23

Recriminations

Almost immediately after the restoration of Louis XVIII, it was announced in Le Moniteur that those senior individuals in France who were seen as having helped Napoleon regain power were going to be dealt with:

All those officers who betrayed the King before March 20th [i.e. before Napoleon had become de facto head of state] or attacked France and the government with armed force, as well as those who seized power by violence, will be arrested and brought before competent courts-martial in their respective military districts.¹

This led to a few high-profile arrests, trials, suicides and executions. The most notable of these was the trial of Marshal Ney, who at one time was arguably the most influential man in the French Army. After Napoleon’s first abdication, Ney had decided to accept a position in the Bourbon army but then became the highest ranking officer to join Napoleon as he advanced on Paris in March 1815.

Exactly what fate awaited him after Napoleon had abdicated for a second time was the subject of much speculation, as shown in the note in the Hampshire Chronicle of Monday, 3 July 1815:

It has been rumoured that Marshall Ney, in attempting to escape to America, has been taken in a schooner belonging to the United States.

This was soon found to be false information. ‘Several of the partisans of Bonaparte, who have been in the late revolution’, ran a piece in the Caledonian Mercury of Saturday, 22 July 1815,

… have, it is said, been invited to quit France. Ney has received passports for Switzerland. Maret is to proceed to Saxe Weimar, and Murat is at Toulon, hesitating whether he shall join his family at Prague, or whether he shall go to England.

It was very apparent to many of Napoleon’s supporters that their lives were in danger all the time they remained in France. The following report, from the Morning Post of 15 August 1815, concerns Marshal Guillaume Marie Anne Brune who was the commander of the Army of the Var, and as such was responsible for the defence of the south of France against the Austrian army:

After Marshal Brune had quitted Toulon, he proceeded with passports from M. De Riviere; he was recognised by the populace at Avignon, and a commotion immediately ensued. M. Brune quitted the carriage, and sought refuge in one of the inns. The Prefect who had previously seen him, and advised him to continue his route without delay, was much perplexed. During four hours and a half, at the peril of his own life, he defended that of M. Brune.

All his efforts, however, were insufficient to allay the fury of the populace – There was no armed force in the town. At length, when the Marshal deemed it certain the gate of his asylum would be forced, he put an end to his existence with a pistol. The Prefect of the Vaucluse has given orders for the prosecution of the principal authors of the above tumult.

Whether or not he killed himself or was killed by the Royalists is uncertain. His body was thrown into the River Rhône but later recovered.

Fearing a similar end Ney went into hiding, but such a well-known and distinctive individual could not remain out of sight for long. His arrest was detailed in many newspapers, including the Morning Post of 15 August 1815, which quoted a report from Paris dated 11 August:

Marshal Ney has been discovered in the Canton de Figeac, near the bounds of the department du Cantal. He was forthwith arrested and conveyed to Aurillac. This important event may be attributed to the vigilance of M. Locard, Prefect of du Cantal. The Captain of the Gendarmerie executed the orders of M. Locard, with the greatest zeal and activity.

The following circumstances respecting Ney are extracted from a letter from Riam, dated the 9th.

Marshal Ney had retired with much secrecy to the chateau of one of his friends near Aurillac. His presence prevented the reception of much company in the house. An individual of the town dining there one day, remarked a sabre, which appeared to him to be exceedingly curious and valuable.

On his return to Aurillac, the Gentleman spoke of the circumstance to several of his friends as very remarkable. One of these observed, ‘That sabre can only belong to Murat or Ney – no one but these had a sabre of that kind. On this information being conveyed to the SubPrefect, steps were taken for the arrestation of the Marshal.’

Marshal Soult, who had acted as Napoleon’s Chief of Staff during the Hundred Days campaign, was also arrested, as reported in the Chester Courant on Tuesday, 25 July 1815:

Marshal Soult has been arrested at Mende, by the National Guards, who lodged him in the prefecture, where he waits the orders of Government. The Prefect and Commandant of this Department have been also arrested, and imprisoned in the steeple of the Cathedral.

Soult faced trail and was banished from France. He returned in 1819 and eventually became the French Prime Minister.

