CHAPTER V

My father is appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of the West--His report on the state of La Vendée--My father is sent to the Army of the Alps as General-in-Chief--State of the army--Capture of Mont Valaisan and of the Little Saint-Bernard--Capture of Mont Cenis--My father is recalled to render an account of his conduct--What he had done--He is acquitted.

It can be seen that such a state of things could not last: moreover, my father by his resistance risked his life in a far more dangerous game than that of the battlefield.

The Committee of Public Safety replied on the 10th of Frimaire in the following terms:--

"The Committee of Public Safety decrees:

"That the Provisional Executive Council shall immediately send 10,000 men of the Army of the Western Pyrenees into la Vendée to join the portion of the Army of the West which is acting against the rebels of that department and its neighbouring tracts on the left bank of the Loire. This division is to be under the command of General Dumas.

"The Executive Council is to take the most active steps to carry out these orders, and must forward its despatches by special courier.

"_Signed in the Records_:

"ROBESPIERRE, LINDET, RIVIÈRE, CARNOT, BILLAULD-VARENNES, and C. A. PRIEUR.

"Authenticated copy.

"J. BOUCHOTTE, Minister of War."

My father went to la Vendée.

There he found an entirely different state of things.

As soon as he arrived General Canclaux was recalled to Paris under suspicion.

Everything fell on my father's shoulders; and he received the chief command of the Army of the West.

He began his work by taking stock of the men at his disposal, as a good workman before setting to work examines the tools in his hands.

The tools were bad, according to my father's report. If we read it attentively in the light of to-day, if we take careful note of the time it was penned (17 Vendémiaire, year II), we shall see that there was sufficient matter in this report to have guillotined him twenty times over.

It was miraculous that he escaped.

Here is the report:--

"REPORT ON THE ARMY OF LA VENDÉE.

"WESTERN ARMY.

"GENERAL QUARTERS AT FONTENAY-LE-PEUPLE, _17th Vendémiaire, Year II of the Republic, one and indivisible._

"_The Commander-in-Chief to the Committee of Public Safety._

"I have delayed my report on the state of the war and army at la Vendée, so that I might be able to make quite sure of my information from personal observation; otherwise it would have been but an echo of the various accounts which have been told me by persons who had each his own particular point of view. Now, on my return from my tour of inspection, it will be quite another matter; I shall speak of facts which have come to my personal knowledge, and of irregularities which I myself have witnessed.

"Well, to speak plainly, there is no part of the Army of the West, whether in its military or administrative departments, which does not need the hand of a martinet. The battalions have no sort of cohesion. The old muster-rolls are reduced to a hundred and fifty men.

"By that you can judge of the small number of recruits there has been, of the incapacity of its regiments, the efficient portions of which are paralysed by the inexperience of the majority, whilst the officers themselves are so undisciplined it is quite hopeless to expect them to train fresh men.

"But there are worse evils than these.

"The evil lies deeper, in the spirit of lawlessness and pillage that prevails through the whole army, a spirit fostered by lack of punishment and produced by long-standing habit. This spirit has been carried to such a pitch that I have ventured to say it is quite impossible to put it down, except by transferring these corps to other armies and in replacing them by troops that have been trained to subordination.

"To convince you of the truth of this it will be sufficient to tell you that the soldiers have threatened to shoot their officers for trying to stop pillage according to my orders. You may at first be amazed at such outrages; but you will cease to be surprised when you reflect that it is the necessary consequence of the system carried on till now during this war. When once _an impulse to plunder and pillage_ has been indulged in, it is difficult to stop it at will, as you, citizen Representatives, know; la Vendée has been _treated just like a town taken by assault: everything in it has been sacked, pillaged, burnt._ The soldiers do not understand why they are forbidden to do to-day what they did yesterday. You will not find even among the general officers any means of recalling the rank and file to a love of justice and more decent behaviour. I do not doubt that there are some who have higher principles and desire to return to a better state of things. Some of these men served in this army when pillage was in practice; witnesses to the defeat of our arms, these men have lost, by their participation in these past defeats, the requisite authority to put a stop to the state of disorganisation I have pointed out; the remainder are lacking in intelligence, in firmness, in proper methods for reducing the troops to order and discipline. Therefore, after careful examination, I have found but few general officers capable of doing any good. Their influence is usually bad, and a deplorable spirit of pillage, of lawlessness, and of license reigns throughout the army. There is no spirit of activity, no supervision, no teaching. One night I walked right through the whole camp without being so much as observed, let alone recognised. Is there, then, any wonder at our recent defeats?

