Regular readers will know of my interest in things Napoleonic. In Blog 22 I did a piece about the Battle of Eylau, fought in the snow in 1807. Parallel to that I have a couple of autobiographies of French soldiers who fought in Napoleon's Grande Armee.
One account was written by Jean-Roch Coignet who was in the Imperial Guard and fought at Waterloo.
The other is by Jean Baptiste Barres who started off as an infantryman in the Imperial Guard, so neither was a 'common soldier' in the normal sense of the word.
Barres was at Eylau and wrote that sixteen (16) French generals were killed or mortally wounded. That was in the days when generals would command Corps, Divisions and sometimes Brigades. They also led their men forward into battle. Even so, it is a pretty startling number of high ranking officers for one battle. All that gold braid makes for a tempting target and a corpse worth looting. It got me wondering whether sixteen French (or British generals) were killed in the entire First World War; I'm not implying a criticism but it's worth comparing just because of the changes in the way war was fought. Something to look up perhaps.
The other little gem this account delivered was one of the nicknames the Grande Armee had for Napoleon. Allied nicknames ranged from 'The Usurper' to 'The Thief of Europe.' Very highbrow indeed and with a faintly cross ring to them, "that chap Bonaparte is nothing but a usurper, the cad."
French ones like 'The Little Corporal' are generally well known, but how about 'Father Violet?' I wonder if that is not a tongue in cheek reference to the butchery he unleashed? The other thing that comes through these accounts is how often they marched, stood guard or tried to sleep in soaking wet clothing, with not a waterproof in existence. Well, disease took more of them than the lead ball and cannon.
Here's to Chasseur Barres for raising a candle's light on one of the most famous men in history. Father Violet, indeed!
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