MARSHAL NEY.
[No apology is requisite for our introduction of the following passage from the life of Marshal Ney, in a volume of the Family Library, entitled "The Court and Camp of Buonaparte.">[
In the campaign of 1813, Ney faithfully adhered to the falling emperor. At Bautzen, Lutzen, Dresden, he contributed powerfully to the success; but he and Oudinot received a severe check at Dennewitz from the Crown Prince of Sweden. From that hour defeat succeeded defeat; the allies invaded France; and, in spite of the most desperate resistance, triumphantly entered Paris in March, 1814. Ney was one of the three marshals chosen by Napoleon to negotiate with Alexander in behalf of the King of Rome, but the attempt was unsuccessful, and all he could do was to remain a passive spectator of the fall and exile of his chief.
On the restoration of the Bourbons, Ney was more fortunate than many of his brethren: he was entrusted with a high military command, and created a knight of St. Louis, and a peer of France.
But France was now at peace with all the world; and no one of these great military chiefs could be more unprepared for the change than the Prince of Moskwa. He was too old to acquire new habits. For domestic comforts he was little adapted: during the many years of his marriage, he had been unable to pass more than a very few months with his family. Too illiterate to find any resource in books, too rude to be a favourite in society, and too proud to desire that sort of distinction, he was condemned to a solitary and an inactive life. The habit of braving death, and of commanding vast bodies of men, had impressed his character with a species of moral grandeur, which raised him far above the puerile observances of the fashionable world. Plain in his manners, and still plainer in his words, he neither knew, nor wished to know, the art of pleasing courtiers. Of good nature he had indeed a considerable fund, but he showed it, not so much by the endless little attentions of a gentleman, as by scattered acts of princely beneficence. For dissipation he had no taste; his professional cares and duties, which, during twenty-five years, had left him no respite, had engrossed his attention too much to allow room for the passions, vices, or follies of society to obtain any empire over him. The sobriety of his manners was extreme, even to austerity.
His wife had been reared in the court of Louis XVI., and had adorned that of the emperor. Cultivated in her mind, accomplished in her manners, and elegant in all she said or did, her society was courted on all sides. Her habits were expensive; luxury reigned throughout her apartments, and presided at her board; and to all this display of elegance and pomp of show, the military simplicity, not to say the coarseness, of the marshal, furnished a striking contrast. His good nature offered no other obstacle to the gratification of her wishes than the occasional expression of a fear that his circumstances might be deranged by them. But if he would not oppose, neither could he join in her extravagance. While she was presiding at a numerous and brilliant party of guests, he preferred to remain alone in a distant apartment, where the festive sounds could not reach him. On such occasions he almost always dined alone.
Ney seldom appeared at court. He could neither bow nor flatter, nor could he stoop to kiss even his sovereign's hand without something like self-humiliation. To his princess, on the other hand, the royal smile was as necessary as the light of the sun; and unfortunately for her, she was sometimes disappointed in her efforts to attract it. Her wounded vanity often beheld an insult in what was probably no more than an inadvertence. In a word she ere long fervently regretted the court in which the great captains had occupied the first rank, and their families shared the almost exclusive favour of the sovereign. She complained to her husband; and he, with a calm smile, advised her never again to expose herself to such mortifications if she really sustained them. But though he could thus rebuke a woman's vanity, the haughty soldier felt his own wounded through hers. To escape from these complaints, and from the monotony of his Parisian existence, he retired to his country-seat, in January, 1815, the very season when people of consideration are most engrossed by the busy scenes of the metropolis. There he led an unfettered life; he gave his mornings to field sports; and the guests he entertained in the evening were such as, from their humble condition, rendered formality useless, and placed him completely at his ease.
It was here that on the 6th of March he was surprised by the arrival of an aide-de-camp from the minister at war, who ordered him, with all possible despatch, to join the sixth division, of which he was the commander, and which was stationed at Besançon. In his anxiety to learn the extent of his instructions, Ney immediately rode to Paris; and there, for the first time, learned the disembarkation of Buonaparte from Elba.
Ney eagerly undertook the commission assigned him of hastening to oppose the invader. In his last interview with Louis his protestations of devotedness to the Bourbons, and his denunciations against Napoleon, were ardent—perhaps they were sincere. Whether he said that Buonaparte deserved to be confined in an iron cage, or that he would bring him to Paris in one, is not very clear, nor indeed very material.—We reluctantly approach the darker shades in the life of this great officer.
On his arrival at Besançon, March 10th, he learned the disaffection of all the troops hitherto sent against the invader, and perceived that those by whom he was surrounded were not more to be trusted. He was surrounded with loud and incessant cries of Vive l'Empereur! Already, at Lyons, two members of the royal family had found all opposition vain; the march of Napoleon was equally peaceful and triumphant. During the night of the 13th, Ney had a secret interview with a courier from his old master; and on the following morning he announced to his troops that the house of Bourbon had ceased to reign—that the emperor was the only ruler France would acknowledge! He then hastened to meet Napoleon, by whom he was received with open arms, and hailed by his indisputed title of Bravest of the Brave.
