When Napoleon deserted the relics of the Grand Army at Vilma the Marshal's difficulties naturally increased, for his enemy Murat was now in command, and, as he wrote to his wife earlier in the campaign, "I am worth ten times as much when the Emperor is present, for he alone can put order into this great complicated machine." But the King of Naples did not long retain his command: he had not Davout's confidence in Napoleon and was disgusted with the ill-success of the campaign and afraid of losing his crown. The Marshal, ever loyal to the Emperor, would listen to none of the Gascon's diatribes, and told him plainly, "You are only King by the grace of Napoleon and by the blood of brave Frenchmen. You can only remain King by Napoleon's aid, and by remaining united to France. It is black ingratitude which blinds you." So Murat went off to Italy to plan treason, and Davout returned to Germany to place his life and reputation at the Emperor's service.
It fell to the Marshal's lot in 1813 to hold Northern Germany as part of the plan of campaign whereby the advance of the Allies was to be checked. The Emperor had determined to make an example of the town of Hamburg, to teach other German cities the fate to be expected by those who deserted him. His orders were that all those who had taken any share in the desertion were to be arrested and their goods sequestrated, and that a contribution of fifty million francs was to be paid by the towns of Lübeck and Hamburg. The Marshal carried out his orders. Hamburg writhed impotent at his feet and the "heavy arm of justice fell on the canaille." Only in the case of the contribution did he make any deviation from the Emperor's wishes, as it was inexpedient to drive all the wealthy people out of the state. In pursuance of the Emperor's plans, by the winter of 1813 Davout had made Hamburg impregnable. He had laid in huge supplies, and built a bridge of wood two leagues long joining Haarburg and Hamburg. With a garrison of thirty thousand men, danger threatened from within rather than from without, for Napoleon's bitter punishment of Hamburg, ending as it did with the seizure of eight million marks from the funds of the city bank, had made the name of France stink in the nostrils of the inhabitants. The Marshal was determined to hold the town to the last. In December, when provisions began to fail, the poor were banished from the city; those who refused to go were threatened with fifty blows of the cane. "At the end of December people without distinction of sex or age were dragged from their beds and conveyed out of the town." During the siege the Russian commander, Bennigsen, attempted by means of spies and proclamations to raise a rebellion in the fortress, but Davout's grip was too firm to be shaken, and a few executions cooled the ardour of the spies. It was not till April 15th that the Marshal was informed by a flag of truce of the fall of the Empire; not certain of the truth of the news, he refused to give up his command. At last, on April 28th, official news arrived from Paris, and on the following day the fifteen thousand men who remained of the original garrison of thirty thousand swore allegiance to the Bourbons and mounted the white cockade.
On May 11th General Gerard arrived to relieve Davout of his command. On his arrival in France the Prince of Eckmühl found himself charged with having fired on the white flag after being informed of Napoleon's abdication, of appropriating the funds of the Bank of Hamburg, and of committing arbitrary acts which caused the French name to become odious. His reply was first that until he had received official information of the fall of the Empire it was his duty to take measures to prevent Hamburg being surprised; that the appropriation of the funds of the bank was the only means of finding money to hold Hamburg; that he was not responsible for the continental system, and as a soldier he had only obeyed commands; that as a matter of fact he had contrived to have the heavy contribution lightened, and lastly, that during the siege he had only had two spies shot and one French soldier executed for purloining hospital stores. But in spite of his defence and the prayers of his fellow Marshals Louis refused to allow Davout to take the oath of allegiance, and accordingly when, in 1815, Napoleon returned from Elba, the Prince of Eckmühl alone of all the Marshals could hasten to the Emperor without a stain on his honour.
