At the beginning of 1812, I was in Paris, with my young wife and our families. But the happiness which I enjoyed was lessened by the thought of my imminent departure. I was due to join the 1st Chasseurs … Cheval as a squadron commander with the rank of Major. The chagrin which I felt at not having been promoted to Colonel, which I thought I deserved, was somewhat relieved when, having gone to the Tuileries to pay my new year respects, the Emperor sent an aide-de-camp to command my presence in his private quarters, where I found General Mouton, Comte de Lobau, who had always been on my side.
Napoleon appeared and told me in the most friendly manner that he had intended to give me a regiment, but that there were certain reasons which had led him to nominate Major Barain. He said that having promoted three of Massena's aides to Colonel he could not accord any more promotions to one general staff, but that he had not forgotten me and although he could not give me the nominal command, he would put me in the position of being, in effect, a regimental commander. "The commanding officer of the 23rd Mounted Chasseurs, M. de La Nougarede, has become so afflicted by gout that he can hardly mount a horse", the Emperor said, "but he is an excellent officer who has fought several campaigns with me, and I have a high regard for him. He has begged me to let him try to go once more on campaign and I do not wish to remove him from his regiment. However, I hear that this fine unit is going down hill in his hands so I am sending you as "Coadjutor" to M. de La Nougarede. You will be working for yourself, for if the Colonel recovers his health I shall promote him to general, and if not I shall transfer him to the gendarmes. In either case he will leave his regiment and you will become their colonel; so I repeat you will be working for your own benefit." This promise gave me renewed hope, and I was making ready to leave when the minister for war extended my leave until the end of March, which I found very acceptable.
The 23rd Chasseurs were stationed in Swedish Pomerania, so I had an enormous distance to travel, and as I wished to arrive before the expiration of my leave, I left Paris on the 15th of March, parting with much regret from my dear wife. I had bought a good barouche, in which, at the request of Marshal Mortier, I gave a seat to his nephew, Lieutenant Durbach, who belonged to the regiment which I was about to join. As my former servant, Woirland, had asked if he might stay in Spain, where he hoped to make his fortune running a canteen, I had replaced him, on my leaving Salamanca, by a Pole named Lorentz Schilkowski. This man, at one time an Austrian Uhlan, was not lacking intelligence, but, like all Poles he was a drunkard, and unlike the soldiers of that nation, he was as timid as a hare. Lorentz, however, as well as his native language, spoke passable French and fluent German and Russian, and for this reason he was most valuable to me in my travelling and campaigning in the north. I was nearing the Rhenish provinces, when on leaving Kaiserslauten at night, the postilion tipped my barouche into a pothole, where it was damaged. No one was hurt, but both M. Durbach and I agreed that this was a bad omen for soldiers who were about to face the enemy. However, after spending a day waiting for repairs to be made, we were able to get under way once more. Unfortunately the accident had so weakened the springs and the wheels that they broke six times during our journey, which delayed us considerably, and on occasions forced us to walk for several leagues in the snow. We arrived at last at the shores of the Baltic sea, where the 23rd Chasseurs were in garrison at Stralsund and Greifswald.
I found Colonel de La Nougarede to be an excellent officer, well-informed and capable, but so prematurely aged by gout that he was hardly able to sit on a horse, and went everywhere in a carriage, a most unsuitable method of transport for the commander of a regiment of light cavalry! He gave me an enthusiastic welcome, and after explaining the reasons which, in the interest of his career, made him stay with the regiment, he showed me a letter in which the Comte de Lobau informed him of the motives which had led the Emperor to attach me to him. M. de La Nougarede, far from being offended, saw this as another kindness on the part of the Emperor, and looked forward to being promoted to general or heading the gendarmerie. He counted, with my help, on completing at least part of the campaign, and on the realisation of his hopes at the first imperial revue. To make it clear that I shared the command, which was not in keeping with my rank as Major, he called together all the officers, in front of whom he provisionally delegated all his powers to me, until such time as he recovered his health, and instructed them to obey my orders without referring to him, since his illness often made it impossible for him to follow the regiment sufficiently closely to command it in person. An order of the day was issued along these lines, and from that day forward, except for the rank,I was virtually the commander of the regiment, and the regiment soon got into the habit of looking on me as their real leader.
