Brother Gregory: Digression

by John Hulme

  Chapter Five

  A Change of Plan

  At Troyes, Alain's adventure with Napoleon and his journey with the bones of Saint Hugh began in earnest. It had been a tearful farewell from his mother and sisters; they had not understood his reasons for joining the army at this time and in this way. Although he was old enough to be in the army and fighting for France, he could have claimed an exemption from conscription on several grounds, including being the head of a household. But he had chosen to go, and few in the village of Avallon could understand why.

  By the time he had spent a week in the training Depot in Troyes, Alain was beginning to question his judgement himself. The Revolutionary army of 1805 was not the same organization that had kept its enemies at bay for a decade. True, a few patriots still held onto their revolutionary beliefs and fought with vigor to defend the new social structure, but the Great Terror and the corruption and incompetence of the Directory had disillusioned so many that the latest batch of conscripts arriving for training worn more sullen expressions than fervent ones.

  Food was scarce and the equipment they were issued was minimal. Boots were worn and repaired several times, the stitching holding their knapsacks together was broken and frayed and their blue coats, symbol of the soldiers of France, were threadbare and torn. But discipline was strict and harsh, and there was plenty of it.

  Daily the new recruits were awakened before dawn, marched out onto the parade ground and made to walk several leagues with their knapsacks full of stones before they were allowed to eat their breakfasts of moldy bread and watered wine. From then on their day got worse. A shortage of muskets prevented all recruits from practicing loading and firing at the same time, so most were given sharpened stakes and driven to attack sabots of straw as if they were the enemy. French generals believed in principle that a musket was only an expensive way of holding a bayonet.

  After two weeks of such practice, word arrived that the Grande Armee was about to move and that all new recruits were needed at once. Alain was formed up with a company destined eventually to join the brigade of Napoleon's brother Joseph in the infantry division commanded by Vandamme, and in the IV Corps of Marshal Soult. So began the longest walk of his life.

  "Come, mes braves," yelled out sergeant LaGrosse, "we march to join our Emperor and the invasion of England." So they marched.

  "Where are we going?" asked Poulec, a fellow recruit and an ex-shoemaker from Montagris.

  "Look at the sun," Alain told him, "we march west towards Paris and beyond to Boulogne."

  "Hurry," admonished the sergeant, "or there will be no English left for us to fight." More by accident than design Duroc had ended up in the same company as the recruiting sergeant who had come to Avallon. At first he had been afraid of the large Norman, but as their training had continued, he and his fellow recruits had discovered that Sergeant LaGrosse wanted nothing more than a comfortable existence with the minimum of effort. Keep out of his way, obey his orders and his sadism was minimal. This was not the case in many of the other companies, so Alain and his new friends felt luckier than most.

  Near Provins, however, everything changed. A flurry of horsemen in fine uniforms suddenly appeared at the tent of the commanding Captain and less than an hour later loud voices were heard as officers and sergeants hurried among their charges issuing new orders.

  "What is it?" demanded Poulec, trying to tie string around the top of his only good boot. Although it was getting towards the middle of August, and the ground was still hard and dry, watertight boots would be a necessity in England, where it always rained.

  "A change of plans," the sergeant told them all, "Soult, our Marshal, has been ordered to take his Corps to Metz, so we march to Nancy where we will join him."

  "Where's Metz?" Poulec asked, but the sergeant had already moved onto the next tent.

  "Metz?" said Alain in a doubtful voice, "Metz is east of here, close to Luxemburg, nowhere near the coast of France."

  But that was where they marched. By the time they reached Nancy the news was raging throughout the camp; Napoleon had changed his mind, he was not going to attack England across the 'Canale', he was going to fight the Coalition of England, Austria and Russia by striking across the Rhine river into the heart of Wurttemberg.

  "A giant Russian army, under the command of Kutusov, is in Galicia and moving to attack us," the sergeant eventually told them, "and in Bavaria Archduke Ferdinand has 70,000 Austrians all armed to the teeth and fed by the Spanish gold given to them by the English. We must strike down this threat before we can turn our attention to the 'roast beefs' on their island."