Immediately on his return the Emperor made a great call on the faithfulness of his friend, and told him he had chosen him as Minister of War. The Marshal begged for service in the field, but the Emperor was firm; Davout alone had held to him and all others had the Bourbon taint. Still the Marshal refused, pleading his brusque manners and well-known harshness; but at last the Emperor appealed to his pity, pointing out that all Europe was against him, and asking him if he also was going to abandon his sovereign. Thereon the Marshal accepted the post. It was no light burden that he had undertaken, prince of martinets though he was, to regenerate an army scattered to the winds. Everything was lacking – men, horses, guns, transports, stores, and ammunition. Yet he worked wonders, and by the beginning of June the Emperor had a field army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, with another quarter of a million troops in formation in France. On the return of the Emperor to Paris after the disaster at Waterloo the Marshal in vain besought him to dissolve the assemblies and proclaim a dictatorship, but Napoleon's spirit was broken and the favourable moment passed by. Meanwhile, the Emperor remained in idleness at Malmaison, and by the 28th of June the Prussians arrived near Paris with the intention of capturing him; but the Prince of Eckmühl warded off the danger by barricading or burning the bridges across the Seine and manœuvring sixty thousand troops in front of Blücher. Thanks to this Napoleon escaped to Rochfort, and owed his safety to Davout, for Blücher had sworn to catch him, dead or alive.
On the evacuation of Paris the Marshal withdrew westwards with the remnant of the imperial army, now called the Army of the Loire. But as soon as Louis had once again ascended the throne he relieved Davout, making Gouvion St. Cyr Minister of War and Macdonald commander of the Army of the Loire. The Marshal spent some months in exile, but was allowed to return to France in 1816. However the mutual distrust between him and the Bourbons could not be overcome, and, although he took the oath of allegiance and received the cross of St. Louis, he never attempted to return to public life, and died of an attack of pleurisy on June 1, 1823.
The causes of the success of the Prince of Eckmühl are easy to ascertain: acute perception, doggedness of purpose, and a devotion which never faltered or failed, are gifts which are bound to bring success when added to an exceptional run of good fortune. Among the Marshals there were many, no doubt, who had as quick a perception and as vivid an imagination as Davout, but there was no one who had his massive doggedness and determination, and Bessières alone perhaps surpassed him in personal devotion to the Emperor. Much as we may see to blame in his untiring hounding down of the patriot Stein in Prussia, in his cruel exactions in Hamburg, and in the remorseless way he treated spies and deserters, we must remember that he did it all from motives of patriotism. Moreover, we cannot fail to admire a man who made it a principle, when he had received rigorous orders, to accept all the odium arising from their performance because he considered that, since the sovereign is permanent and the officials are changeable, it is important that officials should brave the temporary odium of measures which are but temporary. In his opinion the phrase, "If the King only knew," was a precious illusion which was one of the foundation-stones of all government: thus it was that in carrying out severe orders the Marshal never attempted to shield himself behind the name of the Emperor.
It was therefore from a spirit of patriotism, as the servant of the French Emperor, that Davout pressed relentlessly on those who tried to shake off the yoke of France. Stern as his nature was, he did not disguise from himself that his policy bore hardly on the conquered, for when Napoleon asked him, "How would you behave if I made you King of Poland?" he replied, "When a man has the honour to be a Frenchman, he must always be a Frenchman," but he added, "From the day on which I accepted the crown of Poland I would become entirely and solely a Pole, and I would act in complete contradiction to your Majesty if the interests of the people whose chief I was demanded that I should do so." As a soldier and an administrator, though he is rightly called the prince of martinets, yet nothing was more abhorrent to his eyes than red tape. Efficiency was everything, and efficiency he considered was only to be gained by personal inspection of detail considered in relation to existing conditions, and not by blind obedience to hard and fast rules. It was this habit of mind and readiness for all contingencies which won for him his titles of Duke of Auerstädt and Prince of Eckmühl, and made him the right-hand man of the great Emperor, who confessed that, "If I am always prepared, it is because before entering on an undertaking, I have meditated for long and foreseen what may occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unforeseen by others: it is thought and meditation."
