VI
JEAN LANNES, MARSHAL, DUKE OF MONTEBELLO
Jean Lannes, the future Duke of Montebello, was born on April 10, 1769, the year which saw the birth of many famous soldiers, Napoleon, Wellington, Ney, and Soult. He was the fourth son of a peasant proprietor of Lectourne, a little town on the slopes of the Pyrenees. His family had long been settled in the commune of Omet, in the department of the Gironde. The first to rise to any sort of distinction was Jean's eldest brother, who showed at an early age such ability that the episcopal authorities of Lectourne educated him, and in due time he became a priest. It was to his brother, the abbé, that the young Jean owed such elements of learning as he possessed. But the pressure of need compelled his father to indenture him at an early age to a dyer in Lectourne. The young apprentice was of middle height, very well built, amazingly active, and able to bear the utmost fatigue. His face was pleasant and expressive, his eyes small and keen. Behind those eyes lay a brain of extraordinary activity, which was controlled by a boundless ambition. Enthusiastic and passionate, Lannes' spirit could brook but little control. Action was the zest of his life. Administration and control came to him not as Nature's gifts, but as the result of his great common sense, which guided his ambition along the paths which led to success. A nature which could not endure the dullness of the dyer's trade in Lectourne could, however, compel the young soldier during the severest campaigns to give up part of his night's rest to study and to the expansion of his knowledge beyond the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, all the learning his brother, the abbé, had had time to impart to him. Even in the later years of his life the successful Marshal strove by midnight toil to educate himself up to the position his military talents had won for him.
Jean Lannes had already had a taste of the soldier's life before the outbreak of the revolutionary wars. But his uncontrollable temper had brought this short military experience to an abrupt end, and he had been compelled to return to his work at Lectourne after being wounded in a duel. His employer had greeted his return with the words, "There is not the price of a drink to be made in the trade. Return to the army; you may perhaps become captain." But Jean Lannes did not need such advice to drive him to the path of glory. In June, 1792, the Government of France called for volunteers to resist the coming invasion of the Duke of Brunswick's army. Lannes enlisted in the second battalion of the volunteers of Gers, and was at once elected sub-lieutenant by his fellow-citizens. This promotion he owed partly to his former military experience, partly to his personal magnetism, and partly to his extreme political opinions.
When Spain declared war on France the two battalions of Gers were sent to form part of the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees. There Lannes gained his first practical military experience. Both armies were extremely ill-led, ill-disciplined, and ill-equipped. Consequently there was a great deal of desultory hand-to-hand fighting, in which the young sub-lieutenant distinguished himself by his courage and talent. He enjoyed himself hugely fighting all day and dancing all night, when he could spare the time from his books. When military knowledge was almost entirely absent in the army, promotion came quickly to those who distinguished themselves by courage and zeal. On September 25, 1793, Lannes was promoted lieutenant. A month later, on October 21st, he was made captain of the grenadier company. Two months later, on Christmas Day, at the express desire of his chief, General Davout, he was given command of his battalion, and appointed colonel on the staff and acting adjutant-general. This distinction he gained for his brilliant conduct at Villelongue. Summoned from his bed in hospital to command the advance guard of five hundred men, he moved towards the main redoubt of the Spanish lines, and, refusing to be bluffed by the proposal of an armistice, captured the redoubt by a dashing charge. After the action he once again retired to hospital. His next exploit was the delicate mission entrusted to him by General Dugommier of releasing a great number of French émigrés who had been captured in battle, and who otherwise would have fallen victims to the popular fury. While devoting himself to his military duties he yet found time to fall in love. When in hospital at Perpignan, at the end of 1793, he had met Mademoiselle Méric, the daughter of a wealthy banker of that town; the friendship very soon developed into an ardent passion, and on March 19, 1795, the young couple were united, and the marriage seemed very advantageous for the young soldier of fortune, who was barely twenty-five.
After the treaty of Basle the battalions of Gers were brigaded with the old 53rd (regiment d'Alsace), and formed part of the troops which Schérer took to reinforce the Army of Italy in the summer of 1795. Accordingly, Lannes had the good fortune to take part in the battle of Loano, and once again greatly distinguished himself and was specially mentioned in despatches.
