Diary of a Napoleonic Footsoldier (17 page)

The amount of specific detail in Walter’s narrative of 1812 is rather surprising. To be sure, much of it is of experiences of sufferings deeply scarring the memories of all survivors, and often the incidents and ideas in different accounts are so very similar that one would suspect borrowings of one narrative from another or from a common model were not proofs of originality incontestable. But there are authentic details peculiar to each individual narrator. In the case of Walter it is a memory of dimensions and of construction details, as natural for a builder to retain for an indefinite time, as a long memory of horses and transports was for Coignet, or the memory of minutiae of his hospital cases was the Roos [an army doctor whose memoirs are available only in German]. This type of recall is equally noticeable, just as is the surprising recollection of route-of-march details and place names and data, in each part of Walter’s narrative. In the narrative of his movements there are a few serious lapses. These are less serious, but more numerous, for 1812, but then the route was far longer and more complicated. A remarkable feature of his narrative for 1812, surely, is his recall of amazingly difficult names of very minor places. But this feature must be interpreted with caution. Many of us can testify to lifetime recollections of ordinary travels, even down to small details. Walter’s campaign probably marked the full scope of his travels. They were made within those years of his life when memory
presumably is most impressionable and most retentive. He lived only some fifty years thereafter, within which time, it is not illogical to say, his “travel-memory” should have been reliable. The Moscow campaign was indelibly memorable as have been few episodes of history. Its route is traced, with natural variations, in detail, by most of the recitals of its survivors. Many of them are accompanied by maps, a few by atlases. Most extraordinary for minutely photographic recollection of all route details are the Bourgogne
Memoirs
of 1835, when the author had reached an advanced age. True, Bourgogne had his notes of 1814 and 1815 as controls, but indications of the use of some verifying data by Jakob Walter have been cited already. Even so, Walter is not impeccable. He has corrected some slips, made in writing or copying, where sections of his route were out of time or place sequence, but has overlooked some others. Examples of such often very natural confusion are in his narrative of his moves just before and after the Beresina crossing, also his account of the sector just east of the Niemen both on his advance and retreat routes. While his memory for names of obscure places has been cited as remarkable, it is sometimes a confusing factor. Thus footnotes, based on use of Napoleonic marching orders and on other detailed researches, have been needed to amplify and clarify Walter’s itinerary through East Prussia. Because his route missed the larger places, usually, and because as a common soldier he did not know the strategy controlling his movements, his lists of century-old village names, often without essential dates, are a cause of grief to his readers. In his use of dates Walter is as dependable as any of his comrades
who did not keep diaries. Events which he connects with memorable days—such as church holidays—he dates accurately, even as others do. His use of round numbers is apt to be careless. A greater weakness, however, is a tendency to omit dates entirely, and this tendency underlies the confused accounts of his movements during the first months of 1807 and during the Vorarlberg campaign in 1809. Yet the net result of the critical analysis reflected in this discussion of the historicity of the Walter chronicle has been to impress the writer—and he hopes the reader—with its general reliability as historical evidence. Veracity, however, is but one test of the value of a historical document.

In beginning this introduction, I referred to the peculiar circumstances of the bringing to light the Walter narrative as suggesting reasons why it should be of special interest. For one thing it is highly suggestive, for those interested in our European cultural background, that even in Kansas documents of the Napoleonic era—and also of the Thirty Years’ War—have turned up in this fashion. Secondly, there is interest and significance in the fact that the Walter chronicle was brought to Kansas in early territorial days, because heretofore study of the peopling of this central commonwealth has concerned itself so generally with the struggle of free- vs. slave-state elements that foreign factors in the population at so early a stage of Kansas history seem to have been neglected. Evidently the Germans have played a larger part in molding the eastern section of the state than has been realized, and it would be profitable to know whence and why they came and what they actually contributed. However, the publication
of the Walter manuscript has been prompted chiefly by other motives, above all a realization of the interest and value of its contents for students of language and history and for the general reader because of its intrinsic human interest.