IX
JACQUES ÉTIENNE JOSEPH ALEXANDRE MACDONALD, MARSHAL, DUKE OF TARENTUM
Jacques Étienne Joseph Alexandre Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, was the son of a Uist crofter, Macachaim. The Macachaims of Uist were a far-off sept of the Macdonalds of Clanranald. The future Marshal's father was educated at the Scots College in Paris, and was for some time a tutor in Clanranald's household. Owing to his knowledge of French he was entrusted with the duty of helping Flora Macdonald to arrange the escape of Prince Charles. He accompanied the Prince to France, and obtained a commission in Ogilvie's regiment of foot. In 1768 Vall Macachaim, or Neil Macdonald, as he was called in France, retired on a pension of thirty pounds a year. On this pittance he brought up his family at Sancerre. The future Marshal was born at Sedan on November 17, 1765. He was educated for the army at a military academy in Paris, kept by a Scotchman, Paulet, but, owing to bad mathematics, he was unable to enter the Artillery and Engineering School. This failure came as a bitter blow to the keen young soldier, who, after reading Homer, already imagined himself an Achilles. But in 1784 his chance came; the Dutch, threatened by the Emperor Joseph II., had to improvise an army, and Macdonald accepted a pair of colours in a regiment raised by a Frenchman, the Count de Maillebois. A few months later the regiment was disbanded, as the Dutch bought the peace they could not gain by arms. The young officer, thus thrown on his own resources, was glad to accept a cadetship in Dillon's Irish regiment in the French King's service, and at the moment the Revolution broke out he was a sub-lieutenant in that corps. Owing to emigration and the fortune of war, promotion came quickly. Macdonald also was lucky in having a friend in General Beurnonville, on whose staff he served till he was transferred to that of Dumouriez, the commander-in-chief. As a reward for his services at Jemmappes and elsewhere he was made lieutenant-colonel, and early in 1793 his friend Beurnonville, who had become War Minister, gave him his colonelcy and the command of the Picardy regiment, one of the four senior corps of the old French infantry. The young colonel of twenty-eight could not expect to be always so favoured by fortune. Dumouriez's failure at Neerwinden and subsequent desertion to the Allies cast a cloud of suspicion on his protégé at a moment when to be suspected was to be condemned. Luckily, some of the Commissioners from the Convention could recognise merit, but Macdonald spent many anxious months amid denunciations and accusations from those who grudged him his colonelcy. To his intense surprise he was at last summoned before the dread Commissioners and told that, for his zeal, he was to be promoted general of brigade. Overcome by this unexpected turn of fortune, he wished to refuse the honour, and pleaded his youth and inexperience, and was promptly given the choice of accepting or becoming a "suspect" and being arrested. Safe for the moment, Macdonald threw himself heart and soul into his new duties, but still denunciations and accusations were hurled against him. Fresh Commissioners came from the Assembly, and it was only their fortunate recall to Paris that saved the general from arrest. Then came the decree banishing all "ci-devant" nobles. Macdonald, fearing after this order that if he met with the slightest check he would be greeted with cries of treachery, demanded written orders from the new Commissioners confirming him in his employment. These were refused, as also his resignation, with the curt reply, "If you leave the army we will have you arrested and brought to trial." In this dilemma he found a friend in the representative Isore, who, struck by his ability and industry, took up his cause, and from that moment Macdonald had nothing to fear from the revolutionary tribunal.
In November, 1794, he was quite unexpectedly gazetted general of division in the army of Pichegru, and took part in the winter campaign against Holland, where he proved his capacity by seizing the occasion of a hard frost to cross the Vaal on the ice and surprise the Anglo-Hanoverian force at Nimeguen. A few days later, during the general advance, he captured Naarden, the masterpiece of the great engineer Cohorn. Proud of his success, he hastened to inform the commander-in-chief, Pichegru, and was greeted by a laugh, and, "Bah! I pay no attention now to anything less than the surrender of provinces." The blasé commander-in-chief a week or two later himself performed the exploit of capturing the ice-bound Dutch fleet with a cavalry brigade and a battery of horse artillery.
After serving on the Rhine in 1796 Macdonald was transferred in 1798 to the Army of Italy, and sent to Rome to relieve Gouvion St. Cyr. When war broke out between France and Naples, the troops in Southern Italy were formed into the Army of Naples under Championnet. The commander-in-chief overrated the fighting qualities of the Neapolitan troops and thought it prudent to evacuate Rome. Macdonald was entrusted with this duty, and was further required to cover the concentration of Championnet's army. The hard-headed Scotchman had, however, gauged to a nicety the morale of the Neapolitan army, and, although he had but five thousand troops against forty thousand Neapolitans, under the celebrated Austrian general Mack, he engaged the enemy at Cività Castellana, defeated them, followed them up, drove them out of Rome and over the frontier, and practically annihilated the whole force. Unfortunately he wrote a comical account of the operations to his chief, who, having no sense of humour, felt that his evacuation of Rome had, to say the least of it, been hurried and undignified. Championnet therefore greeted his victorious lieutenant with the words, "You want to make me pass for a damned fool," and no explanations could appease his rage. So bitter became the quarrel that Macdonald had to resign his command.
