Napoleon On Death In Battle

An excerpt from, “Napoleon On War” Edited By Bruno Colson, Translated By Gregory Elliott, Oxford University Press, 2015, Pg. 59 – 62:

One of the worst moral dilemmas faced by Napoleon in war involved the plague victims in Jaffa in March 1799. A situation of this kind can be met with in any era of history and puts one in mind of certain American Westerns and war films. Given the impossibility of transporting the soldiers stricken by the plague, and in order to avoid them falling into Turkish hands and suffering appalling tortures, General Bonaparte probably had poison administered to them, which resulted in a painless death, as Bertrand recounts:

It must be remembered that it was a question of not leaving them prisoners in the hands of the Turks, who in their remaining twelve hours of life would have cut them into pieces, applied molten lead to them . . .etc. Had it been my wife or son, I would have behaved similarly if I could not take them with me, because the first principle of charity is to do to others what we would have done to ourselves [ . . .]. On this one must consult not civilians, but soldiers. Ask the 53rd. They would speak with one voice.

The British 53rd infantry regiment was responsible at the time for guarding the prisoner of Saint Helena. The appeal to the opinion of soldiers of another nationality testifies once more to Napoleon’s proximity to all members of the profession. His lack of hesitation over taking the decision at Jaffa will always be open to discussion. He did not concern himself with the prevailing morality, or the teaching of the Church, when adopting the course of action that he sincerely believed to be least painful for his men.

Death in battle is an outcome that can be anticipated by any soldier. It is not part of our intention to study Napoleon’s view on the subject in depth, but there was unquestionably a certain fatalism about him. As we have already seen in some quotations, and as we shall see later, while his way of waging war did not spare men, he sincerely believed rapid operations invariably avoided greater suffering. Frequently confronted with the death of men close to him, he sometimes gave vent to his compassion. We know the deep impression made on him by the spectacle of the battlefield of Eylau after the terrible clash of 8 February 1807. He had these words to say:

A father who loses his children savours no charm in the victory. When the heart speaks, even glory has no more illusions.

He wrote to Josephine:

My friend, I am still at Eylau. The ground is littered with the dead and wounded. This is not the best part of war; one suffers and the soul is oppressed at the sight of so many victims.

On 26 June 1813, at Dresden, Napoleon showed a different side of himself to Prince Metternich. If we are to believe the Austrian diplomat’s memoirs, the Emperor, in a moment of anger it is true, shouted:

I have grown up on the battlefield and a man like me hardly concerns himself about the lives of a million men.

On Saint Helena, he gave it to be understood that he had ended up being accustomed to frequenting death:

It is quite true that the idea of God is a very natural idea. At all times, among all nations, people have had it. But one dies so quickly; in war I have seen so many people die immediately and pass so rapidly from the state of life to that of death that it has made me familiar with death.

On another occasion, when speaking of a book by the naturalist Buffon, he explained:

What he says about death is good. It is not to be feared, because five-sixths [of men] die without suffering and those who seem to be in agony suffer little, for those who have recovered have no memory of it. So the machinery is disrupted and pain is not felt as acutely as people believe, because it leaves no traces. Charles XII, it is said, carried his hand to his sword when a cannon ball or bullet struck him dead. So the pain was not such as to deprive him of the desire to defend himself; it was not extreme.

We owe to Napoleon some of the most beautiful letters of condolence that have ever been written:

Your nephew Elliott has been killed on the battlefield of Arcola. This young man had familiarized himself with weaponry; he marched at the head of the columns several times; he would have made an admirable officer one day. He died with glory in face of the enemy; he did not suffer for one moment. What reasonable man would not envy such a death? Who, amid the vicissitudes of existence, would not want to leave a world that is often despicable thus? Who among us has not regretted a hundred times not being shielded thus from the impact of calumny, envy, and all the odious passions that seem well-nigh exclusively to govern the conduct of men?

Your husband was killed by cannon fire, while fighting alongside it. Without suffering, he died the gentlest death, the one most envied by soldiers. 

I feel your pain acutely. The moment that separates us from the object we love is terrible; it isolates us from the earth; it causes the body to experience the convulsions of agony. The faculties of the soul are destroyed; it retains its links with the universe only through a nightmare that changes everything. In this situation we feel that, if nothing compelled us to go on living, it would be much better to die. But when, after these initial thoughts, we press our children to our heart, tears and tender feelings revive nature and we live for our children. Yes, Madame, you will cry with them; you will raise them in childhood and cultivate their youth; you will speak to them of their father, of your grief, of the loss they have suffered, of that suffered by the Republic. Having attached your soul to the world through filial love and maternal love, appreciate the friendship and keen interest I shall always take in my friend’s wife as something. Be persuaded that he is one of the men, few in number, who warrant being the hope of grief, because they feel the sorrows of the soul acutely.

This piece of eloquence, remarkable for its humanity, envinces a profound sensitivity. Rarely have such appreciate words found to console a loss. Napoleon understood the pain of others. On several occasions, he is known to have cried after a battle. He also made a major contribution to developing a rhetoric of military heroism and glorious death. If the bloodbaths of the First World War have doubtless destroyed the credibility of this kind of discourse in Western Europe for ever, we must not be anachronistic. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, life was so hard and life-expectancy so short that death in battle could seem like an outcome which, if not enviable, was at least acceptable.