The inherent appeal of that type of writing to which the Walter chronicle belongs has already been noted. The number of such memoirs of Napoleonic war veterans, published since 1900, and still appearing despite the competition of the World War and its literature, is remarkable. But a new narrative is expected to have other particular claims of interest. The Walter manuscript does have these—both literary and historical. Its special claim, however, is that it is seemingly unique among the mass of 1812 narratives as the personal record of a German
common soldier
in Napoleon’s Grand Army. But while it is largely devoted to the Russian campaign, it is actually the record of a conscripted private of a Napoleonic vassal-state. Presumably he is typical of his group, the more so because his “military-service-time” covers practically the full period of the New Charlemagne’s domination of Germany and most of Europe.

The factors of Jakob Walter’s personality and background have merited emphasis here. They are essential considerations in reading, with full appreciation, this relation by Walter of the military experiences of his three campaigns. He was merely a builder’s helper, when called up with many like him, in the conscription of 1806, for “the campaign which the Emperor Napoleon with the princes then his allies was conducting against Prussia.” This passage (omitted from the second version) is the
extent of “political” allusion in the manuscript. Evidently when his regiment marched off in the fall, the Jena-Auerstädt battle (October 14) had just demolished the façade of Prussia potency. There was little for the new auxiliaries to do, after Frederick William had sought the safest corner of his realms, except clean up the remnants of unyielded defenses, in Silesia and Pomerania. During the shifting of forces between these two provinces parts of West Prussia were crossed by Württemberg regiments; but they had no part in the big fighting of the Eylau-Friedland campaign, were never exposed to the kindling close influence of the major leaders. The Walter brothers did their bit in the marchings and requisitionings incidental to various sieges and sorties here and there. Jakob had small chance and less incentive to discern any obvious scheme in the campaign. The incidents he best remembered were rowdy pranks. For the poor discipline of certain Württemberg units was such that the King at the home-coming review addressed them as his brigands. Moreover, when in 1812, the humiliated Crown Prince had to notify his father of his troops’ disorders on the Prussian-Lithuanian march, which had earned Napoleonic wrath, he recalled their misconduct of 1807 in Silesia. Nevertheless those especially interested will find some enlightening contributions regarding the futile Colberg and Glatz sieges, and the general reader will enjoy some vividly portrayed sortie incidents. Quite incidentally also Walter slips in some sound observations on the condition of Jews and peasants in Poland and Brandenburg. They illustrate that personal revelation which will be found the primary appeal and significance of the document.

From the end of 1807, when Jakob Walter went on leave to be with his sisters at Rosenberg, he worked intermittently at his craft until recalled to active service in the Austrian War. Again he missed the major conflict; again he served in a side campaign too much underrated by historians. His contingent was sent to the Alpine frontier to repel attacks of insurgent peasants who were fighting to get back under their old Habsburg rulers. Therefore, instead of sharing in the Ratisbon campaign of April and the May-July battles (Aspern, Wagram) near Vienna, the Walter brothers were only in local brushes at the Vorarlberg corner of the Lake of Constance. As the second and fuller version of this campaign is incomplete, we have but a scrappy account of Walter’s experiences. It shows him as more mature and taking a more soldierly part, as being more interested in people, folkways, and rural economy, perhaps as less devoutly Catholic. The disorders of his contingent seem to have changed likewise. There is little boyish rowdyism but some drunken rioting—despite their being on their own borders. Fortunately the campaign was not long, and after some garrison months Jakob Walter could again return to civil life and his trade at Ellwangen for something over two years.

Truly Walter’s third campaign was one of the most momentous in history. His unit being under Marshal Ney for most the advance, he was in the thick of events. Out of that Grand Army of some 600,000 who about June 25, 1812, crossed the Russian border, he was one of the small number who survived the retreat, recrossed the Niemen in late December, and finally reached home.
Naturally the account of his 1812 experiences, about three-fourths of his manuscript, is most detailed, systematic, and vitally—even vividly—interesting. It merits recognition among the many notable memoirs of the Moscow campaign. For many memoirs available for such study, comparative ranking is impracticable because of difference in scope, motive, or nature, and because of the author’s status. Bourgogne, Castellane, Caulaincourt, Fain, Marbot, Roos, and Ségur are examples. But among those of a type more similar to Walter’s, such as Coignet, Lossberg, Steinmüller, Vossen, Yelin, etc., the Walter narrative surely takes high rank.

