Chapter XIII: Part 13

To the Pope they sent a tricoloured cockade and the offer of a pension, to which he made the following reply:--

"I acknowledge no uniform save that with which the Church has adorned me. My life is at your disposal, but my soul is beyond your power. I cannot be ignorant of the hand whence the scourge proceeds which chastises the sheep and afflicts the pastor for the errors of his flock; but I submit to the Divine will. Your pension I need not. A staff and scrip are sufficient for an old man who must pass the remainder of his days in sackcloth and ashes. Rob, pillage, burn as you please, and destroy the monuments of antiquity, _but religion you cannot destroy_: it will, in defiance of your efforts, exist to the end of time!"

Macdonald's Scottish surname was a puzzle to the Italians, who styled him Maldonaldo, Mardona, and every possible variety of the original. After occupying the States of the Church, and leaving Macdonald with his corps to overawe them, the French armies, whose line of march was everywhere marked by flames, plunder, and barbarity, advanced into Naples to expel the old Bourbon king, and erect an affiliated republic on the ruins of his throne. On this service our hero commanded under Championnet. Prior to this he had been charged with the duty of repressing the insurrections which broke out among the Romans, who massacred or assassinated the French soldiers whenever an opportunity of doing so occurred. The most serious of these risings was at Froisinone, a village in the valley of the Apennines. This he suppressed with great severity, and, to strike terror into the peasantry, shot all prisoners taken in arms. The barbarities of the French, during their brief ascendency, are still remembered with horror in Italy. They and their partisans hunted and destroyed the Neapolitan royalists like wild beasts, and made a desert of all Apulia. It was in this province that Ettore Caraffa, Conti di Ruvo, and heir of the Duke of Andria, joined the invaders of his native country, and, after storming and reducing to ashes Andria, a prosperous and populous city in the province of Bari, he was so extolled by the Directory for his generous republicanism, that "when General Broussier carried the town of Trani by storm, Caraffa recommended that it should be burned also--and burned it was, with nearly all that were in it--the wounded and the dead, with those that were living and unhurt. They made, in fact, a hell of all that smiling Adriatic coast long before Cardinal Ruffo had passed the first defile in the Calabrias."

At Froisinone the Roman insurgents murdered the son of the Consul Mathei merely because his father was at the head of the new government. Macdonald offered from fifty to five hundred piastres for the chiefs of the insurrection, dead or alive. He issued a proclamation to the Romans inviting them to obedience and respect for the new authorities put over them, as being the only means of raising the Roman Republic to the rank she should occupy; and he concludes thus: "The great nation wills it so, and its will must be executed.--Macdonald."

Towards the end of 1798, as Commander-in-chief of the Roman territory, he ordained the Consulate to raise two regiments of horse and a battalion of infantry in each department.

The Court of Naples had now been subverted; under the protection of a British fleet and army, the king retired to Sicily, and a republic was supposed to be quietly established at the extremity of the peninsula, when the brave Calabrese, a race of hardy mountaineers, who were living in wild places in all the simple civilization of three centuries ago, rose in arms, and, uniting with the Apulians from the plains, poured against the French in tumultuary hordes--half robbers and wholly patriots. Then began a war of torture and extermination. These new insurgents demanded a general from their foolish and feeble king; but, instead of a soldier, he sent them a priest--a man of peace to oppose armies led by such men as Championnet, Macdonald, Berthier, and Massena!

This was the celebrated Cardinal Ruffo, a descendant of the ancient princes of Ruffo-Scilla, whose now ruined castle crowns that rock so famed in ancient story, and opposite to the fabled whirlpool upon the Sicilian shore. In a remote corner of Calabria he unfurled the banner of Bourbon, with the cry of "Viva Ferdinand and our Holy Faith!"

This brought to the muster-place thousands, who swore upon their knives, daggers, crosses, and relics, to clear their native land of those lawless Jacobins and infidel republicans who were violating and desecrating everything, whether sacred or profane. The mountain robbers, who knew well the secret passes of that romantic and beautiful country--men who under their own government had subsisted by rapine and slaughter, led the van of the new movement. The cardinal cared little for the morals of his followers. Provided they were stanch, brave, good marksmen, and well armed, he received them all with an apostolical benediction, and left the rest to Providence and gunpowder. He marched at their head direct for Naples, where the French army under Championnet was cantoned; and, as he advanced, his wild and tumultuary army was increased, in every town and valley through which he marched, by sturdy peasants armed with muskets, daggers, and weapons of every description.

The fury with which these irregular hordes, clad in their picturesque costume, their Italian hats, and shaggy zammaras, assailed Championnet at Naples, with the advance of another column under General Mack from another point, forced Macdonald to march with his division, four thousand strong, from Rome, and retire to Ottricoli, a small town on a hill near the Tiber, about thirty-six miles distant. He left a garrison in the Castle of St. Angelo, which was summoned by Mack to surrender. He sent a copy of this document, which was imperious in its tenor, to General Championnet, who empowered Macdonald to reply, which he did in the following terms:--

Head-quarters, Monterozi, 29th November, 1798.

"The Commander-in-chief, sir, has sufficient confidence in me to recognise as his own the reply which I make to your letter of the 28th November. I well know that he has not given any answer to your letters concerning the evacuation of the forts and strong places; and one of these, we consider the Castle of St. Angelo. The silence of contempt alone was due to your insolent menaces on this subject, and this was the only answer that could be expected consistently with the dignity of the French name. You mention a regard for treaties, and yet you invade the territory of a Republic in alliance with France, and do so without provocation, and without its having given you the least reason for such conduct.

