BATTLE OF THE BUNNIES- And Napoleon Loses

 

I believe the legend that the first time French Major-General Louis Berthier met Napoleon Bonaparte, in March of 1786, he confided to a fireside comrade, "I don't know why, but that little bastard scares me."   

He was called "Berthier the Ugly" because his head seemed three times too large for his short squat body.  It also featured a large hook nose that thrust from between his cheeks like a prehistoric parrot's beak.  In addition he was clumsy and given to chewing his fingernails.  Add in a dose of social ineptness, and you had Berthier, the man. But he was also a genius of detail.  He spent his entire adult life in the military, rising through the ranks under the “Old Regime”.   He had fought with distinction under Rochambeau at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781 helping America win their revolution. And then he met his doppelganger - Napoleon Bonaparte.

The young Napoleon was  handsome,. almost pretty. He was of average height, and a firebrand of energy.  At 26 years of age he was already a blazing comet on the French political scene, the fresh faced new man of action.

Meanwhile  42 year old “ugly, little” Berthier,  had survived the revolution by keeping his huge head so low it could not be conveniently guillotined.  But perhaps Berthier sensed impending disaster on that blistery March morning when they first met.  Perhaps on some level he understood that the “Little Corsican” who stood before him would use him over the next 20 years to slaughter a million Frenchmen and three million who would die opposing Napoleon.  I wonder if he also sensed the sacrifice of all those bunnies, as well?  It is a legendary tale, and thus worthy of doubt. But if it ain't true, it ought to be.

Napoleon’s amazing string of victories  began at Montenotte, in Piedmont on 12 April and continued at the bridge at Lodi on 10 May 1796.  Berthier was there beside Napoleon,  sharing the hardships and basking in the reflected glory as Napoleon’s Chief of Staff and then a Marshal of France, organizing the now Emperor Napoleon’s complete victory, at "Austerlitz" in 1805.

By July of 1807 Napoleon was the master of the continent, referred to by his implacable English foes as "The Beast of Europe".  And "Bonney" would not have been half so accomplished if it were not for the efforts of ugly, efficient little Berthier.

And so it was obvious that when the Emperor sought an afternoon’s diversion, a summer picnic and a hunt to celebrate his victory over the Russians and Prussians, it would be short little, ugly little Berthier who would organize the entire event.  Surely the man who had planned  the conquest of nations could arrange a simple afternoon’s hunt.

The humans arrived en mass, like an attack column swarming a defensive position. The Emperor went nowhere alone anymore. A regiment of cavalry stood guard. Messengers arrived and were dispatched forth all day long -  for an Empire run by one man cannot survive long without assurance that the master is always watching, and always watching every thing.There were ambassadors and royalty and a dozen Marshals covered in glittering gold braid. There were Generals to carry the Marshals' eyeglasses and purses and fans. There were servants to serve the lunch and keep the Champagne glasses bubbling over. There were chiefs to cook the lamb and fish and chicken Marengo. There were dozens of carriages and wagons to carry them all from their palaces and mansions and back home again. And there were 3,000 caged rabbits hidden in the high grass, wondering when lunch was going to be served.

Once the open air repast was digested the Emperor and his guests put away their knives and Champagne glasses and took up their weapons. Berthier had prepared this too, down to the smallest detail.  Marshal Berthier had attempted to obtain wild rabbits captured locally, but the peasant farmers had been taxed so heavily to pay for all that gold braid, all those cannon and horses and muskets  that they had stripped the local woods and fields of wild rabbits and deer and boar to feed their families.

