Napoleon’s throne, with beside it the throne for Josephine, at a slightly lower elevation, stood at the front of the Imperial Pavilion. A gilt-framed crimson velvet Chair of State was provided for the Emperor, with a crowned eagle in gilt stucco perched on the back; made on the model of Dagobert’s chair on which Napoleon had sat during the ceremony of the distribution of the Crosses of the Legion of Honour at Boulogne. As on that day, so now, trophies of captured battle-flags adorned the back of the Imperial daïs, selected from the two hundred and odd standards taken in battle by the Armies of Italy and Egypt which Napoleon had led in person: trophies of Montenotte and Arcola, of Tagliamento and Lodi, of Rivoli and Castiglione; the red-and-white banner of the Knights of Malta; the green Horse-tail Standard of the Beys of Egypt; Austrian standards won by Napoleon at the crowning triumph of Marengo.
To right and left of the Emperor, on richly decorated chairs of ceremony, Joseph and Louis Bonaparte and the Princesses were seated. The Imperial suites in attendance were grouped at the back together with a cluster of court grandees, filling most of the spacious platform behind the throne.
In the forefront, at the Emperor’s right hand, stood a splendid galaxy of stalwart figures—the Marshals of the Empire. They stood forward prominently. For them that was the day of days. All must see on such a day the champion warriors of France, the renown of whose victories had filled the world! The whole eighteen were there—all except one. Marshal Brune alone was absent; on service out of France as Napoleon’s Ambassador at Constantinople. The group was completed by the four “Honorary Marshals”—the veteran Kellermann, the victor of Valmy; Perignon; Serrurier; and Lefebvre.
THE LIEUTENANTS OF THE WAR LORD
Glance for one moment round the main group of thirteen, the chosen lieutenants of Napoleon the War Lord, as they stand beside their Chief, with, arrayed in front, the serried columns of the destined victors of Austerlitz. Next to the Emperor and the Eagles it is they who on this Day of the Eagles are the principal objects of interest to the general spectator.
Let the reader for one moment imagine himself on the Imperial Pavilion, with at his side a convenient friend who knows everybody, to point the marshals out.
That short, spare, low-browed, swarthy, Italian-faced man, with crafty, pitiless eyes, is Masséna—“L’Enfant chéri de la Victoire,” as Napoleon himself hailed him on the battlefield; the very ablest undoubtedly of all the Marshals. He knows it too. When the list of the Marshals first came out, a friend called on Masséna to know if it was true that he was one, and to congratulate him. “Oh yes, thank you,” replied Masséna in an icy tone, puckering up his dark face with a sour look, “I am one; one of fourteen!” He’s Italian in blood and breeding, and in his tricky ways; every point about him: but he’d give his soul to be a Frenchman! “Massène” is what he is always trying to get people to call him. And the airs and self-importance he assumes—though only like most of the others in that, indeed—ever since he became “Monseigneur le Maréchal” and has had the honour of being addressed as “Mon Cousin” by the Emperor! Just think of it! In the old days, behind the counter of that little olive-oil and dried-fruit shop up a narrow, smelly back street at Antibes, plain “Citoyen André” was good enough! Just look at that thin, pouting chest, gleaming all over with gold embroidery, with the broad crimson riband of the Legion of Honour slanting across it, and the aggressive tilt of his ostrich-plumed hat! Imagine all that being once upon a time just a cabin-boy on a Marseilles to Leghorn coaster, half-starved and sworn at and cuffed and kicked about by a curmudgeonly padrone! Then fancy it a sneaking smuggler, chevied about, and crouching along to keep out of carbine shot of the Nice douaniers! After that Sergeant Masséna of the late King’s Royal Italien regiment of the Line! And so to the bâton.
They are most of them rather tête montée just now, with their exaltation spick and span on them, these demi-gods of war of ours! Just see them in the field, or on the march; away from the Emperor. They stalk ahead in solitary grandeur; each with his own pas seul, keeping the lesser creation at arms’ length, wrapped up in his own dignified importance. Yet only six months since their lofty Excellencies were mere generals of division, “Citoyen Général” this or that, each one; just units among a hundred and twenty odd others! Nowadays, on the march, your Marshal rides by himself, forty yards ahead of everybody; his staff have to tail off well in rear and keep back! M. le Maréchal doesn’t deign to open his lips, except to give an order. He lives by himself: nobody now is good enough to ask to dinner, except perhaps another marshal! No off-duty pleasantries nowadays; no more bon camaraderie; no more telling of Palais-Royal stories, as it used to be; no more cracking of jokes beside the bivouac fire. You might as well expect a bishop to have a game of marbles! Let a former brother-officer tutoyer a marshal! Poor fellow! Let him try, if he wants to know what a paralysing, rasping, cold-blooded snub is, to get a flattening backhander he’ll remember as long as he wears the uniform.
TWO FAMOUS HARD FIGHTERS
That tall, bull-necked, heavy-featured man is Augereau; “gros comme un tambour-major”; absolutely fearless under fire, kind-hearted to those he takes a fancy to, they say, but ordinarily a coarse-tongued swashbuckler, with barrack-room manners. There too is Lannes, that keen-eyed, short man, holding his head as if he had a crick in his neck! He has one, a permanent one, the result of a bullet under the jaw from a British marine’s musket in the trenches at Acre. A hot-tempered, fiery, devil-may-care fellow is Lannes; but as cold as ice on the battlefield when things look like going wrong! Among friends, chivalrous and generous-hearted to a degree, his men worship Lannes; “the Roland of the Grand Army,” some call him. That is Moncey: and that very tall and erect, dry, rather dense-looking, hawk-nosed marshal with the shaggy eyebrows, Mortier. Mark Bernadotte there, that shifty-eyed Gascon with a sharp nose and thick hair; of medium height,—nobody really trusts him. An ingrained Jacobin—strip his arm and you will find tattooed on it, indelibly, for life, “Mort aux rois”—and a schemer, Napoleon named him a Marshal for political reasons mainly; although, no doubt, he has the same soldier-qualifications as the rest; has won a pitched battle or taken two fortresses. A cunning, plausible fellow is Bernadotte; with ready smile and a smooth tongue. He calls everybody “Mon ami” whether he is talking to a brigadier or a bugler. “Que diable fait il dans cette galère?” say a good many people of the Commander of the First Army Corps. Over yonder stands Bessières, Murat’s great friend; a gentlemanly enough fellow, but at times thick-headed, hardly of the mental calibre of his confrères. Yet Bessières is an ideal leader of Horse on the battlefield; as reckless as a lion at bay: you should see him head a charge sword in hand! One of Napoleon’s pets is he and the only man in the Army who sticks to his queue. Bessières flatly refused to cut it off when the order was given last June for everybody to copy “Le petit tondu” (“The little shorn one”), as the men call the Emperor, and it hangs halfway down his back.