"You have attacked the French troops, who trusted in the most sacred defences--the law of nations and the security of treaties.

"You have shot at our flags of truce which were proceeding from Tivoli to Vicavero, and you have made the French garrison at Rieti prisoners of war.

"You have attacked our troops on the heights of Terni, and yet you do not call that a declaration of war!

"Force alone, sir, constrained us to retire from Rome (and you, sir, know better than any one the truth of what I say), that the conquerors of Europe will avenge such proceedings! At present, I confine myself merely to stating our injuries; the French army will do the rest. I declare to you, sir, that I place our sick, Valville the commissary of war, and the other Frenchmen who have remained at Rome, under the care of all the soldiers whom you command. If a hair of their heads be touched, it shall be a signal for _the death of the whole Neapolitan army_! The French Republican soldiers are not assassins; but the Neapolitan generals, the officers and soldiers who were taken prisoners of war, on the day before yesterday, on the heights of Terni, shall answer with their heads for the safety of my wounded. Your summons to the commander of Fort St. Angelo is of such a nature, that I have made it public, in order to add to the indignation and to the horror which your threats inspire, and which we despise as much as we think there is little to be dreaded from them.

"Macdonald."

In his position at Civita Castellana, near Ottricoli, he was attacked by Mack with great determination. Championnet, in his despatch, states that the enemy were forty thousand strong, and advanced in five columns. "General Macdonald, surrounded on all sides, gave proof of his great talents. He received the attack with that courage which distinguishes the man of firm character, and by his able dispositions entirely disconcerted the enemy." His advanced guard, under Kellerman, consisted only of three squadrons of the 19th chasseurs à cheval, the first battalion of the 11th regiment, and two pieces of flying artillery. This handful of brave fellows routed Mack's first column, slew four hundred, and took fifteen pieces of cannon, fifty caissons, and two thousand prisoners, while they had but _thirty_ killed.

The Italians of De Mert retired to the heights of Calvi, a steep mountain range, where, after a midnight march, during a severe December storm, Macdonald surrounded and attacked them a few days after, and by a flag of truce summoned them to capitulate. To this they made some ridiculous propositions, but he sent the following ultimatum:--

"The column shall surrender prisoners at discretion, or be put to the sword!"

On this they surrendered at once to the number of five thousand, with all their arms, fifteen standards, eight guns, and three hundred horses. Among the prisoners were the Marshal De Mert and Don Carello. After this, he returned to Rome, re-established the Republic, and then taking the route to Capua, followed Mack's Neapolitans, who fled before him. Mack was an Austrian general who had entered the service of Ferdinand of Naples to organize the patriots. For this purpose he had brought with him from Vienna fourteen experienced officers.

On the march to Capua Macdonald's soldiers suffered greatly from the constant rain and storms of snow, by the overflow of the mountain torrents, the destruction of all the bridges, and by the rifles of the armed peasantry, who mercilessly slew every straggler. The bravest men in the Neapolitan army were the mountain banditti; and many of these romantic desperadoes, who led armed bands, received the commission of colonel, and were decorated with knightly orders.

Fra Diavolo, a brigand by profession, was a colonel in the infantry, and cavaliere of San Constantino; the Abate Proni, a ferocious monk of the Abruzzi; Gaetano Mammone, a miller from Sora; and Benedetto Mangone--three outlaws and brigands, covered themselves with distinction in this horrible war against the French; but Benedetto was a veritable monster. "He never spared the life of a Frenchman who fell into his power; and it is said that he butchered with his own hand four hundred Frenchmen and Neapolitan republicans; and that it was his custom to have a human head placed upon the table when he dined, as other people would have a vase of flowers."

In March, 1799, a picquet of sixty Polish soldiers was captured between Capua and Fondi by the Calabrese, who put every one of them to death. In the Campagna Frenchmen were roasted alive by the peasantry, or tied naked to trees and left to be devoured by dogs and wolves. Stragglers were destroyed by every means barbarity could devise.

The King of Naples, who had come from Sicily, fled again; and General Mack, before he was blocked up in Capua, wrote in these terms:--

"Sire, of forty thousand men with whom I entered the Roman territory, only twelve thousand remain; and, of these, many are going over daily to the French."

Macdonald, with Championnet, laid siege to Capua, where Mack made a vigorous resistance and repulsed them; but the attack was renewed with fresh fury; the city was won by assault, and the remains of the Neapolitan army, who had gathered courage from despair, and whom shame for past defeats inspired with a glow of double vengeance, perished under the bayonets of the French. Their bodies choked the bed of the Volturno; and for six leagues from thence the road to Naples was strewed with their dead and dying, till even the conquerors grew tired of slaughter. When Mack yielded himself a prisoner of war to the General of Division, he proffered his sword, a handsome weapon, which had been presented to him by the King of Great Britain in 1795.

Championnet laughed, and returned it to him, saying--

"Keep your sword, M. le General, the laws of the Republic prohibit the use of British manufactures."

At this time the rage of the French army against their peculating commissaries was great, for they had suffered severely by the scarcity of provisions; but Championnet and Macdonald skilfully turned this discontent against the enemy.

"Soldiers," they exclaimed, after the fall of Capua, "your magazines are at Naples!"

