#auguste petiet

[josefavomjaaga]

Petiet about the death of Alfred de Lameth

I still owe @cadmusfly a translation of this passage in Petiet’s memoirs. And I had totally forgotten about it. Mea culpa! Also, please bear with me, it’s rather long. But also quite gripping.

The Duke of Dalmatia had made General Quesnel governor of Oporto.

Sidenote: That’s one of the guys whom Gotteri suspects to have been in on the Argenton conspiracy.

The auditor Taboureau was intendant and Captain de la Colombière, in the service of Spain and the marshal's interpreter, had just been appointed by him as Spanish consul in this city.

And if this post wasn’t too long already, I would love to comment on the ways Soult apparently set up his makeshift administration:

Colombière, aren’t you basically a Spaniard? Excellent, consider yourself transfered to diplomatic service as the new Spanish consul.

La Colombière: Uhm… and what are my duties as consul of Spain?

Chorus of ADCs chanting in the background: Par-ty, par-ty, par...

On 11 April, the day of his inauguration, Monsieur de la Colombière gave a dinner for the army's general staff. General Ricard, chief of staff, attended, as did the aides-de-camp and officers of the Duke of Dalmatia.

Notably missing: The Duke of Dalmatia. Which makes me wonder if this wasn’t another Go get drunk elsewhere! incident...

Captain Choiseul-Beaupré, Franceschi's aide-de-camp, and Alfred Lameth, who were due to leave the next day to see this general, were present at the party, which was very merry and lasted until four in the morning. Eugène Choiseul, […]

That’s a different member of this illustrious family, and another of Soult’s aides.

[…] addressing his cousin and Lameth, told them that the route they were about to take was safe and that he had just taken it alone and without a guide. Lameth observed that in Portugal a road was only safe up to the moment at which no one had yet been murdered on it. The disastrous event which took place on the 13th proved only too well the truth of his answer.

And of course, knowing this, the most professionel approach is to start the trip worn out, without sleep and drunk as a skunk. But at least they're finally on their way and I can refrain from any further comments.

Choiseul-Beaupré and Lameth, tired from the night they had spent with the new Spanish consul, instead of going to Franceschi's headquarters the same day, stopped at Villa de Feira, four leagues from Oporto. A convoy of clothing, escorted by dragoons, had just arrived there. The next day, the 13th, the two officers preceded the convoy, which was moving slowly, and they asked to be followed by two dragoons. They had just passed the village of Arrifana when they entered a sunken road, the narrowness of which meant that they had to march one at a time, in this order: one dragoon, Lameth, Choiseul and the second dragoon.

In the middle of the sunken road was a path that turned right and led to a village in the fields. The continuation of the road, making a slight bend to the left, led to Oliveira, one of the cantonments of General Franceschi's troops. The hills bordering the sunken road were covered in woods where fifty or so armed peasants had taken cover, no doubt waiting for the convoy. The leading dragon followed the road directly, but as Lameth took the path to the right, Choiseul shouted at him: "Lameth, you're going the wrong way!" Immediately, a shower of musketry killed Alfred de Lameth and Choiseul's horse. The second dragoon fled towards Arrifana, while the first abandoned his horse and ran towards Oliveira amid renewed shooting and a hail of stones thrown at him by the insurgents from the top of the hill.

Choiseul had his foot caught under his horse. As he tried to remove it, he was hit by a bullet that slightly injured his ear. Choiseul redoubled his efforts, managed to free his leg, got to his feet, ran across the land to the left of the road in the direction of Oliveira and crossed a river at the foot of a hamlet. The armed peasants then ran down the hill like a torrent and followed in his footsteps. Choiseul only had time to reach the first house in the hamlet and ask an old man to save him.

The insurgents entered the cottage, seized Choiseul and took his watch and money. Soon there was a quarrel between the brigands over the division of the spoils and Choiseul, who noticed the compassionate eyes of the old man, hoped that the discussion between his attackers might save his life. But he was taken to a plain near the cottage to be shot. He saw a large number of inhabitants of both sexes gathered there. Choiseul shouted to them in their language that he did not recognise Portuguese honesty in the conduct of those who wanted to immolate a defenceless man. He added that, according to the laws of war, he should regard himself as their prisoner and not their victim. He ended by telling the inhabitants that if his blood were spilt, they would have to fear the most terrible vengeance.

