Joachim Murat de Soult

“ To Storace, who had been appointed to defend him, and who now begged to be allowed to do what he could, Joachim replied: “You cannot save my life. Allow me to save my dignity. I forbid you to speak in my defence.”
Storace, who, with Stratti and Nunziante, appears as one of the three rays of human light in the whole horrid affair, left him sadly, as the magistrate entered and with gusto proceeded to torment the victim with questions. But he did not get very far before Joachim turned upon him.
“I am Joachim Murat,” he replied, “King of the Two Sicilies and your King. ”

“ Pius did not relinquish his claim to the rest of the Papal possessions either, and continued on his way to Cesena, his native place, by the Strada Emilia, among his own subjects, although Murat, fearing the excited feeling among the latter, wished him to go through Tuscany.
Murat’s power was toppling over, for, do what he might, his interests were the interests of the France that he was fighting. But what could he do? It would take a clever man to find his way safely out of such an impasse as confronted Joachim. ”

“ Hearing these questions, Murat rose with an expression of sublime dignity.
“I am Joachim Napoleon, King of the Two Sicilies,” he answered, “and I order you to leave me.”
The registrar obeyed.
Then Murat partially dressed himself, and asked Stratti if he could write a farewell to his wife and children. The Captain no longer able to speak, answered by an affirmative sign; then Joachim sat down to the table and wrote this letter:
“DEAR CAROLINE OF MY HEART,—The fatal moment has come: I am to suffer the death penalty. In an hour you will be a widow, our children will be fatherless: remember me ”

“ For this purpose, Soult, who had crossed at Spires, directed his march upon Augsburg; while, to interrupt the communication betwixt that city and Ulm, the Austrian headquarters, Murat and Lannes had advanced to Wertingen, where a smart action took place. The Austrians lost all their cannon, and it was said four thousand men—an ominous commencement of the campaign. The action would have been termed a battle, had the armies been on a smaller scale; but where such great numbers were engaged on either side, it did not rank much above a skirmish. ”

“ It is scarcely possible to obtain a carriage for transport and I shall not be surprised to find in a short time these inhabitants taking arms against us.” Soult was however a man formed by nature and by experience to struggle against difficulties, always appearing greater when in a desperate condition than when more happily circumstanced. At Genoa under Massena, at Oporto, and in Andalusia, he had been inured to military distress, and probably for that reason the emperor selected him to sustain this dangerous contest in preference to others accounted more ready tacticians on a field of battle. ”

“ We need not here stop to inquire who was the cause of that fearful carnage, or to refute the foolish assertion that the French gained a victory. Such a statement is inconsistent with the fact that Soult had to abandon Toulouse and all his lines of defence, while Wellington attained the object he had in view. It is said that Soult knew before the battle that Napoleon had abdicated, and that his only motive for fighting was a desire to retrieve his fame as a general; but we think no brave man—and Soult was brave—would sacrifice the lives of thousands for so unworthy a motive. ”

“ The fame of Murillo out of his native country, has risen within these last ten or fifteen years to the highest rank, and his historical pictures are now classed with those of the greatest masters of the Italian school: as a colorist he is admitted to stand without a rival. This sudden extension of his merits is in some degree owing to the cheap acquisition of eight of his finest works by Marshal Soult, when he was Napoleon’s governor of Andalusia. These pictures have been seen and admired by all the world in Paris. ”

“ If the English general had been well furnished with money at this time, and if the yellow fever had not raged in Murcia, it is probable he would have followed Joseph rapidly, and rallying all the scattered Spanish forces, and the Sicilian armament on his own army, have endeavoured to crush the king and Suchet before Soult could arrive; or he might have formed a junction with Hill at Despenas Perros and so have fallen on Soult himself, during his march, although such an operation would have endangered his line of communication on the Duero. ”