"Let us march, then--to Naples lead us!" was the reply, and to the capital the fugitives of Mack's army were pursued. A dreadful slaughter was made among the Lazzaroni, for a fresh struggle ensued at Naples, and every house from which the troops were fired on was burned to the ground, and its inmates bayoneted.

Macdonald had distinguished himself in every engagement with the unfortunate Mack; but now a series of disputes ensued between him and Championnet, who had many troubles to contend with. Irritated by the devastations committed by the Sieur Faitpoult, Commissary of the Directory, the general commanding ordered him to quit Naples, with his horde of plunderers, within twenty-four hours. Faitpoult, instead of obeying, raised the standard of mutiny against Championnet, but was forced to retire.

The coarse reproaches of the Deputy St. Just still rankled in the memory of Macdonald, who left nothing undone to gain the confidence of the Directory, and persuade the members of it that he respected their authority, while it is but too probable that he despised them in his heart. The Sieur Faitpoult had friends in the Directory; thus the firmness of Championnet in expelling him from Naples was styled mutiny to the Republic, and he was ordered to quit the peninsula, and resign his command to General Macdonald. Poor Championnet was placed under arrest; and, relinquishing his bâton to his more fortunate second in command, had to appear before a court-martial at Turin.

With confidence Macdonald accepted this new position, which was one of great difficulty; for the revolted state of Naples, and, above all, the turbulence and ferocity of the Lazzaroni, were sources of incessant alarm. To travel, or pass from town to town, without an armed escort, was at that time impossible; fighting, skirmishing, solitary assassinations, and wholesale massacres, were of daily occurrence, particularly in the province of Otranto, where the embers of revolt were still fanned by the presence of the brave old Cardinal Ruffo, who appeared at the head of his followers, clad in full pontificals, wearing his scarlet hat, and carrying his pastoral staff surmounted by a cross; and thus attired, in a sacred costume so well calculated to rouse the enthusiasm of Italians to frenzy, he led them to battle. Thus he gave them his benediction before it, and thus he said mass for the souls of those dead braves who died for "Ferdinand and the Holy Faith;" thus attired, at many a siege, he sprinkled the battering guns, like his drums and banners, with holy water, mingling, as it were, the smoke of the censer with the smoke of battle. Though the fiery spirit thus roused was restless and abroad, Macdonald ultimately forced the whole kingdom to submit, and completely mastered the capital, which he governed with firmness and moderation.

His order of the day, issued on the 4th March, 1799, amply details the many dangers which surrounded him, and the wise measures he took to guard against them. He threatened to make the clergy responsible for the violence of the populace; but concluded by declaring his reverence for, and attachment to, religion, and his determination to protect all pastors and magistrates who conformed to the laws of the new republic. Five days after this, being informed that King Ferdinand had an intention of landing again, he published a proclamation, in which he somewhat oddly invited the people of Naples to rise against their native prince, and unite with France. Acting in concert with the Commissioner Abrial, he lowered the taxes levied on the people; and, filled by a just admiration for the memory of Tasso, he saved from destruction the poet's native town, Sorrento, on the southern side of the Gulf of Naples, where an insurrection had taken place. After this, the provisional government made him a rash and pompous offer of forty thousand auxiliaries.

In April, he generously released and sent to Captain Trowbridge, a British officer and eleven seamen, who had been cast ashore at Castellamare, during a tempest. He had treated them with every kindness as his countrymen. They were the crew of a prize, the _Championnet_, privateer.

The entire command of the army in Italy was now bestowed upon General Sherer; and when that officer was defeated between the Lake of Garda and the Adige, on the 26th of March, he sent a despatch to Macdonald, desiring him to form a junction with his troops in northern Italy by forced marches. On hearing of the battle near the Adige, the Neapolitans again rose in arms; and the massacres of the French by wandering bands were again of daily occurrence; but, in spite of every natural and human obstacle, Macdonald effected the junction according to his orders. As his retreat from Naples would have been dangerous without an attempt to overawe the armed masses who hovered on the mountains, he attacked and took Lacava, Castella, and the gloomy little town of Avellino, before his departure. On the 26th May, he was in Tuscany, and united with the divisions detached by General Moreau. There were not wanting those who blamed him for losing time in combining his force with that of Moreau; but those who did so were ignorant of the nature of the country he had to traverse with his trains of artillery and baggage.

"General Macdonald has been here since the 5th instant," says a French letter from Florence. "We deem him the saviour of the French in Italy, and our confidence in him will not be disappointed. His army, which has advanced by forced marches, assembled here yesterday. It is full of ardour, and its zeal, which a few reverses have only fired anew, is a happy presage in our favour."

On the 13th June, he attacked Modena, and in less than two hours dispersed the Austrian division of Count Hohenzollern, which was in position upon the glacis of the place; and two thousand prisoners were taken by his French grenadiers. In an account of this affair, General Sarrazen, who led these grenadiers, mentions that when Macdonald was pressing on with the infantry of the line against the _cavalry_, he said to him--

"Macdonald, I shall remain with my grenadiers, and think you had better do the same."

"Do you not see, M. Sarrazen, that I have them all, as if caught in a mousetrap," replied the commander, joyously; and, when within a hundred paces of the Austrian horse, he required them to surrender.

"We yield," replied an officer, sheathing his sabre and riding confidently forward. Macdonald continued to approach until within pistol-shot of their line, when the treacherous German suddenly exclaimed, while unsheathing his weapon,--

"Draw sabres--charge!"

