ON THE MOST IMPORTANT MEN ASSOCIATED WITH NAPOLEON
ABRANTÈS, Duke of. See JUNOT.
BASSANO, Duke of. See MARET.
BEAUHARNAIS, Prince Eugène de, VICEROY OF ITALY: born in Paris, 1781. Son of Josephine, and step-son of Napoleon,. Resented his mother’s second marriage; aide-de-camp to Napoleon in Italy and Egypt; with his sister, Hortense, helped to reconcile Napoleon and Josephine in 1799. Granted two hundred thousand francs yearly, and title of Prince, after the Empire was established; Viceroy of Italy, with large administrative powers, after Napoleon became King there in 1805; married Princess Amelia Augusta of Bavaria the same year, by Napoleon’s arrangement; Grand Duke of Frankfort, 1810. Commanded the Fifth Corps in the Russian campaign, and distinguished himself at Borodino and Malo-Jaroslawetz.—Eugene, despite the favouritism shown in his rapid advancement, was one of Napoleon’s ablest officers, civil or military. He rallied what was left of the Grand Army in February, 1813, following Murat’s abdication of command. After Napoleon’s downfall Eugène retired to live in Munich, under the titles of Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstädt. He died in 1824.
BELLUNO, Duke of. See VICTOR.
BERTHIER, Louis-Alexandre, PRINCE OF NEUCHÂTEL; chief-of-staff: born at Versailles, 1753. Son of an officer of the Engineers Corps. Entered the army at seventeen, after instruction by his father; went to America with Rochambeau in 1780, and returned a colonel. Protected the aunts of Louis XVI in 1791, and aided their escape; served in the Vendee, 1793-95; general of division, Army of Italy, the year following. Thereafter Napoleon’s chief-of-staff in every campaign until Fontainebleau; a marshal of the original creation; Prince of Wagram, 1809; married the King of Bavaria’s niece.—With Marmont and Murat, Berthier made up the chosen three whom Napoleon met at the siege of Toulon and took to Italy with him in 1796. He abandoned the Emperor before the first abdication. The manner of Berthier’s death, on June 1, 1815, is uncertain. He had gone to Bamberg at the start of the Hundred Days; and there he either was assassinated by secret agents, or threw himself from his window when he saw Cossacks on their way into France.
BESSIÈRES, Jean-Baptiste, DUKE OF ISTRIA: born near Cahors, 1768. Served first in the Constitutional Guard of Louis XVI; captain in the Italian campaign of 1796; went to Styria with Napoleon in command of the Guides, from which the Consular, later the Imperial, Guard was built up. Brilliant service with the cavalry at Marengo; general of division, 1802; marshal, 1804; at Wagram, his horse was killed under him. Replaced Bernadotte as head of the Army of the North; commanded the Guard Cavalry at Borodino and during the retreat from Russia.—Bessières was put in command of the fifteen thousand cavalry that Napoleon was able to muster in the spring of 1813. Three days after the campaign opened, he was killed by a musket-ball while reconnoitring the terrain at Posenaa-Rippach.
CAMBACÉRÈS, Jean-Jacques-Regis de, PRINCE OF PARMA: born at Montpellier, 1753. Descended from a well-known family, noblesse de la robe. Accepted the ideas of the Revolution in 1789, after progress towards the magistracy of his province; deputy to the Convention, 1792; voted the King guilty, but suggested withholding sentence; President of the Committee of Public Safety, 1795; Second Consul in 1799. Adviser in the drafting of the Napoleonic Code; helped the First Consul obtain appointment for life; disapproved of the Duke of Enghien’s execution. Appointed Vicechancellor, prince of the Empire, and President of the Senate in perpetuity.—Cambacérès was renowned as much as anything else for his fine table, which Napoleon took advantage of for diplomatic purposes. After the second abdication the Duke of Parma was exiled, but afterwards regained his civil rights and lived in retirement until his death in 1824.