So the ever resourceful Berthier (That's him in an 'official' painting above, with the reality edited out of him), had ordered every domesticated rabbit in the Paris market bought and transported to be slaughtered.  The fuzzy furry harmless beasts had been fattened in pens and cages all their lives. They were released the afternoon before the hunt, in the chosen field.  And there they waited. There were beaters, to drive the bunnies to the guns, for an Emperor does not have all day to spend stalking his prey. So as the Emperor Napoleon advanced into the field with his musket held at the ready, Berthier gave the signal, and the beaters advanced.  And such was the sight then seen, the likes of which had never been seen before in all of history. And never would be seen again, either.  As one writer described it, the rabbits "...swarmed the emperor’s legs and started climbing up his jacket. Napoleon tried shooing them with his riding crop, as his men grabbed sticks and tried chasing them. The coachmen cracked their bullwhips to scare the siege. But it kept coming. Napoleon retreated...to his carriage." There, according to historian David Chandler, “with a finer understanding of Napoleonic strategy than most of his generals, the rabbit horde divided into two wings and poured around the flanks of the party and headed for the imperial coach.” The flood of bunnies continued—some reportedly leapt into the carriage."
Three thousand Leporidae Oryctolagus cuniculus (European bunny rabbits) charged desperately toward the first human they had seen in 24 hours - humans being the source of all food and warmth in their entire sheltered lives.  The man in the cocked hat must have seemed the answer to a domesticated rabbit’s hopes and prayers after a cold night in the strange, forbidding emptiness of a field. And the mother figure out front was the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.It was a harebrained stampede! If they could have spoken they would have cried out in unison in their little bunny voices, “Take me home, take me home, get me out of here!” But they could not cry out. They could not speak. Bunnies don't talk.

And so what Napoleon saw as he entered the field with “rodenticide” in his heart, were three  thousand bunnies stampeding remorselessly toward him, perhaps with regicide in their hearts.

Where they afflicted with a pestilence? Where they part of a devilish English plot to murder him?  Napoleon had no way of knowing, and little time to decide. But even if the Emperor had suspected the actual cause behind the stamped of cottontails, hunting is not much of a sport when the prey rush you and demand to be butchered en mass.

The servants thrashed at the rabbits with whips.  The ambassadors and royalty snickered behind their lace cuffs. And the loyal Generals and Marshals of France threw their gold braid between the homesick bunnies and their Emperor.  All sacrifice was futile. For the first time in his life (but not the last) the Emperor of Europe, Napoleon I, was forced to retreat to his royal coach, and then to withdraw back within the walls of his palace, tossing stray bunnies out the windows of his carriage as he escaped, his afternoon sport spoiled.It was prescience of the the snowy road home from Moscow, of the night after Waterloo, of the voyage to exile on Elba and then St. Helena. At a time when no human force could stand up to the 'Beast of Europe', Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated by an army of bunny rabbits.  Vive la Peter Cottontail!  Or so goes the legend.

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THE MONSTER IS LOOSE - Napoleon seduces France one more time.

I think out of the 240 million Europeans alive that spring, less than 1 in 10 felt any joy at learning that at 1:00 pm, on Wednesday, the first day of March 1815, 46 year old Napoleon Bonaparte had landed on the beach of the azure coast village of Antibes. During the previous 20 years, nine hundred thousand Frenchmen had sacrificed their lives to Napoleon's ego – 3 million dead in all of Europe . That was why “The Devil's Favorite”, "The Monster of Europe" had been exiled to the tiny island of Elba, off Tuscany.  

But the reinstated King Louis XVIII (above, right) proved so arrogant and stupid, that just 9 months later the “Ogre of Elba” was back. 

During his sea born escape, “The Eagle” had lectured his followers, "All France regrets me,” he said, “and wants me” And that schizophrenia described France, perfectly. But the “Jupiter Scapin” - or monumental fraud - went on to predict, “I shall reach Paris without firing a shot."

As soon as his columns could form up – 600 of his “grumblers” - the elite Old Guard - 100 Polish lancers (without horses) and assorted followers, 2 cannons and two chests containing 2 ½ million francs in gold coins, the once and future Emperor confidently ordered his men forward. And as always, they obeyed. 

He was of average height for the age, about 5 feet 6 inches tall. The idea that Napoleon was short was pure English propaganda. But his once delicate face had fattened. His shinning white teeth had yellowed. Still, soldiers followed him because he usually brought victory. And his deep set blue-gray eyes were still bright, still constantly darting about, always looking for his foe's vulnerable spot to insert the knife.

