The Russian marshal Koutousoff was heading via Hollabrunn for Brno in Moravia, in order to join the second army which was led by the Emperor Alexander in person; but on approaching Hollabrunn, he was alarmed to discover that the troops of Lannes and Murat were already occupying the town and cutting off his means of retreat. To get out of this fix, the aged marshal, making use, in his turn, of trickery, sent General Prince Bagration as an envoy to Marshal Murat, whom he a.s.sured that an aide-de-camp of the Emperor was on his way to Napoleon in order to conclude an armistice, and that, without doubt, peace would shortly follow.
Prince Bagration was a very amiable man, he knew exactly how to flatter Murat, so that he in turn was deceived into accepting an armistice, in spite of the observations of Lannes, who wished to fight but had to obey Murat, who was his superior officer.
The truce lasted for thirty-six hours; and while Murat was inhaling the incense which the crafty Russian lavished on him, Koutousoff"s army made a detour and concealing its movement behind a screen of low hills, escaped from danger, and went on to take up, beyond Hollabrunn, a strong position which opened the road to Moravia and a.s.sured his retreat and his junction with the second Russian army which was encamped between Znaim and Brno. Napoleon was still in the palace of Schoenbrunn, and was furiously angry when he heard that Murat had allowed himself to be bamboozled by Prince Bagration, and had accepted an armistice without his orders, and he commanded him to attack Koutousoff immediately.
Now the situation of the Russians had changed greatly to their advantage, so they repelled the French most vigorously. The town of Hollabrunn, taken and re-taken several times, set on fire by the mortars, filled with the dead and dying, remained finally in French possession. The Russians retired in the direction of Brno; our troops followed them and took possession of this town without a fight, although it was fortified and dominated by the well-known citadel of Spielberg.
The Russian armies and the remains of the Austrian troops were united in Moravia; the Emperor Napoleon, in order to deliver the final blow, arrived in Brno, the capital of the province.
My comrade Ma.s.sy and I followed after him, but we moved slowly and with much difficulty, firstly because the post-horses were on their last legs, and then because of the great quant.i.ty of troops, guns, ammunition wagons, baggage, etc. with which the roads were obstructed. We were obliged to stop for twenty-four hours at Hollabrunn, while we waited for a pa.s.sage to be cleared through the streets, destroyed by fire and littered with planks and beams and the debris of furniture, still alight. This unfortunate town had been so completely burned that we were unable to find a single house to provide shelter!
During our enforced stay, we were confronted and distressed by the most horrible and shocking spectacle. The wounded, mainly Russians, had taken refuge during the fighting in the houses which were soon set ablaze. All who could walk fled at the approach of this new danger, but the crippled and gravely injured were burned alive in the ruins! Many had attempted to escape the fire by crawling along the ground, but the flames had followed them into the streets,where one could see a mult.i.tude of these wretched victims half consumed by fire, some of them still breathing! The bodies of the men and horses killed in the battle had also been roasted, so that for several leagues around the town there was a sickening stench of burning flesh! ... There are countrysides and towns which because of their situation are destined to serve as battlefields, and Hollabrun is one of them, because it offers an excellent military position; thus it was that the damage done by the fire of 1805 had scarcely been repaired, when I saw the place again, four years later, once more on fire and littered with the half-roasted bodies of the dead and dying; as you will see from my description of the campaign of 1809.
Major Ma.s.sy and I left this pestilential spot as soon as we could, and went on to Znaim, where, four years later I was to be wounded; and at last we reached the Emperor at Brunn (Brno), on November 22nd, ten days before the Battle of Austerlitz.
The day after our arrival, we completed our mission and handed over the flags with the ceremony laid down by the Emperor for solemn occasions of this kind; for he missed no opportunity of displaying to the troops anything which could raise their morale and enthusiasm.
The procedure was as follows:--Half an hour before the daily parade,--which took place at eleven o"clock outside whatever residence was serving as the Emperor"s palace,--General Duroc, the Grand Marshal, sent to our billet a company of Grenadiers of the Guard, with bandsmen and drummers. The town of Brunn was full of French troops, and the soldiers, as we pa.s.sed, celebrated with much cheering the victory of their comrades of 7th Corps. All the guard-posts accorded us military honours, and on our entry to the courtyard of the Emperor"s quarters, the units formed up for the parade beat a salute, presented arms, and cried repeatedly "Vive L"Empereur!"
