BOURGOGNE'S memoirs have always held a special place among the huge bulk of eye witness writings on the Napoleonic wars. Not only was he a soldier in the elite Imperial Guard, he was one of the chosen number who marched to Moscow in 1812 and came back alive. This terrible winter retreat, in which the Grande Armee of more than half a million men withered away to about a tenth of that figure, has lived on both as history and as folk memory. Bourgogne, a 27 year old sergeant from the Conde country in Northern France, I saw it at first hand from start to finish, and his direct, unhistrionic but well written account has become a classic of its kind.
Bourgogne by then was already a veteran, who had seen active service from 1806 onwards and had fought in many major battles and innumerable skirmishes. In fact, the battles he took part in read almost like a roll call of Napoleonic warfare Jena, Pultusk, Eylau, Friedland, Essling (in, which he was twice wounded), Wagram, Somosierra, and the various battles of the Russian campaign. After his return from Russia he fought at Lutzen, Bautzen and Dresden, where he was wounded and taken prisoner, and after that he soldiered no more.
When the Bourbons returned to France he retired from the army, now that his idol Napoleon had fallen from power, and went into civilian life. Bourgogne was married twice, had four children and died in 1867 after the French Government, with much prodding, had finally decided to award him a pension. At Essling (1809) he had received musket ball in the right thigh by the time of his death, this had worked down to about 12 inches above the foot.
When the summons for the campaign in the East came from the Emperor, he and his regiment were in Portugal, facing Wellington and his English army straightaway they marched home across Spain, fighting most of the way, crossed into France at Bayonne,, and so on to Paris. From there they were sent by wagons across Germany, travelling day and night, "and on the morning of June 25, a beautiful day, we passed over the Niemen by our pontoons and entered Lithuania,, the first province of Russia".
Bourgogne was present at the bloody battle of Borodino (or the battle of the Moskowa, as the French have always called it) described by Tolstoy in War and Peace but did not fight that day because the Guard were in reserve. A few days later the Grande Armee triumphantly entered Moscow, virtually abandoned by both the Russian Emperor and his court, and by Kutuzov's Russians who did not choose to fight before the capital. It was a hollow triumph, hg for a time the soldiers luxuriated in their winter quarters in the half burnt city and looked forward to fresh advances and victories which might even take them into India or Persia. In the interim, they looted the abandoned houses and mansions of Moscow, including Bourgogne himself though he insists that he took only small souvenirs or presents from the basements of burnt out buildings. Instead of advancing, however, Napoleon decided abruptly to leave the cite and move westwards, and so his army began what is remembered as the 1812 retreat. Bourgogne and his regiment marched off among a three miles long procession of wagons, carts and carriage, with shouts and yells of most European languages ringing about them the Grande Armee had contingents from Germany, Spain, Portugal Italy as well as its hard core of Frenchmen., The famous 1812 cold had not yet set in, and for a time the homeward march went well, but food supplies were rapidly used up and the Russian winter arrived early. Soon horse meat from dead or dying horses became as sought after as choice cuts of steak and men began to die in thousands freezing to death in their sleep or dropping exhausted by the wayside, never to rise again. Soldiers drifted apart from their regiments or even their divisions, order and disciplined ceased to exist, and individual survival became the paramount, in fact the only, aim. Meanwhile Cossack cavalry harried them continually, or Russian troops tried to cut off their line of retreat.
Bourgogne saw, and recorded, terrible sights. Men fought and sometimes killed, each other for a slice of horse meat or a scrap of bread, exhausted men died in barns when their comrades, unable to stand the cold, set fire to the wood for the sake of a few hours" warmth, robbery and brigandage were every day matters. While halting at Smolensk, he and others were guided to the cathedral by the lulling sound of music only to discover that drunken French soldiers were playing the organ while they looted the hallowed building. One of the most pitiful incidents he records is the case of a mother and her two young daughters who had followed a French officer homewards, on a promise off marriage they were lifted from their carriage dead from exposure and/or hunger, still wearing their best dresses. There were women and children on the retreat as well as men, and newborn babies died quickly and were buried in shallow, frozen graves.
Old friends and comrades in the army blundered into each other at random, and drifted apart, often never to meet again. Madness and delusion in the blinding snow were common, rather similar to the symptoms of "mirage" in desert heat. Bourgogne, went through the fearful crossing of the Berezina, where the hastily constructed pontoon bridges could not hold the disorganised mobs pressing across them and many died within seconds in the frozen water of the river. Finally he reached Vilna in Lithuania, and from there made his way to decent quarters in Germany, where warm beds, good food and wine seemed like memories from another world.
Of his regiment, 27 men came back. Many years later he met a companion in arms while dining with his family in a French hotel, and spontaneously they threw, their arms around one another.
The loyalty which Napoleon inspired, among his soldiers is implicit, and some times explicit, in every chapter of the book during the horrors of the Berezina crossing what hurt Bourgogne and his companions most was the sight of their beloved going on foot like a private. With Napoleon's overthrow, Bourgogne lost interest in soldiering and though his career as a civilian was an up and down one, he took his trials philosophically and at the end of his life was looked after by his nieces.
Contemporary accounts describe him as tall and handsome, a favourite with women, and plainly he was brave, resourceful and loyal, though limited in his outlook. Right to the end, he kept in touch with surviving old comrades, particularly those who had gone through the terrible months of 1812-1813 in that "devil of a country", Holy Russia of the Czars.