That dark, sleek-faced, heavy-eyed man is Jourdan, Commander-in-Chief once of the Army of the Revolution. “The Anvil,” some call him, he has been so often soundly beaten. But, all the same, he was too popular with the Army for Napoleon to pass him over. Jourdan it was who invented the conscription system. He started in life as a linen-draper at Grenoble. There is of course, too, Brune, who isn’t here to-day: but he doesn’t count for much. A minor-poet and a journalist was he once upon a time. He’s another of the clever-tongued Jacobins the Emperor gave the bâton to as a sop.
NAPOLEON’S RIGHT-HAND MAN
Look near the Emperor, at that neat athletic figure, of middle height: that is “Old Berthier.” He is from ten to fifteen years older than most of the other marshals; or, in fact, than the Emperor himself. Berthier, in fact, is old enough to have been a captain in the Army of the ancien régime, and can remember how he first smelt powder fighting under Lafayette and Washington against the British in America. He was a staff officer when Napoleon first came to the Ecole Militaire here from Brienne, as a boy gentleman-cadet. A heaven-born Chief of the Staff is Marshal Berthier, and the Emperor without him in a campaign would be like a man without his right hand. Every detail goes like clockwork with Berthier at the head of the Etat-Major.
You should see the two of them on campaign, working together in the Quartier-Général. Napoleon will be sprawling on his stomach at full length over a huge set of maps which cover, spread out, nearly the whole floor of the tent; an open pair of compasses in his hand, a box of pins with little paper flag-heads, red, blue, yellow, green, at one side, some of them already stuck over the map marking the positions of the different corps and of the enemy. He has the compasses set to scale, to mark off some seventeen to twenty miles, which means from twenty-two to twenty-five miles of road, taking into account the windings. To and fro he twists and turns the compasses like lightning and decides in an instant the marches for each column to arrive at the desired point, all timed exactly to the very day and hour with an astonishing certainty and precision. He calls out his instructions in half a dozen words or so, sharply snapped out, for Berthier, who all the time is standing near, bending down at Napoleon’s shoulder, notebook and pencil in hand, to take down. Old Berthier has a veritable instinct for understanding what the Emperor means. He can interpret the smallest grunt Napoleon makes. He can spin out three or four broken ejaculations into detailed orders for an Army Corps, all worked out with absolute clearness, in beautiful language. It is amazing how he does it, but he does do it. A staff officer, or else Bacler d’Albe, the Imperial Military Cartographer, the officer in charge of the maps, it may be, is all the while also kneeling by the pin-box, and has the pins of the right colour out and stuck in the maps as fast as the Emperor wants them. The instant the Emperor is satisfied, Berthier is off, and with the secretaries at work in his own quarters drafting the orders. Then, before you know well where you are, a dozen estafettes are galloping all over the country with the orders—in the case of a very important order sometimes three or four staff officers each take a copy, to ride by different routes so as to minimise the risk of delay or capture. That is the working of Berthier’s system, and there is not often a miscarriage or serious hitch in the delivery.
MARSHALL SOULT
And mark Soult, the coming man of the Marshals when he gets his chance; a wary old dog-fox for an enemy to tackle. A sergeant of infantry in the old “Royal Regiment” of former days, the old 13th of the Line, then a drill-instructor of Volunteers, now he is at the head of the Army at Boulogne for the descent on England. Hardly even the Emperor knows more about tactics than Soult. Note how self-possessed and masterful he looks, so cold and impassive of demeanour. Those eyes that seem to pierce through you, those clear-cut aquiline features, that face like a mask of bronze, show the character of the man. You wouldn’t think though, to see his fine soldier-like figure as he stands there, a warrior born to look at, that Soult is not only lame from a fall from his horse years ago, but has limped from his birth, from a club-foot.
That bald-headed marshal over there is Marshal Davout, a dashing subaltern of Dragoons once in the Old Royal Army. A fine tactician for a hot place is Davout; and when the fight has been won, no leader so harsh and pitiless to the vanquished enemy. He wears spectacles on service: he can hardly see ten yards in front of his big nose. The ladies are very fond of Davout; he waltzes so nicely.
And that other there is Marshal Ney; “the Indefatigable” is the Army’s name for him. He never spares himself, nor the enemy, on the battlefield; but after the last shot there is no more generous victor than Marshal Ney. For sheer dogged pluck against odds, for simply marvellous intrepidity, the world cannot match Ney. Stalwart and square-shouldered, he carries himself with all the jaunty assurance of manner you would expect in perhaps the most dashing leader of hussars the Army of France has known. He is an Alsatian, born by the Rhine; a pleasant-faced man, with frank grey eyes, curly red hair over a broad open forehead. “Red Michael” is one of the soldiers’ names for Ney; and there is not one of the Marshals for whom his men would do more.
THE EAGLES AWAIT NAPOLEON
Such, if it may be permitted to describe them in this way, is something of what the Marshals of Napoleon looked like on the day of the Eagle presentation on the Field of Mars. All eyes were turned on the Marshals as they stood there beside Napoleon; a brilliant array of soldierly figures in their red ostrich-plumed cocked hats, richly laced uniforms, gleaming brass-bound sword-scabbards and high jack-boots with clanking brass spurs.