  During the heat of the summer, Duroc marched back the way he had come, and by the end of August, he and his fellow recruits had finally joined their new regiment, which was camped east of the town of Metz. For several days towards the end of their march, they had passed among and through large numbers of soldiers from other companies and regiments. Each encounter had brought a different story.

  "We invade Russia in September," was the opinion of a Sub-Lieutenant from a battalion under the command of Marshall Ney.

  "Archduke Charles of Austria has invaded the Kingdom of Italy and driven Marshall Massena into retreat. We will be going to help him." was yet another version.

  At Metz, however, there was very little in the way of hard news, only two things were known for certain; Napoleon had left Paris and was coming to join them, and that the French cavalry was already spreading out along the Rhine river, but as all newspapers were forbidden to publish anything concerning troop movements, other news was scarce.

  "Come with me," Sergeant LaGrosse ordered tersely one morning. He took his company about a mile to the outskirts of a village called Faulquemont and made them lay down in the dry grass beside the road. Within an hour they heard the sound of approaching carts along the rutted road.

  "Silence," he ordered, and everyone froze, gripping their muskets tightly. As they came into view, Alain could see a line of ox drawn carts and a thin screen of blue coated soldiers; they were French, what was going on?

  He found out soon enough when Sergeant LaGrosse suddenly ordered his men to rise up out of the grass and block the passage of the carts. Looking as threatening as he could, Alain obeyed and watched the sergeant negotiate with the frightened group of soldiers guarding the cargoes.

  "We will only take two," he said, reasonably enough.

  "That is not possible," argued his opposite number, recovering from the shock of seeing such a naked display of force by his fellow Frenchmen.

  "We could take them all," Sergeant LaGrosse said reasonably, pulling himself up to his full height and fingering his mustaches, which were equally impressive.

  With a gesture he ordered his seasoned troops to approach the first two carts, knock the current drivers off their seats, and begin pulling the chosen carts to the side of the road, where the oxen contentedly began to eat the dry grass. To the irritation and annoyance of the original owners, who were seriously outnumbered, the sergeant carefully backed away from the confrontation and waved the remaining carts to continue their journey. Spluttering, all they could do was to proceed and wave their fists helplessly.

  Laughing heartily the veterans under Sergeant LaGrosse's command began pulling the covers off the carts they had just high-jacked.

  "Look at this, Sergeant," one shouted and showed the company barrels piled high with apples and other fruits. "Quite a harvest."

  "Quickly now," said the Sergeant with a broad grin, "let's get this food back to camp right away. We don't want anyone to steal it from us." The laughter was universal. Acting on a tip, Sergeant LaGrosse had taken his men to intercept a part of the food supplies being brought to the camp of the II Corps under Marshall Davout. Of all the Marshals in France only Davout and Soult made any serious effort to feed their troops; the rest relied on the ability of the average French soldier to find his own food where ever he could.

  It was one of the last
good meals Alain Duroc was to have in some time. On September 25th Napoleon ordered his Marshall Lannes to cross the Rhine and the invasion of Germany began.

  Alain Duroc and the other members of his regiment began to walk, and walk and walk. At Speyer they crossed the Rhine and marched to Heilbronn on the Neckar River, where lines of communication for the whole army were established. This brought the first hunger of the campaign, as the French army took everything they could carry from the countryside and left little for anyone else. Behind them and to the south Marshall Murat and Lannes were having trouble making contact with the enemy, while to their north it was only by a demonstration of overwhelming force that Marshall Bernadotte frightened the Prussian governor of Ansbach to allow him passage.

  Confusion was everywhere.

  "Where is Archduke Ferdinand?" asked Poulec, as usual he was the most curious and the least informed. But no one, not even the Emperor, could have helped him with an answer. The Austrians, having failed to find Murat and Lannes for themselves, and realizing that a serious force of French troops were now to their north, had begun to draw together behind the Danube River and concentrate their forces around a town called Ulm.

