joachimnapoleon

[joachimnapoleon]

I am not a fouché fangirl

[joachimnapoleon]

As a little treat for this stupid commercial holiday, have my traditional art I did for my friend @credo--ergo-sum.

In honour of the local postal services not failing, I’m posting it.

Marshal Ney in 1805 - proud. Maybe even happy. A5, Watercolour.

[joachimnapoleon]

Random little things abt Mortier according to the biographies by Léon Moreel and Frignet-Despréaux

So today is Mortier’s birthday which gives me permission to go all out and yap about him. Idk how this list got so long but there’s a lot of free space here soooo hope no one minds🥺

* Léon Moreel describes Mortier as a “big boy.”

* He is literally his dad's clone. His dad was also very honest-natured and everyone liked him. His dad also was involved in merchant and farmland business. His dad also served for a time (before getting arrested)

* His mom was English. Mortier became fluent in English from the college he went to. One of his possible jobs after he was fired from his first one was a maritime job be he spoke english

* Mortier's first job was in a merchant's office in Lille. He got fired because he couldn't tie knots on the messenger bags well TT

* Mortier loved horses. He created a stud farm later in life where he bred horses specifically for his heavy self. His coat of arms have horses. He always checks up on his horsies even when he's far away. He had a favorite horse named Le Favori who went on 12 campaigns with him. He lets Le Favori retire on his land and live off his income until old age. Then he makes an epitaph for Le Favori when it passed away at age 28.

* In his retirement, he also created his own farm with crops and animal stuff too

* Mortier once got very mad at his drunk valet and called him a pig I know that's not uncommon for people in general but it's rare to find mad-Mortier moments like these

* Mortier and Louis-Philippe become good friends for many years. They first meet when Mortier was still just a volunteer in the army around 1792. Louis-Philippe was wondering what time it was and saw a huge Captain over there so surely that guy knows

* Mortier and Lefebvre are good friends too. One time Mortier found an enemy carriage by luck and sent it as a gift to Lefebvre. He also let Lefebvre take all the honor for capturing Danzig even though Lefebvre offered to enter the city together (according to Moreel, Mortier declined)

* Mortier and Soult are good friends too. Unofficial pen pals? For example, Mortier telling Soult what his new livery would look like lol

* Mortier and Moncey also seem to be good friends. They write to each other about farming techniques in retirement, and Mortier got a very sweet letter from Moncey that he cherished after returning from Russia as the ambassador

* Mortier and Bernadotte seem to be good friends too.. possibly? They hunt together and have lunch. Bernadotte writes to him that they’re besties at least

* Mortier once became Josephine's temporary window shopper in Hamburg 1806. And then he stole (???) from the Emperor of Russia's Chinese collection for her (????)

* Mortier's literal army baby is the 23rd cavalry regiment. Before he took command of it, he was not yet involved in cavalry and would dream of that position. Once he finally got it, he found that this regiment was suffering from something of an "inferiority complex." It apparently seemed too much like the King's Regiment and was once under suspicion and lost its rank. Mortier did his best to bring them back up. Even after Mortier had to leave his command there for higher ones, he always kept tabs on the 23rd and would try to provide for it and keep it close to him. Eventually it did get removed completely though...

* When he first got appointed Chef de Brigade to 23rd regiment, he got a whole new army fit so his first order of business was to go home to Le Cateau and show off the fit. He then takes a 2 day detour to Coblenz to show off his fit again but this time to his to-be wife Anne Eve Himmes

* The golden retriever comparison works so well. My guy is golden retriever personified. He is very loyal and very obedient to his boss and colleagues, a bit too much gets him in trouble at least twice

* Mortier would rather most anything else than have conflict on the same side. He fears a Vendée. He haaates internal conflict.

* He's generally very respectful to cities/states that are to be captured and governed. This is shown by all the gifts and letters that those places give him when he leaves and sometimes when he comes back :) A few of these places: Hanover, Hamburg, Anclam, Silesia, Saragossa, Talavera

* Hanover specifically gifted him two cannons with his initials E. M. on them. One of the biography authors, Frignet-Despréaux, is the greaaat nephew of Mortier and has written that he had fired these same cannons with Mortier’s grandsons. They were fired every year on August 15 at a Château de Sceaux.

