Swords Around A Throne

616 Pages·1997·5.01 MB·English

by  John R. Elting

Acclaim for Swords Around a Throne
`A fascinating tale, an excellent book."
James L. Stokesbury, Army Magazine
"Fresh, evocative, vivid, and dramatic ... this book reads like a grand novel in the
old style, with the added charm of one of the world's most enduringly fascinating people
at its center. It is a military buff's delight, but also offers large rewards for the general
reader of history."
-Wall Street Journal
"In this thorough and immensely entertaining book ... no aspect of the life of the
Grande Armee escapes Elting's attentions.... Swords Around a Throne is unlikely to be
surpassed."
-Washington Post Book World
"Written in a lively and ironic style, Elting's book offers a wealth of information
and color on this vast undertaking, both new and familiar, which is likely to be of great
interest to military historians, wargamers, and Napoleon buffs.... A work rich in narration
and anecdotal flair."
-The Historian
"The author is knowledgeable, articulate, and meticulously accurate.... His
graceful prose makes the intricacies of grand strategy clear, even to the casual reader, but
does not neglect the minutiae of the daily grind of military life.... Elting's analytical, often
wry, style lends needed perspective."
-Sea Power
"Elting creates a fascinating picture of the people, their motives and their methods,
that made up the metabolism of the Grande Armee and gave it its life blood.... Perceptive
and colourful."
-London Times
`An excellent and unique book.... The author approaches a familiar topic from a
fresh perspective.... Scholarly without being ponderous or presumptuous, this work will
be appreciated by scholars, students, buffs, and general readers."
choice
"The text is superb. It is a mine of information that will be read with interest by
professional historians and military buffs alike. Elting's attention to the most minute
detail would make Napoleon proud."
-Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Swords Around a Throne
Napoleon's Grande Armee
John R. Elting
To Ann, my wife, who-during the years of research that went into this
book-sometimes declared herself the last widow of the Napoleonic Wars!
"The Grand Arm&e fought hard, seldom cheered, and always bitched."
Elzear Blaze, La Vie Militaire

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments Xi
Points of Information xiii
Prologue 1
1. All the King's Horses and the King's Men: The Royal Army 5
II. "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite": The Armies of the Revolution 27
III. Enter la Grande Armee 55
IV. The Imperial Way 67
V. Grand Quartier-General 81
VI. Tall in the Saddle and Under the Rose 103
VII. Much High Brass and Some Low Brows 123
VIII. They Also Served 157
IX. Garde Imperiale 183
X. Poor Bloody Infantry 207
XI. The High Horsemen 227
XII. "It Is with Artillery That One Makes War" 249
XIII. Genie: "The Jesuits of the Army" 267
XIV. Wherever a Comrade May Need My Help 281
XV. Matters Nautical: La Marine 297
XVI. Remounts and Replacements 313
XVII. Trumpets and Drums and Cuckoos 335
XVIII. Regiments Etrangers 355
XIX. Allies and Auxiliaries 387
XX. Law and Order: La Force Publique and L'Armee de 1'Interieur 411
XXI. Discipline and Disciplinary Units 429
XXII. Dressed to Kill 439
XXIII. Marches and Bivouacs 459
XXIV. "Haut les Armes!": Weapons and Ammunition 475
XXV. "Voici 1'Ennemi!" 495
XXVI. Strategy and Tactics 529
XXVII. Logistics 553
XXVIII. Soupe, Pret, et Comptibilite 575
XXIX. Men, Morale, Loot, and Baubles 589
XXX. Vivandieres, Blanchisseuses, Enfants,
et Bric-a-Brac 605
XXXI. Legitimacy Returns-Temporarily 623
XXXII. Les Cent Jours 643
XXXIII. Tout Est Fini 663
Appendix A Comparative Napoleonic and United States
Military Grades 675
Appendix B Glossary of Military Terms 678
Notes 681
Bibliography 735
Index 751

