Thus, in his forty-seventh year, the Prince of Moskowa, a peasant's son, but now immortal as the "Bravest of the Brave," expiated his error. Pity it was that he had not the courage of his gallant subordinate at Lons la Saulnier, who had broken his sword in pieces with the words, "It is easier for a man of honour to break iron than to infringe his word." Looking backward, and calmly reading the evidence of the trial, it is clear that Ney set out in March, 1815, with every intention to remain faithful to the King. But his moral courage failed him; and the glamour of his old life, and the contact with the iron will of the great Corsican, broke down his principles. To some the punishment meted out to him seemed hard; but when the Emperor heard of his execution he said that he only got his deserts. "No one should break his word. I despise traitors. Ney has dishonoured himself." And the Duke of Wellington refused to plead for the Marshal, for he said "it was absolutely necessary to make an example." But the clearest proof of the justice of the penalty was the fact that from the fatal day at Lons la Saulnier the Marshal was never himself again, and he who, during those terrible days in Russia, had been able to sleep like a little child, never could sleep in peace.

Among the Marshals of Napoleon, Ney, with his title of the "Bravest of the Brave," and his magnificent record of hard fighting, will always appeal to those who love romance. But, great fighter as he was, he was not a great general. At times, at St. Helena, Napoleon, remembering his mistakes at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, used to say that he ought not to have made him a Marshal, for he only had the courage and honesty of a hussar, forgetting his words in Russia, "I have three hundred millions francs in my coffers at the Tuileries; I would willingly have given them to save Marshal Ney." But, cruel as it may seem, perhaps the Emperor expressed his real opinion of him when he said, "He was precious on the battlefield, but too immoral and too stupid to succeed." In action he was always master of himself, but as Jomini, his old chief of the staff, wrote of him, "Ney's best qualities, his heroic valour, his rapid coup d'œil, and his energy, diminished in the same proportion that the extent of his command increased his responsibility. Admirable on the battlefield, he displayed less assurance not only in council, but whenever he was not actually face to face with the enemy." In a word, he lacked that marked intellectual capacity which is the chief characteristic of great soldiers like Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon, and Wellington.

VIII
LOUIS NICOLAS DAVOUT, MARSHAL,
DUKE OF AUERSTÄDT, PRINCE OF ECKMÜHL

There was an old saying in Burgundy that "when a Davout comes into the world, another sword has leaped from the scabbard"; but so finely tempered a weapon as Louis Nicolas had never before been produced by the warrior nobles of Annoux, though the line stretched back in unbroken descent to the days of the first Crusades. Born at Auxerre on May 18, 1770, the future Marshal was destined for the service, and at the age of fifteen entered the Royal Military School at Paris. In the fatal year 1789 he received his commission in the Royal Champagne regiment of cavalry stationed at Hesdin, but his period of service with the royal army was short. From his boyhood, young Davout was one of those whom it was impossible to drive, who, while they submit to no authority, are as clay in the hands of the master mind who can gain their affections. His turbulent spirit had early become captivated by the specious revolutionary logic of a brilliant young lawyer, Turreau, who, a few years later, became his stepfather. Full of burning zeal for his new political tenets, chafing under the dull routine of garrison life, despising his mediocre companions, the young sub-lieutenant soon found himself in trouble, and was dismissed from the service for the part he took in aiding the revolutionaries in their attempts to seduce the privates and non-commissioned officers from their allegiance to their sovereign. His return to civil life was but brief, for, when in 1791 the Prussian invasion summoned the country to arms, Louis Nicolas enlisted in the Volunteers of the Yonne, and owing to his former military training was at once elected lieutenant-colonel.

The Volunteers of the Yonne formed part of the corps opposed to the Austrians in the Low Countries, and owing to the stern discipline of their lieutenant-colonel, became distinguished as the most reliable of all the volunteers raised in 1791. Davout adopted the same plan which proved so effective among the Scotch regiments during the eighteenth century: keeping in close communication with the local authorities of the Yonne, and rewarding or punishing his men by posting their names with their records in the various cantons from which they were drawn. After fighting bravely under Dumouriez, it fell to the lot of the battalion to attempt to capture that general, when, after the battle of Neerwinden, he tried to betray his army to the Austrians. Soon after this the lieutenant-colonel had to throw up his command when the Convention decreed that no ci-devant noble could hold a commission; but Davout's record was so strongly republican that his friend Turreau had little difficulty in getting him reinstated in his rank, and sent to command a brigade of cavalry in the Army of the Moselle. Except for two years during which he was at home on parole, after the capture of Mannheim, the general was on active service in the Rhine valley till the peace of Campo Formio in 1797. During these years he steadily added to his reputation as a stern commander and a stubborn fighter, and as such attracted the attention of Desaix, who introduced him early in 1798 to Bonaparte. The future Emperor saw at a glance that this small, stout, bald-headed young man had qualities which few others possessed. Accordingly he took him with him to Egypt. Like all who met the young Napoleon, Davout fell entirely beneath his spell. In spite of the fact that he was not included among the few friends whom Bonaparte selected to return with him in 1800, his enthusiasm for the First Consul increased day by day. Returning to France with Desaix, just before the Marengo campaign, he at once hastened to Paris to congratulate the new head of the Government. Davout's republicanism had received many shocks. Like all other honourable men, he had hated and loathed the Terror. Moreover, he had seen on service how little the preachers of the equality of man carried out their doctrine in practice. As early as 1794 we find him writing to a friend: "Ought we to be exposed to the tyranny of any chance revolutionary committee or club?... Why are not all Frenchmen witnesses of fraternity and of the republican virtues which reign in our camps; we have no brigands here, but have we not plenty at home?" Bonaparte knew well that Davout was not only his enthusiastic personal follower, but also thoroughly approved of the coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire, and in his desire for peace and stability at home would warmly back him up in his scheme of founding a tyranny under the guise of an Imperial Republic. Accordingly the First Consul published a most flattering account of him in the official Moniteur, and gave him command of the cavalry of the Army of Italy, under General Brune. In June, 1801, after the treaty of Lüneville, in pursuance of his plan of congregating his friends at headquarters, he recalled him to Paris as inspector-general of cavalry.