“ Sir Rowland Hill on the right crossed the Nive at Cambo, and the French in front of him fell back on Bayonne; he then occupied the heights of Villefranche. The forces of the allies were disposed in a semicircle, their communications intersected by a river, and made difficult by the muddy roads. The position of the French was central, with short and easy communications, and was supported by the guns of the fortress. Soult could fling himself with all his weight on any point where the allies were weakest in his estimation, and that before they could bring up reinforcements. ”

“ It was while the Marshal was thus engaged, early in 1812, that the Duke of Wellington suddenly captured Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, and was thus able, after defeating Marmont at Salamanca, to march in the summer on Madrid. Soult replied to Joseph's summons to come to his help by telling him that his best policy was to join him in Andalusia and make a counter-stroke at Lisbon. ”

“ And I verily believed that Soult had collected his whole force together here for the express purpose of either allowing himself to be surrounded, and thus make a show of being compelled to surrender, or of inducing his whole army to come over at once to the side of the Bourbons, but in all these conjectures I was completely mistaken; for whatever may have been Soult's faults as a man, he has always shown himself a consistent and an able defender of the cause he first espoused, and as such is certainly respectable. ”

“ Cry ‘Long live Joachim!’ and follow me with these brave fellows to Monteleone.”
“Sire,” said Trenta Capelli, “we are the faithful subjects of King Ferdinand, and we come to fight you, and not to bear you company. Give yourself up, if you would prevent bloodshed.”
Murat looked at the captain with an expression which it would be impossible to describe; then without deigning to answer, he signed to Cagelli to move away, while his other hand went to his pistol. Giotgio Pellegrino perceived the movement.
“Down, captain, down!” he cried. The captain obeyed. ”

“ The “Court” by now had its sentence ready:
“Joachim Murat, by the fortune of arms, having returned into that private life in which he was born, and having ventured with twenty-eight comrades to attempt this rash enterprise, not trusting to the force of arms [313] [this, by the way, seems to be a queer sort of grievance] but to rebellion, has excited the people to rise against the lawful sovereign, endeavoured to revolutionise the Kingdom and Italy, and is therefore condemned to die as a public enemy, by the law made during the Decennium, and which is still maintained in full vigour.” ”

“ The victory of Marengo restoring his freedom, he received the command of the southern part of the kingdom of Naples, and in 1802 he was appointed one of the four generals commanding the consular guard. Though he was one of those generals who had served under Moreau, and who therefore, as a rule, disliked and despised Napoleon, Soult had the wisdom to show his devotion to the ruling power; in consequence he was in August 1803 appointed to the command-in-chief of the camp of Boulogne, and in May 1804 he was made one of the first marshals of France. ”

“ With only a few exceptions they were all traitors, from Napoleon, plotting against the constitution he had sworn to uphold, to Ney, deserting his King. They were greedy, they were unscrupulous, they were selfish. Many of them were men of second-rate talent. Two attributes they had in common—extreme personal bravery and enormous experience in war. Soult is the only Marshal about whom we find any hints of cowardice (and there seems to be no foundation for these hints) , while Suchet, Mortier and Brune were the only ones who had not served in the pre-Revolutionary army. ”

“ Soult the left; and Murat the reserve and cavalry.
Soult had to sustain the first assault of the Prussians, which was violent—and sudden; for the mist lay so thick on the field that the armies were within half gunshot of each other ere the sun and wind rose and discovered them; and on that instant Mollendorf charged. The battle was contested well for some time on this point; but at length Ney appeared in the rear of the Emperor with a fresh division; and then the French centre advanced to a general charge, before which the Prussians were forced to retire. ”

“ From the frontiers of Portugal he followed the French, who retreated on Burgos. In June he beat King Joseph at Vittoria, and following the French to Pamplona, forced them to enter France by the Bidassoa and other points. But France was not to be invaded without a bloody struggle. Soult, who had received reinforcements from those terrific conscriptions with which Napoleon was decimating France, once more turned upon Wellington. ”

