MEMOIRS OF A NAPOLEONIC OFFICER
MESE memoirs were published by the French author Maurice Barres, who died two years ago, and have now been trans- lated into English. The Napoleonic officer who wrote them was the grandfather of the academician and politician.
Jean-Baptiste Barres jotted down an " itinerary " all the while he was upon active service, and afterwards in his retirement, when time hung heavy upon his hands, he wrote out his rough notes to please his son. The manuscript lay for a generation disregarded until at length the grandson himself, getting old and beginning to feel that sympathetic interest in his forbears which age so often develops, set himself to decipher its faded pages. He was delighted with what he read, and determined to share his find with the public.
- It is not easy to say how the book will strike the English reader. It will depend in what spirit he takes it up. It will not help the Napoleonic student. It consists entirely of detailed personal experiences and reflections. The writer describes what he has seen among the trees ; he does not attempt to show the shape of the wood. Fighting was his profession. He had no thought of any cause, no Interest in any plan of campaign. His feeling for his Emperor is more of the nature of military loyalty than of romantic enthusiasm. Obviously this French soldier was a very kind-hearted and very conscientious man. He had no feeling whatever against the enemy whom he desired to vanquish, and oppressed civilians as little as he could. He loved his comrades in arms, towards whom his unselfishness is touching, though he does not appear to regret their deaths. He took his sufferings as " fortune of war," occasionally reflecting that war was a bad thing yet finding any interval of peace very dull and waxing enthusiastic over the delights of victory and the keen happiness of good fellowship. The point of view is not that of to-day, and therein lies its interest. Belonging to an old bourgeois family of notaries and doctors, he joined the " Chasseurs Skirmishers " as little more than a boy, was present at Napoleon's Coronation as Emperor, and was soon fighting in Germany. At first the new soldier sheds tears over the distress of the villagers who lose every- thing that the troops can take from them. Before long, however, we find him pitying the looters, whom recurrent efforts at discipline punish with severity. " Strict orders were given condemning to death all soldiers who should be found with linen, portable property, &c." If this order had been executed throughout the whole campaign the whole Grand Army would have been shot. Upon this occasion " several men did pay the death penalty." A chasseur, a friend of the writer's, who took a goose, got off with a less punishment. He had the ill-luck to meet, while carrying the bird, " the Major in command of our regiment, who struck him a few blows with his stick, ordered that he was to remain a fortnight in the vanguard and that the goose should be hung round his neck until it became putrid."
" There is," comments the old man, looking back on his experiences, " no finer moment in life than the evening of.. a victory. If the joy is tempered a little by the regret caused by the loss of so many good and valiant comrades, it is not the less keen and intoxi- cating." His delight in the rejoicings which take place in Paris to commemorate victories is almost childish. The feasts and fireworks, the noise and display are like champagne to his soul, and seem of themselves to make his hardships—even hunger, which he minds most— worth while. " After all we were young, we were marching all day and we were used to it." The story of a roast chicken unselfishly divided till no one had more than a mouthful is one of-the most moving passages in the book.
The horrors of the Spanish War are the only horrors which really impressed him. He saw civilians tortured to get evidence of the murder of soldiers, and he shivers at his own memories. That incident, the death of his wife and the disbanding of the Grand Army, " which for twenty-four years had filled the world with its exploits," are the only recol- lections which still pierce his heart in his old age. "We were," he writes, " scattered about the roads staff in hand like so many pilgrims begging assistance from the enemies we had so often defeated." These enemies, he adds charac- teristically, were " more generous than our fellow country- men," who called the last remnants of Napoleon's Army " the brigands of the Loire." Maurice Barres speaks of his grandfather's " humiliated and solitary heart "—a senti- mental tribute of pity which would, we think, have greatly surprised that stout-hearted warrior of an earlier world.
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