The aide-de-camp on duty came to receive us and to present us to Napoleon, to whom we were introduced, accompanied always by the N.C.O.s carrying the Austrian flags. The Emperor examined these various trophies, and after dismissing the N.C.O.s. he questioned us closely about the various actions which had been fought by Marshal Augereau and on all we had seen or learned on our long journey through a countryside which had been the theatre of war. Then he told us to await his instructions, and to join the imperial suite.
The Grand Marshal Duroc took charge of the flags, for which he gave us a receipt in the regular manner, informed us that horses would be placed at our disposal and invited us, for the duration of our stay, to the table over which he presided.
The French army was now ma.s.sed around and before Brunn. The Russian advance-guard occupied Austerlitz, while the bulk of their army was positioned round the town of Olmutz, where were also the Emperor Alexander of Russia and the Emperor of Austria. A battle seemed inevitable, but both sides being well aware that the outcome would have an immense bearing on the destiny of Europe, each hesitated to make a decisive move. Napoleon, usually so swift to act, waited for eleven days at Brunn before launching a major attack. It is, however, true that every day of waiting increased his forces by the arrival of great numbers of soldiers who had lagged behind because of illness or fatigue, and who having now recovered, hastened to rejoin their units. I recall that, in these circ.u.mstances, I told a white lie which could have ruined my military career.
Napoleon usually treated his officers with kindness, but there was one point on which he was perhaps too strict, for he held colonels responsible for keeping their units up to full strength, something it is very difficult to do during a campaign. It was in this matter that the Emperor was most often deceived, for the corps commanders were so afraid of displeasing him that they risked being committed to facing an enemy force disproportionate to their own numbers, rather than admit that sickness, fatigue and the need to forage for food had caused many soldiers to drop out. So Napoleon, in spite of his authority, never knew the exact number of combatants available to him on the day of battle.
Now it so happened that the Emperor, in the course of one of the endless trips he made to visit the various corps of the army, saw the mounted Cha.s.seurs of his guard, who were moving to a different position. He was particularly fond of this regiment, of which his "guides" from Italy and Egypt formed the nucleus. The Emperor, whose experienced eye could estimate very exactly the strength of a column, noticing that their numbers were much reduced, took out of his pocket a little notebook, and, calling for General Morland, the commander of the mounted Cha.s.seurs, he said to him in a stern voice, "Your regiment is down in my notes as having 1200 men, and although you have not been in action, you have no more than 800; what has happened to the others?" General Morland was a fine, brave fighting soldier, but he did not have a ready tongue, and being quite nonplussed, he said in his Franco-Alsatian dialect that he was short of only a small number of men. The Emperor maintained that he was about four hundred short, and to get to the truth of the matter he wanted to have an immediate count; but knowing that General Morland was very much liked by the officers of the imperial staff, he feared a cover-up, and thought he would be more likely to discover the truth by choosing an officer who did not belong to his entourage nor to the Cha.s.seurs; so, seeing me, he ordered me to count the Cha.s.seurs and to deliver to him personally a record of their numbers; having said which, he made off at the gallop. I began my task, which was made more easy because the troopers were riding past four abreast at walking pace.
Poor General Morland, who knew how close Napoleon"s estimate was to the reality, was in a state of great agitation, for he foresaw that my report would call down on his head a severe reprimand. He hardly knew me, and did not dare to suggest that I might compromise myself to get him out of trouble. He was then sitting silently on his horse beside me, when, fortunately for him, his adjutant came to join him. This officer, named Fournier, had started his military career as an a.s.sistant surgeon, then, having become a surgeon-major, he felt that he had more of a vocation for the sabre than for the lancet, and had asked for and obtained permission to join the ranks of the combatant officers, and Morland, with whom he had served previously, arranged for him to join the Guard.
I had known Captain Fournier very well when he was still surgeon-major, and I was very much obliged to him, for not only had he dressed my father"s wound when it was inflicted, but he had gone, like him, to Genoa, where, as long as my father lived, he had come several times a day to care for him: if the doctors charged with the duty of fighting the typhus epidemic had been as a.s.siduous and zealous as Fournier, my father, perhaps, would not have died. I had often thought this, so I gave the warmest of welcomes to Fournier, whom I did not at first recognise in the pelisse of a captain of Cha.s.seurs.
