A second lieutenant’s letters to his wife, Prussia-Poland 1806-1807 …

We present two letters of an infantry officer who fought in General (future marshal) Suchet’s Division in the years of 1806 and (early) 1807. He provides many interesting details on daily life in the French army, promotion, hardships, money issues and battlefield experiences.

Dear Rosalie,

I am devoting the first moments of my repose to share my tidings with you: I am going to detail all the events of my journey from the moment I left Rothenburg.

My last letter, which you must have received from Schweinfurt (1), announced our commencement of the (new) campaign. On 5 October, we received the order to march and after crossing the gorges of Saxony, we joined the enemy on the 10th at Saafeld (sic, 2): the enemy had formed up in battle array on a small plain in front of the town and was waiting for us at the outlet of a gorge. The 9th and 10th Hussar Regiments withstood the fire of their artillery as our division was deploying. (3) However, after several charges, victory was no longer in doubt; we made them cross the river without the use of boats, and among the victims of this affair was Prince Louis, nephew of the King of Prussia. (4) We captured the town, a part of their artillery and took many prisoners. (5)

We continued to pursue them as far as Jena, where, on the 13th, we forced them to abandon the entrenchments they had installed on the summit of the mountains. During the day and night our army assembled, and at daybreak on the 14th we attacked them. The enemy army numbered one hundred thousand men across a vast plain. Firing began on both sides and lasted non-stop for at least eight hours. The enemy stood their ground, but we didn’t shy away from their fire, and so we bayoneted them and disrupted their columns. The cavalry, taking advantage of this situation, charged the enemy, routed them and cut them to pieces: thousands of Prussians were taken prisoner, others perished on the battlefield, and the remnants of their army fled, abandoning all their artillery. (6)

The next day, another army corps defeated them again (7); wherever our columns met them, they were beaten. They withdrew with considerable strength to Magdeburg (8) and burnt the bridge of Dessau on the river Elbe. Our regiment had 495 men hors de combat in this affair, including my colonel, who was hit in the left hand by a biscayen and has now recovered well. The enemy army withdrew to three different positions: Magdeburg, Berlin and Custrin. (9) Our army corps pursued them relentlessly, and wherever our army met them, they were bested and taken prisoner: Berlin (10), Magdeburg (11), Wittenberg, Spandau (12), Prenzlau (13), Stettin (14), Custrin (15), Thorn (16), etc. The enemy, or rather the handful of remaining Prussians, withdrew into Poland to the fortified places of Graudenz (17) and Königsberg (18), which have just capitulated. (19)

After the French army had passed the Elbe, our marshal ordered that a depot of V Corps would be established in the town of Wittenberg (20) and that all the regiments’ equipment, the horses useless to the army and the men unable to endure the march had to stay (there). I thus received the order to go there with my caisson and the equipment of the regiment, and remained at the place until 5 November, when a new order instructed the depot of V Corps to proceed to Stettin, a trading town on the Oder (river) 10 leagues from the sea, forty leagues beyond Berlin. I arrived there on the 13th of the same month without having passed through the capital, which was not on my route. On the 22nd, we received orders to head for the town of Thorn.

I was once again forced to depart without having been able to have the pleasant consolation of sending you word of my fate. The mail posts followed the army, and as with our march, we took a completely different route to that taken by the postal services. I was unable to encounter any. My grief was not insignificant. I was unaware of the state of your health and that of our family; I could not relieve you of any anxiety, and with all these worries, I was exposed perhaps to get robbed or apprehended by some Prussian troops who had withdrawn into the woods through which I was travelling.

