The Camp of Boulogne, by Commander Vivien (55th Regiment) …

It was on the 1st of Vendémiaire, Year XII (24th of September 1803) that the first regiments moved into the field to establish this camp, famous for its imposing attitude, for its formidable and noble purpose, for the awe it inspired as far as the centre of the British Isles, and for the accomplishment of the great feat known as the Campaign of Austerlitz.

My regiment (the 55th), which for a month had been occupying billets stretching from the Pont de Briques to Wimille, was the first of all to draw the line to camp six hundred paces in rear of the Tour d’Ordre, with its left side resting against the town. The site had been well chosen, but the barracks arrangements were flawed and the health of the soldiers suffered as a result.

Instead of raising everything above the ground to protect themselves from the humidity, holes eighteen feet long by fourteen wide and two feet deep were dug, and it was in these unhealthy pits covered with a straw roof that the army had to spend the winter. The regiments themselves did justice to the worst barracks imaginable, and the following spring the soldiers bribed each other to meet part of the cost of building new dwellings which they erected; their industry did the rest.

Sketch drawn by Commander Vivien representing a cabin/house meant for the Boulogne camp.

Labourers who could not be usefully employed would extract rubble and lime stones from the cliffside and carry them to the camp. Others would flush sand out of the sea water, so that it could be more effectively combined with lime, and brought it along as well. A lime furnace was built in each regiment and maintained with combustibles from the economies made on firewood. The rebuilding of the barracks was carried out one by one, by company, on a model which offered at the same time elegance, convenience and salubrity. Masons raised the walls; a few camp utensils replaced, in the hands of skilled carpenters, the tools of their trade, and frameworks with joints were substituted for the rafters which, in theory, were simply supported on the right and left of a crosspiece carried by two forks. Straw roofers built roofs that proved impenetrable to the heaviest rains and sea gusts. Carpenters fashioned the wood for doors, windows, cots, and weapon racks. The huts were replaced by charming little houses, which flattered the eye all the more pleasantly, as their walls were whitened both inside and outside.

The space in between the soldiers’ and officers’ quarters was distributed in gardens, without in any way interfering with the passage of people. The officers’ barracks were not strictly subjected to a regular plan; there were some whose interior distribution and furnishings were in no way inferior to the good taste and elegance of town houses. It was not uncommon to see German, Spanish, Italian and especially Parisian families arrive in lavish outfits to visit our camp, to which antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times have offered nothing in comparison among belligerent nations.

At the same time as a land army, one hundred and sixty thousand strong, was practising grand manoeuvres and preparing to cross the Pas-de-Calais, all the ports along the ocean and all the navigable rivers which carry its water, were covered with yards and holds, where construction work was carried out with prodigious activity for the building of prams, gunboats, gunboats, barges and skiffs; all the warships carrying artillery and sailing as well as rowing, whose total number exceeded two thousand seven hundred vessels. They arrived successively in the ports of Etaples, Boulogne, Wimille and Ambleteuse. The creation of a vast lateral basin to the port of Boulogne was ordered by the Emperor, and the army worked night and day, for six months, to dig it out, to border the lower course of the Liane with superb quays, to build piers and four forts intended to defend the port, its surroundings and the roadstead …

Source : Vivien, Jean-Stanislas, Souvenirs de ma vie militaire (1792-1822), Hachette, Paris, 1907, pp. 116-120.