He threw himself at full speed upon Macdonald, who was far from anticipating a movement so sudden, and, after receiving three sword-cuts on the head, was thrown from his horse covered with blood. This was all done in a moment, and the German officer mingled with his squadron, which instantly took to flight. They were, however, overtaken and captured, and their leader, a youth of eighteen, was slain. Macdonald was at first supposed to be dead, for he lay stunned on the ground, having three deep wounds, with a contusion by the fall from his horse; yet he was in his saddle, and at the head of his column on the 17th, when the advanced guard of the Russians, under Suwarrow, forced the French into position on the right bank of the Trebia, so celebrated for the victory of Hannibal over the forces of the consul Sempronius; and there, on this classic ground, ensued one of the bloodiest battles of the Italian campaign.

Macdonald had advanced by Reggio and Modena, to effect a junction with the army of Moreau, or to relieve Mantua; but being without pontoons, he found the passage of the Po impossible, as that river was swollen by recent rains, and, moreover, was defended by General Kray, with 10,000 irregulars, and twice that number of armed peasantry. On the 17th, his advanced guard was at Placentia; next day, he attacked and repulsed General Ott, near San Giovanni; but the advance of the Russians, under Suwarrow, changed the fortune of the field.

General Sarrazen states Macdonald's force at 40,000 strong; M. de Segur gives it at 28,000. On the bank of that stream, the most rapid and impetuous in Cisalpine Gaul, the contest was fierce and desperate; but the daring attempts of Macdonald to cross, at the head of his troops, were repulsed.

"On the 18th and 19th," says a journal of the time, "the battles were very murderous. The French formed a square four men deep and fought desperately, till a column of Russians passed the river up to their necks in the water, broke through with the bayonet, and made a dreadful carnage among them. On the whole, the French are supposed to have lost, since the 11th instant, 15,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Macdonald himself has received two sabre-wounds from a Hungarian hussar. Among the prisoners taken are 4 generals and 700 officers. Our loss consists of 4000 men killed and wounded, and 400 prisoners; but the latter were rescued in the pursuit, and 40 waggons with French wounded were taken at the same time."

The fury of the Russian advance threw Macdonald's centre into confusion. Sabre in hand, he strove to enforce order under a heavy fire of cannon and musketry; but was swept away with the panic-stricken mass of the 5th regiment of light infantry, among whom he became entangled, and who were flying in disorder, abandoning their muskets, knapsacks, canteens, and blankets in their eagerness to escape. By them he was hurried into the current of the Trebia, and narrowly escaped being drowned. This confusion was caused by a brilliant charge of 500 Cossacks, who rushed with their lances in the rest through a cloud of dust. A terrified French chasseur exclaimed,--

"The whole Russian cavalry are upon us--fly!"

Then it was that the 5th gave way, and the centre was broken, but still the flanks fought desperately; and had the division of Moreau been in the field, it must have been won for France; but on that day he was attempting to raise the siege of Tortosa. Three standards were laid at the feet of Suwarrow.

At Trebia, according to M. de Segur, who once served on Macdonald's staff, "during three days of a battle, the most desperate in our annals, twenty-eight thousand French withstood fifty thousand Russians, held the fortunes of the day in balance, and gave vainly to Moreau the time to strike a blow for France. The victory remained finally with Suwarrow; but, in his astonishment, the rude Muscovite exclaimed,--

"One more such success, and we shall lose the Peninsula!"

Meanwhile, Macdonald had been deceived in his expectations; his army was exhausted; he was severely wounded, and when it was necessary that he should retire, a torrent of foes behind opposed his retreat. Beyond this torrent, other foes awaited him. The courage of his soldiers failed; _but_ he, calm and serene, encouraged them, saying,--

"Be of good cheer, for nothing is impossible to the brave!"

With the remains of his shattered army he retired towards Tuscany and Bologna; and at Piacenza a great quantity of his ammunition and baggage fell into the hands of his pursuers. In the Directory there were men who now reproached him with having wished to gain a battle alone, or at least without the participation of Moreau; but it was by the express command of that general, on whose part he fully expected assistance, that he attempted to force the passage of the Trebia, and break the left wing of the Austro-Russian army. Notwithstanding the desperation of his circumstances, he was not without hopes of making another stand; but, on being deserted by General Lahoz, a Cisalpiner, and his corps, which united with twenty thousand insurgents to gall his flight, Macdonald relinquished all idea of again giving battle, and continued his retreat towards the mountains of Genoa, followed by the troops of Generals Ott, Klenau, Lahoz, and Count Hohenzollern, and by hordes of brigands and guerillas, who murdered his men on all hands, and massacred them in the mountain passes.

With a flag of truce, he sent an officer to the Austrian general Melas, praying that he would treat with mercy the wounded Frenchmen whom he had been compelled to abandon in Piacenza.

"The request is needless," replied Melas; "Austrian soldiers know too well the duties of humanity to require such advice."

Wounds and fatigue had so severely impaired Macdonald's health, that he was fain to ask Suwarrow's permission to visit the baths of Pisa. This, the Russian with chivalry and courtesy granted at once; but, instead of visiting the celebrated Bagni di Pisa, the general returned to France, relinquishing the command of his column, after uniting it to the army of Moreau; and immediately on his arrival in Paris he was entrusted by Napoleon with the command at Versailles.

By this time the French had abandoned the whole coast of the Adriatic, and lost their conquests in Naples, where nothing remained of them but the graves of the slain.