* After Battle of Paris in 1814, he stays at Fontainebleau ready to be called on again by Napoleon. Once Napoleon abdicates, Mortier still stays with Napoleon, from April 10-12. However, that showed some offense to others, so on the 12th in the morning he gets recalled back to Paris by the Minister of War, but Mortier decides to stay with Napoleon for the rest of the evening anyways

* Mortier staying with Louis-Philippe (and Louis XVIII) even as Napoleon returns from Elba in 1815. When Davout sends his ADC telling Mortier to arrest him, he lets Louis-Philippe know and lets him leave. Then after he leaves and releases Mortier from his orders, Mortier gets called to Napoleon. Napoleon accepts Mortier but Mortier still tries to let him know that he had went against Davout's message 👉👈

* Mortier gets sciatica and is immobilized and cursing in his bed when Ney visits him to borrow horses for Waterloo lol

* Mortier having a “mini club” in Paris of people from his home region that he sometimes attended in person and they called him their president

* He was a 1.95 m farm boy. Can't forget that one. At the 23rd cavalry regiment on a staff map, he wrote down his height and scribbled, "promising to grow still further if that is the will of the Almighty.”

Frignet-Despréaux

Le Maréchal Mortier, Duc de Trévise (1768-1835) by Léon Moreel

[joachimnapoleon]

Laure Junot and her memoirs (Part 1 of ?)

Not sure if many people will be interested in this, but it’s been on my mind for a while now. I find evaluating and fact-checking sources both tricky and intriguing, maybe somebody else will feel the same.

Some background information: I understand Laure’s memoirs were originally published in 18 volumes, from 1831 on, by a renowned book trader and publisher named Pierre-François Camille Ladvocat, in Paris. They were edited by equally renowned editors, one of them a certain Honoré de Balzac (who would at some point become Laure’s lover). The books had an enormous success and became true bestsellers, resulting in plenty of translations, abridged versions etc. They also earned their author the famous sobriquet "Duchesse d’Abracadabrantès", due to their unreliability.

First of all: Have I read Laure’s memoirs? A world of no. Eighteen volumes? Come on. I had enough trouble focusing while skimming through the one volume 14 so far. There isn’t much of a clear line in these memoirs; they do tell the main events chronologically, but the narrative is constantly interrupted with seemingly random anecdotes or flashbacks. At one point Laure (or probably rather her editors) put in several chapters summing up another book!

I guess to some degree, this is due to the very mixed audience supposed to read these memoirs. The royalists and former émigrés should also have a reason to buy them. But so some degree, the rather confusing interruptions may have happened on purpose, to muddy the waters and to distract from various topics Laure did not want to talk about in too much detail. Her attitude towards her husband in 1812/3 may be one of them.

That is the time frame, 1812 and 1813, for which I have looked at Laure memoirs somewhat more closely, because Eugène gets mentioned in those volumes. It also happens to be a particularly interesting time, because we actually have several other sources for Laure’s life for this period: mostly her letters to her new lover Balincourt, but also a letter from September 1812 that had been intercepted by the Russians and that shows that the marriage was troubled enough at the time for Laure to call Junot "vous" thoughout the missive, and several intercepted letters from Junot, showing that Laure wrote very rarely. Finally, for 1813 there’s the correspondence between Eugène and Napoleon about Junot that quite often makes me doubt Laure’s narrative.

To start, here’s a rather random occasion where Laure’s story seems to be contradicted by a more credible source. I only stumbled across it because I wanted to know exactly when Junot, who had been in Portugal and Spain under the command of Masséna since early 1810, did return to France. Laure mentions it in volume 14, chapter 1 of her memoirs:

Masséna returned to France and left command of the army of Portugal on 15 May of the same year, 1811, and Marshal Marmont took his place. A letter from the emperor himself had announced to Junot that he had another command in the north, and that the 8th corps was going to be merged into a new organisation of the army of Portugal; he could therefore leave Spain and return to France.

Emphasis in the original. In Napoleon’s correspondence, no such letter from Napoleon to Junot seems to be in existence in the archives (as a matter of fact, as I mentioned before, there is not a single letter from Napoleon to Junot after autumn 1809). Instead, we have the following letter from Napoleon to Berthier:

Alençon, 1 June 1811 My cousin, write to the Duke of Raguse that it is necessary that his artillery be well reassembled and well supplied before making any important movement, [… several more instructions ...] that he is master of giving the order to the Duke of Abrantès and to all the generals who do not suit him, to return to France [...]

So, if anything, Junot owed the opportunity to return to Paris to his old buddy Marmont. Junot must have left for France pretty quickly, because on 26 June there is already another brief note from Napoleon to Berthier, to grant Junot entrance to next morning’s lever. Presumably, Junot had asked for an audience through Berthier, and then was allowed to take part in the emperor’s official morning reception (together with all other courtiers).

While I don’t think we can truly prove that Laure’s lying here, the probability is at least very high. But why? And about such an unimportant thing? Well, as she declares at the beginning of her memoirs, one of her motives for writing the memoirs is to restore her husband’s reputation (from which we can gather that it must have been rather bad at some point). That may have been reason enough for her to let Junot be recalled to France by Napoleon in person. Just to make him look more important than he truly was at this point.

