Chapter 20

The greater part of the generals who made a name for themselves in the early wars of the revolution having sprung from the lower ranks of society, it has been supposed, wrongly, that they had received no education, and that they owed their success solely to their fighting ability. Augereau, in particular, has been very badly judged. He has been represented as boastful, hard, noisy and nasty. This is an error, for although he had a stormy youth, and fell into some political misconceptions, he was kind, polite and affectionate, and I can assure you that of the five marshals under whom I have served, it was he who did most to lessen the evils of war, who was most considerate toward the local populace and who treated his officers best, among whom he lived like a father among his children. It is true that he had a most irregular life, but before passing judgement you must consider the conditions which existed at the time.

Pierre Augereau was born in Paris in 1757. His father had an extensive business in the fruit trade and had acquired a large fortune, which allowed him to give his children a good education.

His mother was born in Munich, and she had the good sense to speak nothing but German to her son, who, as a result spoke it perfectly; something he found most useful in his travels, and also during the wars.

Augereau was good-looking, large and well built. He loved all physical activities, at which he excelled. He was a good horseman and a fine swordsman. When he was seventeen his mother died, and one of her brothers who worked in the office of Monsieur (the king's brother) arranged for him to join the Carabiniers, of whom Monsieur was colonel in chief.

He spent several years at Saumur, where the Carabiniers were usually garrisoned, and where his efficiency and good conduct soon raised him to the rank of sergeant. Sadly, there was at this time a craze for duels. The reputation which Augereau had as an excellent swordsman compelled him to engage in several, for it was a great point among duelists not to accept that anyone was their superior; gentlemen, officers and soldiers fought for the most futile of reasons. It so happened that when Augereau was on leave in Paris, the celebrated fencing master Saint-George, seeing him pass, said, in the presence of several swordsmen, there is one of the finest blades in France. Upon this, a sergeant of Dragoons named Belair, who claimed to be next to Saint-George in ability, wrote to Augereau saying that he would challenge him to fight unless he recognised the writer's superiority. Augereau having replied that he would do nothing of the sort, they met on the Champs-Elysees where Belair received a penetrating sword-thrust. He subsequently recovered and having left the service, he married and became the father of eight children, for whom he was unable to provide. So in the first days of the Empire it occurred to him to approach his old adversary, now a marshal. This man, whom I knew, was something of an original character; he presented himself before Augereau with a little violin under his arm, and said that as he had nothing to give his eight children for dinner, he would make them dance a quadrille to cheer them up, unless the marshal could put him in the way of providing a more substantial meal. Augereau recognised Belair, invited him to a meal, gave him some money and a few days later arranged for him to have a good job in the transport department. He also placed two of his sons in school. Conduct which requires no commentary.

Not all the duels which Augereau fought ended like this. As a result of an absurd custom, there existed an inveterate hatred between some units, the cause for which was buried in the past and often hardly known, but which, handed down from age to age, resulted in duels every time the units met. In this way the Gendarmes of Luneville and the Carabiniers had been at war for half a century, though they had not seen one another in this long period of time. At last, at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, they found themselves in the same camp at Compiegne; whereupon, to show themselves no less brave than their forefathers, the Carabiniers and the Gendarmes decided to fight, and their determination was such that the officers thought it wiser to look the other way. However, to avoid too much bloodshed, it was agreed that there would be only one duel; each unit would select a combatant who would represent them, and after that there would be a truce. The Carabiniers chose their twelve best swordsmen, among whom was Augereau, and it was agreed that the defender of the regimental honour should be chosen by lot. On that day fate was more blind than usual, for it selected a sergeant by the name of Donnadieu, who had five children. Augereau observed that the name of a father of a family should not have been included in the draw, and asked if he might replace his comrade. Donnadieu declared that as his name had been chosen he would go forward. Augereau insisted, and this battle of generosity was ended only by the members of the meeting accepting Augereau's proposal. The name of the combatant chosen by the Gendarmes would soon be known and after that it was merely a matter of arranging for the two adversaries to meet, when a simulated quarrel would serve as a motive for the encounter.

Augereau had a fearsome opponent, an excellent swordsman, a professional duelist, who as a warm-up, awaiting the contest, had killed two sergeants of the Guards, on the days previously. Augereau, without allowing himself to be intimidated by the reputation of this bravo, went to the cafe where he knew he was to appear, and while awaiting him sat down at a table. The Gendarme arrived, and when his opponent had been pointed out to him, he pulled aside his coat-tails, and sat down insolently on the table, his backside not a foot from Augereau's face. Augereau was drinking a cup of very hot coffee at the time and he gently eased back the opening, called the ventouse, which existed then at the back of a cavalryman's leather breeches, and poured the steaming liquid onto the the buttocks of the impudent Gendarme, who turned round in a fury! The quarrel having now been engaged upon, they went outside, followed by a crowd of Gendarmes and Carabiniers. As they went along, the ferocious Gendarme, to mock the man whom, he felt confident, would be his victim, asked Augereau, in a bantering tone, whether he would prefer to be buried in the town or in the country. "The country" replied Augereau, "I have always liked the open air." "Fine," said the gendarme, and, turning to his second, he said, "Put him with the other two I killed yesterday and the day before." This was not very encouraging, and anyone but Augereau might have been put out, but determined to sell his life dearly, he defended himself with such skill that his adversary lost his temper and made a false move, which allowed Augereau, who had remained calm, to run him through, saying that it was he who would be buried in the country.