During the past hostilities the domestic relations of the Republic had not improved in character or in spirit; and the feeble condition of the Directory afforded an admirable path by which the ambition of Napoleon might lead to a newer and firmer form of government. Returning hastily from his unsuccessful Egyptian campaign, he had reached Paris; and entering at once into the schemes of Talleyrand and his friend Sieyes, a military conspiracy was formed to remodel the Republic as a Consulate, of which _he_ should be the head. Whatever may have been the motives, or secret ambitions, which led the military chiefs to revolutionize France again, it cannot be denied that she benefited thereby; and the energy with which the essay was made, and the success it had, were a sure guarantee for the decision of future affairs.

Macdonald was in command at Versailles while these plans were maturing, and when Napoleon arrived at the Palace of St. Cloud. Though not actually in the conspiracy, he was in the secret, and knew that opposition to Napoleon would neither be for the interests of France, the army, or himself; thus he took the lead in the matter, and by suddenly closing or dispersing the political club at Versailles, made the inhabitants aware that he, at least, deemed the time had come, "when a just administration should obliterate the horrors of the last few years, and the fatal vacillation of the weak Directory."

On the 18th Brumaire, the attempt was to be made; and Napoleon, accompanied by Macdonald, De Bournouville, and Moreau, inspected in the gardens of the Tuileries ten thousand chosen soldiers on whose faith they could depend, and there Augereau, the future Duke of Castiglione, joined them.

"M. le Général," said he, embracing Napoleon, "you have not called for _me_, but I have come to join you."

"You are welcome," replied Napoleon.

It was a perilous task they had undertaken, to overthrow the political incubus that had pressed so long upon France; and while the startled Directory, who had already discovered the designs of those without, were debating about their own safety, and while Moulins urged that a battalion should be sent to seize Napoleon, the latter suddenly appeared, sword in hand, at the door of the hall, and entered with his grenadiers, three deep, at a time when the projected Consulate was being discussed by some of the Directory with very little chance of success. He decided the matter at once, by ordering his drummers to beat a _pas de charge_, and by dismissing the judges with a promptitude worthy of Cromwell, and with a courage which evinced that, on his part, nothing would be wanting to retain the power he had won.

When an army was formed for the re-conquest of Naples, in 1800, Napoleon offered Macdonald the command of the _corps de reserve_. He did this to testify his pleasure for his adherence to the revolution of the 18th Brumaire; but the general, who felt piqued by the offer of a command so subordinate, in a country where he had before led an army, urged illness and wounds as a reason for remaining in France. The penetration of Napoleon, was too keen for the true sentiments of Macdonald to escape him; thus on the 24th of August, in the same year, he was appointed to command the army of Switzerland, which was destined to penetrate into the Tyrol, to second the operations of the army of Italy and favour the columns of Moreau (who was then warring in Germany) by compelling the Austrians to employ at least thirty thousand of their best men among the Tyrolean mountains--the bulwark of the German empire.

Macdonald marched from Bearn in September, with forty thousand men,[26] towards Helvetia, accompanied by General Matthew Dumas, chief of the staff, a soldier who used his pen better than his sword. His first desire was that a corps of Helvetians should be formed to co-operate with the French against the Austrians; but this request the Swiss government declined; and he soon found his campaign to consist of a series of arduous marches among the mountains, where, as the season advanced and the winter drew on, his soldiers endured every misery that, toil, hunger, and cold could inflict.

In the passage of the Alps, when one of his columns, composed of the 80th Regiment, with some cavalry, artillery, sappers, and guides, under Laboissière, attempted to cross the Splugen, in the country of the Grisons, a dreadful avalanche suddenly came thundering down from the mountains to bar their march, and swept forty-two of the 10th Dragoons, with their horses, over a precipice. His other columns met with equal difficulties. A letter in the Paris papers, dated "Head-quarters, Chicavenna, 7th December, 1800," relates:--

"It was necessary to traverse the Splugen and Mount Carduiet. These mountains, even in July, present all the horrors of winter; judge what they are in December! Threatening and inaccessible rocks, seas of snow on all sides, torrents of avalanches falling with a noise equally terrible. Since our first march, two hundred men, with their horses, have been swallowed up. After unheard-of labour, we succeeded in disengaging all of them except three. There was not the least trace of a road; but by labour and constancy we opened a narrow path, bordered by precipices which the eye could not fathom nor the foot always avoid."

Two-thirds of the pass, which leads towards Como had been traversed, the troops in front, with muskets slung, digging a path for their comrades in the rear, till the column, exhausted by cold and fatigue, began to retire without orders, though the dangers behind--snow, hunger, and avalanches--were the same as those in front. Macdonald galloped towards his sinking soldiers, and his presence had an immediate effect on them. They halted; he entreated and threatened; but they listened in sullen silence.

Then he dismounted, seized a shovel, and proceeded to dig the snow, exclaiming--

"My comrades, I would rather perish in the abyss than stoop to turn my steps on perils such as these!"

"Vive M. le Général!" cried the soldiers of the 80th. Confidence was inspired anew; again the muskets were slung, the shovels resumed, and after three days of labour, danger, and toil, the passage was achieved, and the troops of Macdonald debouched from that terrible gorge, where the frozen precipices seemed to hang from heaven, and where whirlwinds of hail, tempests of snow, with death in its most frightful form, had been encountered.

The resistance he experienced from the Austrian troops was trivial; and on the 7th of January, 1801, he made himself master of the circle and city of Trent; but the armistice concluded at Treviso on the 16th of the same month put an end to the war. After this he remained for some time at Isola, suffering from an illness caused by the fatigues he had undergone at Splugen, and Delmas commanded in the interim.