It was while thus employed that Davout met his wife, Aimée Leclerc. Aimée, a sister of that Leclerc who married Pauline Bonaparte, had been educated at Madame Campan's school in Paris, along with the young Beauharnais and Bonapartes, and was the bosom friend of Caroline and Hortense. From many points of view the marriage was extremely appropriate; for although the Davouts belonged to the old nobility, and Aimée's father was only a corn merchant of Poitou, he had prospered in his business, and had been able to give his daughter an excellent education. The marriage brought Davout into close connection with the First Consul's family, and was successful from a worldly and a domestic point of view. The future Marshal was deeply attached to his wife, and spent every moment with her which he could snatch from his military duties. When absent on service scarcely a day passed on which he did not write to her, and his happiness was completely bound up in her welfare and that of his large family. The year following their marriage the Davouts bought the beautiful estate of Savigny-sur-Orge for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. This was a great strain on their rather limited resources, and for some years they had to practise strict economy.

In September, 1803, the general was summoned to Bruges to command a corps of the Army of the Ocean, which later became the third corps of the Grand Army. There, in close communication with his great chief, he began to show those traits which made him respected as the most relentless and careful administrator of all the Marshals of France. His energy was indefatigable; everything had to undergo his personal scrutiny, be it the best means of securing the embarkation of a company in one of the new barges or the careful inspection of the boots of a battalion: for Davout, like Wellington, knew that a soldier's marching powers depended on two things, his feet and his stomach, and every man in the third corps had to have two pairs of good boots in his valise and one on his feet. Secrecy also, in his eyes, was of prime importance; he was quick to give a lesson to all spies, or would-be spies, in Belgium, and it was with stern exultation in his duty that he wrote to the First Consul, "Your orders for the trial of the spy (Bülow) will be carried out, and within a week he will be executed." Day by day, as he gained experience, the indefatigable soldier drew on him the approbation of the First Consul, and it was with no sense of favouritism that Napoleon, when he became Emperor, nominated him among his newly-created Marshals, although in the eyes of the army at large he had not yet done enough to justify this choice.

The campaign of 1805 gave the Marshal his first opportunity of handling large bodies of troops of all arms in the field, and, though it did not bring him into such conspicuous notice as Murat, Lannes, Soult and Ney, it justified Napoleon in his selection of him as worthy of the Marshal's bâton. In the operations round Ulm, Davout proved himself an excellent subordinate, whose corps was ever ready, at full strength, in the field, and at the hour at which it had been ordered, while the Marshal's stern checking of marauding was a new feature in French military discipline, and one which no other Marshal could successfully carry out without starving his troops. But it was Austerlitz which taught the students of war the true capabilities of this rising officer. There the Emperor, relying on his stubborn, methodical character, entrusted him with a duty which eminently suited his genius: he chose his corps as the screen to cover the trap which he set for the Russian left, and all day long it had to fight a stern rear-guard action against overwhelming odds, until it had tempted the enemy into dissipating his forces, and so weakening his centre that his left and right were defeated in detail. After Austerlitz, Davout was entrusted with the pursuit of the left wing of the Allies. Flushed with victory, the third corps pushed the disorganised enemy in hopeless rout, and it seemed as if the annihilation of the Russians was certain. Meanwhile, unknown to the Marshal, the Emperor had accepted the Czar's demands for an armistice. Davout first heard of the cessation of hostilities from the enemy, but, remembering Murat's mistake, he refused to halt his troops. "You want to deceive me," he said to the flag of truce; "you want to make a fool of me.... I am going to crush you, and that is the only order I have received." So the third corps pushed on, and it was only the production of a despatch in the handwriting of the Czar himself that caused the victor at last to stay his hand.