But during the winter of 1795-6 his successful career nearly came to an untimely end, for on the reorganisation of the army, along with many other officers, he was placed on half pay. Fortunately, at the moment he was retiring dejected to France, Bonaparte assumed command of the Army of Italy. The new general felt he could ill spare a capable officer like Lannes, and consequently he retained him provisionally. The young colonel immediately justified his action. At the critical moment of the Austrian counter-attack at Dego, Lannes cleared the village by a brisk bayonet charge. Thereon Bonaparte gave him command of two battalions of grenadiers and one of carbineers, which formed part of his permanent advance guard under General Dallemagne. From this time onward Lannes had found his proper rôle. As nature had intended Marshal Ney for the command of a rear guard, and Murat for the command of cavalry, so she had equipped Lannes with those qualities which are specially required by the commander of an advance guard. Wiry and strong, he never knew what it was to be tired, and, never sparing himself, he never spared his men; his kind and cheery disposition and his personal magnetism carried all before him. His fiery enthusiasm swept aside all difficulties; his inventive genius ever showed him the way to surmount all obstacles. When danger was most pressing Lannes was there, the first to head the charge, the first to rally the discomfited. Never had Fortune a more zealous wooer. At Lodi he was the first man on the bridge. Later, at the head of three hundred men, he re-established order in Lombardy; at one time especially attached to the headquarter staff, at another hurried off to suppress some outbreak in the rear, at another repelling a determined sortie from Mantua, more and more, day by day, he made himself indispensable to his young chief. At the battle of Bassano, of the five flags wrested from the enemy Lannes captured two with his own hands. Wounded slightly at Bassano and more seriously at Governolo, he yet managed to creep out of hospital in time to take his place beside Bonaparte at Arcola. Early in the battle he received two flesh wounds, and had to retire to have them dressed. Scarcely were they bandaged when the news arrived that Augereau's division had received a severe check. Oblivious of his wounds, he leapt on his horse and arrived at the head of his columns in time to see Augereau and Bonaparte, flag in hand, vainly attempting to rally their soldiers, only to be swept off the embankment into the marsh. But Lannes headed his grenadiers, and charging home on the Austrians, swept them back to the bridge-head, receiving in the charge yet another wound.
During the early months of 1797 he commanded a column at Bologna, and was present at the capitulation of Mantua. Thereafter he commanded the advance guard of Victor's army which invaded the Papal States. In front of Ancona he met with a characteristic adventure. Making a reconnaissance with two or three officers and half a dozen troopers, he suddenly found himself in the presence of three hundred of the enemy's cavalry. Their commander at once ordered his men to draw their swords preparatory to a charge. Whereon Lannes rode up to him and told him to order his men to return their swords, dismount, and lead their horses back to their headquarters. The officer obeyed. By sheer force of character Lannes thus dominated the situation and saved the lives of himself and his escort. After the preliminaries of peace at Leoben, Bonaparte employed him on several confidential missions, in which his impetuosity led him at times into difficulties, and the commander-in-chief was forced to write to the French Minister at Genoa, "I have heard the reply that Lannes made to you. He is hot-headed, but a good fellow, and brave. I must write to him to tell him to be more civil to a minister of the Republic."
Africa has often proved the grave of great military reputations. Napoleon himself only escaped the usual doom by deserting his army and suddenly appearing as a deus ex machina in the stormy field of politics at Paris. But though so fatal to those in supreme command, Africa has sometimes been the school from which the young officers have returned with enhanced reputations. It was from the companions who had stood the test of the fiery trial in Egypt and Syria that Bonaparte later selected his most trusted Marshals.
On May 19, 1798, Lannes sailed for Egypt in the Orient as an unattached general of brigade on the headquarter staff. For his successful action at the head of one of the assaulting columns in Malta he was appointed to the command of a brigade in Kléber's division. He took part in the capture of Alexandria, the march on Cairo, and the battles of Chebrass and the Pyramids; but it was not so much his success in these engagements which enhanced his worth in Bonaparte's eyes, as the fact that Lannes alone of all the general officers in Egypt did not share in the grumbling and depression which threatened to cripple the army after its arrival at Cairo. Soldiers and officers alike had but one desire – to return home. Lannes secretly informed Bonaparte of the plans of those who led the discontent, and, in the words of Murat, "sold the cocoanut." Thus he gained the future Emperor as his life-long friend and Murat as his life-long enemy. When in February, 1799, Bonaparte started for Syria, he took with him Lannes in command of Menou's division.
