United States or Anguilla ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She had such a high opinion of the way in which Fouche managed the police that the first time I was alone with her after our return from Mortfontaine she said to me, "My dear Bourrienne; speak openly to me; will Napoleon know all about the plots from the police of Moncey, Duroc, Junot, and of Davoust? You know better than I do that these are only wretched spies.
While he was crushing Blücher, his lieutenants, Oudinot, Reynier, and Bertrand, were charged to drive Bernadotte's scattered corps from Berlin; whereupon Davoust was to cut him off from the sea and relieve the French garrisons at Stettin and Küstrin.
Davoust also opined that it was too late now that the deputies had firmly seized the reins and were protected by the National Guards of Paris. And so Napoleon let matters drift. In truth, he was "bewildered" by the disunion of France. It was a France that he knew not, a land given over to idéalogues and traitors.
"For the breakfast which Marshal Davoust gave me in his tent, the grenadiers had been preparing to entertain us with several songs, and came forward to sing them with the bashfulness of young girls. In the most embarrassed and timid manner, they sang a song full of the fiercest and most daring threats against England.
'I'll hold it higher, answer I, and I snatch at a soldier. 'Up with me on your shoulder, big comrade, I say, and he lift me up. I make my sticks sing on the leather. 'You shall take off your hat to the Little Corporal to-morrow, if you've still your head, brother' speak Davoust like that, and then he ride away like the devil to Morand's guns. Ha, ha, ha!"
He decided on the former course, which would crush the national movement in Prussia, and bring him into touch with Davoust and the French garrisons at Küstrin and Stettin. "Then, if Austria begins her follies again, I shall be at Dresden with a united army."
Augereau, with his powerful corps d'armée of twenty thousand, pressed on from Frankfort and Mayence; Bernadotte moved up on his flank from Nuremberg and Bamberg; Davoust hastened by forced marches from the Danube; while Soult and Ney with a strong force remained in the south, and in observation on the Austrian frontier.
When Napoleon left the capital Davoust became its governor, and held his post unmoved by the intrigues of the Republicans and the Royalists. When Napoleon returned from the great disaster Davoust gave his voice for the only wise policy, resistance and the prorogation of the factious Chambers.
Davoust, from this disaster, returned once more to Hamburg. Girard, who had advanced with eight thousand men from Magdeburg, was, on the 27th, put to flight by the Prussian Landwehr under General Hirschfeld. Napoleon's plan of attack against Prussia had completely failed, and his sole alternative was to act on the defensive.
But the king, already irritated by the reproaches which the uncertainty and dilatoriness of his first operations had brought upon him, could not suffer a subject to be his commander; he quitted his army, without leaving any one to replace him, or without even communicating, if we are to credit Davoust, to any of his generals, the order which he had just received.
Word Of The Day