At the close of the campaign he returned to Paris, where his opposition to some of the arbitrary measures of the First Consul made that haughty personage resolve on politely getting rid of a troublesome mentor, by sending him on a distant mission. He was accordingly dispatched to Denmark, as Minister Plenipotentiary from France to the Court of Christian VII. There he resided for three years, and there he encountered so many disagreeables, as his presence was unwelcome in Copenhagen, that he frequently solicited his recall; but Napoleon was jealous of Moreau, who was Macdonald's chief friend: thus he was only recalled when the First Consul was about to exchange the consular staff for an imperial sceptre.

It was about this time that the famous conspiracy of General Pichegreu and Georges Cadoudal, and their correspondence with the Prince of Condé, were discovered. In that correspondence Moreau was compromised to a dangerous extent; thus his friend Macdonald was received with greater coldness at the Tuileries.

The high indignation which he had the temerity to express after the mock trial and banishment of his brother soldier Moreau, who fled to America, completed the displeasure of the new Emperor, who withdrew all countenance from Macdonald, and, notwithstanding his past services, bravery, and endurance, his name was omitted from the list of marshals of the Empire who were then created.

He retired to the country, inspired by a mortification which he could not repress; and remained in seclusion, unnoticed, during the early part of the new war against Spain and Austria, and until 1809 would seem to have been forgotten; but he had perhaps the consolation of remembering "that he must not fear who thirsts for glory; and although we often find that true merit is eclipsed for a time, we have never known it to be entirely lost; it bursts at last through the clouds which environ it, and appears resplendent in its bright and genuine colours."

These were the words of Fabius Maximus to Emilius when, with Varro, he went to lead the Roman army; and thus the "true merit," the coolness and intrepidity of Macdonald, were destined to shine again, for he was remembered by Napoleon when that monarch became entangled with the Italian and Peninsula wars--when the great armies of Austria pressed him on one hand and the distant hordes of Russia were gathering on the other; then, but not till then, did he seem to remember the brave soldier whom petty quarrels and court intrigues had compelled him to overlook. This was in that year when the perfidy of Napoleon to the royal family of Spain and to the whole Spanish nation excited such indignation, not only at the Court of Vienna, but throughout the whole of Germany and Europe generally.

Macdonald was now offered the command of a division in that corps of the army of Italy led by Prince Eugene Beauharnois, who was then evincing his usual intrepidity, but was experiencing severe checks from the Archduke John of Austria. This offer he at once accepted, for he had grown weary alike of peace and of retirement. He joined Prince Eugene; and from that period was deemed his mentor rather than his second in command.

At the head of the right wing he crossed the Isola on the 14th and 15th of April, 1809, and drove the Austrians from their strong positions at Goritz, capturing eleven of their guns and much munition of war.

These successes led to those at Raab and at Laybach, both of which were the result of Macdonald's combinations and manoeuvres; and pushing on vigorously, without leisure or delay, with his division, he joined the grand army of the Emperor before the gates of Vienna.

On the 5th and 6th of July he was at the famous battle of Wagram, where he led two divisions of infantry, some of which were battalions of the Garde Impériale. With these he advanced under a fire, when two hundred pieces of cannon were engaged on both sides, and when the roar of the conflict was the greatest ever heard even by the oldest veteran of these warlike armies. Three-fourths of his column perished under the storm of shot by which it was assailed as he advanced to break the Austrian centre, the task assigned to him by the Emperor.

The fury with which his troops came on was irresistible. He drove back the brigades of the archduke with immense loss, and a total rout of the Austrians ensued, thus terminating a two days' conflict which will ever be remembered in the annals of carnage--for few prisoners were taken on either side, which proved the resolution of both--to conquer or die!

Thirty-six thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three officers and soldiers of both armies lay killed or wounded on the field and round the walls of Vienna; while, as related in the memoir of Count O'Reilly, corpses in every variety of uniform, gashed and bloody, floated in hundreds down the dark waters of the Danube, or were daily thrown upon its shores to feed the wolves or to fester and decay. Such was the field of Wagram, and it was the culminating point in the fortunes of Stephen Macdonald.

Napoleon, though little disposed to view him with favour, when the field was won, sprang from his horse, and embraced him with ardour, exclaiming,--

"Now, Macdonald, we are together for life and death!"

He complimented him before his staff, extolled him in the bulletin, and on the field of battle made him at last a Marshal of the Empire.

Of all the French marshals he was the only one who thus received a bâton in the field, and soon after he was created Duke of Tarentum, from a town of that name in Naples.

"Among all the marshals of France," says the editor of Bourienne's _Memoirs_, "there is not one so pure from every stain on the soldier's character--so daringly honest with Napoleon in his prosperity--so lastingly true to him in his adversity, as this, his only Scottish officer."

Napoleon thus bore honourable testimony to the value of his service at Wagram, the glory of which another marshal sought to appropriate to himself.