"And this, notwithstanding that military virtues are never more needed than in civil warfare. How can we fulfil your orders without such virtues? How are we to convince these country-people of your just dealings when justice is violated by your own troops? of your respect for persons and property _when the men_ who are charged to proclaim that respect publicly pillage and murder unpunished? Your designs and their carrying out constantly contradict one another, and there can be no successful outcome unless this is all changed: to change the system we must change the men. It is above all urgently necessary to support precepts by example, as the inhabitants of these parts have so often been deceived by false hopes and broken promises.

"I shall, however, have expressed myself badly if you infer from my report that la Vendée is still a source of danger to the Republic and threatens her liberty.

"That is not my opinion at all, for I fully believe the war could be quickly ended if such measures as I propose were adopted. These are:

"1. A complete reorganisation of the army.

"2. A thorough change in the staff officers.

"3. A carefully sifted selection of officers intended for la Vendée. They should be able to maintain the strictest discipline and to stop the tendency to pillage, by their tried experience, their intelligence, and their integrity, and, finally, by their own steady and determined conduct.

"Citizen Representatives, must I speak out? So many difficulties confront me that I prefer to make this admission to you rather than fall short of your expectations. I should be proud to be able to end this disastrous war and to help to deliver the Republic at last from the perils with which it is threatened; but desire for glory does not make me blind to facts; the materials at my disposal are not adequate to satisfy your views, to reorganise the army, to make up for the inefficiency of the general officers, to restore the confidence of the inhabitants of the revolted provinces; in short, to rouse new life and infuse a better spirit all round.

"Whilst, therefore, matters remain in this condition it will be quite impossible for me to respond to your hopes and to assure you of a speedy termination to the war in la Vendée."

Could not the reader fancy he was studying the report of an old Roman warrior of the time of Regulus or of Cato the Elder, who had had to be sent into a revolted province as a result of the proconsulship of a Calpurnius Piso or a Verres?

This report was equivalent to a resignation, and, considering the spirit of the time, seemed pretty certain to lead to that end; but some good genius always seemed to protect my father; and, instead of forfeiting his head as the penalty for declaring such terrible truths, he was made commander-in-chief of the Army of the Alps on 2nd Nivôse, year II. He took up his new command on the 2nd of the following Pluviôse.

Let us here say a few words about the situation of the Alpine army at the time my father was appointed commander-in-chief.

In the first place, the defeats of Quiévrain and of Marchain and the taking of Longwy and the bombardment of Lille were such comparatively ancient history as to have been almost forgotten. At the end of a year France, who had been so near a foreign invasion, had carried war into the enemy's territory. Belgium was entirely conquered; our soldiers were examining the mountains of the Savoy which they were soon to scale; and our old enemy Austria was already threatened on the one hand by Germany and on the other by Italy.

Three fresh enemies, England, Spain and Holland, rose against us, in response to Francis's and Frederic William's cry of distress. The old Allies, who had placed the old monarchy within an ace of destruction at Fontenoy and at Rosbach, threatened the young Republic; but, as we have said, to the chant of _la Marseillaise_, a miracle was wrought, the whole of France rose simultaneously, and seven armies confronted their enemies on all sides.

When the Prussians had penetrated as far as la Champagne and the Austrians had invaded Flanders, the King of Sardinia made sure that France was lost; he did not hesitate to join the Coalition and to prepare his army for war. The Government, alarmed by these demonstrations, sent General Montesquiou South to prospect. He had not been there a month before, becoming convinced that France ought to reckon the King of Sardinia henceforth among her enemies, he sent the Government a plan for the invasion of Savoy. After untold difficulties, including even a temporary disgrace, General Montesquiou received orders to put his project into execution. He transported his camp to Abrelles, and ordered General Anselme, who was in command of the camp of Var, to make ready to invade the district of Nice towards the end of September, and to combine his forces with those of the fleet then under the command of Admiral Truguet at the port of Toulon.

