Napoleon and his court

by C. S. Forester

However, he was not fated to retain his conquests long. Wellington’s victory at Vittoria in 1813 brought about Suchet’s evacuation of Valencia, just as Salamanca had caused Soult to abandon Andalusia.

The same year an Anglo-Sicilian expedition under Murray landed in Catalonia, and once more set aflame the embers of the guerilla warfare. Suchet himself, in action against unwontedly disciplined enemies, met with a serious reverse at Castalla, but Murray was too much of a nincompoop to follow up his success. In the end Murray once more took ship, and Suchet still held Catalonia and most of Aragon. At this time he had a great opportunity to turn against Wellington, who had his hands full with Soult’s offensive in the Pyrenees, but he let the chance go. Immediately afterwards Lord William Bentinck, who had succeeded to Sir John Murray, kept him busy until the fall of the Empire. Soult’s and Napoleon’s demands had deprived Suchet of his best troops, and he did all that could be expected of him with the few men left to him.

In 1814 Suchet submitted to the Bourbons; in 1815 he betrayed them. During the Hundred Days he was ordered to secure the south-east with a few thousand men, and though unsuccessful, he accomplished much. After the Restoration the Bourbons refused to re-employ him.

Napoleon is credited with saying that Suchet was the best of his Marshals after Masséna’s decay, and also that with two men like Suchet he would have held Spain against all endeavours. If Napoleon really did say this (and O’Meara’s testimony is untrustworthy) Napoleon was wrong. The only time Suchet encountered English troops he was beaten; he was just as selfish and self-seeking as the other Marshals in Spain; he refused help whenever he could; and his success was due in a great part to the blunders of his opponents. Every French general and Marshal (Dupont excepted) succeeded against Spaniards; it was only against the English that they failed. Napoleon might just as well have said that Bessières was his best Marshal, because Bessières beat the Spaniards at Rio Seco while Masséna failed at Torres Vedras.

The one Marshal of Napoleon’s whose career is more interesting in its pre-Revolutionary stages than under Napoleon is Augereau, Duke of Castiglione. He was a gigantic, swaggering fellow with a nose rendered brilliant by alcohol, devil-may-care and reckless, the ideal soldier of fortune. For he was a soldier of fortune. As a young man in the army of Louis XVI. he had killed one of his own officers on parade, and fled from the country with the police at his heels. In exile, he wandered through the East, joined the Russian army, took part in the storming of Ismail under Suvaroff, and then deserted. Next he joined the Prussian army, and served in the Prussian Guard, but once more he deserted. Desertion from the Prussian army was a difficult matter, but Augereau achieved it by banding together all the malcontents and fighting his way to the frontier.

On the birth of the Dauphin (later the unhappy Louis XVII.) an amnesty was proclaimed in France, and Augereau took advantage of it to rejoin his old regiment, but once more tired of continuous service and got himself sent off to Naples as an instructor to the Neapolitan troops. From Naples he eloped with a Greek heiress to Lisbon, and in Lisbon he annoyed the Inquisition, so that he was put in prison.

But still his luck held. He escaped from the clutches of the Holy Office, and arrived with his wife in France just after the execution of Louis XVI. His varied military experience naturally obtained him high command in the Republican army; he fought in La Vendée and in the Pyrenees, and then found himself a divisional general under Napoleon in 1796. In this campaign his reckless courage won him fame; he was one of the heroes of the bridge of Lodi, and at Castiglione it was his dashing leadership which gained the day.

Augereau received the command of the army of the Rhine after Bonaparte’s departure for Egypt, but, suspected of intriguing for the supreme power, he was dismissed from his command, and, two years later, he saw the prize fall into Napoleon’s hands. Napoleon bought Augereau’s support with huge gifts of money and, in 1804, a Marshal’s bâton.

During the Austerlitz campaign Augereau was only entrusted with the minor operation of subduing Tyrol, but he fought well at Jena in 1806. At Eylau came disaster. His corps, sent forward against the Russians in the teeth of a blinding snowstorm, lost direction, and was torn to pieces by a furious cannonade. Three-quarters of his men died; he himself, already gravely ill, was badly wounded.

Napoleon was furious. Augereau was sent home in disgrace, and what remained of the 7th Corps was broken up and distributed round the rest of the army. This was practically the end of Augereau’s military life; he held command for a brief space during the war in Spain, but he failed again at Gerona and was superseded. By now he was well over fifty years of age, and dissipation had sapped his vitality. In 1814 and 1815 Augereau received commands of minor importance, his chief duty being the training of recruits, but his heart was not in his work. He lived long enough to betray Napoleon twice and the Bourbons once, and then died in 1816.