Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Volume 15

by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

We cannot here go into Ney's behaviour at Waterloo except to point out that too little importance is generally given to the fact of the English cavalry having, in a happy moment, fallen on and destroyed the artillery which was being brought up to sweep the English squares at close quarters. At Waterloo, as in so many other combats, the account of Ney's behaviour more resembles that of a Homeric hero than of a modern general. To the ideal commander of to-day, watching the fight at a distance, calmly weighing its course, undisturbed except by distant random shots, it is strange to compare Ney staggering through the gate of Konigsberg all covered with blood; smoke and snow, musket in hand, announcing himself as the rear-guard of France, or appearing, a second Achilles, on the ramparts of Smolensko to encourage the yielding troops on the glacis, or amidst the flying troops at Waterloo, with uncovered head and broken sword, black with powder, on foot, his fifth horse killed under him, knowing that life, honour, and country were lost, still hoping against hope and attempting one more last desperate rally. If he had died—ah! if he had died there—what a glorious tomb might have risen, glorious for France as well as for him, with the simple inscription, "The Bravest of the Brave."

Early on the 19th June a small band of officers retreating from the field found Ney asleep at Marchiennes, "the first repose he had had for four days," and they did not disturb him for orders. "And indeed what order could Marshal Ney have given? "The disaster of the day, the overwhelming horror of the flight of the beaten army, simply crushed Ney morally as well as physically. Rising in the Chambers he denounced all attempt at further resistance. He did not know, he would not believe, that Grouchy was safe, and that the army was fast rallying. Fresh from the field, with all its traces on him, the authority of Ney was too great for the Government. Frightened friends, plotting Royalists, echoed the wild words of Ney brave only against physical dangers. Instead of dying on the battle-field, he had lived to ensure the return of the Bourbons, the fall of Bonaparte, his own death, and the ruin of France.

Before his exception from the amnesty was known Ney left Paris on the 6th of July, and went into the country with but little attempt at concealment, and with formal passports from Fouche. The capitulation of Paris seemed to cover him, and he was so little aware of the thirst of the Royalists for his blood that he let his presence be known by leaving about a splendid sabre presented to him by the Emperor on his marriage, and recognised by mere report by an old soldier as belonging to Ney or Murat; and Ney himself let into the house the party sent to arrest him on the 5th of August, and actually refused the offer of Excelmans, through whose troops he passed, to set him free. No one at the time, except the wretched refugees of Ghent, could have suspected, after the capitulation, that there was any special danger for Ney, and it is very difficult to see on what principle the Bourbons chose their victims or intended victims. Drouot, for example, had never served Louis XVIII., he had never worn the white cockade, he had left France with Napoleon for Elba, and had served the Emperor there. In 1815 he had fought under his own sovereign. After Waterloo he had exerted all his great influence, the greater from his position, to induce the Guard to retire behind the Loire, and to submit to the Bourbons. It was because Davoust so needed him that Drouot remained with the army. Stilt Drouot was selected for death, but the evidence of his position was too strong to enable the Court to condemn him. Cambronne, another selection, had also gone with Napoleon to Elba. Savory, another selection, had, as was eventually acknowledged, only joined Napoleon when he was in full possession of the reins of Government. Bertrend, who was condemned while at St. Helena, was in the same position as Drouot. In fact, if any one were to draw up a list of probable proscriptions and compare it with those of the 24th of July 1815, there would probably be few names common to both except Labedoyere, Mouton Duvernet, etc. The truth is that the Bourbons, and, to do them justice, still more the rancorous band of mediocrities who surrounded them, thirsted for blood. Even they could feel the full ignominy of the flight to Ghent.

While they had been chanting the glories of the Restoration, the devotion of the people, the valour of the Princes, Napoleon had landed, the Restoration had vanished like a bad dream, and the Princes were the first to lead the way to the frontier. To protest that there had been a conspiracy, and that the conspirators must suffer, was the only possible cloak for the shame of the Royalists, who could not see that the only conspiracy was the universal one of the nation against the miserable men who knew not how to govern a high-spirited people.

Ney, arrested on the 5th of August, was first brought before a Military Court on the 9th of November composed of Marshal Jourdan (President), Marshals Massena, Augereau, and Mortier, Lieutenants-General Gazan, Claparede, and Vilatte (members). Moncey had refused to sit, and Massena urged to the Court his own quarrels with Ney in Spain to get rid of the task, but was forced to remain. Defended by both the Berryers, Ney unfortunately denied the jurisdiction of the court-martial over him as a peer. In all probability the Military Court would have acquitted him. Too glad at the moment to be free from the trial of their old comrade, not understanding the danger of the proceeding, the Court, by a majority of five against two, declared themselves non-competent, and on the 21st of November Ney was sent before the Chamber of Peers, which condemned him on the 6th of December.

