Tag: Marshal Macdonald
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Guard Grenadier Philippe Ballut at Lützen and Bautzen, 1813 …
In the evening, with the 2nd Grenadier Regiment occupying the ground on a plateau, the soldiers sighted the town of Lützen, with its round bell tower and a tall belfry tower dominating the large tile roofed buildings. The French cavalry had already entered the town to capture a few stragglers. It was known that Blücher…
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Archduke Charles’ correspondence from the 1809 Campaign
Ried, this 8th April 1809. My dearest uncle, I arrived here yesterday, though not without having suffered a lot from the cold. Everything here is covered with snow. I leave this afternoon for Altheim. I will be in Braunau tomorrow evening, and the day after tomorrow before daylight I will cross my Rubicon, if, as…
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Cuirassier officer Jean de Gouttes and his 1813 correspondence …
These documents relate our cavalry officer’s thoughts and experiences during the 1813 Campaign. De Gouttes served in the 11th Cuirassier Regiment … Kemberg (near Wittenberg), 19 March 1813. I left Braunschweig (Brunswick), where the cavalry was being reorganised, on 25 February with a company which I was honoured to be given command of, to join…
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A perspective from the French Imperial household on the battle of Bautzen, 1813 …
The following extract is drawn from the excellent recollections of treasurer Guillaume Peyrusse (1776-1860) … 20 May (1813). – The entire (Imperial) headquarters was on its feet very early. One staff officer succeeded another. The corps of the dukes of Reggio (Oudinot), Taranto (Macdonald), Ragusa (Marmont) and General Bertrand made their arrangements to cross 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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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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General Rapp at the outset of the siege of Danzig (1813) …
From Smorgoni (Smarhonʹ – Smorgonʹ) in late 1812, Napoleon, at the time of his departure for France after the debacle in Russia, assessing with an experienced eye the precise extent of his reverses, had foreseen the siege of the Vistula places and had sent his intrepid aide-de-camp, General Rapp, to take over the government of…
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Turmoil on the Katzbach (1813), a report of General Sébastiani …
In accordance with the orders of Your Excellency (Marshal Macdonald), I left Brockendorf on the 26th (of August) at seven o’clock in the morning to march on Jauer via the road to Kroïtsch. Brought to a halt in the defile of Nieder-Crayn, I established myself in front of Gietendorf at nine o’clock, and I marched…
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The plight of cuirassier officer de Gouttes in Russia …
This portion of Jean de Gouttes’ correspondence with his family concerns the Russian campaign … He served in the 11th Cuirassier Regiment. From the outskirts of Königsberg (East Prussia), 12 June 1812. My dear mother, I have been sent on a mission to Danzig these days, from where I intended to write to you, but…