The Portuguese, astonished to hear a Frenchman explain himself in their idiom with as much ease as energy, stopped, grouped together, talked amongst themselves and soon beckoned Choiseul to follow them. They returned to the house where he had been arrested. The old man wants to give him back his purse and his watch. The money is found but the watch has disappeared. The old man says to Choiseul: "You have not been arrested by soldiers of our nation, but by highway robbers. We are going to give you six of us to take you to your people. You should not even consider yourself a prisoner." However, the first dragoon arrived breathless at Oliveira and told General Debelle, who was in command there, that chef d'escadron Lameth had just been murdered and that Captain Choiseul was in the greatest danger. Tholozé, aide-de-camp to the marshal, […]

Yes. Another one. Brun’s Cahiers have a report by him about what happened during the evacuation of Oporto, when Wellesley attacked.

[…] was returning to Oporto and was close to the general. He assembled a detachment of dragoons and galloped towards the scene of this deplorable event. The six peasants escorting Choiseul saw the French arrive at full speed. They paled and thought they had arrived at their final hour. Choiseul reassured them, ran to meet Tholozé and shouted at him to spare his liberators. Lameth's body is found and he is taken away to perform the last services.

As soon as the Marshal, who was very fond of Alfred, learned of his assassination, he ordered the Thomières infantry brigade to go to Arrifana, to gather the old men, women and children in the church and to burn the village. General Thomières went to Arrifana to carry out this fatal mission. The village leaders came to meet the General and told him that the fifty culprits, strangers to Arrifana, had been arrested and would be handed over to him. General Thomières then took it upon himself to change the order he had received. The village was respected and the fifty brigands were hanged in front of the church.

So, according to Petiet, the village was not burned in the end. That’s somewhat in accordance with Soult’s memoirs, who claims to only have ordered to find and execute the murderers und to have their houses burned. Petiet, however, was sent on another mission the day after Lameth had left Oporto and can only have learned of all these events later, most likely from the ADC Choiseul, with whom he was close friends, as he states in his memoirs.

There you have my very belated translation. Sorry for the delay 😥.

[josefavomjaaga]

Petiet about the "roi Nicolas" affair

Ha! I'm on a roll today! 😁 Here’s another testimony from the memoirs of one of Soult's aides-de-camp, Auguste Petiet. Petiet often enough was at odds with his marshal over financial matters, so his report is particularly interesting. He did, however, not witness the beginning directly, as he had been sent away from Oprto to support general Delaborde with taking and occupying Amarante, in order to hopefully reopen communications with the French forces in Spain and to find any sign of marshal Victor’s corps. Taking Amarante and the bridge across the river Tamega proved to be a hard task in itself and took its toll on both the troops and their leaders. As Petiet notes about Delaborde:

The general's character suffered because of the continual obstacles he could not overcome. In one of the unsuccessful attacks, a grenadier was killed between General Delaborde and myself and covered us with his blood. The general said gloomily: "How happy this man is, I would like to be in his place!" On 24 April, General Delaborde received a letter from the Marshal instructing him to send me back to him with the journal of his operations. I was all the more anxious to get back to headquarters as I had been strangely surprised by some of General Delaborde's words. He claimed that Marshal Soult was going to usurp the throne of Portugal and that he had not even been afraid to announce this in a proclamation signed by General Ricard. The delegations from the provinces occupied by the French army had come, he added, to pay their respects to King Jean de Dieu.

And at this point Petiet added a footnote in his memoirs, stating that this was Soult’s first name. Apparently he also had already tired of the whole "Nicolas" business. Or he was astonished himself about that weird first name.