By February, 1799, Championnet had fallen into disgrace with the Directory, and Macdonald was gazetted in his place commander-in-chief. When he arrived in Naples and took up his command the situation seemed quiet. But the far-seeing soldier read the signs of the times. The élite of the French army was locked up in Egypt. Austria and Russia were bent on extinguishing France and her revolutionary ideas. Accordingly the general at once set about quietly concentrating his troops to meet an invasion of Northern Italy by the Allies. With his keen military insight he desired to evacuate all Southern Italy, retaining only such fortresses as could be well supplied. But the principle of keeping everything gained the day. Still, on the news of Schérer's defeat at Magnano by the impetuous Suvaroff, the Army of Naples was ready at once to start for the north, and set off to try and pick up communication with General Moreau, who was re-forming the Army of Italy at Genoa. The idea was that a concentrated movement should be made against the Allies through the Apennines. Unfortunately there existed a bitter rivalry between the Army of Italy and the Army of Naples. Consequently on June 17th Macdonald found himself with twenty-five thousand men near Piacenza, in the presence of the enemy, with no support save two divisions of the Army of Italy, which had come in from Bologna, and whose commanders were jealous of his orders. Still there was always the hope that Moreau might after all be coming to his assistance, and accordingly he determined to stand and fight. In the action of June 17th, owing to the lack of co-operation from one of the attached divisions, the general was ridden over by a division of the enemy's cavalry. Carried about in a litter, he directed all movements during the 18th, and held the enemy at bay along the mountain torrent of the Trebbia. On the 19th he determined to take the initiative, but, owing to the collapse of the attached division which formed his centre, he had to fall back on his old position, which he held throughout the whole day. During the three days' fighting on the Trebbia the French had lost a third of their men and nearly all their officers. Still, early on the morning of the 20th the retreat was effected in good order, save that one of the attached divisions under Victor started so late that it was overtaken by the enemy and abandoned all its guns. But Macdonald at once returned to its aid and saved the artillery, for, as he sarcastically wrote to Victor, "he found neither friends nor foes." Both sides had run away.
The battle of the Trebbia brought into notice the sterling qualities of the French commander, and when he was recalled to Paris he found that military opinion was on his side and that Bonaparte himself highly approved of his conduct. "Thenceforward the opinion of my amphitryon was settled in my favour!" Macdonald's next employment was in command of the Army of the Grisons, whose duty was to cover Moreau's right rear in his advance down the Danube, and to keep up communication with the Army of Italy in the valley of the Po. It was in the performance of this duty that the Army of the Grisons crossed the Splügen Pass in winter in spite of glaciers and avalanches, a feat immeasurably superior to Bonaparte's task in crossing the much easier Great St. Bernard Pass, after the snows had melted. Unfortunately for Macdonald, Bonaparte believed him to belong to Moreau's faction. After Hohenlinden the future Emperor, who was afraid that Moreau's glory would outshine his own, placed all that general's friends on the black book. Further, owing to his outspokenness, Talleyrand had conceived a hatred of the hero of the Splügen. Accordingly, he found himself in deep disgrace. First he was exiled as ambassador at Copenhagen, then his enemies tried to get him sent to Russia in the same capacity, but he refused to go, and for the next few years lived the life of a quiet country gentleman on his estate of Courcelles le Roi. Like most of the generals, Macdonald was by now comparatively well off, for the French Government, on the conquest of a country, had allowed its generals to take what works of art they chose, after the Commissioners had selected the best for the national collection at the Louvre. The general's share as commander-in-chief at Naples had been valued by experts at thirty-four thousand pounds. Unfortunately, however, this booty and many masterpieces which he had bought himself were all lost in the hurried march north that ended in the battle of the Trebbia.
It was not till 1809 that Macdonald was summoned from his retreat. In that year the Emperor needed every soldier of ability, with the Spanish ulcer eating at his vitals and the war with Austria on his hands. Accordingly, at a day's notice, he was ordered to hurry off to Italy to help Napoleon's stepson, Prince Eugène, who was opposed by an Austrian army under the Archduke John.
