Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 3, no. 18, November, 1851

by Various Harper

THE DEAD SOLDIER AND HIS DOG.

Austria was still unsubdued. With a perseverance worthy of all admiration, had it been exercised in a better cause, the Austrian government still refused to make peace with republican France. The energies of the empire were aroused anew to raise a fourth army. England, contending against France wherever her navy or her troops could penetrate, was the soul of this warfare. She animated the cabinet of Vienna, and aided the Austrian armies with her strong co-operation and her gold. The people of England, republican in their tendencies, and hating the utter despotism of the old monarchy of France, were clamorous for peace. But the royal family and the aristocracy in general, were extremely unwilling to come to any amicable terms with a nation which had been guilty of the crime of renouncing monarchy.

All the resources of the Austrian government were now devoted to recruiting and equipping a new army. With the wrecks of Wurmser's troops, with detachments from the Rhine, and fresh levies from the bold peasants of the Tyrol, in less than a month an army of nearly one hundred thousand men was assembled. The enthusiasm throughout Austria, in raising and animating these recruits, was so great that the city of Vienna alone contributed four battalions. The empress, with her own hand, embroidered their colors and presented them to the troops. All the noble ladies of the realm devoted their smiles and their aid to inspire the enterprise. About seventy-five thousand men were rendezvoused in the gorges of the northern Tyrol, ready to press down upon Napoleon from the north, while the determined garrison of twenty-five thousand men, under the brave Wurmser, cooped up in Mantua, were ready to emerge at a moment's warning. Thus in about three weeks another army of one hundred thousand men was ready to fall upon Napoleon. His situation now seemed absolutely desperate. The reinforcements he had received from France had been barely sufficient to repair the losses sustained by disease and the sword. He had but thirty thousand men. His funds were all exhausted. His troops, notwithstanding they were in the midst of the most brilliant blaze of victories, had been compelled to strain every nerve of exertion. They were also suffering the severest privations, and began loudly to murmur. "Why," they exclaimed, "do we not receive succor from France? We can not alone contend against all Europe. We have already destroyed three armies, and now a fourth, still more numerous, is rising against us. Is there to be no end to these interminable battles?" Napoleon was fully sensible of the peril of his position, and while he allowed his troops a few weeks of repose, his energies were strained to their very utmost tension in preparing for the all but desperate encounter now before him. The friends and the enemies of Napoleon alike regarded his case as nearly hopeless. The Austrians had by this time learned that it was not safe to divide their forces in the presence of so vigilant a foe. Marching down upon his exhausted band with seventy-five thousand men to attack him in front, and with twenty-five thousand veteran troops, under the brave Wurmser, to sally from the ramparts of Mantua and assail him in the rear, it seemed to all reasonable calculation that the doom of the French army was sealed. Napoleon in the presence of his army assumed an air of most perfect confidence, but he was fearfully apprehensive that, by the power of overwhelming numbers, his army would be destroyed. The appeal which, under the circumstances, he wrote to the Directory for reinforcements, is sublime in its dignity and its eloquence. "All of our superior officers, all of our best generals, are either dead or wounded. The army of Italy, reduced to a handful of men, is exhausted. The heroes of Millesimo, of Lodi, of Castiglione, of Bassano, have died for their country, or are in the hospitals. Nothing is left to the army but its glory and its courage. We are abandoned at the extremity of Italy. The brave men who are left me have no prospect but inevitable death amidst changes so continual and with forces so inferior. Perhaps the hour of the brave Augereau, of the intrepid Massena is about to strike. This consideration renders me cautious. I dare not brave death when it would so certainly be the ruin of those who have so long been the object of my solicitude. The army has done its duty. I do mine. My conscience is at ease, but my soul is lacerated. I never have received a fourth part of the succors which the minister of war has announced in his dispatches. My health is so broken that I can with difficulty sit upon horseback. The enemy can now count our diminished ranks. Nothing is left me but courage. But that alone is not sufficient for the post which I occupy. Troops, or Italy is lost."

Napoleon addressed his soldiers in a very different strain, endeavoring to animate their courage by concealing from them his anxieties. "We have but one more effort to make," said he, "and Italy is our own. True, the enemy is more numerous than we; but half his troops are recruits, who can never stand before the veterans of France. When Alvinzi is beaten Mantua must fall, and our labors are at an end. Not only Italy, but a general peace is to be gained by the capture of Mantua."