I will indicate here the various circumstances which gave rise to such a rumour. Most of the expeditionary army was made up of troops who, having already fought an unfortunate campaign in Portugal, had reluctantly returned to a country which they considered to be cursed. The generals bitterly criticised all the dispositions of the Duke of Dalmatia and seemed delighted to see him forced to stop his invasion plan. The Marshal, who was still counting on the arrival of the auxiliary troops that his instructions promised him, had established order and discipline throughout the country under the jurisdiction of the French troops. Property, religion and industry were protected.

I’m not sure if Petiet does this on purpose but immediately adding the fact that private property, churches and rich warehouses were under protection, after listing the grievances Soult's subordinate officers had against him, almost makes it look as if that, too, had been something they were not happy with.

In this instance, the Portuguese, wishing to shake off the yoke of England, came to the Duke of Dalmatia with deputations from the towns and villages, asking him to ask Napoleon for a monarch of his choice to govern them. But could he be reproached for thinking that Napoleon, who had placed Murat and Bernadotte on their thrones, would set his sights on him to reign in Portugal?

And here Petiet clearly is writing in hindsight, with a messed-up timeline. Murat was already in Naples, that’s true, but Bernadotte was still very much under Napoleon’s command in early 1809 and about to clash with him during the battle of Wagram. He also fails to add that both these marshals had family relations to Napoleon.

If so, would he have taken up arms against his brothers, along with the two Frenchmen I have just named? Was his devotion to the Emperor not absolute?

I suspect what Petiet actually wants to write is: You know, Naps, maybe you should have made Soult a king. That one would at least not have declared war on you like the other two.

When the head of one of the Portuguese delegations knelt before him and exclaimed: "I kiss the hand of my king", the Marshal was undoubtedly wrong not to state vigorously that it was for Napoleon alone to make such a choice and that he did not aspire to rise to this supreme rank. He was undoubtedly wrong to appoint, on his own authority, a high vicar bishop of Braga, to attach him to himself as chaplain and to allow him, when he accompanied him, to throw money at the people, who responded to these gifts with cries of "Viva el rey!" He undoubtedly made the mistake of not personally drafting the proclamation of his chief of staff, which contained the clumsy phrase: "The Marshal wishes the army not to assume that this request from the Portuguese is the result of any personal ambition on his part."

At this point Nicole Gotteri, who edited Petiet’s memoirs, in a footnote again explicitly points at Junot’s behaviour in Lisbon the year before, and even to Davout’s in Poland. I do not know if there really was similar behaviour from those two; Gotteri is clearly not unbiased herself when it comes to Soult 😊. And now, having listed up all evidence against his marshal, Petiet continues:

But it is not true that he exceeded the limits of his duties as Governor of Portugal. It is not true that he usurped the throne. It is not true that he announced his alleged usurpation in a circular. And yet, a denunciation thus conceived was sent to the Emperor signed by Generals Loison and Delaborde and some others whom the Duke of Dalmatia had severely reprimanded, either for their negligence in service or for their impertinence.

I can just see Petiet jumping up in an imaginary court room as he wrote this, vehemently defending his marshal. It is not true! It is not true! They’re all liars! How dare they!

The soldiers were generally tired of war. This campaign was made all the more painful by the fact that, along with the enemy army and the population, the weather and hardships of all kinds were also working against them. Add to these obstacles the grief of being without communication with the other French troops, the certainty of receiving no promotion and, in the future, a death unknown to one's family and to France. Few souls were strong enough to brace themselves against such a fate. Murmurs broke out and echoed all the way to the enemy camp.

Followed by the story of Argenton’s secret negotiations with Wellington (whom Petiet pointedly, and for this period of time I believe correctly, names only Wellesley). Which reminds me that I once came across Wellington’s reports about these negotiations. Those might also be interesting in this context.

[josefavomjaaga]

Dancing to impress Polish ladies

Or not, as it would turn out.