Since that time, I have commanded several cavalry regiments, either as colonel or general. And I was for a long time inspector of this branch of the service; I can say with certainty that if I have seen units as good as the 23rd Chasseurs, I have never seen one better. It was not that the unit contained any outstanding personalities, such as I have seen sometimes in other regiments, but if there was not in the 23rd any one of remarkable talents, there was no one who did not maintain a high standard in carrying out his duties. There were no peaks, but there were no troughs; everyone kept in step. The officers were intelligent, well trained and well behaved. They lived together as true brothers-in-arms. The same applied to the N.C.O.s. And the troopers followed this good example. They were almost all old soldiers, veterans of Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram, a fine body of men who came mostly from Normandy, Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-comte, provinces known for their martial spirit and their love of horses. The build and strength of these men was noticed by General Bourcier, who was in charge of remounts, and he supplied the regiment with horses which were bigger and more lively than the usual issue. A period of several years spent in the fertile land of Germany, had left both men and horses in splendid condition, and the regiment, when I took over, consisted of a thousand officers and men, well disciplined, calm and quiet in the face of the enemy.
I did not yet have a horse, so I went to Stralsund in the isle of Rugen, where they have excellent horses, and I bought several; I got some others from Rostock and ended with a stable of seven good beasts, which was not too many, as war with Russia appeared imminent. I had already forecast this during the summer of 1811, when I saw the great number of old soldiers whom the Emperor was taking from the regiments in the peninsula to reinforce his Old Guard. I had been confirmed in this opinion during my stay in Paris. There were, at first, some distant rumours of a rupture, which vanished quickly amid the entertainments and festivities of winter, but soon returned with increased insistence; and became almost certainties as a result of a serious event, the echoes of which reverberated throughout Europe.
The Emperor Alexander had had, since boyhood, a companion who was a young Russian nobleman, named Czernicheff, of whom he was very fond, and whom, when he came to the throne, he took as aide-de-camp.
In 1809, when Alexander, who was then an ally of Napoleon, was pretending, without actually doing so, to make war against Austria, whose country Napoleon had invaded, there arrived in Vienna Colonel the Comte de Czernicheff, on the ostensible mission to cement good relations between Napoleon and Alexander, but in reality to inform his sovereign of our success or failure, so that he could continue or break off his alliance with France according to circumstances.
Alexander's favourite received the friendliest of welcomes from Napoleon, whose side he never left during the parades and manoeuvres which preceded the battle of Essling, but when this bloody affair appeared to be in the balance, and a hail of bullets descended on the imperial general staff, M. de Czernicheff turned tail rapidly, and crossing the bridges over the Danube, he sought the safety of the palace of Schoenbrunn; and the day after the battle he took to the road for Petersburg, to announce, no doubt, the failure of our enterprise. Napoleon thought this behaviour most unbecoming, and made some jeering comments on the "bravery" of the Russian colonel. Nevertheless, after peace had been made with Austria, M. de Czernicheff came very often to Paris, where he spent part of the years 1810 and 1811. Handsome, courteous, likeable, highly deceitful and exquisitely polite, his title of aide-de-camp to the Russian emperor gave him entry not only to the court but also to the salons of high society, where he never discussed politics, and appeared to be interested only in the pursuit of women, where he was said to have considerable success. But toward the end of 1811, when new rumours of war began to circulate, the Paris police were informed that while appearing to be solely interested in pleasure, the Russian colonel was mixed up in some dubious political schemes, and he was put under close surveillance, when it was discovered that he had frequent meetings with M. X…, an employee of the ministry for war who had special responsibility for the situation reports concerning all the personel and material of the army, which were given to Napoleon every ten days. Not only had M. de Czernicheff been seen walking after midnight in the most secluded part of the Champs-Elysees with this man, but he had been observed, plainly dressed, slipping into the place where M. X… lived and spending several hours there.
The intimacy of someone so highly placed with a poor devil of clerk in the ministry for war being clear evidence that the former had seduced the latter to betray state secrets, the Emperor, highly indignant, ordered the arrest of M.Czernicheff, but Czernicheff, warned, it is said, by a woman, fled from Paris, and reached a nearby "relais" from where, taking unfrequented roads, he managed to reach the frontier, avoiding Maintz and Cologne to where the telegraph had transmitted the order for his seizure. As for the wretched clerk, he was apprehended at the moment when he was counting out the 300,000 francs which he had received for his act of treason. Compelled by the evidence to admit to his crime, he stated that another employee had also given information to the Russian, this man too was arrested, and the two of them were tried, convicted and shot. They died cursing Czernicheff, who they claimed had come to their attics to tempt them with a heap of gold which he increased whenever they hesitated. The Emperor had published in all the French newspapers a virulent denunciation of M. de Czernicheff, with some wounding observations which, although indirect, pointed to the emperor of Russia himself, for they recalled that the assassins of his father, Paul I, had not been punished by Alexander.