mightily when at last he received the cross from his emperor two years later, at the age of twenty-six.
Marshal Augereau was so badly wounded at Eylau that it was years before he was again fit to take the field. Marbot found himself temporarily unemployed. After two months’ convalescence in Paris, however, he was attached to the staff of Marshal Lannes, with whom he served at the battle of Friedland in June 1807. He witnessed the meeting of Bonaparte and the Tsar at Tilsit, and was then sent with the emperor’s despatches to Dresden. There and afterwards in Paris he briefly savoured the delights of a full purse, his status as one of the emperor’s favoured champions, and the tender care of his mother, whom he adored. The only other female object of affection who earns a brief mention in Marbot’s memoirs is the wife whom he married in 1811. Women otherwise have no place in his tale, and perhaps little even in his career as a soldier. Many men such as Marbot became so absorbed in the business of war that they perceived women merely as a source of amusement during leaves, and as childbearers when duty granted an officer leisure to think of such marginal matters as procreation.
The year 1808 found the hussar despatched among the staff of the emperor’s brother-in-law Prince Murat to Spain, where Bonaparte was bent upon overturning the monarchy in favour of his own nominee. Murat aspired to the crown for himself. To his chagrin, however, he was obliged to content himself with the throne of Naples, while that of Spain was given to Bonaparte’s elder brother Joseph. Even the insensitive Marbot, billeted in Madrid when the Spaniards rose in revolt against the French despot and his occupying army, recognised the folly of Bonaparte’s Spanish adventure: ‘this war…seemed to me wicked, but I was a soldier and I must march or be charged with cowardice’. He was appalled by the savagery of the Spanish guerrillos, which bore especially hard on aides, who had to travel far and alone. Once, on a mission bearing despatches, he found the body of a young chasseur officer nailed by his hands and feet to a barn door, under which a fire had been lighted. The Frenchman was still bleeding, and Marbot soon afterwards found himself in a bloody confrontation with the killers, which cost him another wound. The package which he bore was finally carried to Bonaparte by another officer, proudly stained with Marbot’s blood.
In the spring of 1809, the French army in Spain was battling to seize Saragossa, which the Spanish were defending stubbornly. Assault after assault was beaten back. Marbot was ordered to lead a fresh attack, and was reconnoitring the ground when he felt himself pushed sharply backwards, and collapsed to the ground. A Spanish bullet had struck him beside the heart. The after-effects of this wound caused him much discomfort in the saddle after the fall of Saragossa, when he had to travel back to Paris with Marshal Lannes, and thence onwards for the next of Bonaparte’s German campaigns. At the battle of Eckmuhl, Marbot’s worst inconvenience was to have his horse shot under him. A few days later, on 23 April, he was in mortal danger again. At the assault on Ratisbon, Lannes was so frustrated by the failure of his men to scale the walls under heavy fire that he seized a ladder himself, exclaiming: ‘I will let you see that I was a grenadier before I was a marshal, and still am one.’ Marbot tore the ladder from his mentor by main force, and with a comrade holding the other end, dashed for the walls. Though scores of French soldiers were falling around them, Marbot and his companion claimed the honour of reaching the summit of the walls first among Bonaparte’s army. He then persuaded the Austrian officer defending the gate to surrender.
On the banks of the swollen Danube on 7 May, Bonaparte sent for Marbot. He wanted an officer to cross the flood and take a prisoner. ‘Take notice,’ said the emperor, ‘1 am not giving you an order; I am only expressing a wish. I am aware that the enterprise is as dangerous as it can be, and you can decline it without any fear of displeasing me.’ Here Marbot, in his own account, almost bursts with righteous conceit: ‘I had broken out all over in a cold sweat; but at the same moment a feeling…in which a love of glory and of my country was mingled perhaps with a noble pride, raised my ardour to the highest point and I said to myself: “The emperor has here an army of 150,000 devoted warriors, besides 25,000 men of his guard, all selected from the bravest. He is surrounded with aides-de-camp and orderly officers, and yet when an expedition is on foot, requiring intelligence no less than boldness, it is I whom the Emperor and Marshal Lannes choose.” “I will go, sir!”, I cried without hesitation; “I will go; and if I perish, I leave my mother to your Majesty’s care.” The emperor pulled my ear to mark his satisfaction. The marshal shook my hand.’