At the beginning of December 1806, Soult and staff happened to be in Warsaw, just in time for a big festivity that the city gave to Napoleon on occasion of the anniversary of his coronation and the battle of Austerlitz. Soult himself gave a large dinner, at which the rather free and respectless conversation that people were used to at his table apparently made him feel quite uneasy (letting your aides and officers run their big mouths is a different thing with the emperor under the same roof, I assume 😁). At least that’s the impression that Auguste Petiet had at the time and that he gives in his memoirs. He continues:

We ended the evening at a splendid ball held by the city for the Emperor. The women, covered in jewels, flocked to his steps, and their eager eyes gazed upon a thirty-six year old monarch whose sword had constantly triumphed. Napoleon turned to Soult and said to him, pointing to his aides-de-camp: "Your young men must prove to the Polish women that they are as good at dancing as they are at war".

Which, come to think of it, does sound a bit as if he was calling in reinforcements: Soult, make your boys dance with them, or all those women will come after me… - So they danced.

We waltzed. So far so good. But now we are forming quadrilles. The ladies tell us that the figures are the same as those in the contredanse. It was a mazurka. The steps of this dance are completely alien to us. We mess everything up. This led Lameth to say that, according to the Emperor's comparison concerning us, the Polish women now were going to take us for bad soldiers!

Gotta love Lameth 😁.

[josefavomjaaga]

Soult’s aides, again

Another scene with Soult’s unruly aides. Featuring this time: Petiet (who tells the story in his memoirs), Lameth and Brun. Special guest: general Compans, at the time (January 1807) chief of staff of Soult’s corps in Poland. Also in the mix a chamberlain of Napoleon’s whose name Petiet does not give, we only learn that he is a count: comte de ...

A few days before our departure from Prasnitz, this chamberlain had brought to Marshal Soult a despatch from the Emperor. He awaited the answer in a salon where General Compans and the aide-de-camp Brun de Villeret were playing chess. Lameth and I were chatting with the count of ... who asked me many questions about the new court of Naples and seemed to listen to my answers with a lively curiosity. He asked me how many chamberlains King Joseph had. Thirty, I told him. At these words, Brun de Villeret, checking the king, exclaimed: "Peste! Thirty chamberlains, his room must be well provided for". - Monsieur de ..., irritated to see his functions assimilated to those of a valet de chambre, expressed himself thus in a tone which he sought to make pleasant: "One used to say advantageous like an aide de camp to the prince of Neuchatel, one will now say insolent like an aide de camp to Marshal Soult!" - Lameth, with his frank cheerfulness and his ready wit, then spoke up: "You are getting angry, my dear, you are wrong. Think that if you set the aides-de-camp against you, you will have to deal with a strong party; they will also make their comparisons and they will say: military like a chamberlain!" - This was the coup de grace for the poor Count, who answered nothing and was ready to choke.

As to the identity of Napoleon’s chamberlain, I do not know. If he was already a count by 1807, before Napoleon installed his own, new nobility, he must have come from one of the ancien régime families who had rallied to Napoleon. Which would explain why Lameth, coming from a similar background, calls him “tu”.

This is from the “Almanach impérial” of 1807. Take your pick. (Also, I’m pretty sure that’s not all of Napoleon’s chamberlains. Had he really less than Joseph?)

I’m just happy to see that by this time, the newcomer Brun seems to have been well-accepted already by his colleagues. And that he had already picked up the usual tone in Soult’s staff. (A tone that sometimes may have given Soult migraines, considering that people of course would be talking about such disrespectful behaviour.)

[josefavomjaaga]

Thiébault’s Spanish grave

General Paul Thiébault, the guy who gave us the Napoleon-versus-bunnies story and in his memoirs never can quite decide if he hates Berthier more than Soult or Soult more than Berthier, had during the Peninsular War for some time been gouverneur at Burgos. In that function, he had built a magnificent monument for the Spanish national hero, El Cid. When Soult’s aide-de-camp Auguste Petiet, after being wounded in action, was granted a leave, he visited Burgos on his way to France and had a bit of a misunderstanding during his sightseeing trip there. As he tells in his memoirs:

I had already visited the bronze statue of Charles III and the paintings in the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores when I went to see the Promenade de l'Espolon, where a white marble tomb had been erected with an inscription engraved in gold letters, in such a way that the large letters named the person who had built the monument, and the small ones barely indicated the glorious names of El Cid and Jimena Diàz. This was the inscription:

GENERAL THIEBAULT Governor of the two Castilles has brought here the remains of El Cid and Jimena with the remnants of their tomb.