General Morland, seeing the pleasure we had in meeting one another, thought he might profit from our mutual friendship to persuade me not to reveal to the Emperor by how many men he was short. He took his adjutant aside and conferred with him for a time; then Fournier came, and in the name of our former friendship, he begged me to extricate General Morland from a most unpleasant situation by concealing from the Emperor the extent to which the regiment was under strength. I refused firmly and continued to count. The Emperor"s estimate was very close, for there were only a few over eight hundred Cha.s.seurs present, four hundred were missing.
I was about to leave to make my report, when General Morland and Captain Fournier renewed their pleas pointing out that the greater part of the men who had dropped behind for various reasons would rejoin them very shortly, and that it was not likely that Napoleon would engage in battle before the arrival of the divisions of Friant and Gudin, who were still at the gates of Vienna, thirty-six leagues from us and would take several days to reach us. In the interval more laggards would rejoin the unit. They added that the Emperor would be too busy to check my report. I could not pretend to myself that I was not being asked to deceive the Emperor, which was very wrong, but I felt also that I was under a great obligation to Captain Fournier for the truly tender care he had given to my dying father, I allowed myself therefore to be swayed and promised to conceal a large part of the truth.
I was scarcely alone when I realised the enormity of my error, but it was too late; the essential object now was to get out of the situation with the least harm possible. With this aim in view, I kept out of the way of the Emperor as long as he was on horseback, in case he went back to the bivouac of the Cha.s.seurs, where their shortage of numbers striking him anew would give the lie to my report. I craftily did not return to the imperial quarters until night was approaching and Napoleon, having dismounted had gone to his apartment. Brought before him in order to make my report, I found him lying at full length on an immense map which was spread on the floor. As soon as he saw me, he called out "Well now! Marbot, how many Cha.s.seurs are there in my guard? Are there twelve hundred as Morland claims?" "No sire" I replied."I counted only eleven hundred and twenty, that is a shortfall of eighty." "I was sure that there was a lot missing." said the Emperor, in a tone of voice which made it plain that he had expected a much larger deficit; and to be sure if there were no more than eighty men missing from a regiment of twelve hundred which had just come five hundred leagues in winter, sleeping almost every night in bivouac, that was a very small loss.
So when, on going to dinner, the Emperor pa.s.sed through the room where the senior officers of the guard were gathered, all he said to Morland was, "Now you see...you are short of eighty troopers; that is almost a squadron. With eighty of these men one could stop a Russian regiment! You must take care to see that men do not drop behind."
Then, pa.s.sing to the commander of the foot guards, whose numbers were also much reduced, Napoleon gave him a sharp reprimand. Morland, who thought himself lucky to have got away with no more than a few observations, came over to me, as soon as the Emperor was seated at table, and thanked me warmly. He told me that some thirty troopers had just arrived, and that a courier from Vienna had met more than a hundred between Znaim and Brunn, and many more this side of Hollabrunn, which meant that within forty-eight hours the regiment would have made up most of its deficiency. I wished for this as fervently as he did, for I was well aware of the difficult spot I had landed myself in out of my consideration for Fournier. I could not sleep that night for fear of the justifiable wrath of the Emperor, if he found out that I had lied to him.
I was even more dismayed the next day when Napoleon, in the course of his usual visit to his troops, started off in the direction of the Cha.s.seur"s bivouac, for a simple question put to an officer could expose everything; but just when I thought that I was done for, I heard the sound of the band of the Russian force, camped on the high ground of the Pratzen half a league from our position. I urged my horse forward towards the head of the numerous staff by whom the Emperor was accompanied, and getting as close to him as possible, I said in a loud voice, "I am sure there is something going on in the Russian camp, their band is playing a march".... The Emperor, who heard my remark, suddenly left the path which led to the Cha.s.seur"s bivouac, and headed towards Pratzen to see what was happening in the enemy advance-guard. He stayed a long time watching, and as night was approaching, he went back to Brunn without visiting the Cha.s.seurs. For several days I was in a mortal panic, although I learned of the arrival of successive detachments of men, but at last the coming battle and the many preoccupations of the Emperor drove from his mind the idea of making the check which I so much feared.
But I had learned my lesson; so when I became a colonel and was asked by the Emperor how many men were present in the squadrons of my regiment, I always gave the exact number.