DAVOUT, Louis-Nicolas, PRINCE OF ECKMÜHL: born at Annoux (Yonne), 1770. Son of a nobleman. Entered the army as sub-lieutenant at eighteen; already a brigadier at the Revolution, he embraced its ideas but was removed from the active list; reinstated under the Directory; on the Rhine, 1794-97; Egypt; held command in the Consular Guard, 1801; created marshal at Napoleon’s accession, and later Duke of Auerstädt for his defeat of the main Prussian Army in the battle of that name.—Davout was the strictest disciplinarian amongst the Imperial marshals, to which fact, and to the consequent employment of his corps for arduous duties, he owed his general unpopularity. After the first abdication he retired to private life. He reorganised the army for the Hundred Days, held Paris with the reserves during Waterloo, and thereafter threatened to make a campaign of his own unless the Allies signed a general amnesty. He was deprived of his titles after the amnesty was violated, but later he regained them, was admitted to the Chamber of Peers, and died in Paris in 1823.
DUROC, Géraud-Christophe-Michel, DUKE OF FRIULI: born at Pont à Mousson, 1772. Son of an army officer. Gazetted second-lieutenant of artillery, 1793; aide-de-camp to Napoleon, 1796; Italy; seriously wounded in Egypt; first aide-de-camp, 1798, and brigadier two years later. Grand Marshal of the Palace, in charge of the Household administration and of the Emperor’s personal safety. Employed as diplomatist in forming the Confederation of the Rhine; Senator after the Russian campaign.—Duroc was mortally wounded at the battle of Bautzen, May 21, 1813, and died two days later in a near-by farmhouse. Napoleon bought the farm and erected a monument there. The Grand Marshal was buried in the Invalides.
ECKMÜHL, Prince of. See DAVOUT.
ELCHINGEN, Duke of. See NEY.
FRIULI, Duke of. See DUROC.
ISTRIA, Duke of. See BESSIÈRES.
JUNOT, Andoche, DUKE OF ABRANTES: born at Bussy-le-Grand (Cote d’Or), 1771. A law student at the outbreak of the Revolution; joined a volunteer battalion; served Bonaparte as secretary during the siege of Toulon, and as aide-de-camp in Italy; gravely wounded at Lonato. Brigadier in Egypt; wounded again, in a duel on his commander’s behalf; was left in Egypt to recover, and fell into British hands on his way home. General of division and Commandant of Paris; Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour when his associates became marshals. Ambassador to Lisbon; deserted his post to serve with distinction at Austerlitz; created duke for his brilliant but vain effort to seize the Portuguese fleet in 1807. Governor of Portugal; his weak administration compelled the French evacuation of that country; served under Masséna in Spain, 1810-11; seriously wounded again. Corps-commander in the Russian campaign; Governor of Illyria thereafter.—Junot is thought to have suffered from nervous instability consequent upon his first wound. His uncertain temper and his extravagance made him difficult to employ in peace-time; he was always bitterly resentful over not being made a marshal; and he was one of the few reputed lovers of Pauline Bonaparte who procured no advancement in that way. His growing derangement during the Russian campaign made a scapegoat of him, and put an end to his days of active service. On July 29, 1813, in a seizure of insanity, he threw himself from a window at Montbard.
MARET, Hugues-Bernard, DUKE OF BASSANO: born at Dijon, 1763. An advocate and publicist. Helped to publish the debates of the First National Assembly in the Moniteur universel; served in Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 1792; appointed ambassador to Naples; captured by the Austrians and held prisoner for thirty months. Secretary to Napoleon, 1799, and editor of the Moniteur; created count, 1807, and duke, 1809. Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1811; served at Wilna as link with the home offices during the Russian campaign; again private secretary to Napoleon, 1814-15.—Maret was replaced by Caulaincourt as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when the events of 1813 began to take shape. (The Grand Ecuyer was thought to be more devoted to the cause of peace, and more personally acceptable to the Tsar Alexander.) Following the second Bourbon restoration the Duke of Bassano retired to Grätz, where for five years he was engaged in literary work. He was made a Peer of France upon his return there in 1820, and he died in Paris in 1839.
MORTIER, Edouard-Adolphe-Casimir-Joseph, DUKE OF TREVISO: born at Chateau Cambrésis, 1768. Entered the army as sub-lieutenant, 1791; served in the Netherlands, and on the Meuse and Rhine, 1792-3; promoted to brigadier and the general of division for service against the Second Coalition, 1799. Commanded the French occupation of Hanover, and was made a marshal of the original creation, 1804; corps-commander in the Ulm campaign, and at Friedland; was created duke, and led two campaigns in the Peninsula, 1808-9. Led the Young Guard in Russia, and again in 1813; rejoined Napoleon after the return from Elba; was given the high command, but fell ill at the opening of the Waterloo campaign.—Mortier, after his readmission to the Chamber of Peers in 1819, served the Bourbons as ambassador to St. Petersburg, as Minister of War and as President of the Council. Along with eleven others, while in attendance upon Louis-Philippe, he was killed by a bomb-thrower’s attempt to assassinate the King in Paris, July 28, 1839.