Ney was soon doomed to suffer the necessary consequence of his crime—bitter and unceasing remorse. His inward reproaches became intolerable: he felt humbled, mortified, for he had lost that noble self-confidence, that inward sense of dignity, that unspeakable and exalted satisfaction, which integrity alone can bestow: the man who would have defied the world in arms, trembled before the new enemy within him; he saw that his virtue, his honour, his peace, and the esteem of the wise and the good, were lost to him for ever. In the bitterness of his heart, he demanded and obtained permission to retire for a short time into the country. But there he could not regain his self-respect. Of his distress, and we hope of his repentance, no better proof need be required than the reply, which, on his return to Paris, he made to the emperor, who feigned to have believed that he had emigrated: "I ought to have done so long ago (said Ney); it is now too late."
The prospect of approaching hostilities soon roused once more the enthusiasm of this gallant soldier, and made him for awhile less sensible to the gloomy agitation within. From the day of his being ordered to join the army on the frontiers of Flanders, June 11, his temper was observed to be less unequal, and his eye to have regained its fiery glance.
The story of Waterloo need not be repeated here. We shall only observe, that on no occasion did the Bravest of the Brave exhibit more impetuous though hopeless valour. Five horses were shot under him; his garments were pierced with balls; his whole person was disfigured with blood and mud, yet he would have continued the contest on foot while life remained, had he not been forced from the field, by the dense and resistless columns of the fugitives. He returned to the capital, and there witnessed the second imperial abdication, and the capitulation of Paris, before he thought of consulting his safety by flight. Perhaps he hoped that by virtue of the twelfth article of that convention, he should not be disquieted; if so, however, the royal ordinance of July 24th, terribly undeceived him. He secreted himself with one of his relatives at the château of Bessaris, department of Lot, in the expectation that he should soon have an opportunity of escaping to the United States. But he was discovered, and in a very singular manner.
In former days Ney had received a rich Egyptian sabre from the hands of the First Consul. There was but another like it known to exist, and that was possessed by Murat. The marshal was carefully secluded both from visiters and domestics, but unluckily this splendid weapon was left on a sofa in the drawing-room. It was perceived, and not a little admired by a visiter, who afterwards described it to a party of friends at Aurillac. One present immediately observed, that, from the description, it must belong to either Ney or Murat. This came to the ears of the prefect, who instantly despatched fourteen gensdarmes, and some police agents, to arrest the owner. They surrounded the château; and Ney at once surrendered himself. Perhaps he did not foresee the fatal issue of his trial; some of his friends say that he even wished it to take place immediately, that he might have an opportunity to contradict a report that Louis had presented him with half a million of francs, on his departure for Besançon.
A council of war, composed of French marshals, was appointed to try him; but they had little inclination to pass sentence on an old companion in arms; and declared their incompetency to try one, who, when he consummated his treason, was a peer of France. Accordingly, by a royal ordinance of November 12th, the Chamber of Peers were directed to take cognizance of the affair. His defence was made to rest by his advocates—first, on the twelfth article of the capitulation, and when this was overruled, on the ground of his no longer being amenable to French laws, since Sarre-Louis, his native town, had recently been dissevered from France. This the prisoner himself overruled; "I am a Frenchman, (cried Ney), and I will die a Frenchman!" The result was that he was found guilty and condemned to death by an immense majority, one hundred and sixty-nine to seventeen. On hearing the sentence read according to usage, he interrupted the enumeration of his titles, by saying: "Why cannot you simply call me Michael Ney—now a French soldier, and soon a heap of dust?" His last interview with his lady, who was sincerely attached to him, and with his children, whom he passionately loved, was far more bitter than the punishment he was about to undergo. This heavy trial being over, he was perfectly calm, and spoke of his approaching fate with the utmost unconcern. "Marshal," said one of his sentinels, a poor grenadier, "you should now think of God. I never faced danger without such preparation." "Do you suppose (answered Ney) that any one need teach me to die?" But he immediately gave way to better thoughts, and added, "Comrade, you are right. I will die as becomes a man of honour and a Christian. Send for the curate of St. Sulpice."
A little after eight o'clock on the morning of December 7th, the marshal, with a firm step and an air of perfect indifference, descended the steps leading to the court of the Luxembourg, and entered a carriage which conveyed him to the place of execution, outside the garden gates. He alighted, and advanced towards the file of soldiers drawn up to despatch him. To an officer, who proposed to blindfold him, he replied—"Are you ignorant that, for twenty-five years, I have been accustomed to face both ball and bullet?" He took off his hat, raised it above his head, and cried aloud—"I declare before God and man that I have never betrayed my country: may my death render her happy! Vive la France!" He then turned to the men, and, striking his other hand on his heart, gave the word, "Soldiers—fire!"
Thus, in his forty-seventh year, did the "Bravest of the Brave" expiate one great error, alien from his natural character, and unworthy of the general course of his life. If he was sometimes a stern, he was never an implacable, enemy. Ney was sincere, honest, blunt even: so far from flattering, he often contradicted him on whose nod his fortunes depended. He was, with rare exceptions, merciful to the vanquished; and while so many of his brother marshals dishonoured themselves by the most barefaced rapine and extortion, he lived and died poor.
Ney left four sons, two of whom are in the service of his old friend, Bernadotte.