But he was no longer the handsome athlete who had brought a revolution to heel, and then conquered a continent. Now, he was running a bluff.  Having taken the first step by returning to France, he now marched his miniature army 12 kilometers to the west, to the fishing village Cannes. 

There he men camped with his men,  in the open. At 4:00 in the morning of Thursday, 2 March, they set off inland and uphill 20 kilometers to the village of  Grasse - the “Gueuse Parfumee” , “the scented slut” of France.

The crossroads had once been home to stinking leather tanneries, but altitude (1,000 meters) and climate also made it an ideal garden. A later visitor described how, “Violets carpet the terraces under the olive-trees, while on other terraces grows the orange-tree”, with “...fields of jonquil, and of jessamine, and...that Rose of Provence, which excels all other roses in fragrance. …” 

Over time the inept Bourbons taxed Grasse's tanneries and their “perfumed glove makers” out of business. So, first the Galimard family in 1747, followed in 1758 by the Sozio family, switched to the exclusive production of perfumed soaps and balms. These proved so popular that even when the revolution chopped off the heads of most of France's wealthy families, it failed to kill the business.

Then, after dark on 1 March, a messenger arrived from Antibes, alerting the officials in Grasse of the Emperor's arrival. Their reaction, and that of town's 12,000 citizens, was telling. As David Chandler wrote in his monumental 1966 history, “The Campaigns of Napoleon”, “The French people... remained calm and observant, awaiting a sign before committing themselves one way or the other.” But they also sent a rider north to Paris, alerting Minister of War, Soult, that the “Monster was loose”.

Later that evening, when General Pierre Cambronne, at the head of Napoleon's advance guard, arrived, the bakers of Grasse promptly went to work, preparing the 2 to 3,000 baguettes he had requested. At noon, when Napoleon's petite army arrived, curious citizens came out, but did not rush to his eagles. Their mood, noted an observer, was, “Everyone wants the company to fail, but no one wants to provoke it.” 

The petite army paused on a rocky field at the northern edge of town, the Roquevinon, to eat lunch and to transfer their bread and gold to burrows. Everything was paid for, even at inflated prices. Then, to the townsfolk's relief, the army set out again, now climbing 14 kilometers to a small village set amid stone age monoliths - Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey, at 1,500 meters above sea level. They arrived about four in the afternoon, but they did not pause. Napoleon's strategy was the “bums rush”, and speed was now everything. As he famously said, “I may lose a battle, but never a minute.”

Leaving the main road, their route now narrowed until it was a single track, then contracted again until it was little more than a trail, entering the narrow Gorges of the Siagne. 

The column became single file. The advance slowed. And Napoleon stumbled up the steep slope until he tripped and fell. After a second fall, his grumblers set the Emperor atop Tauris, the white stallion he had been given by Russian Tsar Alexander I. As they approached the Gorges de la Haute Siagne (above),  tight beads of snow began to fall. 

One of the burdened mules slipped on the broken limestone and tumbled over the edge of the narrow gorge. Its burden of 10,000 gold Napoleons glittered and danced down the white rocks into the River Siagne, 700 meters below. The column paused while as many of the coins as possible were retrieved.

After dark, and after covering an addition 26 kilometers, the column reached the tiny (300 residents) village of Seranon. They had achieved the summit of their alpine journey, at 1,700 meters - 5.500 feet. While his soldiers made camp in the cold open air, the Emperor checked into the Chateau Broundet, and curled up in an arm chair in the lobby.  He spent an uneasy night, suffering from what his personal physician, Dr. Carabes called, “ ...a crisis of hemorrhoids.” It was a condition which was to afflict him, especially on horseback, throughout the next 100 days,. 