MURAT, Joachim, KING OF NAPLES: born at La Bastide-Fortunière (Lot), 1757. Younger son of an innkeeper. Obtained a bursary to study for the priesthood at Cahors, and later at Toulouse; after dissipating his allowance, he joined the cavalry; dismissed for insubordination, 1790. After various abortive efforts at a military career, he met Bonaparte in Paris, 1795; obtained the guns for the “whiff of grapeshot”; Italy, 1796; general of division, 1799, following the battle of the Pyramids; returned to France with Bonaparte; led the grenadiers into the Council of Five Hundred at Saint-Cloud, thus implementing Napoleon’s coup d‘état. Commandant of the Consular Guard thereafter; married Caroline Bonaparte, 1800; Governor of the Cisalpine Republic; Duke of Berg and Cleves, 1806; commanded the cavalry at Jena, Eylau, Friedland; general-in-chief in Spain, 1808, whereafter he expected to be made king there. Became Joachim Napoleon, King of Naples, after Joseph Bonaparte’s transfer to the Spanish throne; took Capri from the British. Commanded the cavalry in Russia; was left the high command after the Emperor returned to Paris; fled to Naples in disguise, February, 1813, after his mismanagement had destroyed the remnant of the Grand Army. Made the second campaign of 1813 with Napoleon, but concluded a separate peace after Leipzig; joined the allies by treaty in 1814, in an effort to keep his throne.—Murat, who introduced shock-tactics into cavalry warfare, was one of the greatest leaders of all time in that branch. He had a photographic eye for the contour of terrain; blunders such as that of the sunken road at Waterloo were unknown under his generalship. In other capacities, however, he was worse than useless to Napoleon after the coup d’état. He thought himself a statesman; he seized the occasion of the return from Elba to lead Neapolitan forces against the north of Italy, which he hoped to make into a united kingdom; and thus he provided the overt act which set the allies in motion and compelled Napoleon, who had refused his services, to undertake the Belgian campaign. After Murat’s troops had been scattered by the Austrians at Tolentino, King Joachim attempted to regain Naples, but was captured, tried by court-martial and shot, October 13, 1815.
NAPLES, King of. See MURAT.
NEUCHÂTEL, Prince of. See BERTHIER.
NEY, Michel, DUKE OF ELCHINGEN: born at Saarlouis, 1762. Son of a cooper. Enlisted in a hussar regiment at Metz, 1788; first commission, 1792; general of division, 1799. Begged Napoleon to make himself Emperor, 1803; marshal of the original creation; commanded the Grand Army at Elchingen, where his victory insured the Austrians’ surrender at Ulm, and whence his title, 1808; Jena, Eylau, Friedland; with Napoleon to Spain; Peninsular War, 1808-11. In 1812, commanded the centre at Borodino, and was created Prince of the Moskowa that evening; in charge of the rear-guard at start and end of the retreat from Moscow. Corps-commander in the campaign of 1813; protested devotion to the Bourbons upon Napoleon’s return from Elba; was sent to bring the returning exile back to Paris “in an iron cage,” but let his men go over in a body to the Imperial recruits at Grenoble; received a command on the eve of Waterloo, where he led the last charge of the Old Guard.—Ney, who received the epithet “bravest of the brave” from Napoleon himself, appears, like many others who made that campaign, to have been a little “touched” after his return from Russia. His conduct at Waterloo was most erratic. There, in the midst of the action, he beat fieldpieces with the flat of his sword. On August 5, following—his spirit broken—he allowed himself to be arrested, and demanded that his trial for treason be conducted before the Chamber of Peers. Despite the general amnesty which Davout had exacted, the younger Bourbons were determined to make an example of Ney, who had made them ridiculous at Grenoble. (Two of them were to have got credit there for Napoleon’s capture, after Ney had done the work.) The Marshal-Prince of the Moskowa, sentenced to death by a body which included even a few of his former brothers-in-arms, was shot in the Luxembourg Gardens, December 7, 1815.
