Chapter 26

If Napoleon was often deceived, he also used deception himself to further his projects, as can be shown by the tale of this diplomatic-military comedy, in which I played a part.

In order to understand this affair, which will give you the key to the intrigues which, the following year, gave rise to the war between Napoleon and the King of Prussia, we have to go back two months to the time when the French troops, having left the coast, were proceeding by rapid marches to the Danube. The shortest route which the first corps, commanded by Bernadotte, could take to reach Hanover, on the upper Danube, lay through Anspach. This little country belonged to Prussia, but as it was quite a long way from there, from which it was separated by a number of minor principalities, it had always been regarded in previous wars as being neutral territory, through which either party could pass, provided that they paid for any goods they required and refrained from any hostile action.

Things having been established on this footing, Austrian and French armies had often passed through the Margravate of Anspach, since the time of the Directory, without informing Prussia and without the latter raising any objection. Napoleon then, taking advantage of this convention, ordered Bernadotte to go through Anspach, which he did. However, the Queen of Prussia and her court, who detested Napoleon, on hearing of this, raised an outcry, claiming that Prussian territory had been violated, and took advantage of this event to rouse the nation and call loudly for war. The King of Prussia and his minister, Count Haugwitz, alone resisted the general clamour for action. This was in October 1805, when hostilities were about to break out between France and Austria, and the Russian armies were on their way to reinforce the latter. The queen and the young Prince Louis, the king's nephew, in an attempt to persuade the king to make common cause with the Austrians and Russians, arranged for the Emperor Alexander to come to Berlin, in the hope that his presence would influence Frederick-William.

Alexander arrived in the capital of Prussia on the 25th October. He was greeted with enthusiasm by the queen, Prince Louis and the supporters of war against France. The king, besieged on all sides, allowed himself to be persuaded, but only on the condition—advised by the old Prince of Brunswick, and Count Haugwitz—that his army should not be committed to a campaign until the outcome of the conflict between the French and the Austrians on the Danube had been determined. This partial adherence to their cause pleased neither Alexander nor the queen, but for the time being they could obtain nothing more explicit. A melodramatic scene was played out at Potsdam, where the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, having descended, by the light of torches, into the sepulchral vaults of the palace, swore, in the presence of the court, eternal friendship, on the tomb of Frederick the Great; (an oath which did not prevent Alexander from incorporating into the Russian Empire, eighteen months later, one of the Prussian provinces, which Napoleon awarded him under the treaty of Tilsit, and this in the presence of his friend Frederick-William.) The Russian Emperor now went back to Moravia, to place himself at the head of his army, for Napoleon was advancing rapidly towards Vienna, which he shortly occupied.

When he heard of the King of Prussia's reluctance and the compact made at Potsdam, Napoleon, in order to deal with the Russians before the Prussians had made up their minds, installed himself for the encounter with the former in Brunn, where we now were.

It is said, quite rightly, that ambassadors are privileged spies.

The King of Prussia, who heard daily of fresh victories won by Napoleon, was anxious to find out what the true position was between the warring parties; so he decided to send Count Haugwitz, his minister, to the French headquarters, with instructions to assess the situation. Now it was necessary to find an excuse for doing this, so he entrusted Count Haugwitz with a reply to a letter which Napoleon had sent to him, complaining about the agreement concluded between the Prussians and the Russians at Potsdam. Count Haugwitz arrived at Brunn some days before the Battle of Austerlitz, and would dearly have liked to stay there until he knew the result of the major engagement which was in prospect, in order to advise his sovereign to do nothing if we were victorious, or to attack us if we should be defeated. You do not have to be a soldier to see from a map what damage a Prussian army, coming from Breslau in Silesia, could do by going through Bohemia to fall on our rear around Regansberg.

As Napoleon knew that Count Haugwitz sent a courier every evening to Berlin, he decided that it would be by this means that he would inform the Prussians of the defeat of Field-marshal Jellachich's army corps, news of which had not yet reached them. This is how it was done.

