MANY years ago I knew a Frenchman whose father a captain of infantry, had been killed in La Vendée fighting under Hoche. He had many things to tell me about Hoche which interested me in his career, and led me to treasure up in my memory whatever I came across afterwards concerning him.
There was a certain confidential air about the communications of my French friend, which leads me to say to the reader that I trust to his honor not to divulge what I say to him touching the warrior in question.
The French themselves hold that next to Napoleon Bonaparte, the most brilliant soldier thrown to the surface by the revolution, was Lazarus Hoche. This seems too to be the opinion of a writer in the Encyclopedia Brittanica who says that the death of Hoche deprived the French people of the only man capable of making head against the ambition of the Corsican. And it still adds force to that view to bear in mind how short a time was allotted him to win immortality: he never lived to be thirty. Indeed I remember but one general in history who died so young with so high a reputation; and that was that wondrous boy Gaston de Foix nephew of Louis XII., who fell at the age of twenty-three at Ravenna after having there as elsewhere totally overthrown the famous Spanish infantry.
Perhaps some honest reader still callow from the study of John Richard Green, may remind me that that unique historian not only makes the Spanish infantry triumphant at Ravenna, but cites it as their typical exploit. Well, we must be thankful that Mr. Green does not cite the Caudine Forks as the typical exploit of the Roman legions.
Lazarus Hoche was born near Versailles in June 1768. He was the son, not of a common workman as some of the encyclopedias do vainly talk, but of a common soldier, or rather of an uncommon soldier; for his father on account of his uncommonness, was taken from the line and made keeper of the royal kennels at Versailles; and the first useful occupation of the boy, if useful it were, was to help his father in the care of the king’s hounds.
Nature had endowed him with a handsome and vigorous body and a precocious intellect. He had a maternal uncle who was curé of Saint Germain-en-laye and a man of some learning. This good priest interested himself in the education of his clever nephew, and taught him the elements of latin and mathematics; and thus he received instruction beyond what was common in his station in life. And you academical gentlemen will insist I suppose, that his subsequent advancement was all owing to this latin and mathematics.
But his instincts were military and he resolved to be a soldier, and with a boyish longing at the same time, to see the world, he enlisted when he was sixteen in what he supposed to be a regiment bound for the Indies; but his friends had played a trick on him, and he found himself enrolled in a home regiment. He made the best of it however, and soon attracted the attention of his superiors by his prompt and intelligent observance of duty.
But there were some exceptions to his good behavior. On one occasion a soldier of his regiment had been killed in a pot-house brawl. Hoche joined with some of his comrades in razing to the ground the house of the assassin. For his share in this riot he was condemned to three months imprisonment. Another act of violence which cost the life of a fellow being, brought him no punishment whatever, as it was within the tolerance of the service. A corporal was noted for his skill in handling the sabre. He had already slain two opponents in his duels. He insulted Hoche who instantly challenged him. Hoche received a cut across the forehead, which nearly split his skull, and left a long deep scar there the rest of his days; but he put an end to the duelling of his antagonist by running him through the body.
Of his personal comeliness it is related that once, on parade, a noble lady pointed him out to her companion and exclaimed: What a splendid looking general that would make! She little knew she was playing the part of a prophetess.