Diary of a Napoleonic Footsoldier (3 page)

Inherited by the Revolution and Napoleon from the practice of the standing armies introduced after the Thirty Years’ War, this “system” would not work as expected in areas too poor to have any kind of surplus, or emptied of their population and of everything edible and movable. This, however, was precisely the situation that the Grande Armée encountered when it crossed into Russian Poland and from there into Russia proper. Russian Poland was poor, with a sparse population and an extremely backward agrarian economy that provided barely enough sustenance to avoid permanent hunger. Trade networks were primitive,
too—peddlers and small village stores (mostly operated by Jews) carried only a few items of necessity and shoddy luxuries. Conditions in Russia were even worse. The Byelorussian provinces that lay between eastern Poland and Moscow were among the poorest in European Russia: swamps, forests, and a few tilled fields bearing a poor crop of rye. Here, too, there were a meager number of inhabitants, settled in widely scattered villages; manor houses and noble estates were also few and far between, and far from magnificent. The situation was made worse for the Grande Armée by two developments: first, scare propaganda and direct orders of the Russian authorities had resulted in the mass flight of the local population; second, the Russian armies, as they retreated, destroyed everything that could be remotely of use to the enemy—crops, stores of grain, fodder, and hay, cattle, and even peasant dwellings (setting whole villages afire). That is why, from the start of the campaign, Napoleon’s troops lacked food supplies; the situation grew worse as the Grande Armée advanced deeper into the empire, and it became tragically catastrophic on the retreat. Whatever supplies could be secured by headquarters went first to the French troops, in particular the Imperial Guard; soldiers of the vassal states were left to their own devices.

Napoleon’s attempt at subduing Russia ended in tragic disaster, signaling the beginning of his doom. Of about 600,000 men who crossed into Russia in June 1812, about 140,000 retreated from Moscow, and barely 25,000 recrossed the border in December 1812. The disaster
triggered the uprising for national liberation in Prussia and the renewal of an all-European coalition against France. Alexander I’s decision—against the advice of his commander in chief, Marshal M. I. Kutuzov—to continue fighting after the expulsion of the Grande Armée from his realm, eventually led to Napoleon’s defeat and exile, the entrance of the allies into Paris, and the return of King Louis XVIII to the throne of his ancestors. Little wonder that the campaign of Russia appeared to be proof of Napoleon’s
hybris
and, as in Greek classical tragedy, conjured up his own
nemesis.
In Victor Hugo’s words,
on était conquis par sa conquête
(one was conquered by one’s conquest).

The tragic end of Napoleon’s epic has generated an immense literature, for it offered the dramatic contrast of almost superhuman triumphs and glory followed by an abyss of misery and wretchedness. It is the image of the Napoleonic legend which the emperor created and fostered with the help of his chamberlin in exile, Las Cases, who published the vastly popular
Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène
, an “oral history” of Napoleon’s spoken reminiscences. It was kept alive by the stirrings of nationalism and liberalism in France, as well as in the rest of Europe. The legend also owed much to the fact that the revolutionary and Napoleonic armies had helped to spread the political notions and the social legislation that were the hallmark of modern democratic civil and economic freedoms. The digruntled demobilized soldiers and non-coms of his armies were the living illustration of Napoleon’s magnetic appeal and titanic figure, both of which
the songs of Béranger and the poetry of Heine, Hugo, Lermontov, and others popularized throughout Europe.

It is no exaggeration to say that the tragic campaign of 1812 did more than anything else to bring about the birth of a modern national consciousness in Russia and the Germanies. In Russia, it was the pride of having been the first in defeating the mighty military genius of Napoleon. The military leadership and the selfless patriotism of the people had been the instruments of this defeat, and thus had given proof of Russia’s having come of age to save European civilization. This interpretation held sway throughout the imperial regime until 1917 and it was revived on the eve of the Second World War by Stalin; it has not been seriously challenged or amended to this day in Soviet historiography. As far as the Germans were concerned, the French conqueror’s defeat made possible an uprising when the Prussian General Yorck von Wartenburg initiated a war of national liberation from the French; it became an all-German uprising when volunteers, mainly students and burghers, from the other states flocked to participate in the so-called
Freiheitskrieg
(War of Liberation) of 1813–15. This war came to symbolize the emergence of an all-German national consciousness that demanded the creation of a unitary German state. As we know, it served as prelude and justification for Bismarck’s drive to unite Germany, minus Austria, into one empire under the unchallenged dominance of Prussia. The Second Reich, replacing the first, the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nation, lasted until 1918; a German unitary state, exclusive of Austria,
existed until 1945 and, at the present, has reemerged again.

Jakob Walter’s autobiography chronicles only what he witnessed and experienced himself. There is no place in it for general reflections, no effort is made to explain or interpret the wars in which he was involved. This is so despite the fact that he apparently wrote decades after the events and quite clearly, as Frank E. Melvin’s commentary (which in this volume follows Walter’s diary) shows, reconstructed details of the campaign with the help of maps and published histories. Walter has no other ambition than to record, as faithfully as he can, the events in which he himself took part; he has no ulterior motives, no moral or other judgments in mind. He merely testifies to the beastliness that may surface in every man under conditions of extreme hardship and in fear of one’s life. What is also quite remarkable, I think, he displays no bitterness either toward Napoleon and the French, nor toward the Russian enemies. On the other hand, there is no sign of any emotional involvement in the events. His autobiography is as objective a chronicle as one can get, moreover a chronicle from the rare perspective of a lowly soldier, foreign to Napoleon’s and French interests and concerns. It is written exclusively for home consumption, to tell the immediate family and their descendants how one of their own fared in those turbulent times. This is, of course, equally true of the letters we reproduce later in the book—except that they convey facts and feelings on the spot, in the very midst of military action.