Marshal of the Palace Duroc, after telling us what we were to do, had all the Austrian flags which we had brought from Bregenz secretly replaced in the lodgings which Massy and I occupied; then, some hours later, when the Emperor was in conversation with Count Haugwitz in his study, we re-enacted the ceremony of the handover of the flags in exactly the same way as it had been done on the first occasion. The Emperor hearing the band playing in the courtyard, feigned astonishment, and went to the windows followed by the ambassador. Seeing the flags carried by the N.C.O.s. he called for the duty aide-de-camp and asked him what was going on. The aide-de-camp having told him that we were two of Marshal Augereau's aides who had come to hand over to him the flags of Jellachich's Austrian corps captured at Bregenz, we were led inside; there Napoleon, without blinking an eyelid, and as if he had never seen us before, took the letter from Augereau,which had been re-sealed, and read it, although he had been aware of its contents for four days. Then he questioned us, making us go into the smallest details. Duroc had warned us to speak out loudly, as the ambassador was a little hard of hearing, this advice was of no use to Major Massy, who was the leader of the mission, since he was suffering from a cold and had almost completely lost his voice, so it was I who replied to the Emperor, and taking a lead from him, I painted in the most vivid colours the defeat of the Austrians, their despondency, and the enthusiasm of the French. Then, presenting the trophies one after the other, I named the Austrian regiments to which they had once belonged. I laid particular stress on two of them, because I knew that their capture would have a powerful effect on the ambassador, "Here," I said "is the flag of the infantry regiment of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, and there is the standard of the Uhlans, commanded by the Archduke Charles, his brother." Napoleon's eyes twinkled, and he seemed to say, "Well done young man!" At last he dismissed us, and as we left we heard him say to the ambassador, "You see, monsieur le Comte, my armies are everywhere triumphant…. The Austrian army is no more, and soon the same fate will befall the Russians." Count Haugwitz seemed deeply impressed, and Duroc said to us, after we had left the room, "The count will write tonight to Berlin, to tell his government of the destruction of Jellachich's force, which will put a damper on the war party, and give the king new reasons for holding off. Which is what the Emperor very much wants."

This comedy having been played out, The Emperor, to be rid of a dangerous onlooker who could give an account of the disposition of his forces, suggested to Count Haugwitz that it was not very safe for him to remain between two armies which were about to come to blows, and persuaded him to go to Vienna to M. Tallyrand, his minister for foreign affairs, which he did that same evening.

The following day the Emperor said nothing to us about the scene which had been enacted the previous evening, but wishing, no doubt, to give some sign of his satisfaction with the manner in which we had played our parts, he asked Major Massy, kindly, about the progress of his cold, and he pinched my ear, which with him was a sort of caress.

Now the denouement of the great drama was approaching and both sides were preparing for the coming struggle. Nearly all military authors so overload their narrative with details that they confuse the mind of the reader, to the extent that, in most of the published works on the wars of the Empire which I have read, I have been unable to understand the description of several of the battles in which I myself have taken part, and the various phases of which I know. I think that to preserve clarity in the description of an action, one needs to limit oneself to indicating the respective positions of the two armies, prior to the engagement, and to recounting only the principal and decisive events in the combat. This is what I shall attempt to do.

The coming battle is known as the Battle of Austerlitz, although it took place some distance from the village of that name: the reason for this is that, on the eve of the battle, the Emperors of Austria and Russia had slept in the Chateau of Austerlitz, out of which Napoleon drove them.

You will see on the map that a stream, the Goldbach, which rises on the far side of the road to Olmutz, flows into a pool called Menitz. This stream, which runs in a little valley with quite steep banks, separated the two armies. The right of the Austro-Russian forces lay on a wooded escarpment, situated behind the post-house of Posoritz, on the far side of the Olmutz road; their centre occupied Pratzen and the vast plateau of that name, and their left was near the meres of Satschan and the neighbouring marshes. The Emperor placed his left flank on a little hill, very difficult of access, which our men who had been in Egypt called the Santon (a holy man's grave) because it was surmounted by a small chapel, the roof of which had the appearance of a minaret. The French centre was near the pool of Kobolnitz, and the right was at Telnitz. The Emperor had put very few troops there in order to tempt the Russians into the marshy ground, where he had prepared their defeat by concealing in Gross-Raigern, on the road to Vienna, the corps of Marshal Davout.