Preface and Acknowledgments
Certain of mankind's greatest armies have passed like meteors, bursting out of
chaos to storm across our history into enduring legend. Some have left us little more than
a proud tradition; others, a changed world.
To the cadenced thunder of their drums they pass, to the lilting of forgotten
trumpets, riddled standards high about the Great Captains who shaped and led them: The
pikes and muskets of Gustavus Adolphus's tautly disciplined Swedes and Scots; Oliver
Cromwell amidst his Ironside horsemen and redcoat infantry: George Washington's
tattered, hard-bitten Continentals; Napoleon's Grand Armde; the lean butternut ranks of
Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia; George H. Thomas's indomitable Army of
the Cumberland.
Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps and George S. Patton's Third Army were of their
true lineage.
The Grande Armee was the trenchant instrument with which Napoleon reshaped
both Europe and the art of war. Swift-marching, furious in the attack, grimly enduring,
high-hearted, stubborn in disaster, it still ranks among the few greatest of the great.
It also was many men of many different nations-many heroes, not a few cowards,
and the multitude who were neither but did their duty as they saw it.
This book is about that army, and those men.
Acknowledgments
To my mother, Myrtle Welborn Elting, who gave me that wonderful publication,
The Book of Knowledge, with its pictures of Napoleon and his white horse that caught
my imagination even before I could read, and taught me her own love of history.
To Ann, my wife, typist, and editor, whose steadfast and loving comradeship got
me through this long task.
To certain gallant gentlemen and scholars, some unfortunately no longer present:
Brigadier General Vincent J. Esposito, who encouraged my Napoleonic research and
gave me time for it "in addition to other duties"; Roger Forthoffer, retired commandant of
the Gendarmerie Nationale and inspired explorer of forgotten archives; Eugene Leliepvre,
official painter to the French Army; Paul Martin of the Strasbourg Museum; Dr. Jean
Humbert of the Musee de l'Armde; Frederick P. Todd, student of old uniforms; Andrew
Zaremba, student and veteran of the Polish Army; Anne S. K. (Mrs. John N.) Brown,
gifted collector and historian; Dr. J. G. Kerkhoven, Curator of the Royal Dutch Army
Museum; Dr. Tord Buggeland of the Maihaugen Museum, Lillehammer, Norway; Dr.
Kay S. Nielsen of the Tojhus- museet, Copenhagen; Dr. Bengt Hermansson and Dr. Nils
E. Herlitz of the Swedish National Defense Museum; and Dr. Alfred K. Hauge of the
Norwegian Defense Museum.
Also to Egon A. Weiss, once a soldier and then Librarian of the United States
Military Academy; Guy C. Dempsey, Jr., of the new generation of Napoleonic scholars;
and Donald D. Horward of Florida State University, authority on the Napoleonic epoch.
Finally to Mr. Charles E. Smith, Vice President and Publisher of the Macmillan
Publishing Company, who rescued this book from editorial confusion, and to Ms. Joyce
Seltzer, Senior Editor of The Free Press, who saw it into press.

Points of Information
1. The purist would require that Napoleon be styled "Napoleon Bonaparte" or
simply "Bonaparte" until December 2, 1804, when he became Napoleon I, Emperor of
the French. Because this book shifts constantly back and forth through 1792-1815,
however, "Napoleon" is used throughout to avoid confusion.
II. For brevity (and color) this text follows French practice by using "...th Ligne"
for "...th Regiment of Infantry of the Line."
III. Having grown up before the Revolution brought in its ruthlessly logical metric
system, Napoleon and his contemporaries continued to use the old, highly variable
French units of weights and measures. He reckoned short distances by toises (6 French
feet), long distances by ligues (leagues, roughly 3 miles). The "foot" with which he
measured the height of his soldiers was 9 "lines" (three-fourths of an inch) longer than
our foot; consequently, a soldier standing just 5 feet tall by French measurement would
be almost 4 inches taller by ours.
IV. Members of Napoleon's family are mentioned in the text but not always
described. For Louis and Jerome Bonaparte and pretentious Joseph, the oldest brother,
see Chapter XIX. Lucien, the next son after Napoleon, was a political creature of
intelligence, energy, ego, and considerable perversity. The key figure in Napoleon's coup
d'etat of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799), he soon clashed with Napoleon and spent the
following years in exile. He rallied to Napoleon in 1815 but was too much a stranger in
France to have much influence. Of the three sisters, Elisa was the oldest and homeliest;
when Napoleon gave her Tuscany and the tiny states of Lucca and Piombino to rule, she
showed herself a talented administrator and a gifted patron of the arts. Caroline was
pretty and treacherous. Pauline, the youngest, was beautiful and giddy, free-living, frank,
and goodhearted. Loyal to Napoleon, she sent him one of her best cooks to cheer his exile
on St. Helena.
As a family, the Bonapartes were greedy for money, prestige, and (Pauline
excepted) authority. One of history's finest examples of irony is Napoleon's comment on
their claims in 1804: "When I listen to you, I can almost believe that His Majesty our
father of blessed memory must have bequeathed us crown and realm."* They have been
the target of many books but actually were no more sinful and incompetent than the other
European royal families of their time, England's included.
V. Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord) was Napoleon's Foreign
Minister, 1799-1807. The son of high nobility, he had been lamed by a childhood
accident; his family barred him from his inheritance and thrust him into the Church. He
welcomed the Revolution but had to take refuge in the United States during the Terror. In
all of his employments he was absolutely corrupt and selfish, working shamelessly to
enrich himself from any source. (The famous XYZ affair of 1797, when he attempted to
force a bribe of $250,000 out of the United States, was a minor example.) A man of
unprepossessing appearance but great style and charm, he was a born intriguer with an
amazing ability to get others to do his work, whether routine or dirty. His efforts to
ensure himself a peaceful existence after the style of a wealthy pre-Revolutionary
nobleman have often been mistaken for patriotism.
VI. By 1792 militant emigres formed three tiny "armies": The Prince of Conde's
on the upper Rhine; the "Army of the Princes" (Louis and Artois) with the Prussian
invaders; and the Duke of Bourbon's in Flanders.
Sickness and hardship practically destroyed the last two during 1792. Other
emigre units formed in England but were wiped out by Hoche during an attempted
invasion in 1795. Conde maintained a small force until 1800, serving with both Austrians
and Russians. (Saint-Cyr observed that his headquarters was elaborate enough for an
army of 100,000.) Survivors formed the Chasseurs Britanniques Regiment in the British
service; others took service with various foreign armies.
Upon becoming Emperor, Napoleon permitted practically all emigres to return
and commissioned some of them in his foreign regiments. Some, like Narbonne, served
him loyally, albeit with an occasional jest; others, like Bourmont, would betray him.
VII. The chapter opening illustrations are by the late Herbert Knotel, the
acclaimed authority on European uniforms. Mr. Edward J. Krasnoborski, master
cartographer to the Department of History, U.S. Military Academy, prepared the
endpaper map.