Chap. 26.
If Napoleon was often deceived, he also used deception himself to further his projects, as can be shown by the tale of this diplomatic-military comedy, in which I played a part.
In order to understand this affair, which will give you the key to the intrigues which, the following year, gave rise to the war between Napoleon and the King of Prussia, we have to go back two months to the time when the French troops, having left the coast, were proceeding by rapid marches to the Danube. The shortest route which the first corps, commanded by Bernadotte, could take to reach Hanover, on the upper Danube, lay through Ans.p.a.ch. This little country belonged to Prussia, but as it was quite a long way from there, from which it was separated by a number of minor princ.i.p.alities, it had always been regarded in previous wars as being neutral territory, through which either party could pa.s.s, provided that they paid for any goods they required and refrained from any hostile action.
Things having been established on this footing, Austrian and French armies had often pa.s.sed through the Margravate of Ans.p.a.ch, since the time of the Directory, without informing Prussia and without the latter raising any objection. Napoleon then, taking advantage of this convention, ordered Bernadotte to go through Ans.p.a.ch, which he did. However, the Queen of Prussia and her court, who detested Napoleon, on hearing of this, raised an outcry, claiming that Prussian territory had been violated, and took advantage of this event to rouse the nation and call loudly for war. The King of Prussia and his minister, Count Haugwitz, alone resisted the general clamour for action. This was in October 1805, when hostilities were about to break out between France and Austria, and the Russian armies were on their way to reinforce the latter. The queen and the young Prince Louis, the king"s nephew, in an attempt to persuade the king to make common cause with the Austrians and Russians, arranged for the Emperor Alexander to come to Berlin, in the hope that his presence would influence Frederick-William.
Alexander arrived in the capital of Prussia on the 25th October.
He was greeted with enthusiasm by the queen, Prince Louis and the supporters of war against France. The king, besieged on all sides, allowed himself to be persuaded, but only on the condition--advised by the old Prince of Brunswick, and Count Haugwitz--that his army should not be committed to a campaign until the outcome of the conflict between the French and the Austrians on the Danube had been determined. This partial adherence to their cause pleased neither Alexander nor the queen, but for the time being they could obtain nothing more explicit. A melodramatic scene was played out at Potsdam, where the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, having descended, by the light of torches, into the sepulchral vaults of the palace, swore, in the presence of the court, eternal friendship, on the tomb of Frederick the Great; (an oath which did not prevent Alexander from incorporating into the Russian Empire, eighteen months later, one of the Prussian provinces, which Napoleon awarded him under the treaty of Tilsit, and this in the presence of his friend Frederick-William.) The Russian Emperor now went back to Moravia, to place himself at the head of his army, for Napoleon was advancing rapidly towards Vienna, which he shortly occupied.
When he heard of the King of Prussia"s reluctance and the compact made at Potsdam, Napoleon, in order to deal with the Russians before the Prussians had made up their minds, installed himself for the encounter with the former in Brunn, where we now were.
It is said, quite rightly, that amba.s.sadors are privileged spies.
The King of Prussia, who heard daily of fresh victories won by Napoleon, was anxious to find out what the true position was between the warring parties; so he decided to send Count Haugwitz, his minister, to the French headquarters, with instructions to a.s.sess the situation. Now it was necessary to find an excuse for doing this, so he entrusted Count Haugwitz with a reply to a letter which Napoleon had sent to him, complaining about the agreement concluded between the Prussians and the Russians at Potsdam. Count Haugwitz arrived at Brunn some days before the Battle of Austerlitz, and would dearly have liked to stay there until he knew the result of the major engagement which was in prospect, in order to advise his sovereign to do nothing if we were victorious, or to attack us if we should be defeated. You do not have to be a soldier to see from a map what damage a Prussian army, coming from Breslau in Silesia, could do by going through Bohemia to fall on our rear around Regansberg.
As Napoleon knew that Count Haugwitz sent a courier every evening to Berlin, he decided that it would be by this means that he would inform the Prussians of the defeat of Field-marshal Jellachich"s army corps, news of which had not yet reached them.
This is how it was done.
