Happy birthday Marshal Lannes! April 10, 1769
I got a few selections about Jean Lannes from "Napoleon's Military Career" by Montgomery B. Gibbs
The first three, from the Italian campaign 1796/1797
Here also, Lannes, who lives to be a marshal of the empire, first attracted the notice if Napoleon, and was promoted from lieutenant-colonel to colonel.
Lannes, Napoleon, Berthier, and L'Allemand now hurried to the front, rallied and cheered the men, and as the column dashed across and over the dead bodies of the slain which covered the passageway, and in the face of a tempest of fire that thinned their ranks at every step, the leaders shouted: "Follow your generals, my brave fellows!"
Lannes seized one of the standards with his own hands, and, in consequence, Bonaparte demanded for him the rank of general of brigade. "He was," he said, "the first who put the enemy to route at Dego, who the Po at Plaisance, the Adda at Lodi, and the first to enter Bassano."
"The shower of balls from the Austrian musketry was at one time so intense that Lannes, speaking of it afterwards, described it's effect with a horrible, graphic homeliness. "Bones were cracking in my division," he said, "like a shower of hail upon a skylight." Lannes was subsequently created Duke of Montebello.
Napoleon now sent an aid-de-camp to Lannes urging him to expedite the taking of Ratisbon. This intrepid marshal has directed all his artillery against a projecting house, which rose above the wall surrounding the town. The house was knocked down and the ruins fell into the ditch. Still there were two fortified positions to take. Ladders were procured and placed at the critical points by the grenadiers, but every time one of them appeared he was instantly brought down by the well-aimed balls of Austrian sharpshooters. After some men had been thus struck, the rest appeared to hang back. Thereupon Lannes advanced, covered with decorations, seized one of the ladders and cried out: "You shall see that your marshal, for all he is a marshal, has not ceased to be a grenadier!"
Just as Napoleon was about to retire for a few hours' rest he was interrupted by a violent altercation between two of the chief lieutenants, Bessieres and Lannes, the former of whom complained of the language used by the latter, his inferior in rank, in giving a necessary order for a charge of cuirassiers and Chasseurs, then under the orders of Marshal Bessieres himself. Massena, who was on the spot, was obligated to interfere between these gallant men, who, after having braces for a whole day the crossfire of three hundred pieces of cannon, were ready to draw their swords for the sake of their offended pride. Napoleon allayed their quarrel, which was to be terminated the best day by the enemy in the saddest way for themselves and for the army.