Necessarily the scope of 1812 literature forces its students to be selective, to adhere to a dominant interest or motive. With many the interest is broadly historical. They are concerned with the causes or consequences of the Russian War, its diplomacy, its strategy. For them the sources have been often exploited and digested in scholarly monographs. Some aspects will always be disputed, and some phases of diplomacy, or military topics such as the facts regarding commissariat or hospitalization, may still be live issues. As to these the soldier memoirs may add something, but as to strategy or diplomacy rarely anything fresh. Then a second group of students have a “moral” or propagandist objective. They may be seeking to demonstrate the virtues of patriotic popularism, the vices of despotism and its nemesis, the horrors and futility of war. Honest study of the evidences—including soldier memoirs—may well correct certain of their preconceptions which have become popular legends. They will find from Walter very little about
peasants who attacked with flails and scythes, and that little chiefly about defending their villages and themselves against marauders. Of Cossack attacks, they will discover that most were against stragglers during the last stage of the retreat in Lithuania and Poland or East Prussia. They may learn that when Napoleon left his army at Smorgoni he had not only strong justification for rushing back to Paris, but also good reasons to turn the survivors over to capable sub-commanders, he himself having brought them into touch with supply bases, reinforcing new troops, and allied frontiers. But there is a third and most numerous group of readers motivated by the human-interest appeal, being concerned with dramatic incidents and with character portrayal. To them especially Walter’s narrative is commended. His experiences are varied and representative, and particularly significant not merely as those of the army rank and file, but because of Walter’s emotional revelations, thoughts of religion and the ties of home, and a persistent concern over the barbarizing effect of the retreat on himself and others. His mixture of Catholic piety and selfish energy was perhaps typically South German, yet it does show strikingly how the will to live and fend for oneself, joined with some degree of human kindness and providential aid, worked together to bring even a remnant safe home from Moscow in 1812.

1.
Count Dominique René Vandamme (1770–1830), French general.

2.
“
Kapuke
” (also “
Kapusk
,” “
Kapuska
”)—probably a misunderstanding of
kapusta
, Polish and Russian for cabbage.

3.
“
Bopen
”—from Russian
pop
(pl.
popy
), parish priest in common language.

4.
Known as the battle of Borodino by the Russians and as the battle of the Moskova by the French.

5.
French Guard, or the Imperial Guard (
gard impériale
), the elite regiments of Napoleon.

6.
Alia—possibly the Selnia River.

7.
In fact the rivulet Neglinnaia, which used to be a tributary of the Moskva River—now covered over.

8.
In fact the reverse was true: Alexander I ignored Napoleon’s approach for an armistice or peace negotiations.

9.
Apparently Napoleon gave the order to blow up the Kremlin, but it was either foiled or not carried out.

10.
Glauber salt—sulphate of sodium, a laxative.

11.
Princess Maria Luisa of Baden married Alexander I and took the name of Elizaveta Fedorovna.

12.
There is no historical evidence for this statement.

N
APOLEON SET UP THE Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, and appointed his brother, Jérôme king. Like all member states of the Confederation of the Rhine, Westphalia had to provide recruits to Napoleon’s armies. The Westphalians served in the French Army first during the Spanish campaign. Naturally, they were also called upon to participate in the campaign of Russia. They formed the Westphalian Corps, under the command of General Vandamme, and later under that of Marshal Junot (Duc d’Abrantès)—King Jérôme was with the corps in the beginning stages of the campaign. Several additional Westphalian units were attached to various other corps. All told, the Westphalians numbered 27,000 men at the outset of the campaign of Russia.