“ The Spanish troops, neglected by their own government, plundered and ill-used the French peasantry, so Wellington sent them back to Spain, except Morillo's division. Bad weather kept him inactive for a month, but on 9 Dec. he forced the passage of the Nive, and placed Hill's corps between the Nive and the Adour. This restricted the French field of supplies and enlarged his own. Soult, seeing the allied army divided, took advantage of his central position at Bayonne to assail first one part and then the other. On the 10th he attacked the left and centre, but with no great vigour or success. ”

“ On October 6th the corps of Soult and Lannes, helped by Murat's powerful cavalry, cut the Austrian lines on the Danube at Donauwörth, and gained a firm footing on the right bank. Over the crossing thus secured far in Mack's rear, the French poured in dense array, and marched south and south-west towards the back of the Austrian positions, while Ney's corps marched to seize the chief bridges over the Danube.
A study of the processes of Mack's brain at this time is not without interest. It shows the danger of intrusting the fate of an army to a man who cannot weigh evidence. ”

“ Soult therefore was of opinion that his duty was to drop down into Leon, and there join with Mortier in making such a demonstration against Portugal as would compel the British army to stand upon the defensive, and to abandon any idea of invading Spain either by the valley of the Douro or that of the Tagus. ‘He could not keep his eye off Portugal,’ as Jourdan and King Joseph, no less than Ney, kept complaining [487] . There cannot be the least doubt that Soult was quite right in turning his main attention in this direction. It was the English army that was the most dangerous enemy ”

“ Let any man, I say, consider this, and he will be convinced that it was no common genius that could remain unshaken amidst such difficulties; yet Soult not only sustained himself, but contemplated the most gigantic offensive enterprises, and was at all times an adversary to be dreaded. What though his skill in actual combat was not so remarkable as in some of his contemporaries; who can deny him firmness, activity, vigour, foresight, grand perception, and admirable arrangement? It is this combination of high qualities that forms a great captain. ”

“ Thus reinforced, Blucher adopted the plan of passing the Elbe at Lauenburg, and reinforcing the Prussian garrisons in Lower Saxony. With this view he fought several sharp actions, and made many rapid marches. But the odds were too great to be balanced by courage and activity. The division of Soult which had crossed the Elbe, cut him off from Lauenburg, that of Murat interposed between him and Stralsund, while Bernadotte pressed upon his rear. Blucher had no resource but to throw himself and his diminished and dispirited army into Lubeck. ”

“ You have been able to remain a good, loyal fellow. He did not give you a kingdom, he did not encircle your brow with a band of iron which men call a crown and which drives one mad; he did not place you between your conscience and your family. So I must leave France, begin my vagabond life again, and say farewell to Toulon, which recalls so many memories to me! See, Brune,” continued Murat, leaning on the arm of the marshal, “are not the pines yonder as fine as any at the Villa Pamfili, the palms as imposing as any at Cairo, the mountains as grand as any range in the Tyrol? ”

“ The attack was fiercely made, as fiercely repulsed, and every effort against the allied flanks was unsuccessful. Finally, numbers enabled the French marshal to turn the position: but Hill steadily retired on Equaros, and there, joined by Campbell’s Portuguese brigade and Morillo’s Spaniards, he again boldly stood his ground and offered battle. But Soult declined an action—and, contented with having gained the Isurzun road, he determined to force his way to San Sebastian; but it was decreed that, like Pampeluna, the fortress on the Urumea should be abandoned to its fate. ”

“ Here he thought that he could defend the line of the Tormes, even against a combined force that outnumbered him by 25,000 men. Probably he would have succeeded if the enemy had delivered a frontal attack, as Jourdan and the majority of the French generals desired. But Soult’s safe but indecisive policy of refusing to make such an attack, and turning the Allied flank by the fords of the upper Tormes, was adopted. The only counter to this move would have been to assail the French while they were in the midst of their manœuvre, even as Marmont had been assailed at the battle of the Arapiles. ”