers under the command of the generals who were in charge of the kingdom or province occupied by our troops. So it required only an authorisation from one of them to permit the goods to be landed, after which the traders negotiated with the "protector." This was called a "licence."

The origin of this new form of commerce goes back to the days when Bernadotte was occupying Hamburg and a part of Denmark. He made a considerable amount of money in this way, and when he wanted to reward someone, he would give the person a licence, which could then be sold to a merchant. This practice spread, little by little, to all the coasts of Germany, Spain and mainly to Italy. It even got as far as the Emperor's court, where ladies and chamberlains were given licences by ministers. Napoleon was not told of this, but he knew, or suspected, that it went on. Nevertheless, in order not to interfere too drastically with the usages of the conquered countries, he tolerated this abuse outside France as long as it was carried on clandestinely, but if he discovered that someone had made immoderate profits from the illicit trade, he made them cough up. For example, when the Emperor heard that M. Michaux, the administrative head of Bernadotte's army, had lost, in one evening, 300,000 francs, in a Paris gaming house, he directed an aide-de-camp to write to him saying that the Invalides was in need of money, and that he was ordered to pay 300,000 francs into their account; which Michaux, who had made so much money from licences, hastened to do.

As you may imagine, Ma.s.sena was not the last to engage in the business of selling licences. Together with General Solignac, his chief of staff, he flooded all the ports of Naples with them. When the Emperor was informed that Ma.s.sena had deposited the sum of three million with a banker at Leghorn, who had taken at the same time 600,000 from General Solignac, he had a request sent to Ma.s.sena for a loan of one million, and one for 200,000 francs from his chief of staff. Just one third of their illegal gains, which was not fleecing them too greatly. However, at the sight of this demand, Ma.s.sena, bellowing as if he were being disembowelled, replied to Napoleon that as the poorest of the marshals, with a numerous family and crippling debts, he profoundly regretted that he could not send him anything!

And general replied in similar terms.

They were congratulating themselves on having evaded these requests when, during the siege of Gaeta, the son of the Leghorn banker arrived to say that a French treasury inspector, escorted by a commissioner of police and a number of gendarmes, had arrived at his father's establishment and had demanded to see the accounts in which were recorded the deposits made by the marshal and general Solignac, stating that these sums belonged to the army, and had been entrusted to the two officers concerned, and that the Emperor demanded their immediate return, either in cash or negotiable bonds, and the cancellation of the receipts given to Ma.s.sena and Solignac.

A legal endors.e.m.e.nt was given to this seizure which the banker, having nothing to lose, did not oppose.

It is impossible to describe Ma.s.sena's fury on finding that he had been deprived of his fortune. It made him quite ill, but he did not dare to make any complaint when the Emperor, who was then in Poland, sent for him.

After the peace of Tilsit, the t.i.tle of Duke of Rivoli and an award of 300,000 francs of income were a recompense for his services, but did not console him for what had been taken from him at Leghorn, for, in spite of his usual caution, he was heard to say on a number of occasions "I think it cruel that, while I was fighting in his interest, he had the gall to take the small savings I had banked at Leghorn!"

The invasion of Spain having sparked off a new war with Austria, the Emperor, threatened by these considerable forces, hurried back from the peninsula to go to Germany, to where he had already sent Ma.s.sena. I have already described the part played by the marshal in the campaign of 1809. As a reward for his conduct at Essling and Wagram, the Emperor created him Prince of Essling and gave him an additional income of 500,000 francs, which was added to his previous award of 300,000 francs and his salary of 200,000 as marshal and army commander. The new prince had no more than that.

The campaigns of 1810 and 1811 in Spain and Portugal were Ma.s.sena's last. They were not very happy; his morale had gone down and the two campaigns, instead of adding to his fame, lowered his reputation. The "Enfant cheri de la victoire," as he had been named, suffered reverses where he could and should have been successful.

Ma.s.sena was thin and bony, and of less than average height. His Italian features were full of expression. The bad sides to his character were hypocrisy, spite, harshness, and avarice. He had plenty of natural intelligence but his adventurous youth and the lowly position of his family had not encouraged him to study; he was totally lacking in what one calls education. In the heyday of his career he had a keen eye and a decisive mind and was not dismayed by a reverse. As he aged his caution began to verge on timidity, so anxious was he not to besmirch the reputation he had acquired. He hated reading, so he had no idea of what had been written on the principles of warfare, he acted intuitively, and Napoleon summed him up accurately when he said the Ma.s.sena arrived on the battlefield without knowing what he was going to do, his actions were determined by circ.u.mstances.

It has been wrongly said that Ma.s.sena was a stranger to flattery, and spoke his mind fearlessly even to the Emperor. Beneath his rough exterior Ma.s.sena was a shrewd courtier. When in the course of a pheasant shoot, Napoleon had the misfortune to pepper Ma.s.sena, injuring one of his eyes, Ma.s.sena laid the blame on Berthier, although only Napoleon had fired a shot. Everyone understood perfectly the discretion of the courtier, and Ma.s.sena was overwhelmed by attentions from the Emperor.