As there had been no mention in the army that the remains of these famous figures, who were resting in the church of the Carthusian monastery, had been disturbed, when I entered the Espolon, seeing a tomb in the distance and in large letters the name of General Thiébault, I exclaimed: "I pity the fate of the governor who has just died in Spain".

Poor Thiébault already bemoaned by Soult’s staff 😁. Petiet could relax though, Thiébault would live until 1846.

[josefavomjaaga]

Soult and Petiet go hunting

Soult’s aide-de-camp and close friend Brun de Villeret apparently stated in his diaries that Soult was not a skilled hunter. Yet he seems to have enjoyed hunting, quite unlike another of his aides, Auguste Petiet, who relates in his memoirs the following incident:

Buffalo, wild boar, and the bohac, a kind of wolf that resembles the deer, inhabit the forests of Poland and it is a real country for hunting. Marshal Soult, a lover of this kind of exercise, often explored the beech, fir and oak woods around Prasnitz. This pleasure, in which all young people willingly indulge, never had any attraction for me. One day I accompanied the Marshal on a hunting trip, and what happened to me there was not likely to give me a vocation.

We were to have a big hunt and attack some wild boars. While the peasants were preparing to hunt, a polar fox passed almost under my rifle and, by such an extraordinary chance, I fired happily enough to hit it. This beginning should have encouraged me. We were waiting for the boars. I was positioned behind a large oak tree and the marshal was posted in the same way to my right and at a short distance. I saw animals running up to me at half range, which I took to be dogs, and I remained motionless. The marshal makes signs to me which I do not understand. He has since told me that, if he had not been afraid to hit me, he would have fired, so certain was he of making the boars fall. I finally realise my mistake and I want to make up for it by aiming at other, smaller boars, which follow those I have let escape. I let go of the trigger of my rifle and the gamekeeper exclaims: "Ah, monsieur, you have killed my best dog!"

On my way back to Prasnitz, my horse fell on the ice and the consequences of this fall forced me to stay in bed for fifteen days. This accident caused me quite severe pain for several years, especially when the weather changed. Since then I have cursed hunting so much that I have rarely handled a gun.

I can just imagine those two mouthing and gesticulating at each other from behind their trees, before aiming at the dogs. Maybe, despite all animosity, they should have asked for some lessons from Berthier before setting out. You know, just the basics: Boar -> shoot. Dog -> no shoot. Berthier could have used little picture cards...

[josefavomjaaga]

Soult’s plunderings (part 3 of ?)

I’ve already said in part 2 that in Vienna, after the Austerlitz campaign of 1805, Soult’s aide-de-camp Petiet felt he was treated unjustly by his marshal, after the latter had been refused some dubious financial benefits by Petiet’s father. There is a second, even more striking incident of a similar kind in early 1810, in Spain, when Soult apparently seized the largest chunk of a sum King Joseph Bonaparte had donated to Soult’s aides – though this story may come with a twist.

Let’s first hear Petiet’s memoirs. The event takes place, as he claims, during the march into Andalusia, on 20 January 1810, after a battle that had cleared the road through the Sierra Morena.

With the success of the day assured, the king followed the columns pursuing the enemy and taking possession of the high mountains that the Spaniards had so easily surrendered to them. To the right of the road, a very picturesque spot caught Joseph's eye and he ordered lunch to be prepared for him on the heather. At this rural dining table, formed by nature, took their places the ministers, the colonel-general of the guard, the major-general and his aides-de-camp.

This major general being Soult, Petiet of course was among the aides enjoying this impromptu lunch. It’d be interesting to know how Soult reacted to the royal idea of having a picnic while the troops were still pursuing the enemy, a picnic because the landscape was so picturesque…

During the meal, the king showed me a lot of kindness and, when it was over, I had hardly mounted my horse when General Merlin approached me saying that Joseph wanted to speak to me. I went up to the king, who was also on horseback, and he said to me with a smile: " Put your hat on, because we are going to have a long talk ". Indeed, it lasted until we reached La Caroline. I will only report the details of this conversation that may be of interest to my family [...]

