Antoine Morlot

On 14 June 1804, Morlot was made a commander of the Légion d'Honneur. On 19 November 1805 he was employed as commander of the 16th Military Division and on 9 November 1807 he was assigned to the Corps of Observation of the Ocean Coast.^[1] In 1808 the 29,341-strong corps was under the command of Marshal Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey. Morlot commanded the 7,149-man 3rd Division which consisted of the 9th, 10th and 11th Provisional Regiments and a Prussian battalion. His brigadiers were Charles Joseph Buget (Bujet) and Simon Lefebvre.^[13] Morlot's soldiers were from the conscript classes of 1808 and 1809 which had been called up a year early. The provisional regiments were each made up of four 560-man battalions from the regimental depots in southern France. The soldiers were all untrained draftees and the officers were all half-pay men or brand-new sous lieutenants. These were the troops who invaded Spain in 1808.^[14]

Morlot missed Moncey's expedition that ended unsuccessfully in the Battle of Valencia. Instead, his division guarded Madrid.^[15] When the news of the disastrous Battle of Bailén arrived, Morlot's division was separated. Buget's 3,700-man brigade remained near Madid while Lefebvre's brigade had been lent to Marshal Jean Baptiste Bessieres' corps. Madrid was quickly abandoned and the French retreated beyond the Ebro River.^[16] Before subsequent operations, the 3rd Division was reorganized as part of the III Corps. The 5th Provisional Regiment became the 2-battalion 116th Line Infantry Regiment while the 9th and 10th Provisional were combined to form the 4-battalion 117th Line. The division's Irish and Prussian battalions were detached as garrisons in northeast Spain.^[17]

Morlot led about 4,000 men in six battalions at the Battle of Tudela on 23 November 1808. That morning Marshal Jean Lannes had his troops on the road at dawn. Reaching Tudela at 9 AM the French caught the Spanish army unprepared. Seeing the half-unmanned defenses, Lannes sent his leading division under Morlot directly into the assault. The 6,500 soldiers of the Spanish 5th Division arrived just in time to blunt the attack on the Cerro de Santa Barbara. Before resuming the attack, Lannes waited a few hours for all his troops to reach the battlefield. Then he launched the divisions of Morlot and Maurice Mathieu at the Spanish positions. Morlot's front line brigade suffered heavy losses, but he sent one battalion up a ravine that the defenders neglected to watch. Noting that the battalion had gained a foothold on the crest, he pushed forward reinforcements and soon the Spaniards were fleeing in rout.^[18]

In November 1808, the 1st, 3rd and 4th Divisions of the III Corps and Marshal Michel Ney's VI Corps reached Zaragoza. Soon Ney was ordered away, leaving Moncey with only 15,000 men to face 30,000 Spaniards. Accordingly, Moncey pulled back to a safe distance until the V Corps arrived to help.^[19] In December 1808, Morlot's division received two additions. The 4-battalion 121st Line arrived at the front and was assigned to the division. Three battalions of the 5th Light Infantry and four battalions of the 2nd Légion of the Reserve were added when the 4th Division of the corps was dissolved.^[17] During this period, the III Corps suffered terribly from illness. In October, there were 7,741 men in the hospital and by January 1809 there were 13,000 wounded or fever-ridden soldiers.^[20]

The Second Siege of Zaragoza lasted from 20 December 1808 to 20 February 1809. On the second day, the divisions of Morlot and Charles Louis Dieudonne Grandjean successfully captured Monte Terrero.^[21] On 29 December Moncey was replaced in command of III Corps by Jean-Andoche Junot.^[22] After the withdrawal of one V Corps division on 2 January, Morlot's division was assigned to attack the west front of the city.^[23] Lannes assumed overall command of operations on 22 January.^[24] By the 28th the French had captured a large section of the city wall and the rest of the siege involved bitter street fighting. To minimize casualties, Lannes reduced the Spanish defenses block by block with cannonballs and mines.^[25] On 12 February a crowd of women emerged from the city and approached Morlot's lines. They begged to be allowed to return to their villages. They were each given a loaf of bread and chased back into the city.^[26] By the end of the siege, casualties were horrific. About 54,000 Spaniards died in the siege of whom 20,000 were soldiers. Of these, only 6,000 died in the fighting while the others succumbed from disease, many from typhus. French losses are estimated as 10,000 dead of whom 4,000 perished in the battle and the remainder from illness. The great majority of the losses were suffered by the III Corps.^[27]

Morlot was another victim of the fever. He was evacuated to Bayonne where he died on 23 March 1809. MORLOT is one of the names inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe, on Column 6.^[1] He is buried at the cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris.^[28]

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• Mullié, Charles (1852). Biographie des célébrités militaires des armées de terre et de mer de 1789 a 1850 (in French). Paris.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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• Oman, Charles (1995). A History of the Peninsular War Volume II. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole. ISBN 1-85367-215-7.
• Rickard, J. (2009). "Battle of Wissembourg or The Geisberg, 25-26 December 1793". historyofwar.org. Retrieved 16 February 2014.
• Rothenberg, Gunther E. (1980). The Art of War in the Age of Napoleon. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-31076-8.
• Smith, Digby (1998). The Napoleonic Wars Data Book. London: Greenhill. ISBN 1-85367-276-9.
• Van Beveren, Rik (2009). "Antoine Morlot". findagrave.com. Retrieved 22 February 2014.