On the 1st December, the eve of the battle, Napoleon left Brunn in the morning and spent all day examining the positions; in the evening he set up his headquarters behind the French centre, at a spot from where could be seen the camps of both armies and the area which would form their battlefield the next day. There was no building in the vicinity but a dilapidated barn, and it was there that were placed the Emperor's tables and maps, while he himself took up a position by a huge fire, surrounded by his numerous staff and his guards. Happily there was no snow, although it was very cold. I bedded down on the ground and fell into a deep sleep; but soon we had to remount our horses to accompany the Emperor, who was about to visit his troops. There was no moon, and the obscurity of the night was increased by a thick mist which made progress difficult. The troopers of the Emperor's escort had the idea of lighting torches made of pinewood and straw which were most useful. The soldiers, seeing the approach of a group of mounted men thus illuminated, could easily distinguish the imperial staff, and in an instant, as if by magic, one saw all our camp lit up by torches carried by the men who greeted the Emperor with cheer, made all the louder because the next day would be the anniversary of his coronation, a coincidence which seemed to them to be a good augury. The enemy must have been greatly astonished when, from the height of the neighbouring slope, they saw in the middle of the night, the light of sixty thousand torches and heard the repeated cheers of "Vive l'Empereur!" mingled with the sound of the regimental bands. All was gaiety, light and movement in our camp, while, on the Austro-Russian side, all was dark and silent.

The next day, the 2nd December, the cannons were heard at daybreak. We have seen that the Emperor had deployed few troops on his right wing; a bait which he dangled before the enemy, who would see the apparent possibility of taking Telnitz easily, and then crossing the Goldbach and going on to Gross-Raigern in order to control the road from Brunn to Vienna and so cut off our line of retreat. The Austro-Russians fell headlong into the trap, and, thinning out the rest of their line, they clumsily piled up a considerable force in the lower part of Telnitz, and in the narrow, marshy defiles around the meres of Satschan and Menitz. They thought, for some unknown reason, that Napoleon was considering withdrawing, without facing a battle, so to hasten this move they decided to attack us at the Santon on our left and at our centre before Puntowitz, so that, being defeated at these two points, and forced to retreat, we would find the road to Vienna cut by the Russian troops. But on our left Marshal Lannes not only repelled all the enemy attacks on the Santon, but drove them back across the Olmutz road as far as Blasiowitz, where the more level ground allowed Murat's cavalry to make several very effective charges, which compelled the Russians to retire hurriedly to the village of Austerlitz.

While our left was achieving this brilliant success, the centre, consisting of the troops of Marshals Soult and Bernadotte, who had been placed by the Emperor in the valley of the Goldbach where they were hidden by a thick mist, advanced towards the slope on which stood the village of Pratzen. It was at this moment that the bright "Sunshine of Austerlitz" appeared, the memory of which Napoleon was pleased so frequently to recall. Marshal Soult took not only the village of Pratzen but also the great plateau of that name, which is the high point of the surrounding country, and, in consequence, the key to the battlefield. Here took place, before the eyes of the Emperor, a very sharp engagement in which the Russians were defeated; but a battalion of the 4th Line regiment, commanded by Prince Joseph, Napoleon's brother, went too far in pursuit of the enemy and was charged and over-run by the horse-guards and Cuirassiers of the Grand-duke Constantin, the brother of Alexander, who captured their Eagle. A force of Russian cavalry advanced rapidly to support the momentary success of the horse-guards; but Napoleon sent against them the Mamelukes, the light cavalry and the mounted Grenadiers of his guard, led by Marshal Bessieres and General Rapp, and a most sanguinary melee ensued. The Russian squadrons were overcome and driven back beyond the village of Austerlitz with great losses. Our cavalry captured many standards and prisoners, among whom was Prince Repnin, the commander of the horse-guards. This regiment, made up of the most glittering youth of the Russian nobility, suffered many casualties. The boastful threats which they had made concerning the French were known to our men, who in reply said that they would give the ladies of St. Petersburg something to cry about.

The painter Gerard, in his picture of the Battle of Austerlitz, has taken as his subject the moment when General Rapp, leaving the battle, wounded and covered in his own and the enemies' blood, is presenting to the Emperor the flags which have been captured as well as Prince Repnin, his prisoner. I was present at this memorable scene, which the painter has reproduced with remarkable exactness. All the heads are portraits, even that of the brave trooper, who without complaining, though shot through the body, fell dead at the feet of the Emperor as he presented the standard which he had just captured. Napoleon, to honour the memory of this brave Chasseur, ordered the painter to include him in his composition. One can see also in this picture a Mameluke, who carries in one hand an enemy flag, and with the other holds the bridle of his wounded horse. This man, named Mustapha, known in the guards for his courage and ferocity, had set off, during the charge, in pursuit of the Grand-duke Constantin, who was only able to get rid of him by firing a pistol shot which mortally wounded his horse. Mustapha, grieved at having only a standard to offer the Emperor, said in his broken French, when he presented it, "Ah! If me catch Prince Constantin, me cut off head and bring to Emperor!" Napoleon replied indignantly, "You be quiet! You wicked savage!"