Marshal of the Palace Duroc, after telling us what we were to do, had all the Austrian flags which we had brought from Bregenz secretly replaced in the lodgings which Ma.s.sy and I occupied; then, some hours later, when the Emperor was in conversation with Count Haugwitz in his study, we re-enacted the ceremony of the handover of the flags in exactly the same way as it had been done on the first occasion. The Emperor hearing the band playing in the courtyard, feigned astonishment, and went to the windows followed by the amba.s.sador.
Seeing the flags carried by the N.C.O.s. he called for the duty aide-de-camp and asked him what was going on. The aide-de-camp having told him that we were two of Marshal Augereau"s aides who had come to hand over to him the flags of Jellachich"s Austrian corps captured at Bregenz, we were led inside; there Napoleon, without blinking an eyelid, and as if he had never seen us before, took the letter from Augereau,which had been re-sealed, and read it, although he had been aware of its contents for four days. Then he questioned us,making us go into the smallest details. Duroc had warned us to speak out loudly, as the amba.s.sador was a little hard of hearing, this advice was of no use to Major Ma.s.sy, who was the leader of the mission, since he was suffering from a cold and had almost completely lost his voice, so it was I who replied to the Emperor, and taking a lead from him, I painted in the most vivid colours the defeat of the Austrians, their despondency, and the enthusiasm of the French.
Then, presenting the trophies one after the other, I named the Austrian regiments to which they had once belonged. I laid particular stress on two of them, because I knew that their capture would have a powerful effect on the amba.s.sador, "Here," I said "is the flag of the infantry regiment of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, and there is the standard of the Uhlans, commanded by the Archduke Charles, his brother." Napoleon"s eyes twinkled, and he seemed to say, "Well done young man!" At last he dismissed us, and as we left we heard him say to the amba.s.sador, "You see, monsieur le Comte, my armies are everywhere triumphant.... The Austrian army is no more, and soon the same fate will befall the Russians." Count Haugwitz seemed deeply impressed, and Duroc said to us, after we had left the room, "The count will write tonight to Berlin, to tell his government of the destruction of Jellachich"s force, which will put a damper on the war party, and give the king new reasons for holding off. Which is what the Emperor very much wants."
This comedy having been played out, The Emperor, to be rid of a dangerous onlooker who could give an account of the disposition of his forces, suggested to Count Haugwitz that it was not very safe for him to remain between two armies which were about to come to blows, and persuaded him to go to Vienna to M. Tallyrand, his minister for foreign affairs, which he did that same evening.
The following day the Emperor said nothing to us about the scene which had been enacted the previous evening, but wishing, no doubt, to give some sign of his satisfaction with the manner in which we had played our parts, he asked Major Ma.s.sy, kindly, about the progress of his cold, and he pinched my ear, which with him was a sort of caress.
Now the denouement of the great drama was approaching and both sides were preparing for the coming struggle. Nearly all military authors so overload their narrative with details that they confuse the mind of the reader, to the extent that, in most of the published works on the wars of the Empire which I have read, I have been unable to understand the description of several of the battles in which I myself have taken part, and the various phases of which I know. I think that to preserve clarity in the description of an action, one needs to limit oneself to indicating the respective positions of the two armies, prior to the engagement, and to recounting only the princ.i.p.al and decisive events in the combat.
This is what I shall attempt to do.
The coming battle is known as the Battle of Austerlitz, although it took place some distance from the village of that name: the reason for this is that, on the eve of the battle, the Emperors of Austria and Russia had slept in the Chateau of Austerlitz, out of which Napoleon drove them.
You will see on the map that a stream, the Goldbach, which rises on the far side of the road to Olmutz, flows into a pool called Menitz. This stream, which runs in a little valley with quite steep banks, separated the two armies. The right of the Austro-Russian forces lay on a wooded escarpment, situated behind the post-house of Posoritz, on the far side of the Olmutz road; their centre occupied Pratzen and the vast plateau of that name, and their left was near the meres of Satschan and the neighbouring marshes. The Emperor placed his left flank on a little hill, very difficult of access, which our men who had been in Egypt called the Santon (a holy man"s grave) because it was surmounted by a small chapel, the roof of which had the appearance of a minaret. The French centre was near the pool of Kobolnitz, and the right was at Telnitz. The Emperor had put very few troops there in order to tempt the Russians into the marshy ground, where he had prepared their defeat by concealing in Gross-Raigern, on the road to Vienna, the corps of Marshal Davout.