When Bonaparte found that his military reputation was likely to suffer by a more prolonged stay in Egypt, and above all that France was now ready to accept the rule of a dictator, he deserted his army in Egypt, leaving Kléber, whom he hated, in command; he took with him his most trustworthy officers, Lannes, Murat, Marmont, Andréossy, and Berthier, ordering Desaix to follow. The return to France, so longed for by most, was less agreeable to Lannes: while in hospital after the battle of Aboukir he had heard that his wife had given birth to a son whose father he could not be. Consequently one of his first acts on his return was to divorce her. But Bonaparte gave him little time to bewail his misfortune, for he relied on him, with Berthier, Murat, and Marmont, to debauch the army and bring it over to his side. Berthier's business was to win over the general staff, Murat the cavalry, Marmont the artillery, and Lannes the infantry. Shortly after the coup d'état General Lannes was appointed commandant and inspector of the Consular Guard in preference to Murat. But this was a hollow victory over his rival, for when, after the Marengo campaign, these life-long enemies met in open rivalry for the hand of Caroline Bonaparte, the First Consul's sister, Murat, aided by Josephine, became the accepted suitor, and Lannes had to submit to see his hated rival in quick succession the brother-in-law of Napoleon, a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, the crowned King of Naples, and, most bitter of all, the confidential friend of his idol.
It was in the Marengo campaign that the general had his first opportunity of distinguishing himself as an independent commander, and winning the renown which the victory of Montebello inseparably connects with his name. When Bonaparte made his famous march into Italy with the Army of the Reserve, he appointed Lannes to command the advance guard. The whole success of the operations depended on the rapidity with which they were carried out, for the First Consul, in his endeavour to get astride the Austrian line of communication, was exposing his flank to the enemy, and the French army, if beaten, had no other line of retreat save the terrible defiles of the Alps. Accordingly, Napoleon's selection of Lannes to command the advance guard is the highest possible testimony to his military ability. The battle of Montebello was Lannes's first independent engagement. In it he showed his genius for war. If he had allowed the Austrians to reoccupy Stradella he would have ruined the whole of Napoleon's scheme of operations, but, though his force was only a third of the enemy's, he remembered the advantage that comes to the assailant; instead of waiting in an entrenched position, he attacked, and by his indomitable courage and tenacity, and his tactical ability, he kept the enemy pinned to his entrenchments until the arrival of fresh troops under Victor enabled him to pulverise his foe. The battle was one of the finest of the campaign. "The bones," said Lannes, "cracked in my division like glass in a hailstorm."
At Marengo Lannes had to reverse his usual rôle and fight a rear-guard action, for during the early part of the engagement the French were outnumbered by thirty thousand men against eighteen thousand, and yet the general was able to report: "I carried out my retirement by successive echelons under a devastating fire of artillery, amid successive charges of cavalry. I had not a single gun to cover my retreat, and yet it was carried out in perfect order." The soldier who in the hour of success was full of impetuosity and élan, in the hour of retreat was able to inspire his troops with stubborn courage and unfailing self-confidence, which did much to secure the victory.