At last, I proceeded to Thorn and arrived at Bromberg (21), 12 leagues from this town, where I learned that Thorn was still in the hands of the Prussians. There I received a letter from my colonel urging me to join the regiment as soon as possible, the regiment being in pressing need of the supplies I was escorting. I had travelled 64 leagues from Stettin and still had 56 leagues to go to reach Warsaw, the capital of Poland, where the army was headed. My fears then mounted; the Vistula (river) was cut off from me, the enemy was guarding all the main points and, on the left bank, every day passed by to rob and pillage all the convoys heading for Poland. I decided with the regimental post officer who was with me, under the escort of a detachment of sixty men that we had, to continue marching eight and ten leagues from the river. And despite the poor weather, the rain, the snow, the woods, combined with the wretched terrain, for Poland is nothing but misery, we reached Warsaw safely on 14 December. (22)

The colonel was surprised to see me and to learn that I had arrived without incident, as rumours had spread, and had even been confirmed, that I had been taken prisoner and my equipment stolen from the town of Thorn by the Prussians. He welcomed me wholeheartedly and told me that he was pleased with my arrival, that he needed me and that I should never leave him again, even though he himself had ordered me at Wittenberg to stay until further notice and to take great care of the caisson he had entrusted to my care. I told him how pleased I would be to be close to him at all times and to be constantly at his orders: he invited me to assist the paymaster in his work and placed me beside him.

I spent eight days there constantly working day and night to settle the regiment’s accounts, which had not been settled since we left Rothenburg, even though I could have indulged in the joy of writing to you, which I did (eventually). I could not find the time to visit the post office myself, hoping for the first day to arrive that I would be free and could enjoy it twice as much.

On the 21st we were reviewed by the Emperor, and that day gave me the sweetest and most consoling hope of getting closer to you. However, my dear Rosalie, as you have been reading my letter for a quarter of an hour and are unaware that it is an officer who is writing to you, I must tell you about my new rank. At the inspection which [I] just mentioned to you, the Emperor appointed replacements for the vacant ranks and I was proposed to him [by] the colonel, after he had questioned me about how long I have been in service, and after having read the letter of recommendation which had [already] been prepared in advance, and which the colonel had endorsed in these terms: ‘This young man is brave, full of courage and his knowledge merits him the post I am requesting for him from His Majesty the Emperor and King’. He accepted and appointed me at the head of the regiment.

My dear and loving wife, it is due to my courage, my conduct, I dare say, that I owe this promotion, and to the commander who leads us. It’s also a great proof of his attachment to me and of his gratitude. He preferred to select me over his nephew, whom he was supposed to appoint. Since then I have received the most flattering testimonials and the highest praise from him in public. On the 23rd I received my letter of appointment from the Minister. My dear friend, we must therefore be content: this rank places me in an honourable and distinguished class in the present circumstances. May peace put an end to all the ills and political dissensions and lead me back to you to spend happy days that I can only enjoy at this time. Receive the most tender kiss from your sincere husband, embrace our mothers and assure them of my eternal remembrance, our dear children whom I recommend to you; the most honest and kindest regards to our brothers and sisters, Passelais and his wife, cousins etc. and may God keep you all in good health this year and the next, and to the one who desires only to press you against his heart one day.

Farewell, (my) dear and sweet Rosalie, I embrace you a thousand and one times over and will be with you until my last breath,

Hinard, second lieutenant. (23)

My dear friend, I can already imagine you asking me why I didn’t write to you as soon as I was appointed? Have a look, and you will notice that I paid dearly for the first results of my rank: in the days that followed, it was [completely] impossible for me to write. The inspection had resulted in some work and the colonel asked me to finish it, which I didn’t make myself say twice. But on the 25th at […], the order reached us that we had to depart and cross the Vistula (the river); what despair for me! We took up arms, the entire division, and off we went. I was [as I still am] attached to a company as second lieutenant and I followed: we marched all night and all day, and bivouacked until one after midnight when we set off again; the weather could not have been worse. At noon on the 26th, our division, with the exception of our regiment, [was] in front and had reached the Russian army. We numbered only fifteen thousand men, and they had fifty thousand. A few days before, they had been defeated and driven out of a position they occupied on a river, but here they were in force and stood on fairly good ground, while our troops stood knee-deep in mud. The firing began, the enemy was numerically superior and fought to the utmost.

The inability of the division to carry out any manoeuvres in such poor terrain meant that they had to withstand the enemy fire without moving, although one of the regiments, intending to cut the town off from the enemy, was unable to form a battalion square quickly enough and was subjected to a charge of the enemy cavalry. We arrived at [5] o’clock, we were being drawn in with great force. We were deployed to the rear of the line, but the marshal, realising the impossibility of marching, had the division hold out in the position it found itself in until ten o’clock in the evening, and fifteen thousand Frenchmen compelled fifty thousand Russians to abandon the terrain and the town during the night. (24)

It is difficult to have an idea of the mud and the poor weather, we spent […] days in the bivouac without straw, without bread and in the mire. Some men remained in the mud unable to pull themselves out, others succumbed to the cold and weakness, as it had been three days since the army had received (any) bread. Poland could no longer afford to pay, and wherever the Russians went, they burnt what they couldn’t take with them, even wheat. On the 28th, we entered Pultusk, the town that the Russians [had] abandoned, and we stayed there until 2 January without receiving or appreciating a single morsel of bread; such was the misery. As the poor weather persisted, we could no longer move on either side, and the enemy had retired 25 leagues and there was a ceasefire until spring.

We returned to Warsaw, where the misery was becoming noticeable due to the large number of troops. All the Coutançais are doing well, only Dupré from the Rue d’Égypte was wounded at the Jena affair. I made Levée a corporal (25) in my company. I met the young Boissel, he is at Warsaw. I hope that during our ceasefire, there will be arrangements made for us to return to France.

I received the four letters and the small note at the foot of Girard’s letter; they finally eased my mind; I received the last one today.

Notes

(1) Schweinfurt in Lower Franconia (Bavaria), from where Marshal Lannes’ V Corps departed on 6 October.

(2) Saalfeld, where the first significant confrontation of the campaign took place between the French troops led by Marshal Lannes and General Hohenlohe’s Prussian vanguard under the orders of Prince Louis Ferdinand, nephew of King Frederick II of Prussia, on 10 October 1806.

(3) ‘The cannonade lasted only two hours: only half of General Suchet’s Division engaged. The Prussian cavalry was overwhelmed by the 9th and 10th Hussar regiments’ (2nd Bulletin of the Grande Armée on campaign in Prussia, 12 October 1806).

(4) He was sabred to death by Quartermaster Guindey of the 10th Hussar Regiment. This death dealt a heavy blow to the morale of the Prussian troops.

(5) The official figures mention 1,000 prisoners, 600 Prussian casualties and 30 captured guns, compared with 172 French soldiers killed or wounded (2nd Bulletin of the Grande Armée on campaign in Prussia, 12 October 1806).

(6) To be compared with the official version: ‘The battle of Jena atoned for the disgrace of Rossbach […]. 300,000 men with 7 or 8,000 (?) guns sowed death everywhere and offered one of those rare occasions in history […] Victory was not in doubt.’ (5th Bulletin of the Grande Armée on campaign in Prussia, 15 October 1806). The official numbers, derived from the same source, refer to 30,000 to 40,000 prisoners, more than 20,000 killed or wounded, 60 flags and 300 guns captured, compared with just over 1,000 French dead and 3,000 wounded.

(7) This was probably IV Corps, commanded by Marshal Soult.

(8) ‘The enemy army withdrew in force to Magdeburg’. (11th Bulletin of the Grande Armée on campaign in Prussia, 19 October 1806).

(9) Kostrzyn nad Odrą in Poland.

(10) Napoleon made his solemn entrance on 27 October.

(11) The place surrendered on 8 November.

(12) The fortress surrendered on 25 October.

(13) Joachim Murat’s forces defeated the Prussians on 28 October, resulting in the surrender of Prince August of Prussia, of General Hohenlohe and the capture of 17,000 prisoners.

(14) Stettin, or Szczecin in Poland, in the immediate vicinity of the German border, was an important trading centre for Poland. The town was definitively acquired by the French on 31 October.

(15) Custrin surrendered at the beginning of November after Marshal Davout’s siege.

(16) Present-day Toruń, a Polish stopover on the French lines of communication and formerly the Emperor’s headquarters.

(17) Present-day Grudziądz.

(18) Present-day Kaliningrad, in the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad.

(19) The suspension of hostilities, signed on 17 November, was not ratified by the King of Prussia on the pretext that the Russians, who occupied part of Prussia, prevented him from doing so.