"As his majesty commands his army in person," says Napoleon, in a private order, dated Camp of Schoenbrunn, 9th of July, 1809, "to him belongs the exclusive right of assigning the degree of glory which each merits. His majesty owes the success of his arms to the French troops, and not to strangers. Prince Ponte Corvo's order of the day, tending to give false pretensions to troops, at best not above mediocrity, is contrary to truth, to discipline, and to national honour. The corps of the Prince of Ponte Corvo did not remain immovable as iron. It was the first to retreat. His majesty was obliged to cover it by the corps of the Guard and the division commanded by Marshal Macdonald, by the division of heavy cavalry commanded by General Nautsonby, and by a part of the cavalry of the Guard. _To Marshal Macdonald belongs the praise which the Prince of Ponte Corvo arrogates to himself._ His majesty desires that this testimony of his displeasure may serve as an example to every marshal not to attribute to himself the glory which belongs to others."[27]

After Wagram he commanded in the duchy of Gratz, and maintained in his army a discipline so severe in repressing plunder and outrage, that on his departure at the peace with Austria, before his division began its homeward march for France, the States prayed him to accept an offering of two hundred thousand francs, but he resolutely declined them.

"Messieurs," said he, "I am a soldier--I have done but my duty."

Then the deputies offered him a jewel-box of great value, as a bridal gift for one of his daughters; and to the bearers he made the following reply:--

"Gentlemen, if you believe that you owe me anything, you shall have the means of repaying me amply, by the care you will take of three hundred poor invalid soldiers, whom I shall leave in your city."

Napoleon was now in the zenith of his power; his marriage with Maria Louisa--an espousal more politic than honourable--had been celebrated at the close of the year of Wagram; and in the year following, Holland, the Valais, and the Hanse Towns were annexed to France; territories which, with those of Rome, gave to the new empire an augmentation of nearly 5,000,000 of subjects.

The war was now raging in the Peninsula, and there the feeble measures of Augereau in Catalonia made Napoleon resolve to supersede him. The Duke of Tarentum was named his successor, and, as such, he soon restored order among the Catalans. In their mountainous province, more than in any other part of Spain, military talent and energy were required; as the entire population--a brave, resolute, and hardy race--were in arms against the invaders. Augereau's losses in the desultory warfare maintained by the Guerillas were so severe that they more than counterbalanced his success in the sieges he undertook; and these losses were so indicative of mismanagement that they ensured his recal to France. He marched for the frontier laden with the plunder of Barcelona, and of all the officers who formed its escort, General Chabran was the only one--as the Catalan journals remarked--who did not pillage the house in which he had been quartered; but returned to the Patron de Caza the silver spoons he had used at table.

At this time rapine was the order of the day in the French army; a hammer and a small saw invariably formed a portion of a soldier's accoutrements, that he might have tools at hand to break open every lock-fast place, when the work of pillage began.

In Catalonia, Macdonald found himself at the head of 17,000 men; in the adjoining province of Aragon, Suchet led 16,000; and the Spanish corps of O'Donnel were the only regular troops opposed to them both.

On Suchet laying siege to Tortosa, a fortified city on the left bank of the Ebro, Macdonald marched with 12,000 men to secure the entrance of a convoy of provisions into Barcelona; and this he achieved in triumph, defeating a vigorous attempt of the Spaniards to intercept it.

O'Donnel, general of the Spaniards, now directed his main efforts to relieve Tortosa, where the Conde de Alacha Miguel Lili, with 7800 brave fellows, who had survived or escaped from the battle of Tudela, made a stout resistance. O'Donnel left nothing undone to impede the operations of the besiegers and raise the blockade; till Macdonald, to distract his attention and favour the operations of Suchet, marched upon Tarragona, a seaport near the mouth of the Francoli. It is picturesquely situated upon a hill, and is surrounded by old Moorish walls, having turrets at intervals. As it is a place of importance, the Spaniards were anxious to preserve it, and pressed Macdonald so severely that he was forced to take up a position in sight of the town, in a plain so near the sea that one of his flanks was exposed to a cannonade from a British frigate. Finding this position untenable, after a sharp encounter, and reaping no other advantage from his march than the plunder of Reus, a wealthy little manufacturing town, he retreated across the plains of Tarragona, harassed on both flanks by the troops of Sarsfield and Ibarrola, who slew 300 of his soldiers, captured 130, and retook most of the pillage found in Reus and elsewhere.

As a central point, from whence he could cover Suchet's operations against Tortosa, and command a space of country capable of supplying the troops with food and forage, Macdonald chose a strong position near Cervera, in sight of the Mediterranean. Finding him secure here, O'Donnel, instead of attacking him, turned the attention of his own troops against the French elsewhere, and cut off several of their small garrisons, until he received a wound which disabled him.

On the 13th December, Macdonald received a welcome reinforcement of ten thousand men; but, notwithstanding, Eroles, Sarsfield, and Campoverde, at the head of the Spanish regiments of the line and Guerillas of Catalonia, fought him successfully in almost every instance. Yet his movements so completely covered the siege of Tortosa that, after five months' delay, Suchet was able to break ground before it, and the Conde Lili surrendered at discretion; for which sentence of death was pronounced against him by the Spanish authorities; and with great solemnity, in the market-place of Tarragona, the head was struck from his _effigy_ by the public executioner.

In 1811, Macdonald possessed himself of Figueras, a small Catalonian town situated in a fertile plain, not far from the frontier of France. On an eminence it has a magnificent castle, with bomb-proof towers and undermined approaches. This important strength had been taken by the French three years before; but on the night of the 10th April, 1811, some Catalonians who had been forced into the ranks of a French regiment, finding themselves, by a lucky coincidence, all on guard together, resolved to have their revenge. They opened a sally-port to their countrymen, who entering the castle sword in hand, made the garrison, to the number of four thousand men, prisoners, without a shot being exchanged. On the 19th of the following August, Macdonald, after meeting with a determined resistance from these Catalonians, retook the castle of Figueras, by capitulation, and garrisoned it again for Joseph Bonaparte.