  Napoleon decided to take his army across the Danube at a place called Donauworth. This was a gamble as the Austrians, under the nominal command of Archduke Ferdinand but actually controlled by General Mack, were prepared to strike on his flank and cut him off from France. Such a tactic could well have succeeded if it had been carried out with vigor and at once. But the Austrians were divided, and later in history no one would accept responsibility for what happened next.

  On the night of October 7th Alain Duroc and the rest of the brigade commanded by Vandamme crossed the Danube. For Duroc's company it was not just another walk in the dark, they were moving into unknown territory where Austrian soldiers could be waiting with fully loaded cannon and sharp bayonets. To make matters worse, the weather, which had been reasonable up to that point, broke and icy rain began to fall, washing out the roads and turning the fields into swamps.

  "What happens if the Austrian's attack?" Poulec wanted to know. His boots had just fallen apart and the rain was soaking through his coat.

  "You stick them with your bayonet," growled Herbette, one of the veteran soldiers in the company and one of the men who had been on a recent food forage, without success. "Watch out!"

  The sudden cry was not to warn of any approaching enemy, but to direct attention to a messenger on a large horse.

  "Captain Grandvillers, where is the Captain?" shouted the horseman.

  "Over there," Herbette indicated, "what goes?"

  "South," shouted the horseman, "you have been directed south along the Lech to Augsburg."

  Before he could ask, Poulec was informed that the Lech was a nearby river and that Augsburg was a critical town about 10 miles from their current position. Without sleep, and for most of the next two days, October 8th and 9th, Marshall Soult took most of his men south in a series of forced marches. Archduke Ferdinand, to the despair of General Mack, had decided not to attack but to regroup his forces around Ulm, off to the right of Soult's march. Ulm, as Napoleon well knew, was a strong, well-fortified position on the bank of the Danube. After a chance to reorganize, the Austrian Archduke would be in a viable condition to advance across the Danube and cut most of Napoleon's army off from France and a possible route of retreat.

  Leaving his generals to surround Ferdinand and Mack in Ulm, Napoleon rode to Munich. Soult and his men continued their southern march first to Landsberg and then west to Mindelheim. If the IV Corps moved fast enough they would be able to catch up with Marshals Ney and Lannes, now rapidly closing in on the trapped Austrians, and cut off their southern escape route.

  In Ulm General Mack, recognizing his increasingly precarious position, tried to persuade his vacillating Archduke to break out across the river to the north where Marshall Ney had left a gap. Mack himself led some of his troops against the unfortunate French left to defend Albeck and would have broken through, but he was both wounded and let down by other Austrian forces commanded by Schwarzenberg and Ferdinand. Far to the south, Duroc and his friends had no understanding of the situation and continued to walk and walk.

  March followed march as the weather closed down and the rain fell continuously. By the 13th October, Soult was closing in on Ulm from the south and the Austrian army was surrounded. Fearing capture, Archduke Ferdinand fled, leaving his army and his loyal General Mack to face the consequences. Despite this, Mack refused to give up until his fellow Generals mutinied and opened negotiations for favorable terms of surrender. After a few days of protracted quibbling, Mack surrendered on 20th October and 50,000 Austrian soldiers went into captivity, most without firing a single shot.

  "What did I tell you," shouted a jubilant Sergeant LaGrosse when the news arrived at the IV Corps. "Our little Corsican has done it again. A total victory, a swift campaign, no losses - that man is a genius!"

  LaGrosse was not alone in his praise, although a less biased voice might have given more credit to the average French soldier who had moved with amazing speed over ruined roads through atrocious weather sustained with little food with not many desertions.

  "Now for the Russians," said Duroc after the excitement had died down. Ominous reports had been arriving for days that the Russian armies to the east were being driven by Kutusov towards Vienna. To the south Archduke Charles had an intact army shadowed by Marshal Massena, and to the north the cowardly Ferdinand was forming a second Austrian army near Prague. In Salzburg, Archduke John had about 40,000 veteran soldiers and more were spread out through the Tyrol.

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