This is one of the most enchanting passages in Marbot’s narrative, inseparably linked to its time, nation and personalities. Conveyed by local boatmen, he braved the Danube torrent, secured three Austrian prisoners, and returned in triumph. He received the embrace of Lannes, an invitation to breakfast with the emperor, and his coveted promotion to major. A fortnight later, after innumerable adventures at Essling and Aspern, he carried the mortally wounded Lannes off the field. Marbot himself had lost a piece of flesh, torn from his thigh by a grapeshot, but carelessly ignored it. Bonaparte noticed the major’s bloody breeches and observed laconically: ‘Your turn comes around pretty often!’ It was a measure of the limitations of nineteenth-century weapons that any man could so often be injured by them, yet survive to fight again.
At Wagram in July 1809, Marbot suffered a serious falling-out with Marshal Masséna, on whose staff he was serving. The corn that covered much of the battlefield was set ablaze by smouldering cannon wadding. Men and horses suffered terribly, fighting amid the fires. Marbot’s mount was already scorched and exhausted when Masséna sought an aide to check the rout of a division broken by Austrian cavalry, and to direct the fugitives to the island of Löbau on the Danube. First in line for duty was Prosper, Masséna’s own son. Yet the marshal could not bring himself to despatch his offspring into the midst of the slaughter. He appealed to Marbot: ‘You understand, my friend, why I do not send my son, although it’s his turn; I am afraid of getting him killed. You understand? You understand?’ Marbot, disgusted, claims to have answered: ‘Marshal, I was going under the impression that I was about to fulfil a duty; I am sorry that you have corrected my mistake, for now I understand perfectly that, being obliged to send one of your aides-de-camp to almost certain death, you would rather it should be me rather than your son.’ He set off full-tilt across the murderous plain, only to find after a few minutes that Prosper Masséna, shamed by his father’s behaviour, had followed him. The two young men became friends thereafter, but the marshal never again addressed Marbot by the intimate ‘tu’.
A few days later, at Znaym, the rival armies were once more deploying for battle when an armistice was agreed between the French and the Austrians. Marbot was among a cluster of aides hastily despatched to intervene between the combatants. He raced in front of the advancing infantry, who were already crying ‘Vive l’empereur!’ as their bayonets and those of the Austrians ranged within a hundred paces of each other. A bullet struck the aide’s wrist, inflicting an injury that cost him six months in a sling. He charged on, crying ‘Peace! Peace!’ and holding up his uninjured hand to arrest the French advance. An Austrian officer attempting to convey the same message in front of his own ranks was hit in the shoulder before he and Marbot met and embraced, in a gesture unmistakable to both sides.
In April 1810, after more months of convalescence, Marbot set forth from his mother’s house in Paris to travel ahead of Masséna and prepare for the marshal’s arrival to command the Peninsular army. The major’s passage was enlivened by fever and a brush with Spanish guerrillas. Once he was on the battlefield with Masséna, his memoirs provide one of the most vivid, if absurdly prejudiced, French narratives of the Peninsula experience. He tells of actions and skirmishes innumerable, of ‘Marshal Stockpot’, the French deserter who established himself at the head of a band of French, Portuguese, Spanish and English deserters, living as bandits until Masséna disposed of them. He inflates the toll of English casualties in every encounter. He castigates Masséna for his failure to anticipate and frustrate Wellington’s retreat behind the lines of Torres Vedras – and for his folly in bringing his mistress on campaign.
One of Marbot’s best stories, whether accepted at face value or no, concerns a duel with a British light cavalry officer who trotted forward from Wellington’s lines one morning in March 1811