During the three weeks in which the Austrians were recruiting their army and the French were reposing around the walls of Mantua, Napoleon made the most Herculean exertions to strengthen his position in Italy, and to disarm those states which were manifesting hostility against him. During this period his labors as a statesman and a diplomatist were even more severe than his toils as a general. He allowed himself no stated time for food or repose, but day and night devoted himself incessantly to his work. Horse after horse sunk beneath him, in the impetuous speed with which he passed from place to place. He dictated innumerable communications to the Directory, respecting treaties of peace with Rome, Naples, Venice, Genoa. He despised the feeble Directory, with its shallow views, conscious that unless wiser counsels than they proposed should prevail, the republic would be ruined. "So long," said he, "as your general shall not be the centre of all influence in Italy, every thing will go wrong. It would be easy to accuse me of ambition, but I am satiated with honor and worn down with care. Peace with Naples is indispensable. You must conciliate Venice and Genoa. The influence of Rome is incalculable. You did wrong to break with that power. We must secure friends for the Italian army, both among kings and people. The general in Italy must be the fountain-head of negotiation as well as of military operations." These were bold assumptions for a young man of twenty-five. But Napoleon was conscious of his power. He now listened to the earnest entreaties of the people of the duchy of Modena and of the papal states of Bologna and Ferrara, and, in consequence of treachery on the part of the Duke of Modena and the Pope, emancipated those states and constituted them into a united and independent Republic. As the whole territory included under this new government extended south of the Po, Napoleon named it the Cispadane Republic, that is the This side of the Po Republic. It contained about a million and a half of inhabitants, compactly gathered in one of the most rich, and fertile, and beautiful regions of the globe. The joy and the enthusiasm of the people, thus blessed with a free government, surpassed all bounds. Wherever Napoleon appeared he was greeted with every demonstration of affection. He assembled at Modena a convention, composed of lawyers, landed proprietors, and merchants to organize the government. All leaned upon the mind of Napoleon, and he guided their counsels with the most consummate wisdom. Napoleon's abhorrence of the anarchy which had disgraced the Jacobin reign in France, and his reverence for law were made very prominent on this occasion. "Never forget," said he in an address to the Assembly, "that laws are mere nullities without the necessary force to sustain them. Attend to your military organization, which you have the means of placing upon a respectable footing. You will then be more fortunate than the people of France. You will attain liberty without passing through the ordeal of revolution."

The Italians were an effeminate people and quite unable to cope in arms with the French or the Austrians. Yet the new republic manifested its zeal and attachment for its youthful founder so strongly, that a detachment of Austrians having made a sally from Mantua, they immediately sprang to arms, took it prisoner, and conducted it in triumph to Napoleon. When the Austrians saw that Napoleon was endeavoring to make soldiers of the Italians, they ridiculed the idea, saying that they had tried the experiment in vain, and that it was not possible for an Italian to make a good soldier. "Notwithstanding this," said Napoleon, "I raised many thousands of Italians, who fought with a bravery equal to that of the French, and who did not desert me even in my adversity. What was the cause? I abolished flogging. Instead of the lash I introduced the stimulus of honor. Whatever debases a man can not be serviceable. What honor can a man possibly have who is flogged before his comrades. When a soldier has been debased by stripes he cares little for his own reputation or for the honor of his country. After an action I assembled the officers and soldiers and inquired who had proved themselves heroes. Such of them as were able to read and write I promoted. Those who were not I ordered to study five hours a day, until they had learned a sufficiency, and then promoted them. Thus I substituted honor and emulation for terror and the lash."

He bound the Duke of Parma and the Duke of Tuscany to him by ties of friendship. He cheered the inhabitants of Lombardy with the hope, that as soon as extricated from his present embarrassments, he would do something for the promotion of their independence. Thus with the skill of a veteran diplomatist he raised around him friendly governments, and availed himself of all the resources of politics to make amends for the inefficiency of the Directory. Never was a man placed in a situation where more delicacy of tact was necessary. The Republican party in all the Italian states were clamorous for the support of Napoleon, and waited but his permission to raise the standard of revolt. Had the slightest encouragement been given the whole peninsula would have plunged into the horrors of civil war; and the awful scenes which had been enacted in Paris would have been re-enacted in every city in Italy. The aristocratic party would have been roused to perfect desperation, and the situation of Napoleon would have been still more precarious. It required consummate genius as a statesman, and moral courage of the highest order, to wield such opposing influences. But the greatness of Napoleon shone forth even more brilliantly in the cabinet than in the field. The course which he had pursued had made him extremely popular with the Italians. They regarded him as their countryman. They were proud of his fame. He was driving from their territory the haughty Austrians whom they hated. He was the enemy of despots, the friend of the people. Their own beautiful language was his mother tongue. He was familiar with their manners and customs, and they felt flattered by his high appreciation of their literature and arts.