[joachimnapoleon]

Okay, okay. Now THIS

Murat, at this point you are just showing it off on purpose now

[joachimnapoleon]

Trader Joe's? ...No..... this is my Traitor Jo. ❤️

[joachimnapoleon]

[joachimnapoleon]

Letter from Berthier to his wife, from Moscow

Another letter from the book "Lettres interceptées par les Russes durant la campagne de 1812", edited by F. Masson, Paris 1913.

Alexandre Berthier to Her Serene Highness the Princess of Neuchatel, at her palace in Paris Moscow, 15 October [1812] Here I am writing to you with glasses on my nose, otherwise I get too tired from reading. But what can we do? We have to get on with things that belong to every age. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, I'm not complaining - apart from the glasses. I'm fast approaching sixty. I am pleased to know that you are either in Grosbois or in Paris, and it is with great pleasure that I am certain of the progress you have made taking the waters. I spoke to Desgenettes about you, and he said she should be patient and sober, and that next year she should go to the waters of Balaruc [?], and I'll vouch for her recovery. So, my dear friend, if winter doesn't give you the means to play billiards with your lazy Bros [?], I want you to go to Balaruc next season. I'm waiting to hear from you, so you can tell me about our Alexandre and paint me a portrait of our Lesio. How they will all admire you, what a noise around you. As for me, I enjoy the idea of seeing you again. Your letters bring me closer. Finally, after a war worthy of us, I'll bring you an olive leaf and a thousand kisses. All yours Alexandre

[joachimnapoleon]

[joachimnapoleon]

Made an artwork + design for Ney's birthday

Happy birthday to the bravest of the brave

[joachimnapoleon]

Joyeux Anniversaire Monsieur Le Marechal Ney! . A version without the text under the cut↓

[joachimnapoleon]

Joyeux anniversaire, Maréchal Ney!

Traditional annual art on the birthday of an important historical figure for me

[joachimnapoleon]

The ends of the Marshals

We know a lot about our marshals of empires, but for some their existence ends in 1814, I did some research and I did all the dates of death of the 26 marshals of the empire with their age of death and some information that I had, do not hesitate to say other information if you have any, when we look closely Lannes was the first to die and at a young age while the one who spent the most time on earth is Moncey who lived until 87 years old, yet it is Marmont who will be the last to die in 1852, I hope that this will be useful for some.

Shot:

-Murat, October 13, 1815 (trying to recover his former kingdom of Naples …) at 48 years old -Ney, December 7, 1815 (judged as a traitor for having joined Napoleon in 1815) at 46 years old

Defenestrate: (throw at a window)

-Berthier, June 1, 1815 (suicide or murder?) at age 61

Killed in combat:

-Lannes, May 31, 1809, wounded in the leg, dies of his wounds, at age 40 -Bessières, May 1, 1813, wounded by a cannon (no chance of survival) at age 44 -Poniatowski, October 19, 1813, drowned during the battle of Liepzig, at age 50

assassinated:

-Brune, August 2, 1815 (victim of the white terror of 1815) at age 52

-Mortier, July 28, 1835 (killed in an attack) at age 67

illness:

-Davout, June 1, 1823 (probably of tuberculosis) at age 53 -Augereau, June 12, 1816, at age 58 -Masséna, April 4, 1817 (long-term ill) at age 58 -Gouvion Saint-Cyr, March 17, 1830 (stroke) at age 65

natural causes, old age: (Here it is mainly deaths from natural causes)

-Perignon, December 25, 1818, at age 64 -Serurier, December 21, 1819, at age 77 -Lefebvre, September 4, 1820, at age 64 -Kellermann, September 14, 1820, at age 85

-Suchet, January 3, 1826, at age 55 -Jourdan, November 23, 1833, at age 71 -MacDonald, September 25, 1840, at age 74 -Victor, March 1, 1841, at age 76 -Moncey, April 20 1842, at age 87 -Bernadotte, March 8, 1844 (died of a paralytic attack at age 81) -Grouchy, May 29, 1847, at age 80 -Oudinot, September 13, 1847, at age 80 -Soult, November 26, 1851, at age 82 -Marmont, March 2, 1852, at age 77

[joachimnapoleon]

I've seen this book mentioned a lot here on tumblr and wondered if anybody has read it and can recommend it? So far I've only read the preface and introduction and I'm ... a bit sceptical.

Thanks in advance for all input!

I may read the chapter on Lannes first, maybe that will give me some more insight into wtf the author even wants to prove...

[joachimnapoleon]

This took forever. But now I'm finally finished. For now, until I add more idiots to my RPF blogs. Didn't put little brother Damas, or Magon's son, or Lejeune. I was running out of room. 😂