After Marengo came a period of peace. Lannes, as commander of the Consular Guard, had his headquarters in Paris, and, owing to his official position, was constantly in touch with Bonaparte. But, necessary as he was in war time, his companionship during peace was not altogether congenial to the First Consul, and as time went on it became almost distasteful. Although happily married to Mademoiselle Louise Antoinette Guéheneuc, the daughter of a senator, he felt himself aggrieved that Bonaparte had not supported his suit with Caroline, and was extremely jealous of many of the First Consul's friends. The constant bickering between Lannes and Murat never ceased. Moreover Lannes, as an out-and-out republican, treated the First Consul in a frank spirit of camaraderie, relying on his services at Arcola and Montebello. This Bonaparte not unnaturally resented. The increased ceremonial of the court and the prospect of the Concordat were abhorrent to the stern republicans, but necessary to establish the divinity which should at least seem to surround a throne. Relations became so strained that Bonaparte was soon glad to seize on any excuse to dismiss Lannes from his post. Murat and his tool Bessières provided him with a plausible reason. Lannes, by nature happy-go-lucky and no financier, wishing no doubt to please the First Consul, spent his money freely in lavish entertainment at his Paris house, and equipped the guard in most gorgeous uniforms. To meet these expenses he overdrew his account with the military authorities by more than three hundred thousand francs. Murat, hearing of this from Bessières, brought it to the First Consul's notice. Bonaparte at once summoned Lannes, rated him soundly, and commanded him immediately to refund the money. Murat was delighted; he thought that his enemy was certain to be disgraced. In his difficulty Lannes turned to his old friend and former chief, Augereau, who at once lent him the money and refused to take any security. But although he was thus able to refund the money, Bonaparte dismissed him from the command of the Guard. Still, remembering his war service and thinking that he might be useful again later, he did not disgrace him utterly, but at the end of 1801 sent him as ambassador to Portugal.
Lannes's diplomatic career was at first not very successful. English influence was all-powerful at Lisbon and the new envoy had not the talent to counteract it. In the autumn of 1802, thinking himself slighted by the Portuguese authorities, without consulting Talleyrand, he suddenly withdrew from Lisbon and returned to France. But at Orleans he received an angry message from Bonaparte forbidding him to return to Paris. The First Consul meanwhile addressed peremptory messages to the court of Lisbon about the supposed insult offered to his ambassador. Thereon the Portuguese Foreign Minister apologised and Lannes returned. Angry as Bonaparte was at the moment, he confessed later that Lannes' soldierly impetuosity had served the cause of France better than the skilfulness of a consummate diplomat. For from this time onwards French influence began to increase at Lisbon, Lannes was courted by the minister, and the Prince Regent himself stood godfather to his son. The story goes that after the ceremony the Prince Regent took the ambassador into a salon of the palace where the diamonds from Brazil were stored, and then gave him a handful, saying, "That is for my godson," then a second handful for the mother, and a third for himself. Whatever the truth of the story, the fact remains that Lannes returned to France a rich man, able not only to repay his loan to Augereau but to indulge in fresh extravagance.
From Lisbon the ambassador was summoned to attend the coronation of the Emperor and to take his place among the Marshals. But he was not yet received back into full favour by the Emperor, and had to return to his embassy at Lisbon. It was not till March 22, 1805, that he was recalled to France to command the right wing of the Army of the Ocean, which, when war broke out between Austria and France, became the Grand Army. The fifth corps under Lannes reached the Rhine at Kehl on September 25th. Napoleon's scheme of operations was, by making vigorous demonstrations in the direction of the Black Forest, to persuade the Austrians that he was advancing in force in that direction, while all the time his wings were sweeping round the Austrian rear and cutting their line of communication on the Danube, in the direction of Ratisbon. The task of deceiving the Austrians was performed to perfection by Murat with the reserve cavalry and Lannes's corps. Immediately after Mack's surrender at Ulm, the Emperor detached Lannes and Murat in pursuit of the Archduke Ferdinand, who had successfully broken through the ring of French troops. Lannes's infantry tramped sturdily behind Murat's cavalry, and fighting proceeded day and night. The soldiers marched thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen hours a day, and captured in five days fifteen thousand men with eleven colours, one hundred and twenty-eight guns, and six hundred limbers and provision wagons.