The text of Jakob Walter’s autobiography is reproduced, with minor corrections, from the translation first published in
Bulletin of the University of Kansas—Humanistic Studies
, vol. VI, no. 3 (Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas, Department of Journalism Press), 1938, under the title
A German Conscript with Napoleon—Jakob Walter’s Recollections of the Campaigns of 1806–1807, 1809, and 1812–1813
, edited and translated by Otto Springer (professor of Germanic Languages) with historical collaboration by Frank E. Melvin (associate professor of History).

We are reproducing, omitting unnecessary rhetoric and detail, the historical commentary and notes of Frank E. Melvin. It was deemed unneccessary, for this edition, to reproduce the philological notes and commentary on Walter’s language by Otto Springer, the original editor and translator.

In the present edition the text of the translation has been rearranged so that the order of the chapters follows the chronological sequence of events. The illustrations, which are contemporary with the manuscript, have been selected with the help of Edward Kasinec, Chief of the Slavic and Baltic Division of the New York Public Library, from the holdings of that division and the permission of the Trustees of the Library.

—M
ARC
R
AEFF
   S
EPTEMBER
1990

P
ORTRAIT OF
J
AKOB
W
ALTER AT THE AGE OF FIFTY
.

M
EMORABLE
H
ISTORY OF THE
M
ILITARY
S
ERVICE
E
XPERIENCED BY THE
A
UTHOR OF
T
HIS
T
EXT

I
N THE YEAR 1806, I WAS drafted with many of my comrades into military service in the conscription at that time and was assigned to the regiment of Romig, which afterward was given the name of Franquemont and of Number 4 and which was in the Ludwigsburg garrison. In the fall I traveled with the regiment to Prussia in the campaign which Emperor Napoleon with the princes, then his allies, was conducting at that time against Prussia. In the fall we marched through Ellwangen, Nuremberg, Ansbach, Bayreuth, Plauen, Dresden in Saxony, then through Bunzlau into Grossglogau in Silesia, where we remained in garrison for about three weeks.

During a period from the month of January to the month of March, I had to go with half of the regiment to accompany several convoys of captured Prussians from Glogau back through Crossen, Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and Dresden, where we were relieved. We were given good quarters everywhere, which kept me always healthy and cheerful in spite of the continuous marching. Furthermore, I was only nineteen years old, a fact which caused me frequently to participate in thoughtless and dangerous enterprises. During our return to Glogau the
convoy, together with a Bavarian corps, was surrounded by Prussians in Bunzlau. We then closed all the gates and caught the spies.

In this city it happened in my quarter that a comrade wanted to force the landlord to sing. However, he refused to do so, sitting the whole night on a bench near the stove weeping. Since this man could not sing because of his sorrow, Soldier Hummel wanted to frighten him, took his rifle, cocked the hammer, and shot. The bullet passed by me and another soldier and lodged in the wall. I wanted to mention this in order to show how the soldiers were running wild at that time.

A spy who was a village smith was brought before the guard house. He had letters and orders to tell the Prussians of our strength in man power. He was laid on a bench and whipped by two or three corporals. Two men had to hold his feet and two his head. His leather breeches were stretched out and water poured on them, and then he received about one hundred and fifty blows. At last he could no longer speak, because he was half dead. At every blow the lieutenant said to the smith, “This is a Bavarian thaler; this is a Württemberg thaler,” at which the lieutenant was really able to laugh. After this experience the smith was taken to the threshing floor [?] and shot. Blows with clubs also were heaped upon many innocent people in this city.

When the Prussians who were laying siege to the city lost their courage, they withdrew, and we entered Glogau again.

After I had been in Glogau one day, I had to escort with a part of the regiment 19 money wagons to the
Grand Army. These money wagons were drawn by four and six horses, and many sank into the mire every day. This march went through Breslau and then across the Polish border to Kalisch, Posen, Gnesen, [Inowr]azlav, and Thorn on the Vistula River, where the convoy was given over. From there we had to return to Gnesen, a sizable city in Poland. There we had a storeroom to guard, watching in a room at a bright fire. In this house there was a Polish soldier’s wife who taught me as much Polish as I would need. We suffered from the cold a great deal there during the two weeks of our stay because our feet got no warmth and a severely cold winter prevailed.

Finally, eight men, including myself, were sent into the outlying villages by the Commandant of the city. I received several written orders to requisition food supplies; yet, even though I did not know the roads, I was not furnished with a guide. Since I had to carry out my commission, I went, as did my other comrades, into the Jewish section, where everyone spoke German but few could read or write it and few, as I found out, could read Polish. There I wanted to take the first Jew I came across as a guide, but the first escaped and likewise the others I chased. Finally, I ran after one and chased him into the attic of his house and caught him among many women and children. Here he wanted to defend himself, and I had to use force. I took him, dragged him down the two flights of stairs, and had to hold him by the coat and kick him forward for two hours, threatening him if he should fail to lead me to the right village. Here I had to walk through a lake, and the water went over my knees. I commanded the Jew to lead the way, and he howled so loudly for fear of drowning that I had to laugh and send him back immediately. After crossing, the Jew sat down and shook out his water-filled boots.