It was now Friday, 3, March, 1815, and before dawn, Napoleon and his army set off again, rejoining the main road and marching 25 kilometers to Castellane,  They had escaped the highest mountains, and for the first time a few in the crowd shouted, “Vive La Emperor!” Without pausing the army continued another 25 kilometers to the lavender fields surrounding the village of Barreme. Here Napoleon again stopped for the night, and to rest his weary soldiers.

Seven hundred seventy kilometers to the north, in the Tuileries Palace (above) in Paris...

...French Minister of War, General Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult (above) informed Louis Stanislas Xavier Bourbon, a.k.a., King Louis XVIII of France, that Napoleon had landed three days earlier. The acerbic Soult assured his King the 60,000 troops scattered about the south of France would easily deal with Napoleon's 600. The issue he told the King, was “...a mere matter for the gendarmerie.” 

But fat Louis, though gout ridden, was not quite as dense as his detractors wanted to believe. He responded thoughtfully, “ It will depend on the behavior of the first regiment Bonaparte encounters.” Soult predicted that first encounter would take place at Grenoble. 

That night “Le Rougeaud” (red faced) Marshall Michel Ney (above) , whom Napoleon had called his “Bravest of the Brave”, left Paris to take command of troops at Grenoble. His orders were to secure the Emperor's  arrest or death. He promised Louis to bring Napoleon back “in an iron cage.”

Before dawn on Saturday, 4 March 1815, Napoleon's army marched out of Barreme,  And a few hours later  three companies of the 27^th regiment of royal infantry – about 400 men - appeared on the same road. 

The 27th had been intended as the core of a blocking force further south, but Napoleon's decision to pass through the Gorges of the Siagne had slipped around them, and left them rushing to catch up to him. But now, with a royal force gathering at Grenoble, Napoleon's petite army would be squeezed between the two.

Twenty kilometers beyond Digne, the petite army camped around the Chateau Noguier just outside of the small village of Malijai, while the Emperor spent another evening inside. But in the morning, Sunday, 5 March, he was again near the head of his column, marching for the bottleneck at the “Gateway to Provence”, the fortress town of Sisterton, on the River Durance - 40 kilometers to the northwest of Digne. But the 3,500 residents of Sisterton were strongly royalist. Lead and powder stored there had already been moved beyond the Emperor's reach.

Napoleon passed through the hostile commune as quickly as he could. Instead, he continued another 50 kilometers to the regional capital of Gap, where he paused only long enough to print up a proclamation. 

It told the people of France, “Your wishes are granted. The cause of the nation will triumph again. You are right to call me your father; I live for the honor and happiness of France.” After overpaying for a carriage, wherein he could rest his hemorrhoids, Napoleon was on the march again by 2:00 p.m. This time the abusive father of France was headed 40 kilometers to the north to the tiny village of Corps. There, early the next morning, he was awakened from his sleep in the Hotel du Palais, and informed the enemy had been met.

It was a most French of encounters. At about midnight, that Monday, 6 March, two staff officers – one from Napoleon's advance guard, the other from the advance guard of the 5^th Royal Infantry - met at the front desk of the hotel in the village of La Mure,  Both were there to reserve rooms for their bosses. The opposing officers - once old comrades - cordially greeted each, reserved accommodations for the opposing commanders, and then rushed to inform their respective commanders. 

Marshall Ney had ordered the Pont du Haut bridge over the la Bonne River destroyed, and dispatched the first battalion of the 5th regiment to blow it up or burn it up.  But General Cambronne's  advance guard got there first, securing both the bridge and the village of La Mure (above). He immediately sent word back to Napoleon. Tomorrow would be the day of decision.

Napoleon and his 600 men arrived in La Mure at 8:00 a.m, on Monday, 6 March, 1815, and crossed over the bridge. 

They then advanced 16 kilometers to the prairie now called de la Recontre - “Field of Encounter” - outside the tiny village of Laffrey.  