On the 1st December, the eve of the battle, Napoleon left Brunn in the morning and spent all day examining the positions; in the evening he set up his headquarters behind the French centre, at a spot from where could be seen the camps of both armies and the area which would form their battlefield the next day. There was no building in the vicinity but a dilapidated barn, and it was there that were placed the Emperor"s tables and maps, while he himself took up a position by a huge fire, surrounded by his numerous staff and his guards.
Happily there was no snow, although it was very cold. I bedded down on the ground and fell into a deep sleep; but soon we had to remount our horses to accompany the Emperor, who was about to visit his troops. There was no moon, and the obscurity of the night was increased by a thick mist which made progress difficult. The troopers of the Emperor"s escort had the idea of lighting torches made of pinewood and straw which were most useful. The soldiers, seeing the approach of a group of mounted men thus illuminated, could easily distinguish the imperial staff, and in an instant, as if by magic, one saw all our camp lit up by torches carried by the men who greeted the Emperor with cheer, made all the louder because the next day would be the anniversary of his coronation, a coincidence which seemed to them to be a good augury. The enemy must have been greatly astonished when, from the height of the neighbouring slope, they saw in the middle of the night, the light of sixty thousand torches and heard the repeated cheers of "Vive l"Empereur!" mingled with the sound of the regimental bands. All was gaiety, light and movement in our camp, while, on the Austro-Russian side, all was dark and silent.
The next day, the 2nd December, the cannons were heard at daybreak. We have seen that the Emperor had deployed few troops on his right wing; a bait which he dangled before the enemy, who would see the apparent possibility of taking Telnitz easily, and then crossing the Goldbach and going on to Gross-Raigern in order to control the road from Brunn to Vienna and so cut off our line of retreat. The Austro-Russians fell headlong into the trap, and, thinning out the rest of their line, they clumsily piled up a considerable force in the lower part of Telnitz, and in the narrow, marshy defiles around the meres of Satschan and Menitz. They thought, for some unknown reason, that Napoleon was considering withdrawing, without facing a battle, so to hasten this move they decided to attack us at the Santon on our left and at our centre before Puntowitz, so that, being defeated at these two points, and forced to retreat, we would find the road to Vienna cut by the Russian troops. But on our left Marshal Lannes not only repelled all the enemy attacks on the Santon, but drove them back across the Olmutz road as far as Blasiowitz, where the more level ground allowed Murat"s cavalry to make several very effective charges, which compelled the Russians to retire hurriedly to the village of Austerlitz.
While our left was achieving this brilliant success, the centre, consisting of the troops of Marshals Soult and Bernadotte, who had been placed by the Emperor in the valley of the Goldbach where they were hidden by a thick mist, advanced towards the slope on which stood the village of Pratzen. It was at this moment that the bright "Sunshine of Austerlitz" appeared, the memory of which Napoleon was pleased so frequently to recall. Marshal Soult took not only the village of Pratzen but also the great plateau of that name, which is the high point of the surrounding country, and, in consequence, the key to the battlefield. Here took place, before the eyes of the Emperor, a very sharp engagement in which the Russians were defeated; but a battalion of the 4th Line regiment, commanded by Prince Joseph, Napoleon"s brother, went too far in pursuit of the enemy and was charged and over-run by the horse-guards and Cuira.s.siers of the Grand-duke Constantin, the brother of Alexander, who captured their Eagle. A force of Russian cavalry advanced rapidly to support the momentary success of the horse-guards; but Napoleon sent against them the Mamelukes, the light cavalry and the mounted Grenadiers of his guard, led by Marshal Bessieres and General Rapp, and a most sanguinary melee ensued. The Russian squadrons were overcome and driven back beyond the village of Austerlitz with great losses. Our cavalry captured many standards and prisoners, among whom was Prince Repnin, the commander of the horse-guards. This regiment, made up of the most glittering youth of the Russian n.o.bility, suffered many casualties. The boastful threats which they had made concerning the French were known to our men, who in reply said that they would give the ladies of St. Petersburg something to cry about.
The painter Gerard, in his picture of the Battle of Austerlitz, has taken as his subject the moment when General Rapp, leaving the battle, wounded and covered in his own and the enemies" blood, is presenting to the Emperor the flags which have been captured as well as Prince Repnin, his prisoner. I was present at this memorable scene, which the painter has reproduced with remarkable exactness.