During the rapid advance down the Danube on Vienna, the fifth corps continued in close support of Murat's cavalry. Vienna capitulated and the Marshals pressed on to seize the bridge before the city. The defence of the bridge had been entrusted to General Auersperg, with seven thousand men. The bridge was commanded by a battery of artillery, and the engineers were preparing to blow it up when Murat, Lannes, and Bertrand arrived. The three general officers quietly walked down to the bridge and shouted out to the Austrian picquets that an armistice had been arranged. Thereon the commander of the picquet proceeded to withdraw his men and sent word to Auersperg. Meanwhile the three officers strolled unconcernedly across, while a considerable way behind them a strong body of Lannes's infantry followed. When the French generals reached the Austrian end they found a sergeant of engineers actually proceeding to fire the fuse. Lannes caught him by the arm and snatched the match from his hand, telling him that it was a crime to blow up the bridge, and that he would be disgraced if he did such a thing. Then the two Marshals ran up to the officers commanding the artillery, who, growing restive at the continual advance of the French infantry, were preparing to open fire. Meanwhile Auersperg himself arrived, and the Marshals told him the same tale, affirming that the French were to occupy the bridge-head. Uncertain, like his subordinates, and but half convinced, he allowed himself to be bluffed, and thus Napoleon secured without dispute the crossing of the Danube. The boldness and audacity of the scheme so successfully carried out by Murat and Lannes, difficult as it is to condone from a moral point of view, brings out with great clearness the audacity, sangfroid, and resourcefulness of both these Marshals.
The successful crossing of the Danube was soon followed by the decisive battle of Austerlitz. The battle was brought on by Napoleon impressing the Allies with the idea that it was possible to slip past the French left flank and surround him, much as he had surrounded Mack at Ulm. For this purpose the right under Davout was drawn back and concealed by skilful use of the ground. The centre under Soult and the left under Lannes were to hold their ground until the Russian left was absolutely compromised, when Soult was to push forward, and, seizing the commanding hill of Pratzen, to cut the Russian force in two, while Lannes and Murat were to fall with all their weight on the isolated Russian right. For once Murat and Lannes laid aside their jealousy and worked hand in hand, and the success of the French left was due to the perfect combination of infantry and cavalry. Of the Russian right, seven thousand five hundred were made prisoners, and two colours and twenty-seven pieces of artillery were captured. But hardly had the battle ceased when bickerings broke out again, and Lannes, thinking Napoleon did not appreciate him, sent in his resignation, which the Emperor, much to his surprise, accepted.
The Marshal spent the greater part of the year 1806 in retirement at his native town of Lectourne, where he was joyfully received by his erstwhile neighbours and friends. He was always popular with his fellow-citizens, not only because of his republican ideas and his unaffected simplicity, but because he never forgot those who at any time had befriended him – a man who had once lent him a thousand francs was presented with a beautiful house and garden; the old soldier who had carried him out of the trenches at St. Jean d'Acre was established as a local postmaster, and received a small property and an annuity, and the Marshal never passed the house without going in, taking a meal with him, and making presents to the wife and children. On one occasion Lannes was attending a big official reception at Auch. On his way, he passed a peasant whom he recognised as one of the playfellows of his boyhood; strongly moved, the Marshal, when he arrived at the prefecture, asked the prefect if he might invite one of his friends to the luncheon. The prefect was charmed, but much surprised when an aide-de-camp returned with the peasant, whom Lannes embraced, placed by his side, and soon set at ease.
