Marcellin Marbot

Early life

Jean-Baptiste Antoine Marcelin Marbot was born into a family of military nobility in Altillac, in the ancient province of Quercy in southwestern France.^[4] He was the younger son of General Jean-Antoine Marbot, who had served as aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-Général de Schomberg, inspector general of the cavalry in the military household of the king of France.^[5]

After completing his studies at the Military College of Sorèze (1793–1798), he joined the 1st Hussar Regiment as a volunteer on 3 September 1799.^[4] Serving under General Jean-Mathieu Seras, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant on 1 December 1799, and later that month, to second lieutenant on 31 December in recognition of his bravery. He fought with the Army of Italy and took part in the Siege of Genoa, during which his father, General Jean-Antoine Marbot died, and subsequently fought in the Battle of Marengo.^[6]

Upon returning to France, he joined the 25th Chasseur Regiment on 11 June 1801 and was detached to the Cavalry School at Versailles.^[7]

Napoleonic wars

On 31 August 1803 he became aide-de-camp to General Charles-Pierre Augereau and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on 11 July 1804. Having distinguished himself at the Battle of Austerlitz, he fought in the VII corps of the Grande Armée during the 1806–1807 campaign against the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire.

On 3 January 1807 he was promoted to the rank of captain and took part in the Battle of Eylau, during the course of which he nearly lost his life, recalling in his memoirs:

Stretched on the snow among the piles of dead and dying, unable to move in any way, I gradually and without pain lost consciousness… I judge that my swoon lasted four hours, and when I came to my sense I found myself in this horrible position. I was completely naked, having nothing on but my hat and my right boot. A man of the transport corps, thinking me dead, had stripped me in the usual fashion, and wishing to pull off the only boot that remained, was dragging me by one leg with his foot against my body. The jerk which the man gave me no doubt had restored me to my senses. I succeeded in sitting up and spitting out the clots of blood from my throat. The shock caused by the wind of the ball had produced such an extravasation of blood, that my face, shoulders, and chest were black, while the rest of my body was stained red by the blood from my wound. My hat and my hair were full of bloodstained snow, and as I rolled my haggard eyes I must have been horrible to see. Anyhow, the transport man looked the other way, and went off with my property without my being able to say a single word to him, so utterly prostrate was I. But I had recovered my mental faculties and my thoughts turned towards God and my mother. The setting sun cast some feeble rays through the clouds. I took what I believed to be a last farwell of it.^[8]

Marbot was saved by the fact that his stolen clothes and pocket watch were recognised by his valet when the soldier returned with them, and the valet searched for his body for burial, only to find Marbot clinging to life despite his wounds and onsetting hypothermia.

Subsequently, he served in the Peninsular War under Marshals Jean Lannes and André Masséna, and showed himself to be a dashing leader of light cavalry in the Russian campaign of 1812.^[9]

He was promoted to the rank of colonel on 15 November 1812 and took part in the German campaign of 1813 as commander of the 23rd Chasseur Regiment. During the morning of the first day of the Battle of Leipzig, Marbot nearly altered the course of the war when his regiment came close to capturing the Tsar of Russia, Alexander I and the King of Prussia, Frederick William III, as they had strayed from their escort.^[10] After a slow recovery from the wounds he had sustained at the battles of Leipzig and Hanau, he rallied to Emperor Napoleon during the Hundred Days, leading the 7th Hussar Regiment at the Battle of Waterloo.^[9]

After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, he was exiled during the early years of the Bourbon Restoration, returning to France in 1819.^[9]

July Monarchy

During the July Monarchy, his close relationship with King Louis Philippe I and his son, Prince Ferdinand Philippe of Orléans secured him important military appointments. He was promoted to the rank of maréchal de camp (brigadier general), and was present in this capacity at the Siege of Antwerp in 1832.^[9]

From 1835 to 1840 he served in various Algerian expeditions, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-général (divisional general) in 1836. In 1845 he became a member of the Chamber of Peers. Three years later, after the fall of King Louis Philippe I, he retired into private life.^[9]

Publications

In exile after the Battle of Waterloo, Marbot returned to France in 1819 and wrote two books:

• Critical remarks on the work of Lieutenant-Général Rogniat, entitled: Considerations on the art of war (1820).^[17]
• On the necessity of increasing the military forces of France; means of achieving this in the most cost-efficient way possible (1825).^[18]

The first publication was a reply to General Joseph Rogniat's treatise on war, in which Marbot effectively contrasted the human factor in war with Rogniat's pure theory. The second presented his recommendations for the future development of the French Armed Forces.

