The inspiration for Brigadier Gerard
Allan Mallinson
THE EXPLOITS OF BARON DE MARBOT edited by Christopher Summerville Constable, f10.99, pp. 318 The French are not as other soldiers. The Gallic shrug and 'c'est la guerre' is at the heart of their military doctrine — at the heart of Bonaparte's 'scientific' strate- gy, even. British troops told to defend a piece of ground, even today, cling to it tenaciously. The French prefer to abandon it after a few shots and then retake it glori- ously, preferably with bugles.
The hussars were the worst in this respect — or best, depending on viewpoint. The first ones raised, for the Austro- Hungarian army, were not intended to operate as part of the regular order of bat- tle but as free-ranging scouts and maraud- ers. Ever since, the anarchic impulse has been transmitted to hussars of every nationality. A hussar who lived beyond 25, it was said, was not fit to call himself one. The motto was 'enjoy the war, for you won't be around for the peace'. And they did, it seems — if that fictional Gallic cavalryman, Conan Doyle's dashing Brigadier Gerard, is to be believed — for they 'always had the whole population run- ning, the women towards us, and the men away'. The inspiration for Gerard, General Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcellin de Mar- bot, put it more reflectively in these mem- oirs: 'You may call the feeling which urged us love of glory, or perhaps madness; it was an imperious master and we marched with- `Go and tidy your bedroom.' out looking back.'
Marbot enlisted in his father's regiment in 1799 at the age of 17, 'having been edu- cated first in a girls' school and then at the military college of Soreze. By mistake entrusted for training to the more repro- bate of two NCO brothers, he learned the soldier's and the hussar's art quickly. He was soon made corporal, then commis- sioned, was aide de camp to four of Bona- parte's marshals, and having taken his regiment over to the 'emperor' after the escape from Elba, he was promoted major- general on the eve of Waterloo. He served in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Austria and Russia, and was wounded so many times badly, too — that I simply lost count. As far as I can make out, he seems to have survived by avoiding field hospitals. As a raconteur of Napoleonic military life he is absorbing, still. Conan Doyle called him `the human, the gallant, the inimitable Marbot'. He certainly shows the face of war, but invariably with a light touch: A ball struck poor Albuquerque in the loins, flinging him over the head of his horse, and laying him stone dead at Lannes' feet. 'This,' he [Marshal Lannes] exclaimed, 'is the end of the poor lad's romance! But he has, at least, died nobly.' A second ball passed between La Bourdonnaye's saddle and the spine of his horse without touching either horse or rider: a really miraculous shot. But the front of the saddle-tree was so violently smashed between La Bourdonnaye's thighs, that the wood and the iron were forced into his flesh and he suf- fered for a long time with this extraordinary wound.
The original memoirs run to three vol- umes, covering most of Marbot's life (he received his final wound at the age of 59, in Algeria), and were published in English for the first time in 1892, the translation by A. J. Butler. In this edition, Christopher Summerville has set out to 'reintroduce Marbot to a new generation of readers'. And the single abridged volume covering Marbot's Napoleonic service, using as its basis the Butler translation, could hardly succeed better. It has one of the best chronologies of the Napoleonic wars I have seen, each chapter has a brief introduction which perfectly sets the scene, there is a glossary and impeccable notes and sources. He has done his hussar-hero proud. Only an index would have made it better.
The terrible gambler's throw that was Bonaparte's 'hundred days' in 1815 ended almost 25 years of fighting, sending France back to her pre-1790 boundaries and Mar- bot into exile in Germany. Of Waterloo, the gallant old hussar wrote, 'I cannot get over our defeat. We manoeuvred like so many pumpkins.' It was not something to get worked up about, evidently. Not for a hussar all that weeping by the Garde. They'd had a good run for their money. C'est la guerre.
Allan Mallinson's novel of Wellington's cav- alry, A Close Run Thing, is published in paperback by Bantam.
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