Let us now finish the story of the battle. While Marshals Lannes, Soult and Murat attacked the centre and right of the Austro-Russians and drove them back beyond the village of Austerlitz, the enemy left, having fallen into the trap which the Emperor had prepared for them, attacked the village of Telnitz and took possession of it, then, crossing the Goldbach, they prepared to occupy the road to Vienna; but they had greatly underestimated the skill of Napoleon in thinking that he would neglect to defend his route of retreat in case of misfortune. Marshal Davout's divisions were concealed in Gross-Regairn and from that point he fell on the Russians as soon as he saw that their massed troops were held up in the defiles between the meres of Telnitz, Menitz and the rivulet.

The Emperor, whom we left on the plateau of Pratzen, free of the right and centre of the enemy, who were retreating in disorder beyond Austerlitz, came down from the heights of Pratzen and hurried with Marshal Soult's corps and all his guard, infantry, cavalry and artillery, towards Telnitz; where he attacked in the rear the enemy columns which Marshal Davout was attacking in front. From this moment, the cumbersome masses of the Austro-Russians, crammed together on the narrow pathways which ran alongside the Goldbach, finding themselves between two fires, fell into indescribable confusion. The ranks broke down and each man sought his own safety in flight. Some rushed into the marshes around the meres, but our infantry followed them; others tried to escape down the road which runs between the two meres, but our cavalry charged them with fearful slaughter; the largest body of men, principally Russians, tried to get across the frozen meres, and already a great number were on the ice of Lake Satschan when Napoleon ordered his gunners to fire on them. The ice broke in many places with a loud cracking sound and we saw a host of Russians with their horses wagons and guns slide slowly into the depths. The surface of the lake was covered with men and horses struggling amid the ice and water. A few were saved, helped by poles and ropes which our men held out to them from the bank, but many were drowned.

The number of combatants at the Emperor's disposal in this battle was sixty-eight thousand men. The Austro-Russians had ninety-two thousand. Our losses in killed and wounded were about eight thousand, the enemy stated that their losses in killed wounded and drowned amounted to fourteen thousand. We took eighteen thousand prisoners and captured one hundred and fifty cannons, as well as a great number of flags, standards, etc.

After giving orders to pursue the enemy in all directions, the Emperor went to his new headquarters in the post-house at Posoritz, on the Olmutz road. He was highly delighted as you may imagine, although he several times expressed regret that the only Eagle we had lost was that of the fourth line regiment, of which his brother, Prince Joseph, was colonel. The fact that this had been captured by the regiment of the Grand-duke Constantin, the Emperor of Russia's brother, made the loss even more annoying.

Napoleon soon had a great consolation; Prince Jean of Lichtenstein came, on behalf of the Emperor of Austria, to request a meeting, and Napoleon, realising that this would lead to peace and remove the fear of having the Prussians attack the French rear before he had rid himself of his present enemies, readily agreed to the proposal.

Of all the units of the Imperial Guard, the regiment of Mounted Chasseurs was the one which suffered the most casualties in the great charge made on the Pratzen plateau against the Russian Guard. My poor friend Fournier was killed, as was General Morland. It is said that Napoleon intended to have the body of General Morland interred in a mausoleum which he meant to have built in the centre of the Esplanade des Invalides, and that it was preserved in a cask of rum for that reason. But the mausoleum was never built, and it is alleged that the general's body was still in a room in the school of medicine when Napoleon lost his Empire in 1814.

I was not wounded at Austerlitz, although I was often exposed to danger, notably during the melee with the Russian cavalry on the Pratzen plateau. The Emperor had sent me to take some orders to General Rapp, whom I found it very difficult to reach amid the appalling confusion of the embattled soldiery. My horse was crushed up against that of a Russian horse-guard and our sabres were about to clash when we were separated by other combatants; I came away with a large bruise. However, the next day I ran into a more serious danger, one that one does not expect to meet on the field of battle.

On the morning of the 3rd of December, the day after the battle, the Emperor mounted his horse and went round all the places where action had taken place on the previous day. Having arrived at the mere of Satschan, Napoleon dismounted and was chatting round a fire with a number of marshals, when we saw, some hundred paces from the bank, a large slab of ice on which lay a poor Russian sergeant, who was unable to help himself because of a bullet wound in his thigh. Seeing the large group on the bank, the soldier raised his voice and pleaded for help, saying that when the fighting was over we were all brother soldiers. When his interpreter translated this, Napoleon was touched and ordered General Bertrand to do what he could to rescue the wretched Russian.

