Category: 1814 Campaign
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The Military Life of Bruno d’Ast … (III)
In the meantime, Bruno d’Ast’s family was delighted to receive the news that he had been promoted to the Legion of Honour: they knew that this was the award that their son sought above all else, and we will see in one of the following letters the emotion with which he received this distinction, the…
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1813-14 letters from Cuirassier Brigadier Pilloy
The following letters are drawn from a voluminous register which also contains copies of the Emperor’s proclamations, accounts of our narrator’s travels and more or less unusual recipes. The author in question is Étienne-Nicolas Pilloy, born in Santeau, canton of Pithiviers (Loiret), a farmer by trade. Here are his service records: 13th Cuirassier Regiment. Entered…
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A report on the battle of Craonne, March 1814 …
On 7 March, the general received the order to proceed to Craonne; he was far from expecting to enter the line with troops comprising conscripts who only had been assembled for twenty days, during which time they had travelled more than a hundred leagues and had barely had time to learn how to load a…
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Reminiscences on the defence of Paris, 1814 …
… Paris took on an increasingly bellicose appearance. The mobile National Guard arrived from all sides; I even remember that, while the army only expressed its patriotism by its acclamations in favour of the Emperor, the National Guard added the longstanding manifestations of the days of republican glory. One day, in front of the café…
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Imperial decrees related to POWs, desertion and call to arms, 1806-1814
Year 1806 (N° 1,167) – IMPERIAL DECREE relating to the prosecution of offences committed by prisoners of war. At the Imperial headquarters at Brünn, 17 Frimaire. NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH, KING OF ITALY, HAS DECREED and HEREBY DECREES the following: Art. 1. Offences committed by prisoners of war throughout our Empire are under the…
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Colonel Raymond Guiraud’s war journal (VI) …
… My injury prevented me from taking part in the German campaign. The Emperor left Paris on 15 April 1813 to put himself at the head of the new army that his genius had reorganised. You had to behold him the preceding days in the courtyard of the Tuileries, at the daily parades, having the…
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More Konstantin Bulgakov’s 1814 letters from France …
In these letters, Konstantin Bulgakov recounts to his brother the impressions of his stay in Paris during its occupation. Paris, 31 March 1814. It would take a hundred hands to describe what I saw, my very good friend, and a hundred eyes to see everything there was to see. We entered Paris today after defeating…
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Konstantin Bulgakov’s 1814 letters from France …
In the course of the campaign for France in 1814, Konstantin Bulgakov (1782-1835), attached to the Russian Imperial headquarters (whilst he also was a diplomat, privy councillor and postal administrator), maintained correspondence with his brother, Alexander. His letters, written in French, were published in the Roussky Arkhiv (1904, II and III); they are not lacking…
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Letters of Marshal Berthier from the 1814 Campaign …
In the following four letters (dated 8 to 15 March 1814), Berthier seems to share the Emperor’s hopes and illusions; he reports the battle of Craonne which, Napoleon said, was glorious. He heralded the recapture of Soissons and Rheims; he even suggested that the enemy was troubled, threatened on all sides by the levée en…
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Letters of a Grenadier of the Guard, France 1814 …
The author of these letters, François Franconin (1788-1857), was sergeant-major in the 1st Regiment of the Grenadiers of the Guard. Nogent-sur-Seine, 22 February 1814. I make use of the opportunity of an officer lodged in the same building as myself, who is heading for Paris with dispatches, to inform you that my health is as…
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