As soon as the Piedmontese were aware of our preparations to invade, they hastened to make ready for our attack. Three forts had been built, one near Champareille, and the other two at Miaux. Montesquiou allowed these preparations to grow and intrenchments to be thrown up. Then, just when he knew the Piedmontese were about to mount guns in them, he sent Major-General Laroque with the 2nd battalion of light infantry and some grenadiers to take them by surprise. The Piedmontese, whose preparations for defence were not yet complete, made no attempt to resist the attack, and, abandoning the half-finished fortifications which they had raised with such labour, they fled without firing a single shot. The evacuation of the bridges, the marches from Bellegarde and Nôtre-Dame-de-Miaux and Apremont, were the result of this retreat. The French followed the Piedmontese a half-day's march behind. Montmeillan opened its gates.

Public opinion, checked until now by the Sardinian occupation, began to wake up. The French were welcomed on all sides as liberators. The Piedmontese fled to the sound of the cheering which greeted the tricoloured flag. Deputations from all the villages hurried up to General Montesquiou; his march was a triumphal procession; deputies came to him even to the château des Marches to bring him the keys of Chambéry, and the next day he entered the town with an escort of a hundred cavalry, eight companies of grenadiers and four pieces of cannon. There a grand banquet awaited him, his staff, and his soldiers, given by the Municipal Council.

Savoy was now incorporated into France under the name of the department of Mont-Blanc, a title retained until 1814. This first conquest was brought about without the firing of a single rifle--solely by the superiority of the tactics of the French general over those of his enemy.

In the meantime, General Anselme took possession of the district of Nice and added the department of the Alpes-Maritimes to France; the principality of Monaco soon followed.

But here the French invasion ended. Civil war began to rage at home. Jean Chouan had raised la Vendée by his nocturnal whisperings; the scaffold, ever ready in the squares of Revolutionary towns, claimed its ghastly toll; General Montesquiou was proscribed by the Convention, but succeeded in escaping to Switzerland, where he found refuge. Anselme was arrested and beheaded for the conquest of Nice. Biron took his place, and followed him to the scaffold. Finally Kellermann, whom my father was to succeed, took a turn as commander-in-chief in a post known to be under suspicion, and more dangerous than grapeshot; but Kellermann soon found himself between the Piedmontese army, eager to assume the offensive, and Lyon, which was in a state of revolt. He kept his eyes on Italy and France alternately, and divided his small army into two corps, leaving one under General Brunet's command, and leading the other up to the walls of Lyon himself.

Directly the Piedmontese discovered Kellermann's departure, they took advantage of the reduced numbers of the French troops, and fell upon them with 25,000 men. For eighteen days that handful of brave men fought incessantly, only falling back step by step, losing but a matter of twenty leagues of ground, and saving all their magazines.

However, General Brunet could not hold out much longer, and he notified his position to Kellermann. Kellermann immediately raised the siege of Lyon, and joined the army with a reinforcement of three thousand men, bringing up the total of his forces to eight thousand men. He placed three hundred of the National Guards in the second line, and with these trifling numbers he began the attack on 13th September 1793.

His plan of attack was most cleverly contrived, and was carried into execution with equal skill by his lieutenants and men. It was a complete success, and, from October 9th following, the enemy was chased from Faucigny, from Tarantaise, and from la Maurienne; the Piedmontese were driven from post to post till they reached St. Maurice, which they hoped to hold, since they had mounted there several pieces of cannon. The advance guard reached it at seven o'clock on the morning of October 4th; the cannonade lasted until ten o'clock, till the bulk of the army appeared on the scenes with its artillery. Whilst the French guns were silencing the enemy's battery, Kellermann ordered the 2nd battalion of light cavalry to outflank the Piedmontese. The eight hundred men who composed this battalion were accustomed to mountain warfare, and dashed over the boulders, leaped the precipices, climbed down the abysses and attacked the Piedmontese with such impetuosity that they could not withstand the onslaught, but fled in disorder, abandoning St. Maurice.