Prologue
I have shown the Emperor, Monsieur le general Pino, the report which you have
sent me. It is essential that you write your reports more legibly, and especially show the
date plainly; that which you have written is not clear; one cannot tell whether it is the
11th, the 21st, or the 22d. Besides the date, it is always necessary to show the hour at
which you write, and the place.
Berthier in Memoires de Prince Eugene'
On October 12, 1806, French cavalry swept abruptly through the little Saxon city
of Zeitz, some 25 miles south of Leipzig. Chasseurs a cheval in dark green, jaunty
hussars in brown-and-blue, white-and-blue, and greenred-and-yellow, they were the
leading squadrons of the cavalry screen that shrouded the swift northward advance of the
Emperor Napoleon's Grande Armee.
Close behind the leading brigade, his white uniform a dazzle of gold braid, lace,
and galloons, rode Marshal Joachim Murat, the army's cavalry commander. Probably he
halted impatiently in the Zietz market square while his staff interrogated the local
postmaster, minister, and mayor as to the whereabouts of the Prussian and Saxon armies
for which his troopers were probing. Somewhere in Zeitz, at any rate, an inconspicuous
civilian sifted through the gawking townspeople, identified himself as a French spy, and
reported that the principal enemy army lay to the west and south around Erfurt.
A staff officer fished pen, paper, and portable inkwell from his saddlebags, settled
himself at a chair and table outside a nearby beer hall, and quickly converted the spy's
report into several copies of a message to the Emperor. Murat handed one copy to an
aide-de-camp, who buckled it carefully into the sabretache dangling from his sword belt,
then put his eager horse into a gallop southward. A second copy went to a scar-faced
brigadier of Murat's guides. A horse was found for the spy, and spy and brigadier
pounded off together in the aide's wake. Ten minutes later another aide spurred away
with orders to follow a different road from that taken by his comrades. A final copy went
into the staff records folder, with the name of each messenger and the date and hour of
his departure.
The roads southward were filled with the infantry of Marshal Jean Bernadotte's I
Corps, pressing forward through a low haze of dust and the hanging smell of sweat,
onions, and rank French tobacco. Along the principal road waited a string of small
cavalry detachments serving as estafettes; when the messengers' horses tired, they
replaced them with troopers' mounts at those relay stations-the distinctive
fawn-amaranth-and-white uniforms of Murat's aides and guides were authority enough
for such an exchange.
On into the deepening night they galloped, to be halted at last outside the city of
Gera by a challenge from vedettes of the 1st Hussar Regiment, temporarily serving as
Napoleon's escort,' their faded sky-blue uniforms almost invisible in the gloom. Directed
to a nearby chateau, they were passed in by sentinels from the grenadiers of the Imperial
Guard, tall, fierce-eyed veterans in lofty bearskin caps. And so they came to a quiet room
where beside a crackling fire their Emperor worked over his orders for the next day.
Beside him was a stocky older officer in equally simple uniform, Marshal
Louis-Alexandre Berthier, Napoleon's chief of staff. Around them the quiet officers of
the advance echelon of the Imperial Headquarters came and went.
Even while Napoleon minutely interrogated the spy and the aides-decamp, their
messages went into the routine staff processing. In the next room, where the Emperor's
situation map lay spread across a banquet table, lighted by candles at each corner, Chef
d'Escadron Louis Bacler d'Albe of the Topographical Engineers shifted pins with heads
of various colors to indicate the last reported positions of the enemy and Murat's cavalry
screen. Each messenger was given a receipt showing the time and place he had made
delivery. Other messengers came striding in, to report with a clash of spurs and scabbard:
a rider from Marshal Pierre Augereau VII Corps, 20 miles to the southwest; another from
Marshal Louis Davout's III Corps, 20 miles to the northwest. All had the same word-the
enemy was massing to westward around Erfurt and Weimar.
Finally, his questioning finished, the Emperor turned to Berthier and began a rush
of rapid, harsh-accented orders, seemingly too swift for pen to follow. Unperturbed,
Berthier made quick entries in a green-covered notebook. The dictation over, he turned to
his waiting staff. Breaking down Napoleon's general operations order, Berthier drafted
specific orders for each of the major units involved. The finished versions were presented
to the Emperor for any necessary corrections and additions and his approval. That
secured, additional copies were written out, aides and staff officers summoned to deliver
them. Meanwhile, Berthier went ahead with supplementary orders to ensure that the
supply trains and supporting units further to the rear were properly redirected to follow
the Grande Armee's westward wheel.
One such order, dealing with the resupply of shoes and overcoats, went through
the rear echelon of Imperial Headquarters, two days of ordinary marching (approximately
60 miles) farther south, and then on south and west to the Grande Armee's administrative
headquarters, where Intendent General Pierre Daru wrestled with a chaotic logistical
situation. Daru started what stocks he had been able to collect forward in requisitioned
wagons and dispatched another urgent appeal to the Ministry of the Administration of
War. Reaching the fortress city of Strasbourg, his courier handed this message to the
local director of the Telegraph Service, who sent it off along the line of semaphore signal
towers to Paris.
At the Ministry, somehow, things always went more slowly than they should, but
eventually a bored commissaire des guerres took notice of the message and summoned an
equally bored clerk.

