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Updated: June 5, 2025
And at Lyons there was not militiaman, a royalist, volunteer or a pariah out of the streets who was willing to fire that first and "single shot": and though Marshal Macdonald swore ultimately that he would do it himself, his determination failed him at the last when surrounded by his wavering troops he found himself face to face with the conqueror of Austerlitz and Jena and Rivoli and a thousand other glorious fights, with the man in the grey redingote who had created him Marshal of France and Duke of Tarente on the battlefields of Lombardy, his comrade-in-arms who had shared his own scanty army rations with him, slept beside him round the bivouac fires, and round whom now there rose a cry from end to end of Lyons: "Vive l'Empereur!"
This anecdote is confirmed by Philarete Chasle, who saw the statue in the Rue Cassini apartment, a plaster statue representing the emperor clad in his redingote and holding his celebrated lorgnette in his hand. Napoleon's influence upon Balzac was profound, or rather there was a sort of parallelism between their two ambitions, each of a different order, but equally formidable.
To them "the old white coat" an antique garment of unrenewed immortality was as much a subject of idolatry as the redingote grise to the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who had seen it by the campfires on the Po and on the Borysthenes, and believed that he would come again in it to lead them against the enemies of France. The Greeley of the popular heart was clad as Bennett said he was clad.
Montfanon, too recognizable, alas! by the empty sleeve of his black redingote, was seated on a chair, not very far from the altar, on which burned enormous tapers. Priests and monks were arranging baskets filled with petals, like those of the chaplain, whom Dorsenne had just met.
It was wonderful to see her, when any one approached the chair on which she was seated, take a decent position, draw over her legs and thighs the fronts of a long redingote, and, when she rose to make a bow, hold the redingote carefully in front of her, acting, in fact, exactly as would a young girl who had been well reared.
The two men dismounted and in their turn led their horses into the yard: at sight of them the man in the grey redingote seemed to wake from his sleep. "Berthier," he said slowly, "is that you?" "Yes, Sire, and Colonel Bertrand is here too." "What do you want?" "We earnestly beg you, Sire, to come with us to Genappe. There is not the slightest hope of rallying any portion of your army now.
As for the Prince, the same childish carelessness lighted up his jovial face, while the hero of Patay, with his coarse boots, his immense form enveloped in a somewhat shabby redingote, exhibited a face so contracted that one would have thought him devoured by remorse.
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