When Kellermann left this village he wrote to the Convention as follows:--

"Mont Blanc was invaded several days ago by a considerable number of the enemy, but to-day it is evacuated; the frontier from Nice to Geneva is open, and the retreat of the Piedmontese from la Tarantaise will necessitate their retiring from la Maurienne. The taking of Mont Blanc has cost the enemy two thousand men and a vast quantity of money."

Kellermann's reward was a warrant for his arrest and a summons to appear before the Convention.

It was to replace him whilst he went to give an account of his victories, that my father was called to the Army of the Alps.

His first care on arrival was to reconnoitre the enemy's lines and to re-establish the broken communications between the Army of the Alps and the Army in Italy; while busied over these preliminary operations he sent the Convention a plan of campaign which was adopted.

All this time my father was making friends with the boldest chamois-hunters; he made one or two excursions with them to show them that he was capable of making one of their party, and, when he had gained their confidence, or rather their devotion, by hunting with them among the snows, he converted his hunting comrades into guides.

One morning the general left his army in command of General Bagdelaune, took provisions to last several days, and set out with three of his faithful hunters.

He was absent five days; during these five days he examined all the passes by which it might be possible to reach the redoubt on Mont Cenis. This work was no easy task, for the passes could only be examined by night; and the least false step would have hurled a reckless scout into the precipices.

He returned on the fifth day.

Mont Cenis was the strategic point, the pivot on which all his plans had to turn; Mont Cenis, with its everlasting snows, its bottomless abysses, and its impracticable paths, was reckoned impregnable.

As he re-entered the camp my father remarked:

"In a month Mont Cenis will be ours."

It should be pointed out that the men who had to second him in this enterprise were used to mountain warfare; they stuck at nothing short of the impossible; now they were about to overcome the impossible: the soldiers would have to pass where no mountaineer had ever passed, paths whose snows the foot of man had never trodden, where only the hoofs of chamois or the eagle's talons had pressed.

My father had three thousand iron _crampons_ (frost-nails) made for distribution among his soldiers, and they were bidden to practise the use of these in crossing the most difficult places.

Spring came, and with it the possibility of action; but the Piedmontese too had been busy, and were preparing to give their enemies a warm reception. Mont Cenis, the Valaisan, and the Little St. Bernard bristled with guns. My father decided he must begin by seizing St. Bernard and the Valaisan. The enemy he wanted to get at were bivouacking among the clouds. It was a war with Titans: and the heavens had to be climbed.

On the evening of April 24th General Bagdelaune received instructions to scale the Little St. Bernard and to be ready by daybreak to attack it.

My father reserved Mont Valaisan to himself.

General Bagdelaune set out at nine at night; he marched for six hours in the region of precipices without the least sign of paths, trusting in guides who themselves several times got confused in the darkness and misled our soldiers. At last, at break of day, they reached the redoubt, and attacked it with that courage and fury of which his men had so many times before given proof; but the redoubt was a hard nut to crack. The mountain seemed like a flaming volcano; three times Bagdelaune rallied his men to the attack and three times they were driven back. Suddenly the muzzles of the cannon of an outlying fort, which my father had just stormed, were turned on them; a hail of bullets overwhelmed the defenders of St. Bernard; my father had been the first to succeed in his enterprise, he had turned the Piedmontese cannon against themselves. Mont Valaisan, which should have protected St. Bernard, now destroyed it. The French, seeing the help that had so unexpectedly come to them, made a fourth dash. The Piedmontese, intimidated by this effectual diversion, did not even attempt to offer resistance, but fled on all sides; General Bagdelaune sent two battalions of new recruits from the Côte d'Or with the 2nd battalion of light infantry in pursuit of them; for three leagues the Piedmontese were followed and hunted down like chamois in bloody tracks; twenty pieces of cannon, six howitzers, thirteen pieces of mountain artillery, two hundred muskets, and two hundred prisoners were the trophies from this twofold victory.

But there was still Mont Cenis to take.

The possession of this last redoubt would complete the effective occupation of the whole of the Savoy, and to gain it the commander-in-chief of the Army of the Alps concentrated all his attention. The Piedmontese would thus be cut off from all means of pouring down the defiles into this duchy at their own sweet will, and they would be compelled to camp in the plains of Piedmont.