Arriving there about 11:00 a.m., the Emperor mounted Tauris and slowly rode forward to the face 800 men of the first battalion of the 5^th royal infantry regiment (above), formed up in firing lines. The Emperor knew that a few kilometers behind these 800 men was another battalion, this from the 7^th royal regiment, rushing to their support. It was vital the Emperor resolve the issue in his favor before that second battalion arrived, and before the 400 soldiers of the 27th advancing up his rear, caught him in a squeeze play.

From atop his own horse, Major Lessart in command of the 5^th infantry, ordered his men to raise their weapons - “Armes!” In unison the troops lifted their muskets to their shoulders. Napoleon slowly rode forward until he was half way between the opposing ranks. Then he dismounted. Lessart shouted, “Joue!” - Ready! And 800 hammers were pulled back on 800 muskets. 

By a sweep of his arm, Napoleon signaled his Old Guard to lower their own muskets. Raggedly, reluctantly, they did so. Then Napoleon opened his gray frock coat, baring his white shirt to the ranks of bayonets and muskets. Major Lessart shouted, “Feu!” - fire! And the world caught it's breath.

Not one of the 800 members of the Fifth regiment pulled their triggers. Not a single flint sparked. But, in the silence, no one lowered their weapon, either. The fate of France teetered on a knife's edge. Napoleon took a long breath, and removed his hat. The second in command of the Fifth shouted desperately, “Feu! Feu! Feu!”. In a loud, firm voice, Napoleon shouted over those words, “"Soldiers of the Fifth. I am your Emperor. If there is among you a soldier who wants to kill his Emperor, here I am!"

Major Lassart shouted again, “Feu!” And while that order still reverberated in the spring air, Napoleon continued. “Soldiers! I come to you with a handful of good people, because I count on the people and you. The throne of the Bourbons is illegitimate since it was not raised by the nation. Your fathers are threatened with the return of tithes and feudal rights. It is not ambition that brings me among you. The forty-five best heads of the government of Paris have called me from Elba, and my return is supported by the three first powers of Europe.”

 It was a lie, of course.  No one in the Paris government had called for his return. And this same day, the heads of the 3 victorious European powers - Russia, Prussia and England - had labeled Napoleon an outlaw, and pledged 150,000 men each to destroy him.  But that would not be generally known for weeks. By then it would no longer matter. 

Those lies broke the ties between the French army and the Bourbon monarchy. The soldiers of the 5^th infantry lowered their weapons, and began to shout, “Vive l’Empereur!” - Long live the Emperor!” As the writer Honoré de Balzac described it, “...once again, France gave herself to Napoleon, just as a pretty girl abandons herself to a Lancer”.

The next day the 7^th regiment at Grenoble switched sides as well and joined the ranks of Napoleon's army. Napoleon said later, “Before Grenoble I was an adventurer. At Grenoble I was a ruling prince.” 

On 8 March, the mayor of Lyon not only opened the city gates to Napoleon, he had them removed and presented to the Emperor as a gift (above).  On 11 March the Rothschild bankers received early word of Napoleon's success at Grenoble and sold 600,000 shares of English bonds on the London stock exchange, turning a handsome profit when the stock prices plummeted 24 hours later. 

On 14 March, Marshall Ney (above), leading 6,000 soldiers, switched sides and rejoined his Emperor. 

On Sunday, 19 March, King Louis XVIII  (above) abandoned Paris and ran for the coast. The next day, Napoleon reoccupied his capital.

A mere 89 days later, on Sunday, 18, June, 1815, France got the bill for their brief re-infatuation with Napoleon – some 40,0000 dead and and wounded on the fields of Waterloo and a half dozen other towns across Belgium , France and Italy.  For the next 3 years, the allied armies  would impose a 700 million franc bill on France to pay for their occupation of France. But the greatest cost of feeding Napoleon's ego was that after the little corporal sailed off to his final exile on St. Helena, there were more women still alive in France than men.

As Napoleon himself said, “There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.” And from his tiny  palace on St. Helena he assured his devastated nation, “In five hundred years' time, the French imagination will be full of me. They will talk only of the glory of our brilliant campaigns. Heaven help anyone who dares to speak ill of me."

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