Although very miserly, the victor of Zurich would have given half his fortune to have been born in the France of the "Ancien Regime"

rather than on the left bank of the Var. Nothing displeased him more than the Italian termination to his name, of which he transformed the "a" to "e" in his signature. However the public did not adopt this change, and Ma.s.sena he remained in spite of his efforts. The campaign in Portugal had so much weakened Ma.s.sena physically and mentally, that he was obliged to seek rest and recuperation in the gentle climate of Nice, where he stayed for the whole of 1812; but Napoleon, returning from the disastrous invasion of Russia, and scouring Europe for further resources, thought that the name of Ma.s.sena could still be of service, particularly in Provence. So he appointed him governor of the 8th military division.

When, in 1814, enemy forces invaded France, Ma.s.sena, who, in any case, had few troops at his disposal, did nothing to arrest their progress, and on the 15th April he surrendered to the Duc d'Angouleme, who created him a Commander of Saint Louis, but would not elevate him to the peerage, on the pretext that he had been born abroad, and had never become a naturalised French citizen! ... As if the victories of Rivoli, Zurich, the defence of Genoa, and a series of other successful actions on the behalf of France were not worth as much as naturalisation papers, given often to scheming foreigners for cash. The treatment given to Ma.s.sena in these circ.u.mstances had a very adverse effect on sentiment in the public and the army, and was an additional source of the disenchantment of the nation with the government of Louis XVIII, which led to the return of the Emperor.

Napoleon disembarked near to Cannes on 1st March 1815 and set off immediately for Paris at the head of about a thousand Grenadiers of his Guard. The unexpectedness and swiftness of this invasion threw Ma.s.sena into confusion. Nevertheless, he tried to stem the torrent by calling together some line regiments and activating the national guard of Ma.r.s.eilles and district; but having learned that the Duc d'Angouleme had surrendered and left the country, he sent his son to inform Louis XVIII that he could no longer rely on his support, and rallying to the imperial government, he hoisted the tricolour throughout the area and locked up the prefect of Var, who still wanted to resist. By this conduct Ma.s.sena alienated both the Royalists and the Bonapartists; so when the Emperor hurriedly summoned him to Paris, he greeted him very coolly.

When, soon afterwards, Napoleon made the great mistake of abdicating for the second time, following the battle of Waterloo, the Chamber of Representatives seized power and formed a provisional government whose first act was to invest Ma.s.sena with the command of the national guard of Paris. It was hoped that, although his infirmities prevented him playing any active role, his name would inspire the populace to support the army in the defence of the capital, but when a council of war was a.s.sembled, Ma.s.sena gave it as his opinion that Paris could not be defended! As a consequence an armistice was agreed with the enemy generals and the French army withdrew across the Loire, where it was disbanded.

Once the allies were masters of France, Louis XVIII, to punish Ma.s.sena for having abandoned his cause after March 20th, included him among the judges who were to try Marshal Ney, hoping that out of enmity he would condemn his former colleague and so besmirch his good name; but Ma.s.sena recused himself on the grounds that there had been disagreements between him and Marshal Ney in Portugal, and when this measure failed he joined with those judges who wanted Ney brought before the House of Peers. They had hoped to save him, but it would have been better if they had had the political courage to try him and acquit him....They did not dare! Ney was condemned and shot, but his blood did not pacify the Royalists, they became more implacable and soon pursued Ma.s.sena himself.

The citizens of Ma.r.s.eilles, on whose behalf Ma.s.sena had used his influence to obtain the freedom of their port, now denounced him to the Chamber of Deputies on the grounds of peculation. There was no evidence to support this charge, as Ma.s.sena had never exacted any money in Provence, and the chamber, although known for its hatred of the leading figures of the empire, rejected the pet.i.tion out of hand.

Ma.s.sena, having escaped from the wave of reaction which was now sweeping the country, abandoned the stage on which he had played so brilliant a part, and retired to his chateau of Rueil, which had once belonged to Cardinal Richelieu, to end his splendid career in solitude and disgrace. He died on the 4th April 1817, at the age of fifty-nine.

At his death, the government had not sent the baton which is by custom placed on the bier of a marshal, so his son-in-law, General Reille, claimed this insignia from the minister for war, a fervent Royalist. When he received no reply to this reasonable request, in an act of courage, rare at the time, he let it be known to the court that if a baton did not arrive in time for his father-in-law's funeral, he would place ostentatiously on his coffin, the baton awarded to him by the Emperor. The government then decided that they would supply a baton after all.

I have touched on some of the blemishes which mar his career, but Ma.s.sena more than compensated for them by the remarkable and heroic services he rendered to France. He will be remembered as one of the great captains of an era which produced so many.

Chap. 3.

At the beginning of 1812, I was in Paris, with my young wife and our families. But the happiness which I enjoyed was lessened by the thought of my imminent departure. I was due to join the 1st Cha.s.seurs a Cheval as a squadron commander with the rank of Major.