Petiet then indeed repeats a very long conversation, in which Joseph asks for the whereabouts of each of Petiet’s family members, praises Petiet’s deceased father, gives Petiet every opportunity to complain about his poverty again and then assures him of his royal friendship, while recalling details of his long-standing relationship with Petiet’s family. Petiet continues:

Joseph no doubt intended to offer a sign of his satisfaction to the aides de camp of the major general. But it often takes a cause of little importance to inspire a memory in kings, and this conversation led to a bonus of one hundred thousand reals that he handed over to the marshal for his aides-de-camps on entering Seville. There were ten of us, which would have made a sum of two thousand five hundred francs for each of us, enough to make up for the loss of our equipment. As far as I was concerned, since I had been in Spain, I had lost six horses and, as always, I had fought the war at my own expense. But it was not to be. The Marshal offered each of us a bonus of 375 francs which we unanimously refused. Soult was very irritated by this refusal, which made our work for him very unpleasant. I don't know why, he imagined that I was the author of this decision and, to punish me for it, he made my comrades have promotions and decorations, excepting me in particular. His suspicions were unfounded, however, and if we had wanted to follow the advice of Saint-Chamans and Bory de Saint-Vincent, we would have sent back to his piqueur the bonus that he offered to his aides-de-camp.

Unfortunately, like with the incident in Vienna, Saint-Chamans’ memoirs do not mention this scene at all. It would have been nice to have a second report and a second point of view. (Plus, Saint-Chamans’s stories tend to be funny.)

When the king left Andalusia in April 1810, he gave a second gratuity of 200,000 reals for the aides-de-camp and the major-general's staff. This time, the Duke of Dalmatia had his chief of staff draw up a list of one hundred and thirty-five individuals, including storekeepers, sub-assistant storekeepers, surgeon-majors, aide-majors, sub-assistant-majors, etc., and, what is most curious, according to the breakdown of the sums, the total amounted to only eighty thousand reals. This time, the Marshal offered us each five hundred francs. Our first instinct was again to refuse, but we thought we should not continue to show so much susceptibility so as not to be stopped in our career and, out of 200,000 reals, twenty thousand forming five thousand francs were not diverted from the destination Joseph had reserved for them.

Unlike much of the rest, as Petiet clearly wants to say.

As ugly as the story is, I guess it shows quite nicely how Soult’s plundering worked – it was more a diversion of available funds into his own pocket than genuine looting. But there is also something curious about Petiet’s memoirs here, as his editor – Nicole Gotteri, who else – notes in the preface: For whatever reason, Petiet (and deliberately, not by accident) changed the date of the long conversation he had with Joseph Bonaparte. Like many memoirists, he was using a set of documents in order to help along his memory, among them the letters he had written to his family from Spain at the time. The conversation with Joseph he copied almost verbally from a letter to Petiet’s mother, but it happened several weeks later, having taken place in Andujar on 3 April 1810.

Why this change? No clue. Maybe just to be able to brag that Joseph’s first gratification was due mostly to Petiet’s long conversation.

On the other hand, I’m a bit wary of Joseph just handing out money to Soult’s aides like that. Granted, Joseph tended to be more generous than his imperial brother – if he expected this generosity to pay off in the future. He saw gifts, donations etc. as an investment, expecting gratitude and loyalty in return. (When Soult, to whom he had offered all that money, and some excellent paintings on top!, some months later decided to remain true to Napoleon’s ideas on how to govern Spain, rather than Joseph’s, Joseph obviously felt betrayed.)

So I wonder: why did Joseph, in April 1810, show such interest in this lowly aide-de-camp? And what other topics, that did not interest Petiet’s family and that Petiet left out of the memoirs, had the two of them talked about, only a couple of weeks before Joseph would all of a sudden set out for Madrid, leaving a flabbergasted Soult in Sevilla to handle Andalusia as he saw fit?