Napoleon, in the midst of these stormy scenes, also dispatched an armament from Leghorn, to wrest his native island of Corsica from the dominion of the English. Scott, in allusion to the fact that Napoleon never manifested any special attachment for the obscure island of his birth, beautifully says, "He was like the young lion, who, while he is scattering the herds and destroying the hunters, thinks little of the forest cave in which he first saw the light." But at St. Helena Napoleon said, and few will read his remarks without emotion, "What recollections of childhood crowd upon my memory, when my thoughts are no longer occupied with political subjects, or with the insults of my jailer upon this rock. I am carried back to my first impressions of the life of man. It seems to me always in these moments of calm, that I should have been the happiest man in the world, with an income of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, living as the father of a family, with my wife and son, in our old house at Ajaccio. You, Montholon, remember its beautiful situation. You have often despoiled it of its finest bunches of grapes, when you ran off with Pauline to satisfy your childish appetite. Happy hours! The natal soil has infinite charms. Memory embellishes it with all its attractions, even to the very odor of the ground, which one can so realize to the senses, as to be able with the eyes shut, to tell the spot first trodden by the foot of childhood. I still remember with emotion the most minute details of a journey in which I accompanied Paoli. More than five hundred of us, young persons of the first families in the island, formed his guard of honor. I felt proud of walking by his side, and he appeared to take pleasure in pointing out to me, with paternal affection, the passes of our mountains which had been witnesses of the heroic struggle of our countrymen for independence. The impression made upon me still vibrates in my heart. Come, place your hand," said he to Montholon, "upon my bosom! See how it beats!" "And it was true," Montholon remarks, "his heart did beat with such rapidity as would have excited my astonishment, had I not been acquainted with his organization, and with the kind of electric commotion which his thoughts communicated to his whole being." "It is like the sound of a church bell," continued Napoleon. "There is none upon this rock. I am no longer accustomed to hear it. But the tones of a bell never fall upon my ear without awakening within me the emotions of childhood. The Angelus bell transported me back to pensive yet pleasant memories, when in the midst of earnest thoughts and burdened with the weight of an imperial crown, I heard its first sounds under the shady woods of St. Cloud. And often have I been supposed to have been revolving the plan of a campaign or digesting an imperial law, when my thoughts were wholly absorbed in dwelling upon the first impressions of my youth. Religion is in fact the dominion of the soul. It is the hope of life, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! What a power would it still have, did its ministers comprehend their mission."

Early in November the Austrians commenced their march. The cold winds of winter were sweeping through the defiles of the Tyrol, and the summits of the mountains were white with snow. But it was impossible to postpone operations; for unless Wurmser were immediately relieved Mantua must fall, and with it would fall all hopes of Austrian dominion in Italy. The hardy old soldier had killed all his horses, and salted them down for provisions; but even that coarse fare was nearly exhausted, and he had succeeded in sending word to Alvinzi that he could not possibly hold out more than six weeks longer. Napoleon, the moment he heard that the Austrians were on the move, hastened to the head-quarters of the army at Verona. He had stationed General Vaubois, with twelve thousand men, a few miles north of Trent, in a narrow defile among the mountains to watch the Austrians, and to arrest their first advances. Vaubois and his division, overwhelmed by numbers, retreated, and thus vastly magnified the peril of the army. The moment Napoleon received the disastrous intelligence, he hastened, with such troops as he could collect, like the sweep of the wind, to rally the retreating forces and check the progress of the enemy. And here he singularly displayed that thorough knowledge of human nature which enabled him so effectually to control and to inspire his army. Deeming it necessary, in his present peril, that every man should be a hero, and that every regiment should be nerved by the determination to conquer or to die, he resolved to make a severe example of those whose panic had proved so nearly fatal to the army. Like a whirlwind, surrounded by his staff, he swept into the camp, and ordered immediately the troops to be collected in a circle around him. He sat upon his horse, and every eye was fixed upon the pale and wan, and wasted features of their young and adored general. With a stern and saddened voice he exclaimed, "Soldiers! I am displeased with you. You have evinced neither discipline nor valor. You have allowed yourselves to be driven from positions where a handful of resolute men might have arrested an army. You are no longer French soldiers! Chief of the staff, cause it to be written on their standards, They are no longer of the army of Italy."