On arriving in Italy the old soldier found that Prince Eugène, unaccustomed to an independent command, had opened the gate of Italy to the Austrians by his impetuous action at Sacile. The French troops were in complete disorganisation, and the slightest activity on the part of the Austrians would have turned the retreat into a rout. Prince Eugène, who was without a spark of jealousy, and in reality a man of considerable character, greeted his mentor with delight. Macdonald at once pointed out that it was unnecessary to retire as far as Mantua, because the Archduke would not venture to penetrate far into Italy until a decision had been arrived at between the main armies on the Danube. Under his careful supervision, order and discipline were restored among the French troops on the line of the Adige. The news of the French success at Eckmühl and Ratisbon automatically cleared the Austrians out of Northern Italy. During the pursuit the general had to impose on himself the severest self-control, because, though Prince Eugène invariably accepted his advice, the disaster at Sacile had for the time broken his nerve, and, again and again, he spoiled his mentor's best combinations by ordering a halt whenever the enemy appeared to be going to offer any resistance. It was hard indeed to accept subsequent apologies with a courteous smile, when it was success alone that would win back the Emperor's favour. But at last patience had its reward: while the viceroy himself pursued the main force of the enemy, he detached his lieutenant with a strong corps to take Trieste and to pick up communication with Marmont, who was bringing up the army of Dalmatia. Macdonald was given carte blanche. Trieste and Görz were taken; the junction with Marmont was speedily effected, and the combined forces hurried on towards Vienna. The great entrenched camp at Laybach blocked the way. Macdonald had not the necessary heavy artillery with which to capture it. He determined therefore to make a threatening demonstration by day and slip past it by night. But at ten o'clock in the evening a flag of truce arrived offering a capitulation. "You are doing wisely," said the imperturbable Scotchman; "I was just going to sound the attack."
At Gratz he overtook Prince Eugène's army at the moment that the ill news of the battle of Aspern-Essling arrived. Then came the summons to hurry to the assistance of the Emperor. After marching sixty leagues in three days the Army of Italy arrived at nine o'clock at night on July 4th at the imperial headquarters at Ebersdorf. During that night it crossed the Danube, under cover of the terrific thunderstorm which hid the French advance from the Austrians. On the afternoon of July 5th it fell to the lot of Macdonald to attempt to seize the plateau which formed the Austrian centre. As the general well knew, the Emperor had been mistaken in thinking that the enemy were evacuating their position; still, he had to obey orders, and night alone saved his cruelly shaken battalions. Next day was fought the terrible battle of Wagram. At the critical moment of the fight, when the Emperor heard that Masséna, on his left wing, was being driven in on the bridge-head, amid the confusion and rout he ordered Macdonald to attempt by a bold counter-stroke to break the enemy's centre. The Austrians were advancing in masses, with nothing in front of them, and the bridge, the only line of retreat, was threatened. To meet this situation Macdonald deployed four battalions in line, at the double; behind them he formed up the rest of his corps in two solid columns, and closed the rear of this immense rectangle of troops by Nansouty's cavalry. Covered by the fire of a massed battery of a hundred guns, he discharged this huge body of thirty thousand troops against the Austrians, and in spite of vast losses from the enemy's artillery, by sheer weight of human beings he completely checked the Austrian advance and broke their centre. If the cavalry of the Guard had only charged home the enemy would have been driven off the field in complete rout. Still unsupported, the column continued its victorious career, taking six thousand prisoners and ten guns, the only trophies of the day. Next morning the hero of Wagram, lame from the effect of a kick from his horse, was summoned before the Emperor.
Napoleon embraced him with the words, "Let us be friends." "Till death," replied his staunch lieutenant. Then came his reward. "You have behaved valiantly," continued the Emperor, "and have rendered me the greatest services, as, indeed, throughout the entire campaign. On the battlefield of your glory, where I owe you so large a share of yesterday's success, I make you a Marshal of France. You have long deserved it."
