CHAPTER II.
THE FRENCH ARMY.
The French army, it is hardly necessary to state, had been seriously affected by the sudden and complete change in government through which France had passed in April, 1814. Without going into particulars, it is sufficient to say that Napoleon found on his return from Elba much which needed to be undone and more which it was necessary to do. But the details of this partial reorganization do not greatly concern us. Napoleon unquestionably did his utmost to bring the troops into a state of efficiency. And he certainly was in great measure successful. The larger part of the Marshals and high officers remained in France and took command with cheerfulness, and the younger officers and the men were unanimous in their devotion to the cause of their country against the coalition. But some of the Marshals and generals high in rank had retired into Belgium with Louis XVIII.; others declined active service; and where there were so many defections, there was inevitably not a little suspicion and disquietude. In the reorganization, which was beyond a question necessary, great changes had to be made in the higher commands, and the regiments, even, were to a greater or less extent recast. The Guard was also reconstituted, a measure obviously wise, taking account of the prestige which this famous corps had always possessed, but a measure which, carried out as it had to be, in a very brief period of time, could not but injure to a considerable extent the value of the regiments of the line. It is true that France at this time was full of veteran soldiers; some 200,000 men had returned into the country from foreign prisons. There was an abundance of excellent material. But the circumstances under which the existing military force was reorganized and increased in numbers were unfavorable to the moral of the soldiers and of the army generally, and there was not sufficient time before the outbreak of hostilities to overcome the disturbing influences inseparable from such a state of things. The men were full of enthusiasm for and confidence in Napoleon; but they mistrusted many of their commanders. They were old soldiers, nearly or quite all of them, and understood their work perfectly; but the changes of the last eighteen months had been so utterly perplexing,—so thorough,—the new organization had been so recent and attended by so many disquieting circumstances and disturbing rumors, that the absolute confidence, which ought to exist between the officers and men of an army as strongly as between the members of a family, did not prevail.[23]
Coming now to the personnel of the army: Napoleon’s old chief-of-staff, Berthier, who had served him in this capacity for twenty years, who had grown accustomed to his ways, and was able by reason of his long experience to supplement his defects, had retired into Belgium with the King. To supply his place the Emperor selected Marshal Soult, certainly a very singular choice.[24] Soult was a man of Napoleon’s own age,—he had for several years commanded an army in Spain, and had had, of course, a chief-of-staff of his own. To place such a man at such a time of his life on staff duty when he should be commanding troops, must strike any one as strange. Such an officer is not fitted by his experience in an independent command for the duties of a chief-of-staff. Those duties he has been for years accustomed to turn over to a subordinate. The personal attention which they need he has for years expected to be given by a junior officer. It is out of the question that he can, all at once, assume the extremely laborious duties which belong to the chief-of-staff. We shall, before we get through, have more than one opportunity to see how Soult performed his new tasks. It is safe to say that there was many a younger officer in the French army who would have served with much more efficiency in this all-important place, for which the utmost vigor and alertness of mind and body are wellnigh indispensable.
For the invasion of Belgium, Napoleon destined the 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, and 6th Corps, and the Imperial Guard, besides a large force of cavalry. The five corps-commanders, d’Erlon, Reille, Vandamme, Gérard and the Comte de Lobau were all men of experience and admitted capacity. Vandamme was known specially as a hard fighter. Gérard was a comparatively young officer of great promise. The Comte de Lobau, under his original name of Mouton, had distinguished himself in the Austrian campaign of 1809. But no one of them equalled in military talent the leading generals in the Italian or Austerlitz campaigns,—Masséna, Lannes, Davout, Desaix, and their fellows. The commander of the cavalry, Grouchy, was a veteran of twenty years’ hard fighting, but was not credited with possessing any great capacity. The fact is that Napoleon himself could not do for his own army what the turmoil and chaos of the Revolution had done for the army of the republic, and that was to override seniority and all ordinary claims to promotion, and to open the door wide to youthful vigor and ambition. It was to the confusion created by the Revolution that the formidable list of warriors who served France so brilliantly for twenty years owed in great measure their rapid advancement. Napoleon himself constitutes no exception to this remark.
Napoleon[25] says of his officers at this period:—
“The character of several of the generals had been weakened by the events of 1814; they had lost something of that audacity, of that resolution, of that confidence, which had * * * contributed so much to the successes of former campaigns.”[26]
Charras has a passage to the same effect:[27]—
“Enriched, systematically corrupted, by the prodigality of the Empire; enervated by luxury and pleasure; fatigued by twenty years of war, several among the generals would have preferred the tranquil life of their own homes to the labors of the march and the discomforts of the bivouac. They had tasted of peace for a whole year; they looked back on that period with regret. Some among them had met with rude defeats while in independent commands, and they remembered them well. Others, shaken by the cruel recollections of 1813 and 1814, despaired of the issue of the war in view of the enormous armies of the coalition and of the feebleness of our means of defence. All remained brave, intrepid; but all had not preserved the activity, the resolution, the audacity of their early days. Their moral was no longer equal to sustaining a reverse.”
These statements may very possibly be somewhat too highly colored, but there is little doubt that there was a good deal of truth in them. It is significant that they are made by writers who wrote of the campaign from opposite points of view. Napoleon in his narrative of the campaign sought to show that he was not the sole or even the chief cause of its failure, and claimed that his orders were not carried out with the spirit and energy which his lieutenants had once possessed. Charras on the other hand, throughout his history, is uniformly harsh in his comments on the Emperor’s conduct, and insists that he was greatly lacking both in physical strength and in energy of character. That both Charras and Napoleon, therefore, state that the higher officers of the army were not up to the mark of their earlier campaigns renders it very probable that such was the actual fact.
The importance of this fact is to be seen in its true light only when we bear in mind to how great an extent Napoleon’s campaigns required for their successful conduct qualities in his lieutenants by no means universally found even in respectable corps-commanders,—qualities far in excess of those commonly demanded. Napoleon was not content with mere obedience; he expected from his chief officers an intelligent comprehension of his views, and a vigorous and daring execution of the parts assigned to them,—a sort of coöperation, in fact. The movements with which the campaign of 1809 opened will best illustrate, perhaps, what is here referred to. It is not too much to say that without this hearty and intelligent work on the part of his lieutenants many of Napoleon’s most brilliant and successful campaigns could never have been carried out. We shall see in the course of this narrative how much he expected from Ney and Grouchy. Hence any inability or unwillingness on the part of the leading officers to render this assistance must be fully taken into account when we are seeking to understand this campaign of Waterloo.