Several men of the escort, and even two staff officers, attempted to reach the Russian using two tree trunks which they pushed into the water, but they ended up by falling in with all their clothes on, and having difficulty in getting out. It then occurred to me to say that they should have entered the water naked, so that their movements would not be hampered, and they would not have to wear wet clothing. This observation was repeated to the Emperor, who said that I was right, and that the others had shown zeal without forethought. I have no wish to make myself out to be better than I am; I can assure you that, having just taken part in a battle where I had seen thousands of dead and dying, my emotions were blunted, I did not feel sufficiently philanthropic to risk pneumonia by struggling amongst the ice floes to save the life of an enemy soldier, however much I deplored his unhappy lot; but the Emperor's remark stung me into action, it seemed to me ridiculous that I should offer advice which I was not prepared to put into action. I jumped off my horse, stripped off my clothes and leapt into the lake.

I had been very active during the day, and was warm; the water felt bitterly cold, but I was young and vigourous, a very good swimmer, and encouraged by the presence of the Emperor, I was making towards the Russian, when my example and probably the praise I received from the Emperor, persuaded a lieutenant of artillery named Roumestain to come after me.

While he was undressing, I pushed on, but I had more difficulty than I had foreseen in forcing my way through the thin layer of new ice which was forming on the water, the sharp edges of which inflicted many scrapes and scratches. The officer who followed me was able to make use of the sort of path which I had made, and when he reached me, he volunteered to take the lead, to give me some relief. We eventually reached the large block of ice on which the Russian lay, but it was only with the greatest difficulty that we managed to push it near enough to the shore for the man to be rescued. We were both so cold and exhausted that we had to be lifted out of the water, and we were hardly able to stand. My good comrade Massy, who had watched me with much anxiety during this swim, had had the forethought to warm his horse's blanket before the fire, which he wrapped round me as soon as I was out of the water. After I had dried myself and dressed, I wanted to lie beside the fire, but Doctor Larrey was against this and told me to walk around, something I was unable to do without the aid of two troopers. The Emperor came to congratulate the two of us on the courage with which we had undertaken the rescue of the wounded Russian, and calling for his Mameluke, Roustan, whose horse was always loaded with provisions, he poured out for us a tot of rum each, and asked us, laughing, how we had enjoyed the bath.

As for the Russian sergeant, after his wound had been dressed by Doctor Larrey, Napoleon gave him several gold coins. He was wrapped in warm coverings and put in one of the houses of Telnitz which was acting as a dressing station; the next day he was taken to the hospital at Brunn. The poor lad blessed the Emperor as well as Roumestain and me, and wanted to kiss our hands. He was a Lithuanian, that is to say, born in a former province of Poland, which is now part of Russia. As soon as he had recovered, he announced that he wished now to serve no one but Napoleon. He was sent back to France with our own wounded and subsequently joined the Polish legion. In the end he became a sergeant in the lancers of the guard, and each time I met him, he gave me a warm greeting.

The ice-cold bath which I had taken and the almost superhuman efforts I had made to rescue the Russian could have cost me dear had I been less young and strongly built; for Lieutenant Roumestain, who did not possess the latter of these two advantages to the same extent, was taken that same evening with a severe chest infection. He had to be taken to the hospital at Brunn, where he spent several months between life and death. He never recovered completely, and his poor health forced him to resign from the service some years later.

As for me, although I felt very weak, I mounted my horse when the Emperor left to go to the chateau of Austerlitz, where his headquarters had been set up. Napoleon never went anywhere except at the gallop; in my bruised state this pace was hardly suitable, however I followed on, since night was approaching, and I feared to be left behind, and anyway, if I had ridden at a walk, I would have been overcome by the cold.

When I arrived at the courtyard of the chateau of Austerlitz, I had to be helped off my horse. A violent shivering took me, my teeth chattered and I felt very ill. Colonel Dahlmann, a major in the Mounted Chasseurs, who had just been promoted to replace Colonel Morland, remembering, no doubt, the service I had rendered to the latter, took, me into one of the chateau's barns, where he had established himself with his officers. There, after giving me some hot tea, his medical officer massaged me with warm oil, I was wrapped in several blankets and put into an enormous pile of hay with only my face exposed. A gentle warmth crept slowly back into my benumbed limbs; I slept very soundly and thanks to these ministrations and my twenty-three years, I awoke the next day fully recovered and able to mount my horse and to observe a spectacle of great interest.