All the heads are portraits, even that of the brave trooper, who without complaining, though shot through the body, fell dead at the feet of the Emperor as he presented the standard which he had just captured. Napoleon, to honour the memory of this brave Cha.s.seur, ordered the painter to include him in his composition. One can see also in this picture a Mameluke, who carries in one hand an enemy flag, and with the other holds the bridle of his wounded horse. This man, named Mustapha, known in the guards for his courage and ferocity, had set off, during the charge, in pursuit of the Grand-duke Constantin, who was only able to get rid of him by firing a pistol shot which mortally wounded his horse. Mustapha, grieved at having only a standard to offer the Emperor, said in his broken French, when he presented it, "Ah! If me catch Prince Constantin, me cut off head and bring to Emperor!" Napoleon replied indignantly, "You be quiet! You wicked savage!"
Let us now finish the story of the battle. While Marshals Lannes, Soult and Murat attacked the centre and right of the Austro-Russians and drove them back beyond the village of Austerlitz, the enemy left, having fallen into the trap which the Emperor had prepared for them, attacked the village of Telnitz and took possession of it, then, crossing the Goldbach, they prepared to occupy the road to Vienna; but they had greatly underestimated the skill of Napoleon in thinking that he would neglect to defend his route of retreat in case of misfortune. Marshal Davout"s divisions were concealed in Gross-Regairn and from that point he fell on the Russians as soon as he saw that their ma.s.sed troops were held up in the defiles between the meres of Telnitz, Menitz and the rivulet.
The Emperor, whom we left on the plateau of Pratzen, free of the right and centre of the enemy, who were retreating in disorder beyond Austerlitz, came down from the heights of Pratzen and hurried with Marshal Soult"s corps and all his guard, infantry, cavalry and artillery, towards Telnitz; where he attacked in the rear the enemy columns which Marshal Davout was attacking in front. From this moment, the c.u.mbersome ma.s.ses of the Austro-Russians, crammed together on the narrow pathways which ran alongside the Goldbach, finding themselves between two fires, fell into indescribable confusion. The ranks broke down and each man sought his own safety in flight. Some rushed into the marshes around the meres, but our infantry followed them; others tried to escape down the road which runs between the two meres, but our cavalry charged them with fearful slaughter; the largest body of men, princ.i.p.ally Russians, tried to get across the frozen meres, and already a great number were on the ice of Lake Satschan when Napoleon ordered his gunners to fire on them. The ice broke in many places with a loud cracking sound and we saw a host of Russians with their horses wagons and guns slide slowly into the depths. The surface of the lake was covered with men and horses struggling amid the ice and water. A few were saved, helped by poles and ropes which our men held out to them from the bank, but many were drowned.
The number of combatants at the Emperor"s disposal in this battle was sixty-eight thousand men. The Austro-Russians had ninety-two thousand. Our losses in killed and wounded were about eight thousand, the enemy stated that their losses in killed wounded and drowned amounted to fourteen thousand. We took eighteen thousand prisoners and captured one hundred and fifty cannons, as well as a great number of flags, standards, etc.
After giving orders to pursue the enemy in all directions, the Emperor went to his new headquarters in the post-house at Posoritz, on the Olmutz road. He was highly delighted as you may imagine, although he several times expressed regret that the only Eagle we had lost was that of the fourth line regiment, of which his brother, Prince Joseph, was colonel. The fact that this had been captured by the regiment of the Grand-duke Constantin, the Emperor of Russia"s brother, made the loss even more annoying.
Napoleon soon had a great consolation; Prince Jean of Lichtenstein came, on behalf of the Emperor of Austria, to request a meeting, and Napoleon, realising that this would lead to peace and remove the fear of having the Prussians attack the French rear before he had rid himself of his present enemies, readily agreed to the proposal.
Of all the units of the Imperial Guard, the regiment of Mounted Cha.s.seurs was the one which suffered the most casualties in the great charge made on the Pratzen plateau against the Russian Guard. My poor friend Fournier was killed, as was General Morland. It is said that Napoleon intended to have the body of General Morland interred in a mausoleum which he meant to have built in the centre of the Esplanade des Invalides, and that it was preserved in a cask of rum for that reason. But the mausoleum was never built, and it is alleged that the general"s body was still in a room in the school of medicine when Napoleon lost his Empire in 1814.