The camp being ended, the Carabiniers returned to Saumur, where Augereau was peacefully continuing his military service when a disastrous event precipitated him into a life of high adventure.

A young officer of exalted birth, but with a very nasty temper, having found something to complain about concerning the grooming of horses, rounded on Augereau, and in an access of rage offered to strike him with his riding whip in front of the whole squadron. Augereau indignantly seized the officer's whip and threw it away, whereupon the latter, in a fury, drew his sword and confronted Augereau, saying, "Defend yourself!" Augereau restricted himself at first merely to parrying, but having been slightly wounded, he made a riposte and the officer fell dead.

The general, Comte de Malseigne, who commanded the Carabiniers in the name of Monsieur, was soon told of this affair, and although eye-witnesses agreed in saying that Augereau, provoked by the most unjustifiable attack, had legitimately defended himself, the general, who favoured Augereau, thought it would be wiser to get him out of the way. To do this he called on a Carabinier named Papon, a native of Geneva whose term of service was due to expire in a few days, and invited him to give his travel permit to Augereau, promising to give him another one later. Papon agreed to this, and Augereau was always most grateful to him, for when he arrived in Geneva, he learned that the court-martial, in spite of the evidence of the witnesses, had condemned him to death for raising his sword against an officer.

The Papon family had a business which exported a large number of watches to the east. Augereau decided to go with a representative whom they were sending there, and travelled with him to Greece, to the Ionian islands, to Constantinople and the shores of the Black Sea.

He was in the Crimea when a Russian colonel, guessing from his bearing that he had been a soldier, offered him the rank of sergeant.

Augereau accepted, and served for several years in the Russian army, which the famous Souwaroff commanded in a war against the Turks, and was wounded in the assault on Ismailoff.

When peace was made between the Porte and Russia, the regiment in which Augereau was serving was ordered to go to Poland; but he did not wish to stay any longer with the semi-barbarous Russians, so he deserted and went to Prussia, where he served at first in the regiment of Prince Henry, and then, on account of his height and good looks, he was posted to the famous guards of Frederick the Great. He was there for two years, and his captain had led him to hope for promotion, when one day the king, who was reviewing his guards stopped in front of him and said, "There is a fine looking Grenadier!….Where does he come from?" "He is French sire," came the reply. "Too bad," said Frederick, who had come to detest the French as much as he had once liked them. "Too bad. If he had been Swiss or German we could have made something of him".

Augereau, from then on, was convinced he would get nowhere in Prussia, since he had heard it from the lips of the king himself, and so he resolved to leave the country. This was a very difficult matter, because as soon as the desertion of a soldier was signalised by the firing of a cannon, the population set off in pursuit of him, in the hope of obtaining the promised reward, and the deserter when captured was invariably shot.

In order to avoid this fate and to regain his liberty, Augereau, who knew that a good one third of the guards, foreigners like himself, had only one wish, and that was to get out of Prussia, spoke with some sixty of the most daring, to whom he pointed out that a single deserter had no chance of escape, since it required only two or three men to arrest him, so that it was essential to leave in a body with arms and ammunition for defence. This is what they did, under the leadership of Augereau.

This determined group of men, attacked on their way by peasants, and even a detachment of soldiers, lost several of their company, but killed many of their adversaries, and in one night they reached a small area of the country of Saxony which is not more than ten leagues from Potsdam. Augereau went to Dresden, where he gave lessons in dancing and fencing, until the birth of the first Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI, an event which the government celebrated by granting an amnesty to all deserters, which allowed Augereau not only to return to Paris, but to rejoin the Carabiniers, his sentence having been quashed, and General de Malseigne having insisted that he was one of the finest N.C.O.s in the corps.

In 1788, the King of Naples, feeling the need to put his army on a good footing, requested the King of France to send him a number of officers and N.C.O.s to act as instructors, whom he undertook to promote to a rank above their present one on their arrival. Augereau was included in this party and was promoted to sous-lieutenant. He served there for several years, and had just been promoted to lieutenant, when he fell in love with the daughter of a Greek merchant. When her father refused his consent to the union, the two lovers were married in secret, and embarking on the first vessel they found about to leave, they went to Lisbon, where they lived peacefully for some time.

It was now the end of 1792; the French Revolution was spreading rapidly, and all the sovereign heads of Europe feared the introduction of these new principles into their states, and were suspicious of everything French. Augereau has often assured me that during his stay in Portugal he never said or did anything which could alarm the government, nevertheless, he was arrested and incarcerated in the prison of the Inquisition.