OUDINOT, Charles-Nicholas, DUKE OF REGGIO: born at Bar-le-duc, 1767. Son of a bourgeois family. Entered the army at seventeen, but withdrew three years later with rank of sergeant because none but a noble could go higher. Elected lieutenant-colonel, volunteers of the Meuse, 1792; brigadier, 1794; general of division and chief-of-staff, 1799; Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour when his associates were made marshals; divisional commander of grenadiers at Hollabrünn, Austerlitz, Ostrolenka, Friedland. Governor of Erfurt and count of the Empire, 1808; marshal, 1809, and Duke the year following; administrator of Holland, 1810-12; corps-commander in Russia; defeated at Gross Beeren, and afterwards superseded by Ney, in the last Napoleonic drive on Berlin.—After Fontainebleau, Oudinot stood by the Bourbon government. Louis XVIII made him a peer, and he died governor of the Invalides, September 13, 1847.
PARMA, Duke of. See CAMBACÉRÈS.
PONIATOWSKI, Prince Joseph: born in Warsaw, 1762. Nephew of the last King of Poland. Entered the Austrian service at sixteen; returned to Poland and fought against the Russians in 1792; later commander-in-chief and Minister of War for the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Organized the Polish forces for the campaign of 1812, and commanded the Fifth Corps of the Grand Army; refused all offers to desert Napoleon thereafter; made the campaign of 1813, in command of the Polish contingent.—Poniatowski had been unwilling to accept French honours, since he did not wish his countrymen to think him forgetful of their cause. Against his wishes, however, Napoleon created him a marshal of the Empire, October 16, 1813. Two days later Poniatowski, wounded in three places, was drowned while trying to swim the Elster. The Emperor, retreating from Leipzig, had left him and the Polish remnant to hold back the entire allied advance, and had blown up the bridges without waiting for him.
REGGIO, Duke of. See OUDINOT.
ROVIGO, Duke of. See SAVARY.
SAVARY, Anne-Jean-Marie, DUKE OF ROVIGO: born at Marcq in the Ardennes, 1774. Attended the College of St.-Louis at Metz; entered the army, 1790; squadron-leader, 1797; Egypt; attracted the First Consul’s notice at Marengo, and thereafter was put in charge of the Consular gendarmerie. Commanded the troops at Vincennes at the Duke of Enghien’s execution; general of division, 1805; ambassador to St. Petersburg, 1807, and soon after to Madrid; succeeded Fouché as Minister of Police, 1810, and as such attended to the exiling of Mme. de Staël and the destruction of her works.—Savary was Caulaincourt’s predecessor at St. Petersburg. He was recalled from Russia, partly of his own motion, because the post required someone with a better knowledge of the great world. Later, he was one of the few who stayed with Napoleon at Fontainebleau, and, following the second abdication, he attempted to follow him to St. Helena. However, he was sent back from Plymouth, afterwards regained his civil rights, and died in Paris in June, 1833.
TREVISO, Duke of. See MORTIER.
VICEROY, the, of Italy. See BEAUHARNAIS.
VICTOR (né Perrin), Claude, DUKE OF BELLUNO: born at La Marche in the Vosges, 1764. Son of a process-server. Joined the army at seventeen; brigadier, 1793; was noticed by Bonaparte at Toulon; general of division, 1797; made both Italian campaigns, and commanded the vanguard in the second; distinction at Marengo. Captured in the Prussian campaign, and exchanged for Blücher at Friedland; marshal of the later creation, and Governor of Berlin after Tilsit; corps-commander in Spain with some success, but was defeated by Wellington at Talavera. Commanded the Ninth Corps in Russia, and bore the brunt at the Beresina crossing.—Victor was one of the first to go over to the Bourbons, and so was made chairman of the military commission appointed to try Ney and other recidivist officers after the Hundred Days. In 1821 he served the Bourbons as Minister of War, and in 1823 he went into Spain as second-in-command of their Peninsular expedition. Habits acquired during the great days in the Peninsula were too strong for him, however; he had to be recalled on suspicion of complicity in fraudulent contracts. Victor lived until March 1, 1841.