Murat, the former King of Naples who had disobeyed Napoleon by launching his premature offensive, tried to regain his throne. However, he was captured in Naples, brought before a tribunal and sentenced to death, as related by his widow:

The prisoner listened to his sentence with coolness and contempt. He was then led into a little court of the castle, where he found a party of soldiers drawn up in two files. Upon these preparations he looked calmly, and refused to permit his eyes to be covered. Then advancing in front of the party, and, placing himself in an attitude to meet the bullets, he called out to the soldiers, ‘Spare my face – aim at the heart.’ No sooner had he uttered these words than the party fired, and he, who had been so lately King of the Two Sicilies, fell dead, holding fast with his hands the portraits of his family.²

The trial of Marshal Ney was reported in most of the British newspapers, including the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal of Friday, 24 November 1815, which detailed the appeal of Ney to the Allied Powers concerning the legality of the charge laid against him. His argument was as follows:

Victory soon decided in favour of the English and Prussian arms on the plains of Waterloo, and brought them under the walls of Paris. There remained, to oppose their ulterior progress, a corps of the French army, which might have sold their lives dearly. A negociation took place, and on the 3d of July, a convention between the two parties was signed. The 12th article of which, says:

‘Shall be equally respected, persons and private property; the inhabitants, and, in general, all the individuals who are in the capital, shall continue to enjoy their rights and liberty, without being disturbed or sought after for any thing relating to the functions they occupy, or shall have occupied, their conduct and their political opinions..’ The Convention has been since ratified by each of the Allied Sovereigns.

Ney might seem here to have a good case. However, this was the reply sent to him, from Paris on 15 November 1815, by the Allied supreme commander, the Duke of Wellington:

I have had the honour of receiving the note which you addressed to me on the 13th instant, relative to the operation of the Capitulation of Paris in your case.

The Capitulation of Paris of the 3d July last, was made between the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied and Parisian Armies on the one part, and the Prince d’Eckmuhl [Marshal Davout] Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, on the other, and related exclusively to the military occupation of Paris.

The object of the twelfth article was to prevent any measure of severity under the military authority of those who made it towards any persons in Paris, on account of any offices they had filled, or any conduct or political opinions of theirs: but it never was intended, and never could be intended, to prevent either the existing French Government, under whose authority the French Commander in Chief must have acted, or any French Government which might succeed to it, from acting in this respect as it might seem fit.

This, it would seem, sealed Ney’s fate. Further details concerning Ney’s trial appeared in the Caledonian Mercury of 25 November 1815. The first report was dated 18 November:

Generals Grouchy, Lefebvre, Desnouettes, Gilly, and Michaud, have been arrested. Talleyrand, de Jaucourt, and Gouvion St Cyr, have refused to sit upon the trial of Ney, upon the grounds of their being members of the Administration under which he was arrested, and consequently his accusers. Augereau has also declined sitting upon his trial.

The second part of the Caledonian Mercury’s account was dated the next day, 19 November. It, too, had been sent from Paris:

I am told that Ney betrays great fears for the result of his trial, and that his courage has forsaken him. His confessor is constantly with him, and he is frequently found in tears. He is to be transferred to-morrow to the Luxemburg, where he is to remain in a place of security near the Chamber of Peers. His trial is definitely fixed for Tuesday next, and it is expected his fate will be decided on the Thursday following.

The decision of the court was that Ney was guilty of ‘having maintained intelligence with Buonaparte in order to second the progress of his arms against French territory on the night of 13–14 March [when he went over to Napoleon’s side]; having aided him with troops and men; by speeches in public places, broadsheets, posters and printed material, of having directly incited the citizens to fight one another; of having encouraged soldiers to pass over to the enemy.’³ The death sentence was pronounced.

The following report in the Sussex Advertiser of 18 December 1815, carried the headline ‘Further Particulars of the Last Moments of Marshal Ney’:

When the judgment was announced to him, he said, ‘it would have been more military to have said, you are to bite the dust.’ At the execution, he endeavoured to protest against the iniquity of the sentence, and appealed to God and posterity. The Officer, commanding the veterans attempting to give the word, appeared struck dumb. L’Espinois (the commander of the military division) then said, ‘Officer, if you cannot command, I will,’ the latter remaining silent, the Marshal himself said, ‘Soldiers, do your duty,’ upon which the platoon ordered for the purpose, fired at random, only five out of sixteen balls fired struck the Marshal, who fell upon his knees, and died instantly. The officer recovering himself said, ‘There is still a platoon, let them shoot me also.’ The officer is put under arrest.

Marshal Ney was buried yesterday at the cemetery of La Chaise. Madame Ney was accompanied to the Thulleries by her four children and sister, she remained in the salon de la paix some time before the Duc de Duras came to inform her that she could not be received by the king, and leading her down the grand staircase, acquainted her with the mournful execution; she fainted, and was with difficulty removed to her carriage amidst the cries of her children, and the lamentations of the spectators of this distressing scene. She had several times endeavoured to see the Duchess d’Angouleme, near to whose person she had been brought up when a child; the Duchess however, as well as the Princess, constantly refused to see her.