The Swiss Guard, 1791

CHAPTER I
All the King's Horses
and the King's Men:
The Royal Army
Over and above the general quarrel which all sons of Adam maintain with their lot
here below, the grievances of the French soldiery reduce themselves to two. First, that
their Officers are Aristocrats; secondly, that they cheat them of their Pay.
Carlyle, The French Revolution'
In the young days of Louis XIV it had been the world's finest army, the
conquering graycoats of Conde and Turenne. "Corporal John" Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough, had beaten it at Blenheim, Malplaquet, and elsewhere, breaking its
reputation of invincibility but not its spirit. Once English politicians had, for reasons
sufficient unto politicians, skragged Marlborough, the French came surging back to bring
Louis XIV's endless wars to an acceptable conclusion.
Under Louis XV, the French Army slumped into slow decay. At first there were
victories such as Fontenoy, but this Louis was the original roi faineant, careless and
contemptuous of everything except his own idle pleasures. Competent generals grew old
and died. Their replacements too often were noblemen whose major ability was that of
pleasing the Marquise de Pompadour (once Jeanne Poisson, and so known to
disrespectful Englishmen as "Jane Fish") and/or her principal successor, Madame du
Barry. For those females were Louis's mistresses: They ruled France and its armies
utterly with a pout, a smile, a flutter of eyelashes, a twitch of the hips. The best of
ministers and generals must give way to their whims or give place to their favorites.2
The decay spread and deepened. French armies and not a few French generals got
an ill fame for greedy, brutal looting and for being, as one unknown Paris gutter poet
suggested, "more hungry than bold." When the weather turned bad, they left the field
armies in droves for the comforts of home. In early 1758 a General Louis de
Bourbon-Conde, Comte Clermont, took command of the French army in western
Germany. Clermont was an incompetent officer who doubled in brass as a roue abbot of
the Benedictine Order, the sort of commander who would insist on finishing his lunch
before taking measures to meet an enemy attack, but his report on the condition of his
troops was exact enough: "[T]his poor army is in a miserable state ... companies less than
twelve men strong; with hospitals which are dirty and [stink]; no medical orderlies, little
linen, little broth. In short, we are in an inconceivable mess; no discipline, either among
the officers or the men; hardly any officers with their [units]."'
To no one's surprise, Louis's last war (the Seven Years' War, 1756-63) was an
utter French defeat, which wrecked France's army, navy, and finances and stripped
France of practically all of its colonies. To add to the bitterness, there had been brave
men and brave deeds in those colonies: Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, in Canada,
and half-Irish Thomas Arthur de Lally in India. But Montcalm died of wounds at Quebec;
Lally was falsely accused of treason and judicially murdered in Paris.
In the muddle of that war a small, overconfident French army, acting together
with the so-called Army of the Holy Roman Empire' and commanded by one of