After this recapture, Catalonia seemed to be subjugated to the yoke of France; yet, for some reason unknown, Macdonald was withdrawn from the command of the army there, and it was bestowed upon General Decaen. It is supposed that Napoleon, who disliked that any one should assume the part of monitor or judge of his soldiers, was piqued at the tenor of an obscure passage in Macdonald's report, in which he detailed to Marshal Berthier the recapture of Figueras. It ran thus:--

"_I please myself in rendering justice_ to the army, in the hope that the Emperor will view with an eye of favour these brave fellows, entreating your excellency _to cause it to be remarked_ to his Majesty that his army in Catalonia is a stranger to the event which has re-united it in this place."

"How happens it," said General Sarrazen, "that Macdonald, who does not want for good sense, should have permitted himself to use such awkward observations?"

In the disastrous invasion of Russia he had command of the 10th Corps, of which the Prussians formed a part. The details of that terrible winter campaign are too well known to all the world to require recapitulation in these memoirs.

The Emperor led his army to Smolensko, on the great road to Moscow, and crossed the Niemann on the 27th of June.

Macdonald crossed the same river, on the same day, at Tilsit, by a bridge of boats, and at the head of his French and Prussians (the Corps d'Yorck) seized Dunabourg, while Kowno, in Lithuania, fell without a struggle, and the great army of the Empire marched through it in splendid order, with all its bands playing and colours flying. How different was the aspect of the few surviving fugitives of that army when they repassed Kowno in December following!

With orders to occupy the line of Riga, and if it was captured, to threaten St. Petersburg, Macdonald marched towards the capital of Livonia, which was occupied by a numerous garrison, whose defensive measures were ably seconded by a British naval force. Napoleon conceived that if the main body of the Russians fell back on St. Petersburg, he would, when following them, be able to effect a junction with the 10th Corps under Macdonald, after which they could push on together; but though the latter burned the suburbs of Riga, his operations against the place were long retarded by the bravery of the besieged. Though not regularly fortified, the town has considerable means of defence, being encircled by an earthen rampart, and having a citadel, while a fortress guards the entrance of the Duna or Dwina.

The project of Napoleon became a failure, when the route pursued by the retreating Russians proved different from the one he anticipated. Thus he was obliged to advance after them to Moscow, while Macdonald remained for a time before Riga, on which he could make no impression, though he fought under its walls a series of bloody conflicts, in futile assaults and repulsing desperate sorties. Suspicion of the faith of his Prussian regiments was not his least source of anxiety. When St. Cyr was alarmed that his flanks might be turned by the Russians from Finland, he wrote an urgent letter to Macdonald requesting him to oppose the march of those troops who were led by Wittgenstien and Steinheil, and whose line of march lay in front of the position before Riga; adding that if he (Macdonald) objected to detach any part of his forces from the blockade, to come and assume command of St. Cyr's division in person, and meet this army from Finland. "But Macdonald," adds Count Segur, "did not conceive himself justified in making so important a movement without express orders. He distrusted Yorck, the Prussian general, whom he suspected of intending to deliver up to the Russians his park of siege artillery. He replied, that to defend it was his first and most indispensable duty, and he declined to quit his station."

Macdonald's suspicions soon proved correct; for on the 13th December, 1812, when in presence of the enemy, he was abandoned by the whole of the Prussians under General Yorck; and was thus compelled to retire, though resisting with indomitable energy the attack of the Russians, who followed him closely, when sword in hand he sought to hew a passage to the rear. By this time all was lost elsewhere.

He survived the perils of that frightful campaign, in which out of 300,000 soldiers, who, in June, passed the Niemann in all the pomp of war and pride of former victories, scarcely 50,000 escaped out of Russia; and of these the greater number had suffered so dreadfully from wounds, hunger and frost, as to be quite unfit for future service.

With 1131 pieces of cannon, there were taken by the Russians 41 generals, 1298 officers. 167,410 sergeants and rank and file. The _rest_ were accounted for by the frost and snow, the Cossack lances, the bullet and the sabre, rendering the paths across the whitened wastes of Russia impassable with the bodies of the dying and the dead. Never in all the annals of war were greater sufferings detailed than those endured by the miserable French on their retreat from flaming Moscow.

In 1813, Macdonald commanded a corps in Saxony, where, on the 29th April, he had the satisfaction of routing at Mercebourg the division of General Yorck, composed of the _same_ Prussians who had abandoned him at Riga during the previous year; and at Lutzen, where, on the 2nd May, the combined forces of Russia and Prussia met the French in battle, led by the Emperor in person, he attacked the Prussian reserve, and after a long and severe engagement cut it to pieces.

"Now," said he, "I have fully avenged the desertion of General Yorck."

After this Napoleon retired and established his head-quarters at Dresden, while Leipzig and Breslau were also occupied by his troops. On being reinforced by the Saxons, whose king he held as a species of hostage for his people, he resolved on attacking the northern allies near Bautzen; and Macdonald hastened with his division across the Spree, to share in the battle which ensued in June. The French triumphed, and their foes had to retreat, but in fine order, into Silesia. Macdonald was despatched by the Emperor in pursuit; but was compelled to fall back, as the roads by which he must have marched were almost inundated.

Nowhere did he attain more distinction than during the horrors of the three days of Leipzig.