After the ratification of peace, the Emperor created his new Marshal Duke of Tarentum, granted him a present of sixty thousand francs, and presented him with the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour. Having at last regained the Emperor's favour, the Marshal had never again to complain of lack of employment. From Wagram he was sent to watch the army of the Archduke John; thereafter he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy. In 1810 he was despatched to Spain to take command in Catalonia. Like his fellow Marshals, Macdonald hated the Spanish war, which was a war of posts, and devoid of glory. But he showed his versatility by capturing, without artillery, the stronghold of Figueras.
It was while suffering from a bad attack of gout after this success that he was summoned from Spain to Tilsit, to command the corps comprised of Prussian troops which was to join the Grand Army in its advance into Russia. As he graphically put it, "I had left my armchair in the fortress of Figueras, I left one crutch in Paris and the other in Berlin." The Duke of Tarentum's duty was to guard the tête-du-pont at Dunaberg, near the mouth of the Dwina; consequently he was spared a great many of the horrors of the terrible retreat. Still, he had his full share of troubles, for the Prussians deserted him and went over to the enemy. So confident was he of the loyalty of his subordinates that this desertion took him quite unawares, and, in spite of warnings, he waited for the divisions to rejoin him, declaring that, "My life, my career, shall never be stained with the reproach that I have committed the cowardly action of deserting troops committed to my care." Fortunately his eyes were opened by letters which he intercepted. With a handful of troops he escaped to Dantzig. On returning to Paris Macdonald was greeted with a cold reception by the Emperor, who thought that the desertion of the Prussians was due to his negligence. But the Marshal's character was soon cleared and a reconciliation followed. In the campaign of 1813 it fell to the lot of the Duke of Tarentum to watch the Prussian army under Blücher in Silesia while the Emperor operated against the Austrians round Dresden. Whilst thus employed he was defeated on August 26th at the Katzbach. The Prussians had established themselves on the heights at Jauer. Macdonald attempted, by a combined frontal attack and a turning movement, to dislodge them. Unfortunately the rain came down in torrents, the French artillery became embedded in the mud, the infantry could not fire, the cavalry could not charge, and a hurried retreat alone saved the Army from absolute annihilation, for, as Macdonald wrote in his despatch, "The generals cannot prevent the men from seeking shelter, as their muskets are useless to them."
The repulse at the Katzbach did not weaken the Emperor's esteem for the Marshal, and a few days later he sent to inquire his views of the general situation. With absolute courage he told the truth. The situation was hopeless; the only wise course was to evacuate all garrisons in Germany and retire on the Saale. Unfortunately, such a retirement would have meant the loss of Napoleon's throne.
On the third day of the battle of Leipzig, in the midst of the action, Macdonald was deserted by all the Hessian troops under his command, and, at the same time, Marshal Augereau, who was supposed to cover his right, withdrew from the combat. Accordingly, the Marshal retired with the remnants of his corps to the Elster, only to find the bridge blown up. Dragged along by the crowd of fugitives, he determined not to fall alive into the hands of the enemy, but either to drown or shoot himself. More fortunate, however, than Prince Poniatowski, he managed to cross the river on his horse. Once safely across, he was greeted by cries from the other bank, "Monsieur le Maréchal, save your soldiers, save your children!" But there was nothing to be done; no advice could he give them save to surrender.
The Duke of Tarentum was mainly instrumental in saving the remnants of the army which had managed to cross the Elster. Going straight to the Emperor, he laid the situation before him, ruthlessly tore aside the tissue of lies with which the staff were trying to cajole him, and, by his force of will, compelled Napoleon, who for the time was quite unnerved and mazed, to hurry on the retreat to the Rhine. It was entirely owing to the Marshal that the Bavarians were brushed aside at Hanau, and that some few remnants of the great army regained France.
In the famous campaign of 1814 Macdonald fought fiercely to drive the enemy out of France. His corps was one of those which the Emperor summoned to Arcis sur Aube. There again he had to tell Napoleon the truth and convince him that the enemy were not retreating, but were in full advance on Paris. When the Emperor tried to retrieve his mistake by following in the rear, the Marshal was in favour of the bolder course of advancing into Alsace and Lorraine, and of raising the nation in arms, and thus starving out the Allies by cutting off their supplies and reinforcements; and no doubt he was right, for the Czar himself said that the Allies lost more than three thousand troops in the Vosges without seeing a single French soldier.