As to the finances of Soult’s ADCs, I guess I owe it to Soult to make another post with an excerpt from Brun’s Cahiers, as Brun gives quite a different description of their situation than Petiet.

[josefavomjaaga]

Soult’s plunderings (part 2 of ?)

The next installment of this ongoing series (part 1 being here). This time we’ll have a direct witness - and victime of Soult’s schemes to make money: His aide-de-camp Auguste Petiet.

Several of Soult’s aides complained about being poor, and all of them were eagerly trying to receive promotions or donations – something that their marshal, once the euphory of Austerlitz was over, only rarely could achieve for them.

Petiet mentions the strained financial situation of his family several times. His father was, however, an important politician with a long career: Claude-Louis Petiet. A moderate, he managed to be both a friend of Moreau and to support Napoleon’s coup d’état, and he seems to have been able to keep an unblemished reputation of probity even during the Directory. Napoleon made him the intendant-general during the 1805 campaign against Austria, a senator and a Grand Officier de la Légion d’honneur. But when Petiet died in 1806, Napoleon refused to grant his widow a pension, arguing that a man with so many opportunities to enrich himself ought to have done so. (Or at least, that’s what his son writes in his memoirs.)

It was after the campaign of 1805, when Soult was briefly gouvernor of Vienna, that Petiet Senior had a little run-in with his son’s marshal, that had severe consequences for poor Auguste Petiet and shows a rather dark side of Soult. As Auguste Petiet writes in his memoirs:

Shall I speak here of the weakness of a great captain? [...] Also, I wish it were in my power to hide a fact damaging to the reputation of a famous warrior. I would even keep absolute silence on an anecdote that my sons must know so that they are convinced that military genius must be free of this stain and that the most intact probity is the first duty of a soldier.

The Emperor, who was well aware that Marshal Soult had been responsible for the victory in the battle of Austerlitz, had promised him that all the graces he requested for the 4th corps would be granted. Franceschi had just been appointed brigadier general and three proposals for the rank of captain for the three lieutenants aides-de-camp who had actively taken part on the battlefield were to be sent to Napoleon at Schönbrunn Castle.

In the meantime, the chief of staff gathered the various heads of the army administration departments in Vienna. General S […]

That of course would be Saligny again. See part 1.

[…] told them that he had come on behalf of the general-in-chief of 4th Corps to ask for a huge discount on the products they were dealing with. The astonished administrators reply that they can only act after referring the matter to the Intendant General.

And that would be Petiet Senior.

My father told them that a bonus of this nature could only be taken to the detriment of the soldier and he ordered them to refuse. Until then, the few people who knew about this procedure believed that S…, who had been seen during the campaign to remove even the paintings from the rooms where he was staying, [...]

Paintings, huh? Mhm...

was acting on his own behalf and compromising the Marshal. But Soult's coldness [from now on] towards my father was obvious. Lameth and Saint-Chamans were appointed captains and, although I was a more senior lieutenant than the latter, the request in my favour was cancelled.

Which is a blatant injustice that not even Nicole Gotteri can deny. She wonders if Soult may have been trying to gain money in order to put up his spy network in Vienna (a network that would indeed gather valuable information during the following year when 4th corps was stationed in Passau), as Napoleon sort of expected his marshals to pay for this sort of thing with the means they had. But even if there had been some justification for Soult’s and Saligny’s action and if they considered Petiet Senior’s refusal incorrect, taking it out on the son is plain mean. Period.

It’s all the more astonishing that Auguste Petiet would remain attached to Soult’s staff, and that, when he for a while ended up in Naples under the orders of Joseph Bonaparte (whom he very much liked, unlike his marshal 😁), he desperately tried to get back to him despite this injustice. I also feel like Petiet meticulously lists all instances when Soult treats him kindly or worries about him (like Soult embracing him on his return from Naples or showing concern over his wound at the battle of the Gebora). So apparently, despite this flagrant injustice, he still felt quite attached to him?

It would, however, not be the last injustice of this kind. Another would follow in Spain, but I’ll give that it’s own post.