Several attempts had been already made and proved abortive; in one of these attempts, tried in the month of February, General Sarret had lost his life. His foot slipped, and he fell to the bottom of a precipice, where his body was buried beneath the snows.

This accident had suggested to my father the precaution of having crampons made for himself and his men.

Mont Cenis was only assailable from three sides; the fourth was so well defended by Nature that the Piedmontese simply protected it by a stockade.

To get up from this side meant a climb from the very bottom of a precipice.

My father made a pretence of attacking the other three sides; then, on the 19th Floréal (8th of May), he set out at night with three hundred men.

He had to turn the mountain, climb the inaccessible rock-side, and give the signal for attack to the other corps by his own attack.

Before beginning the ascent my father showed his men the rock they had to climb.

"Understand beforehand," he said, "that any man who slips is a dead man, for nothing can save him if he falls from such a height. It will therefore be useless to call for help; his cry will not save him, and may imperil the enterprise by giving the alarm."

Three men fell; their bodies were heard bounding from rock to rock; but no cry, not a groan, not a murmur, escaped them.

The climbers reached the plateau. Although it was a dark night, the long line of soldiers, clothed in blue uniforms, could have been perceived outlined against the snow from the fort. But my father had foreseen this contingency; each man had a cotton cap and a shirt rolled up in his knapsack.

This was the ordinary dress my father adopted at night when he hunted chamois.

They reached the foot of the palisade without having roused a single challenge. The men began climbing the palisades as soon as they reached them; but thanks to my father's herculean strength he thought of a better and quieter way--namely, to take each man by the seat of his trousers and the collar of his coat and throw him over the palisades. The snow would break the fall, and also deaden the noise. Surprised out of their sleep, and seeing the French soldiers in their midst without knowing how they had come there, the Piedmontese hardly offered any resistance.

So just a month to the day, after it had been predicted, Mont Cenis became ours!

Whilst my father was taking Mont Cenis, another column of the Army of the Alps crossed the pass of Argentière, near Barcelonnette, seized the post at the Barricades, invaded the valley of la Hure, and thereby put the Army of the Alps in close connection with the Army of Italy, the extreme left arm of which had advanced as far as the little village of Isola, near San-Dalmatio-Salvatico.

My father had just reached the stage at which the commanding generals of the Army of the Alps were recalled to be guillotined.

He expected this reward, and he was not therefore surprised to receive this communication:--

_6th Messidor, Year II._

"CITIZEN GENERAL,--You are commanded to leave the Army of the Alps instantly and to present yourself in Paris, to answer the accusations which are being made against you."

"COLLOT D'HERBOIS."

The accusations, or rather the accusation, which my father had to answer was this:

My father had entered the little village of St. Maurice in mid-winter.

The first thing he saw in the open square of the village was a guillotine ready prepared for an execution.

He was informed that four wretched men were going to be executed for trying to steal and smelt down the church clock.

The crime did not seem to my father deserving of the penalty of death, and he turned to Captain Dermoncourt--the same who was soon to become his aide-de-camp:--

"Dermoncourt," he said to him, "it is horribly cold, as you can see and feel for yourself; we may not find any wood where we are going, let that devilish red-coloured machine you see there be pulled down and taken away to make firewood for us."

Dermoncourt, accustomed to implicit obedience, obeyed implicitly.

This proceeding, put into execution with truly military rapidity, very much embarrassed the executioner, who had four men to guillotine and no longer a guillotine to do it with.

My father, perceiving the poor man's dilemma, took pity on him, relieved him of his four prisoners, gave him a quittance for them, and let them go, with the advice to flee to the mountains as fast as their legs could carry them.

It need hardly be said that the prisoners did not wait for a second bidding.

By nothing short of a miracle my father escaped paying for the four heads he had saved by his own; but, thanks to his conquest of the St. Bernard, of Valaisan, and of Mont Cenis, he was pardoned for this insult to patriotism.

But the nickname of "M. de l'Humanité" was now more applicable than ever, and was more often than ever applied to him.

I have already said how lucky my father was.