To beg the life of his brave adversary would have been such an obvious act of generosity on the part of the Duke of Wellington that we maybe pardoned for examining his reasons for not interfering. First, the Duke seems to have laid weight on the fact that if Ney had believed the capitulation had covered him he would not have hidden. Now, even before Ney knew of his exception from the amnesty, to appear in Paris would have been a foolish piece of bravado. Further, the Royalist reaction was in full vigour, and when the Royalist mobs, with the connivance of the authorities, were murdering Marshal Brune and attacking any prominent adherents of Napoleon, it was hardly the time for Ney to travel in full pomp. It cannot be said that, apart from the capitulation, the Duke had no responsibility. Generally a Government executing a prisoner, may, with some force, if rather brutally, urge that the fact of their being able to try and execute him in itself shows their authority to do so. The Bourbons could not even use this argument. If the Allies had evacuated France Louis le Desiree would have ordered his carriage and have been at the frontier before they had reached it. If Frenchmen actually fired the shots which killed Ney, the Allies at least shared the responsibility with the French Government. Lastly, it would seem that the Duke would have asked for the life of Ney if the King, clever at such small artifices, had not purposely affected a temporary coldness to him. Few men would have been so deterred from asking for the life of a dog. The fact is, the Duke of Wellington was a great general, he was a single- hearted and patriotic statesman, he had a thousand virtues, but he was never generous. It cannot be said that he simply shared the feelings of his army, for there was preparation among some of his officers to enable Ney to escape, and Ney had to be guarded by men of good position disguised in the uniform of privates. Ney had written to his wife when he joined Napoleon, thinking of the little vexations the Royalists loved to inflict on the men who had conquered the Continent. "You will no longer weep when you leave the Tuileries." The unfortunate lady wept now as she vainly sought some mercy for her husband. Arrested on the 5th of August, sentenced on the 6th of December, Ney was shot on the 7th of December, and the very manner of his execution shows that, in taking his life there was much more of revenge than of justice.

If Ney were to be shot, it is obvious that it should have been as a high act of justice. If neither the rank nor the services of the criminal were to save him, his death could not be too formal, too solemn, too public. Even an ordinary military execution is always carried out with grave and striking forms: there is a grand parade of the troops, that all may see with their own eyes the last act of the law. After the execution the troops defile past the body, that all may see the criminal actually dead: There was nothing of all this in the execution of Ney. A few chance passers, in the early morning of the 7th of December 1815, saw a small body of troops waiting by the wall of the garden of the Luxemburg. A fiacre drove up, out of which got Marshal Ney in plain clothes, himself surprised by the everyday aspect of the place. Then, when the officer of the firing party (for such the spectators now knew it to be) saw whom it was he was to fire on, he became, it is said, perfectly petrified; and a peer, one of the judges of Ney, the Duke de la Force, took his place. Ney fell at the first volley with six balls in his breast, three in the head and neck, and one in the arm, and in a quarter of an hour the body was removed; "plain Michel Ney" as he had said to the secretary enunciating his title in reading his sentence, "plain Michel Ney, soon to be a little dust."

The Communists caught red-handed in the streets of Paris in 1870 died with hardly less formality than was observed at the death-scene of the Prince of the Moskowa and Duke of Elchingen, and the truth then became plain. The Bourbons could not, dared not, attempt to carry out the sentence of the law with the forms of the law. The Government did not venture to let the troops or the people face the Marshal. The forms of the law could not be carried out, the demands of revenge could be. And if this be thought any exaggeration, the proof of the ill effects of this murder, for its form makes it difficult to call it anything else, is ready to our hands. It was impossible to get the public to believe that Ney had really been killed in this manner, and nearly to this day we have had fresh stories recurring of the real Ney being discovered in America. The deed, however, had really been done. The Marshals now knew that when the Princes fled they themselves must remain to die for the Royal cause; and Louis had at last succeeded in preventing his return to his kingdom amongst the baggage waggons of the Allies from being considered as a mere subject for jeers. One detail of the execution of Ney, however, we are told nothing of: we do not know if his widow, like Madame Labedoyere, had to pay three francs a head to the soldiers of the firing party which shot her husband. Whatever were the faults of the Bourbons, they at least carried out their executions economically.

The statesmen of France, distinguished as they were, certainly did not rise to a level with the situation either in 1814 or in 1815. In 1814, it is true, they were almost stunned by the crash of the Empire, and little as they foresaw the restoration of the Bourbons, still less could they have anticipated the extraordinary follies which were to be perpetrated. In 1815 there was less excuse for their helplessness, and, overawed as they were by the mass of foes which was pouring on them to complete the disaster of Waterloo, still it is disappointing to find that there was no one to seize the helm of power, and, confronting the Allies, to stipulate proper terms for France, and for the brave men who had fought for her. The Steady Davoust was there with his 100,000 men to add weight to their language, and the total helplessness of the older line of the Bourbons had been too evidently displayed to make their return a certainty, so that there is no reason to doubt that a firm-hearted patriot might have saved France from much of the degradation and loss inflicted on her when once the Allies had again got her at their mercy. At-the least the Bourbons might have been deprived of the revenge they sought for in taking some of the best blood of France. Better for Ney and his comrades to have fallen in a last struggle before Paris than to be shot by Frenchmen emboldened by the presence of foreign troops.

Talleyrand, the most prominent figure among the statesmen, was away. His absence at Vienna during the first Restoration was undoubtedly the cause of many of the errors then committed. His ability as displayed under Napoleon has been much exaggerated, for, as the Duke of Wellington said, it was easy enough to be Foreign Minister to a Government in military possession of Europe, but at least he was above the petty trivialities and absurdities of the Bourbon' Court. On the receipt of the news of the landing of Napoleon he really seems to have believed that the enterprise would immediately end in disaster, and he pressed on the outlawing of the man who had overwhelmed him with riches, and who had, at the worst, left him when in disgrace in quiet possession of all his ill-gotten wealth. But, as the power of Napoleon became more and more displayed, as perhaps Talleyrand found that the Austrians were not quite so firm as they wished to be considered, and as he foresaw the possible chances of the Orleans family, he became rather lukewarm in his attention to the King, to whom he had recently been bewailing the hardships of his separation from his loved monarch. He suddenly found that, after a Congress, the first duty of a diplomatist was to look after his liver, and Carlsbad offered an agreeable retreat where he could wait till he might congratulate the winner in the struggle.