Napoleon read the first publication while in exile on the island of Saint Helena. His aide-de-camp, General Henri Gatien Bertrand recorded in his diary on 14 March 1821:

In the evening, the Emperor handed me Marbot's book, [...] and said: "That is the best book I have read for four years. It is the one that has given me the greatest amount of pleasure. [...] He has expressed some things better than I did, he was more familiar with them because, on the whole, he was more of a Corps commander than I. [...] Throughout the book he never refers to 'the Emperor'. He wanted the King of France [Louis XVIII] to give him an appointment with the rank of Colonel; that is quite obvious. He uses 'Emperor' once, so as not to look as though he were afraid to do so, or to appear cowardly, and another time he uses 'Napoleon'. He mentions Masséna and Augereau frequently, and he has described the Battle of Essling better than I could have done it myself [...]. I should have liked to show Marbot my appreciation by sending him a ring. If I ever return to active life, I will have him attached to me as an aide-de-camp [...].^[19]

This publication earned Marbot the distinction of being remembered in Napoleon's will:

To Colonel Marbot, one hundred thousand francs. I recommend him to continue to write in defence of the glory of the French armies, and to confound their calumniators and apostates.^[20]

Memoirs

His fame rests chiefly on the Memoirs of his life and campaigns, the Memoirs of General Baron de Marbot, which were written for his children and published posthumously in Paris, in 1891. An English translation by Arthur John Butler was published in London, in 1892.^[21] Marbot's Memoirs were widely acclaimed, and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of them:

The first of all soldier books in the world. [...] There are few books which I could not spare from my shelves better than the Memoirs of the gallant Marbot.^[22]

Literary references

Several authors and personalities have cited Marbot and his Memoirs in their works:

• Andrew Lang's collections of stories written by various authors feature selected excerpts from Marbot's Memoirs. Three appear in The Red True Story Book collection (1895): "Marbot's March",^[23] "Eylau. The Mare Lisette"^[24] and "How Marbot crossed the Danube".^[25] Another two appear in The All Sorts of Stories Book collection (1911): "How the Russian Soldier was Saved"^[26] and "Marbot and the Young Cossack".^[27]
• In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel Through the Magic Door (1907), the author shares his admiration for Marbot's Memoirs with his readers.^[22] Doyle also modelled the fictional comedic character of Brigadier Gerard, the most entertaining of all his characters, on a number of real-life sources from the Napoleonic era, among them Marbot.^[28]
• In Theodore Roosevelt's writings and public statements, Marbot is cited on two occasions. He is mentioned in Roosevelt's address Biological Analogies in History (1910), delivered at the University of Oxford,^[29] and in his publication A Book Lover's Holiday in the Open (1916).^[30]
• In Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway (1925), there are several mentions of the protagonist Clarissa Dalloway reading Marbot's Memoirs.^[31]
• As with a number of other historical figures, Marbot appears prominently in the Riverworld cycle of science-fiction novels (1967–1983) by Philip José Farmer. Marbot is first featured as the commander of Marines on Sam Clemens' riverboat, the Not for Hire. After the destruction of that boat and the death of its captain, Marbot joins the group led by famed English explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton and accompanies him on the journey to the head of the River. Accompanied by his lover, the English author Aphra Behn, Marbot reaches the Tower at the head of the River, only to die in combat when androids based on characters from Alice Through the Looking-Glass attack the guests during a Lewis Carroll-themed party.^[32]
• In Marc Bloch's book The Historian's Craft (1949), he uses the story of Marbot crossing the Danube, along with various documentary evidence, as an example of historical criticism unearthing erroneous history-writing, citing sources as wide-ranging as the Commentaries of Julius Caesar and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.^[33]
• In Ronald Frederick Delderfield's novel To Serve Them All My Days (1972), the protagonist David Powlett-Jones gets comfort from Marbot's Memoirs during his time in the trenches, and again on the death of his wife and daughter in a road accident.^[34]