Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 20, 2024
Jourdan began the campaigns of 1795 and 1796 with equal brilliancy, and ended them with equal disgrace.
With the former of these armies Jourdan pursued the retreating confederates, and, after driving them from different stands and positions, he repulsed them to the banks of the Rhine, which river they were obliged to pass. Here ended his successes this year, successes that were not obtained without great loss on our side.
The mighty battles that had caused such a sensation throughout the whole of the civilized world, the terrors that had been created by the combats which had been fought by Moreau, by Jourdan, by Wurmser, and all the other great generals upon the continent, were entirely forgotten, or thought but little of, in the vicinity of Amesbury and Everly.
Only the name of General Jourdan excited universal reprobation, and it was immediately struck out. The measure itself was soon mitigated, and the decree was never executed.
Mountain fastnesses and roaring torrents stayed not the advance of his light troops on that side. Near the sources of the Ebro, the French again felt their communications with France threatened, and falling back from the main stream, up the defile carved out by a tributary, the Zadora, they halted wearily in the basin of Vittoria. There Joseph and Jourdan determined to fight.
As usual, there had been recriminations at headquarters. "Jourdan, ill and angry, kept his room; and the King was equally invisible." Few orders were given. The town was packed with convoys and vehicles of all kinds, and it was not till dawn of that fatal midsummer's day that the last convoy set out for France, under the escort of 3,000 troops. Nevertheless, Joseph might hope to hold his own.
Soult, Oudinot, and the guilty Marmont were in evidence in these days of great national rejoicing. Davoust, Jourdan, Macdonald, and Masséna had passed behind the veil. It was the defection of Berthier and Marmont, whom he regarded as his most trusted and loyal comrades-in-arms, that crushed the Emperor at the time of the first abdication.
The English got away in great haste, abandoning their siege guns; but as they ought not to have got away at all, the French cut off the head of their victorious commander. Jourdan, his successor, turned upon the Prince of Coburg, and, by the new and expensive tactics, defeated him at Wattignies on October 16.
The leaders of that party soon selected from the secondary ranks generals belonging to the Mountain to replace the Girondist generals. Those generals were Jourdan, Pichegru, Hoche, Moreau, Westermann, Dugommier, Marceau, Joubert, Kleber, etc. Carnot, by his admission to the committee of public safety, became minister of war and commander-in-chief of all the republican armies.
Bethier, Murat, Moncey, Jourdan, Massena, Augereau, Bernadotte, Soult, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davoust, Bessieres, Kellermann, Lefevre, Perignon, Serurier, were named marshals of the empire. The departments sent up addresses, and the clergy compared Napoleon to a new Moses, a new Mattathias, a new Cyrus.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking