Pierre Ballue, from whose memoirs we are reproducing an extract, was born in Bergerac in the Dordogne on 20 February 1778. His father, Jean-Baptiste, was a postmaster in the town. In 1799 (14 Vendémiaire, Year VII of the Republic), Ballue was drafted into the army through conscription. ‘This law’, he said, ‘summoned me to serve my country. Whether tall, rich, small or poor, no Frenchman over the age of twenty could be exempt from this measure’. He nevertheless sought to have himself replaced, but was unable to do so and returned to Bergerac, the place of his birth. Pierre was then incorporated into the 40th Demi-Brigade at Rennes and soon left for the Vendée to fight the Chouans.
Then followed a series of marches and counter marches. He crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass and took part in the campaign in Italy alongside the First Consul. Ballue was present at all the celebrated battles: Montebello, Marengo, the Mincio. His good conduct earned him the rank of corporal.
He was posted at the camp of Boulogne and appointed sergeant in Brumaire of Year XI. In 1805, the 40th Line Regiment, integrated into the Grande Armée, headed for Germany and Austria by forced marches. Ballue was involved in the capture of Ulm. Second-lieutenant in Thermidor of Year XIII, he fought at Austerlitz on 2 December.
Our officer then participated in the campaign in Prussia, where he fought at Jena. Lieutenant on 21 December 1806, he followed the Grande Armée to Poland. He reached Pultusk on 25 December 1806, then returned to France before being transferred to Spain, where Ballue was appointed captain of grenadiers in the 40th Regiment on 16 October 1809.
Following a dreadful campaign, he was wounded by a lance thrust on 28 October 1811 at Royo-Molino and captured the same day by the British, who, after transporting him to Plymouth, sent him as a prisoner on parole to Welshpool. It was there that Pierre wrote down his memoirs. ‘It was during these appalling times,’ he remarked, ‘that I ventured to write about my campaigns to bolster my memory and recount it one day in the future, either to my family or to my children, should God grant me the opportunity.’
On his return to France, he joined the Army of the Rhine in 1815, and he was wounded again on 28 June at Hoenheim, near Strasbourg. He was also made a Knight of the Legion of Honour on 2 November 1814.
When he returned to civilian life, he married one of his cousins, Eloyse Ballue, and had two children, Ernest and Léonie. Mayor of La Haye-Descartes from 1816 to 1830, Ballue passed away at La Haye on 23 July 1852.
Here is his account on the battle of the Three Emperors:
On 1 December 1805 [should be 2 December], Emperor Napoleon’s birthday [actually meaning the anniversary of his coronation], the memorable battle of Austerlitz took place on the Moravian plains between Brünn and Wichaw [sic]. The French army was commanded by Emperor Napoleon himself and the Allied armies by emperors Alexander of Russia and Franz Joseph [Francis] of Austria.
At dawn on 1 December [sic], the French army corps began to advance and the battle lines were formed and established by the Emperor himself, who, after visiting all the positions, proceeded to take up his place on a knoll from where he could observe all the movements of his army, as well as those of the enemy. It was around ten o’clock in the morning, and from atop the hillock, that the Emperor gave the signal to attack. At this command, the French army sent its skirmishers forward and by noon the entire enemy line was under attack.
The position occupied by our division at that moment offered the most magnificent spectacle imaginable; it was Marshal Soult’s Corps descending from its position at the double, with music playing at the head, to attack the centre of the enemy army, which was also descending from its position in haste to engage Marshal Soult. The weather was very clear and the sun’s rays shining on the thousands of bayonets, helmets and breastplates added to the splendour of the scene. It seemed to me that I could witness the whirling of these enormous masses, bristling with steel tips that were about to meet and shatter as they clashed against each other.
Suddenly I lost sight of these two masses and heard them collide. I thought, when I heard the clash, that it was as if the sky and its clouds had struck the earth itself: more than three hundred guns went off at once and I don’t know how many thousands of muskets. That moment sounded like a tremendous din and in less than ten minutes, the gunpowder smoke formed a shroud of mist that plunged the combatants into obscurity. It was at this moment that the brave 40th Line Infantry Regiment rushed headlong into the Russian lines. It ran through them with bayonets and, although confused in the enemy columns, crossed them again and, having knocked down everything that stood in its way, turned around and found itself in line, facing the enemy.
Then the corps under the orders of Marshal Moncey, having made a movement on the enemy’s left wing, forced them to bend on their centre and head back over the lake of Austerlitz. The Emperor, following all the enemy’s movements with a keen eye, led himself with the artillery of his Guard to the front of the lake; there he ordered the ice to be broken up by cannon fire, and all the Russian masses on it were swallowed up by the icy lake. The Emperor had the village of Austerlitz flanked and a column of ten thousand Russians was captured. It was then that all the lines of the French army uttered the cry of ‘long live the Emperor’ and the orders to advance were given. All the trumpets and drums sounded and beat the charge, and at that moment the entire French army moved forward.
The 1st Division of V Corps, which had lost more than two thousand men without firing a shot and had remained under canister fire throughout the action, surged forward under the command of General Suchet and soon found itself facing several Russian columns, both infantry and cavalry. The 40th Regiment attacked a Russian counterpart, overthrew it and chased it off before them. Swarms of Cossacks who came up to us were met with fire from two ranks. The 40th Regiment then made a movement and took control of the Olmütz road. Our 2nd Battalion, having been ordered to make a change of front to the right, passed in front of the regiment and, despite the gunpowder smoke, placed its right on our right and its left on the left of the 34th Regiment, forming an angle with the brigade. This battalion arrived just in time to receive a huge mass of Cossacks who were making a last effort to surround our lines, but this endeavour was futile. The Cossacks fell upon the bayonets of the 34th, but this regiment and our 2nd Battalion received them with a well-fed fire from two ranks and forced them to turn back. Our artillery, commanded by Major Souchard, wreaked havoc and more than seven to eight hundred of these scoundrels remained dead or maimed in front of the 34th and the 2nd Battalion of the 40th.
The 40th Regiment changed front to attack a mass of Russian infantry which formed up in a closed column and supported itself on a hill. A squadron of cuirassiers, having passed to our right, charged this mass and drove it in. But the enemy leaned against the hill and, without breaking up, managed to pass through a defile with great loss, as it was blasted by our artillery.
As a result, this magnificent and formidable army was defeated at four o’clock in the evening, and the emperors of Austria and Russia were eyewitnesses to their confounded and half-destroyed armies. The French army camped on the battlefield, which was covered with the dead …
Source : Mémoires du capitaine Ballue – Récit de ses campagnes à la Grande Armée rédigés pendant sa captivité en Angleterre, in Le Bulletin de la Société archéologique de Touraine, 1963, pp. 351-355.
Other accounts to read:
> The Camp of Boulogne, by Commander Vivien (55th Regiment) …
> The Austerlitz campaign, by Lieutenant Jean-Pierre Sibelet …
> A surgeon assistant’s recollections of the Ulm-Austerlitz campaign …
Jonas De Neef's Napoleon Chronicles 
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