He had been languishing there for several months, when Madame Augereau, his wife, a woman of courage, saw come into the harbour a ship flying the tricolour. She went on board to give the captain a letter, informing the French government of the arbitrary arrest of her husband. The captain, although not a naval officer, went boldly to the Portuguese ministry and demanded the release of his compatriot; failing which, he said that he would declare war in the name of France. Whether the Portuguese believed this, or whether they realised that they had acted unjustly, they set Augereau free, and he and his wife went back to Havre in the ship of the gallant captain.

On his arrival in Paris, Augereau was designated captain, and was sent to the Vendee, where by his advice and example he saved the army of the incompetent General Ronsin, which gained him the rank of battalion commander. Sick of fighting his fellow Frenchmen, Augereau asked to be posted to the Pyrenees, and was sent to the camp at Toulouse commanded by my father, who, recognising his ability, made him adjutant-general, (That is colonel of the general staff), and showed him many marks of affection, something which Augereau never forgot. Having become general, he distinguished himself in the wars in Spain and Italy, and in particular, at Castiglione.

On the eve of this battle, the French army, beset on all sides, found itself in a most critical position, and the commander-in-chief, Bonaparte, called a council of war; the only one he ever consulted. All the generals, even Massena, proposed a retreat, but Augereau, having explained what, in his opinion, could be done to get out of the situation, said, "Even if you all go, I shall stay here and will attack the enemy, with my division, at dawn." Bonaparte, impressed by the arguments which Augereau had put forward, then said that he would stay with him. After which there was no more talk of retreat, and the next day a brilliant victory, due in large part to the courage and tactical skill of Augereau, established, for a long time, the position of the French army in Italy. Bonaparte was always mindful of this day, and when, as Emperor, he created a new nobility, he named Augereau Duc de Castiglione.

When General Hoche died, Augereau replaced him in the army of the Rhine. After the establishment of the consulate, he was put in charge of an army composed of French and Dutch troops which fought the campaign of 1800 in Franconia, and won the battle of Burg-Eberach.

When peace had been declared, he bought the estate and chateau of La Houssaye. I may say, in regard to this purchase, that there has been much exaggeration of the fortunes of some generals of the army of Italy. Augereau, after having held for twenty years the rank of commander-in-chief, or of marshal, and having enjoyed for seven years a salary of two hundred thousand francs, and an award of twenty-five thousand francs, due to his Legion of Honour, left at his death an income of no more than forty-eight thousand francs.

There was never a man more generous, unselfish and obliging. I could give a number of examples, but will limit myself to two. General Bonaparte, after his elevation to the consulate, created a large unit of Guards, the infantry portion of which was placed under the command of General Lannes. Lannes was a distinguished soldier, but had no understanding of administration. Instead of conforming to the tariff laid down for the purchase of clothing, fabrics and other items, nothing was too good for him; so that the suppliers of clothing and equipment to the guards, delighted to be able to deal by mutual agreement with the manufacturers, (in order to get back-handers,) and believing that their malversations would be covered by the name of General Lannes, the friend of the First Consul, made uniforms in such luxurious style that when the accounts were drawn up, they exceeded by three hundred thousand francs the sum allowed by the ministerial regulations. The First Consul, who had resolved to restore order to the finances, and to compel commanders not to go beyond the permitted expenditure, decided to make an example. In spite of his affection for Lannes, and his certainty that not a centime had gone into his pocket, he held him responsible for the deficit of three hundred thousand francs, and gave him no more than eight days to pay this sum into the Guard's account, or face court-martial.

This uncompromising ruling had an excellent effect in putting an end to the extravagance which had got into unit accounting, but General Lannes, although he had recently married the daughter of a senator, had no hope of making this payment. When General Augereau heard of the fix in which his friend found himself, he went to his lawyer, drew out the sum required, and instructed his secretary to pay it into the Guard's account, in the name of General Lannes. When the First Consul heard of this, he warmly approved of what Augereau had done, and to put Lannes in a position to pay him back, he had him sent to Lisbon as ambassador, a very lucrative post.

Here is another example of Augereau's generosity. He was not a close friend of General Bernadotte, who had bought the estate of Lagrange, for which he expected to pay with his wife's dowry; but there was some delay in the transfer of this money, and his creditors were pressing him, so he asked Augereau to lend him two hundred thousand francs for five years. Augereau having agreed to this, Madame Bernadotte took it on herself to ask what rate of interest he would expect. He replied that although bankers and businessmen required interest on money which they lent, when a marshal was in the happy position of being able to help a comrade, he should not expect any reward but the pleasure of being of service. That is the man whom some have represented as being hard and avaricious. At this moment, I shall say nothing more about the life of Augereau, which will unroll itself in the course of my story, which will show up his faults as well as his fine qualities.