Not every trial resulted in the death sentence. General Pierre-Jacques- Etienne Michel Cambronne commanded the 1st Chasseurs of the Old Guard. A dedicated supporter of Napoleon, he had followed him to Elba and returned with the Emperor to overthrow Louis. The story of the results of his trial were published in the Liverpool Mercury of Friday, 10 May 1816:

During the deliberation of the Court, which lasted very long in Cambronne’s case, that General having withdrawn, called for a dinner, of which he eat most composedly and plentifully. – Suspecting that a fatal sentence awaited him, and his mind being fully made up to that event, he occupied himself afterwards in making some last arrangements, and in preparing the following letter to the Commander of the 1st military division.

‘M. de Lespinois – I am condemned to death. I address you this letter to apprise you that I positively disclaim all applications for pardon that may be made for me, either by my family, my friends, or my counsel. The only favour which I solicit of those who are competent to grant it, is that my sentence be executed immediately.’

When his cousin, a most interesting young Lady, ran up to him to inform him of his acquittal, he said – ‘Well then, my letters will be useless;’ and he was going to destroy them, when she snatched up the one in question and preserved it. My translation of it is literal.

It was not only French officers that faced inquests into their conduct. The Duke of Cumberland’s Hussars, which formed part of the 1st Hanoverian Cavalry Brigade, was posted behind the main Anglo- Netherlands line at Waterloo. After the charge by the British heavy cavalry, Colonel Hake was asked to move his regiment further forward. The Hussars did not move.

Unlike the British cavalry regiments which had dismounted to reduce casualties from the French artillery, the Cumberland Hussars remained in their saddles and suffered accordingly. Uxbridge saw that the Hussars were wavering under the bombardment and were beginning to fall back. He sent his aide over to see what was happening. Colonel von Hake apparently explained that since his men were volunteers and their horses were their own property, he did not believe that he could order them to remain under fire. Despite Seymour’s insistence, the Hussars left the field and rode all the way back to Brussels declaring that the battle was lost and that the French would be in the Belgian capital within hours. As a consequence, Hake faced a court-martial. This was reported in the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal on Friday, 1 March 1816:

Advices from Hanover state, that the court martial ordered to enquire into the conduct of Colonel Hake, formerly commanding the Cumberland hussars, as well as of the regiment accused of having failed in its duty, in leaving the field of battle at Waterloo, on the 18th of June, has condemned Colonel Hake to be cashiered and degraded, but acquitted the regiment of the charge of having disordered the ranks of the army. Major Mellzing, the second in command, is severely reprimanded for not having opposed the retreat of his corps.

The following extract from ‘Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolks,’ will explain the foregoing paragraph:-

‘In another part of the field, the Hanoverian hussars of Cumberland, as they were called, a corps distinguished for their handsome appearance and complete equipment, were ordered to support a charge made by the British. Their gallant commanding officer showed no alacrity in obeying this order, and indeed observed so much ceremony, that, after having been once and again ordered to advance, an aide-de-camp of the Duke of Wellington informed him of his Grace’s command that he should either advance or draw off his men entirely, and not remain there to show a bad example, and discourage others. The gallant officer of hussars, considering this as a serious option submitted to his own decision, was not long in making his choice; and having expressed to the aide-de-camp his sense of the Duke’s kindness, and of the consideration which he had for raw troops under a fire of such unexampled severity, said he would embrace the alternative of drawing his men off, and posting them behind the hamlet of St. John. This he accordingly did, in spite of the reproaches of the aide-de-camp, who loaded him with every epithet that is most disgraceful to a soldier.

‘The incident, although sufficiently mortifying in itself, and attended, as may be supposed, with no little inconvenience at such a moment, had something in it so comic, that neither the General nor any of his attendants were able to resist laughing when it was communicated by the incensed aide-de-camp. I have been told that many of the officers and soldiers of this unlucky regiment left it in shame, joined themselves to other bodies of cavalry, and behaved well in the action. But the valiant commander, not finding himself comfortable in the place of refuge which he had himself chosen, fled to Brussels, and alarmed the town with a report that the French were at his heels. His regiment was afterwards in a manner disbanded, or attached to the service of the commissariat.’

Hake was not the only Allied officer that was brought before a court- martial, as reported in the Hereford Journal of Wednesday, 27 September 1815:

Ramsgate, Sept 21. – We regret to announce the landing here of a British Officer from Ostend, under arrest and in irons, said to have entered the French army, and taken at the battle of Waterloo. He is a fine looking young man, and appeared indifferent as to his disgraceful situation. The cause assigned for his traitorous conduct is from having, when in the Peninsula with the immortal Wellington, undergone a Court Martial, the sentence of which inflicted a severe, though merited, wound upon his honour as an Officer and a Gentleman. The offence he has now been guilty of, we are happy to reflect, is of a rare and almost unheard of description in the British Army.