(20) Marshal Davout’s advance troops entered on 20 October. It is difficult to date this order more accurately. The 28th Bulletin of the Grande Armée on campaign in Prussia, dated 7 November 1806, states that ‘a siege unit for Magdeburg has been formed at Dresden and Wittenberg’.

(21) Present-day Bydgoszcz in Poland.

(22) Marshal Lannes’ Corps had been there since the end of November.

(23) Hinard was appointed second lieutenant by imperial decree on 21 December 1806.

(24) What Hinard describes as a devastating Russian defeat was in fact the recounting of the brilliant manoeuvre by which the Russian command succeeded in saving the entire Russian army from certain disaster, by organising a skilful retreat, at night, across the Vistula, to escape a French manoeuvre of encirclement. This success for the Coalition forces, which the bulletins also described as a Russian defeat, was not very agreeable for the soldiers, who were obliged to not even turn around and fire when pursued, but to march as quickly as possible. Once the withdrawal was completed, the Russians were able to extend the campaign, which would otherwise have ended quickly. The cessation of hostilities is common practice in winter, especially in such a destitute region, yet it proved to be an unfortunate setback for Napoleon.

(25)  Pierre Levée (1783), conscripted in Year X, only became a corporal in 1808. He had to retire in 1810 (SHD/GR, 21YC 350).

***

[Warsaw, 25-28 January 1807] (1)

In one of your letters you asked me to lend twelve francs to Vée (2) and that his father would give them back to you; I am sorry, my dear friend, that circumstances prevent me from being able to give you more, but there is no money in the bank except for the soldier’s subsistence, which must be arranged as is customary, and no payment has been made. All that was due to me from the colonel (3) with my company mass has only been paid to me and used to buy my boots, a sword, epaulettes, a hausse-col dragonnes, etc., because nothing is being provided. And I only have four years’ service, which means I’m not entitled to the 500-franc bonus that every officer receives when he has completed five years’ service in the same corps.

It is possible, and we are encouraged to hope, that we may obtain the campaign bonus of 100 écus (4) that officers receive when they enter the campaign, so you will have a share, my good friend. I still have about fifty francs, but they will hardly be enough for me to live on for the remainder of the month, as we are obliged to feed ourselves, and it costs a thaler worth 3 francs and 15 sols for soup, broth and a bottle of beer, thus imagine our plight. However, this is only a payment in advance that we are providing, because the Emperor has decided that neither officer nor soldier will reside in the homes of the locals, but that the officer will receive 100 francs at the end of each month for his meals, which will enable him not to demand anything for his accommodation, and thus spare the region’s resources. Therefore, you can count on me to give Levée 18 to 20 francs at the end of the month, and his father will keep you informed; I will have him sign my letter as he will have received them.

I encourage you to write to me often, and as I am going to follow the army I will be able to write to you, as I have nothing to distract me from this enjoyable pastime. Please believe me to be as sincere as I am telling you this, moreover you must understand that if I had anything and abused it, I would not have attracted the attention of my superiors to the extent that I did.

When I arrived at Warsaw I found Levée separated from the grenadiers; he avoided my presence until we marched together in the regiment, and he came to ask me to take an interest in him to have him promoted to corporal, pleading with me a thousand times, which the colonel granted at my request.

I send you my fondest love, at the end of the month.

Hinard.

My address: Mr. Hinard, officer in the 40th Line Regiment, 1st Battalion, 6th Company, General Suchet’s Division, V Army Corps at Warsaw in Poland or in its wake.

Notes

(1) This letter is undated. On 28 January, V Corps under the command of Lannes (who became ill and handed over command a few days later to generals Suchet and then Savary) entered the campaign and departed from its billets. This was the last letter to be preserved before Second Lieutenant Hinard succumbed to illness on 11 February 1807.

(2) Pierre Levée, the conscript mentioned in the previous letter.

(3) Thomas Jean Chassereaux (1763-1840), colonel of the 40th Infantry Regiment as of 16 May 1806.

(4) Around 500 francs. 

Source : Second Lieutenant François Hinard’s correspondence with his wife, Rosalie Passelais, on website Napoleonica: Les Archives, document numbers 48 and 49.