But war once again caused the Emperor to summon his fiery lieutenant. Lannes took command of the fifth corps on October 5, 1806, and five days later had the satisfaction of beating a strong Prussian force at Saalfeld. From Saalfeld the Marshal pushed on towards Jena, near which town, early on October 13th, his scouts came in contact with a large Prussian force under Hohenlohe. His small force was in considerable danger, but Napoleon at once hurried up all possible reinforcements. The Prussians held an apparently impregnable position on the Landgrafenberg, a precipitous hill which commanded the town. But during the night a local pastor pointed out to the French a track, which led up to the summit, which the Prussians had neglected to occupy. Working all night, the French sappers made a road up which guns could be hauled by hand, and on the morning of the 14th the corps of Lannes, Augereau, and the Guard were safely drawn up on the plateau of the Landgrafenberg, while Ney and Soult continued the line to the north. A heavy mist overhung the field of battle, and Hohenlohe was confident that he was only opposed by the fifth corps, and his surprise was immense when the fog lifted and he found himself confronted by the French army. The battle commenced by Lannes seizing the village of Vierzehn Heiligen. While the Prussians were fully occupied in attempting to hold this village, Napoleon threw his flanks round them, and the battle ended in the annihilation of Hohenlohe's army. In the evening Napoleon learned that on the same day Davout had completely defeated the main Prussian army at Auerstädt. Thereon he sent forward his various corps to seize all the important fortresses of Prussia, and detailed Lannes to support Murat in pursuit of the Prussian troops under Hohenlohe and Blücher, which retreated in the direction of the Oder. If the battle of Jena had been followed by peace, as had happened after Austerlitz in the previous year, it is more than probable that once again Lannes would have thrown up his command, for when the bulletin appeared, the part that his corps had taken was almost entirely neglected. The Marshal's letter to his wife showed that he was vexed beyond words with his treatment by Napoleon, and he started out in the worst of tempers to support Murat. But he was too keen a soldier to let his personal grievances interfere with his active work, and, although he gave vent to his spleen in the usual recriminations, he performed his work to admiration. So hard did he push his infantry, marching sixty miles in forty-eight hours, that he was never more than five miles behind the light cavalry, and it was owing to his effective support that, on October 28th, Murat was able to surround Hohenlohe and force him to surrender at Prinzlow. But, in spite of this, Murat in his despatch never mentioned the name of Lannes. It took all Napoleon's tact to smooth the Marshal's ruffled temper, and it was only the prospect of further action which ultimately prevented him from throwing up his command in high dudgeon.
By the beginning of November the theatre of war was virtually transferred from Prussia to Poland. As after Ulm, so after Jena, the Russians appeared on the scene too late to give effective aid to their allies, but in sufficient time to prevent the war from ending. Napoleon, who always had an intense esteem for the Marshal's common sense and military ability, asked him at this time to furnish a confidential report on the possibilities of Poland as a theatre of war, and the Marshal, with his keen insight into character, replied, "I am convinced that if you attempt to make the Poles rise on our behalf, within a fortnight they will be more against us than for us."
The French troops crossed the Vistula at Warsaw, and encountered "the fifth element, mud." Led by Murat, unable to make headway in mud up to their knees, baffled by the Fabian tactics of the Russians, and lacking the mighty brain of their Emperor, the Marshals fought without co-operation, each for his own glory. Lannes was as bad as the rest, showing in his refusal to give due praise to his brother generals for their help at Pultusk the same petty spirit of which he had complained in Murat. During the long winter weeks spent in cantonments along the Vistula, the Marshal was ill with fever, in hospital at Warsaw, and was not able to return to the head of his corps in time for the bloody battle of Eylau. During May he commanded the covering force at the siege of Dantzig, and was summoned thence to take part in the last phase of the campaign. The Russian General, Bennigsen, allowed himself to be outgeneralled by Napoleon, and the French were soon nearer Königsberg than the Russians. Bennigsen made desperate efforts to retrieve his mistake, and on June 13th actually managed to throw himself across the Alle at Friedland, just at the moment that Lannes arrived on the scene. The Marshal at once saw his opportunity. The Russians were drawn up with the Alle at their backs, so that retreat was impossible, and only victory could save them. The Marshal's design, therefore, was to hold the enemy till the main French army arrived. Bennigsen made the most determined efforts to throw him off, attempting to crush him by superior weight of horsemen and artillery. But the Marshal held on to him grimly, and by magnificent handling of Oudinot's grenadiers, the Saxon horse, and Grouchy's dragoons, he maintained his position in spite of all the Russian efforts during the night of June 13th. On the morning of the 14th, with ten thousand troops opposed to forty thousand, he fought for four hours without giving ground, skilfully availing himself of every bit of wood and cover, till at last reinforcements arrived. When the main French columns were deployed, Lannes, with the remnant of his indomitable corps, had a brief period of rest. But during the last phase of the battle the enemy made a desperate effort to break out of the trap through his shattered corps, and once again the Marshal led his troops with invincible élan, and drove the Russians right into the death-trap of Friedland.
Tilsit followed, and Napoleon showered honours on his trusty lieutenants. On June 30, 1807, he gave to Lannes the principality of Sievers in the department of Kalish, and on March 19, 1808, he conferred on him a greater honour when he created him Duke of Montebello in memory of his famous victory.