The Memoirs of General Baron de Marbot

by baron de Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcelin Marbot

Massena, attacked on all sides, seeing his troops worn down by continual battle and famine, forced to hold down a large population, driven to despair by hunger, found himself in a most critical position, and believed that to maintain good order in the army he needed to impose iron discipline. So any officer who did not execute his orders immediately was dismissed, under the power which the law gave at that time to the commander-in-chief.

Several examples of this kind had already been made when, during a sortie which we had pushed forward some six leagues from the town, the brigade commanded by Col. Sacleux was not in position at the time ordered in a valley where it was meant to block the passage of the Austrians, who thus escaped.

The commander-in-chief, furious at seeing his plans come to nothing, dismissed poor Col. Sacleux by publishing his dismissal in an order of the day. Sacleux may well not have understood what was expected of him, but he was a very brave man. Assuredly he would have blown his brains out, had he not been determined to restore his honour. He took up a musket and joined the ranks as a private soldier! He came to see us one day, Colindo and I were sore at heart to see this excellent man dressed as a simple infantryman. We said our good-byes to Sacleux who, after the surrender of the town, was restored to his rank of colonel at the request of Massena himself, who had been impressed by Sacleux's courage. But the following year, when peace had been made in Europe, Sacleux, perhaps wishing to rid himself completely of the stigma with which he had been so unjustly branded, asked to be posted to the war in Santa-Dominica, where he was killed at the moment when he was about to be promoted to brigadier-general! There are men who, in spite of their merits, have a cruel destiny; of which he was an example.

Chap. 12.

I shall discuss only briefly the conduct of the siege or blockade which we sustained. The fortifications of Genoa consisted at that time of a plain wall, flanked by towers; but what made the place well suited for defence was the fact that it is surrounded at a short distance by mountains, the summits and flanks of which are dotted with forts and strong-points. The Austrians continually attacked these positions. When they took one, we went to retake it, and the next day they came to take it again. If they managed to do so, we went to chase them out once more. There was an endless shuttling back and forth, with varying results, but in the end, we remained in control of the terrain. These encounters were often very fierce. In one of them, General Soult, who was General Massena's right hand man, was climbing up Monte Corona at the head of his men to retake a fort of that name, which we had lost the day before, when his knee was struck by a bullet at a moment when the enemy, who greatly outnumbered his party, were running down from the top of the mountain. It was impossible with the few troops we had at this point to resist the avalanche, and a retreat was called for. The soldiers carried General Soult for some way, on their muskets, but the intolerable pain which he suffered decided them that he should be left at the foot of a tree, where his brother and one of his aides-de-camp stayed with him to protect him from being attacked by the first enemy troops to arrive. Luckily there were among these some officers who had much respect for their illustrious prisoner.

The capture of General Soult having encouraged the Austrians, they pushed us back to the city wall, which they were preparing to attack when a heavy storm darkened the blue sky, which we had had since the beginning of the siege. The rain fell in torrents. The Austrians halted and most of them sought shelter in the blockhouses or under the trees. Then General Massena, one of whose principal gifts was the ability to turn to advantage the unforeseen incidents of warfare, addressed his men, rekindled their spirit, and having reinforced them with some troops from the town, he ordered them to fix bayonets and led them, at the height of the storm, against the erstwhile victorious Austrians who, taken by surprise, retired in disorder. Massena pursued them with such effect that he cut off some three thousand Grenadiers, who laid down their arms.

This was not the first time that we had taken numerous prisoners, for the total of those we had captured since the beginning of the siege amounted to more than eight thousand; but having no food for them, Massena had always sent them back, on the condition that they would not be used against us for a period of six months. Although the officers held religiously to their promise, the wretched soldiers, who went back to the Austrian camp ignorant of the undertaking that their leaders had made on their behalf, were transferred to other regiments and forced to fight against us once more. If they fell again into our hands, something that often happened, they were once more sent back and transferred anew; so that there were very many of these men who, on their own admission, had been captured four or five times. Massena, angered at the lack of good faith on the part of the Austrian generals, decided that this time he would retain both officers and men of the three thousand Grenadiers whom he had captured; and so that the duty of guarding them would not fall on his troops, he had the unfortunate prisoners loaded into floating hulks moored in the middle of the harbour with the guns of the harbour mole aimed at them. He then sent an envoy to General Ott, who commanded the Austrian troops before Genoa, to reproach him for his failure to keep his word, and to warn him that he did not consider himself bound to give the prisoners more than half the ration of the French soldier; but that he would agree to an arrangement which the Austrians might make with the British, whereby vessels might bring, every day, food for the prisoners, and not leave until they had seen it eaten, so that it could not be thought that Massena was using this pretext to bring in food for his own men. The Austrian general who may have hoped that a refusal would compel Massena to send back the three thousand soldiers, whom he probably intended to use again, turned down this philanthropic proposal, and Massena then carried out his threat.

The French ration was composed of a quarter of a pound of disgusting bread and an equal amount of horse flesh; the prisoners were given only half this amount! This was fifteen days before the end of the siege. For fifteen days, these poor devils remained on this regime!. Every two or three days Messena renewed his offer to the enemy general; he never accepted, perhaps out of obstinacy, or perhaps because the English admiral, Lord Kieth, was unwilling to employ his long-boats for fear, it is said, that they would bring typhus back to the fleet. However that may be, the wretched Austrians were left howling with rage and hunger in their floating prison. It was truly appalling! In the end, having eaten their boots and packs, and perhaps some dead bodies, they nearly all died of starvation! There were hardly more than seven or eight hundred left when the place was surrendered to our enemies. The Austrian soldiers, when they entered the town, hurried to the harbour and gave food to their compatriots with so little caution that many of them died as a result.

I have described this horrible episode, firstly as an example of the sort of ghastly event which war brings in its train, but principally to brand with shame the conduct and lack of good faith of the Austrian general, who forced soldiers who had been captured and released on parole, to take up arms against us once more, although he had promised to send them back to Germany.

In the course of the fighting which took place during the siege, I ran into a number of dangers but I shall limit myself to mentioning two of the more serious.