#alexandre urbain yvan

[illustratus]

Napoleon dismounting with an injured foot at Regensburg, aided by the Surgeon, Yvan, 23 April, 1809

by Claude Gautherot

[handfuloftime]

A number of surgeons attended Duroc after his fatal wounding, including François Ribes and Alexandre-Urbain Yvan. Dominique-Jean Larrey also saw him a few hours before his death, and recorded their brief conversation in his journal. He also recounted their meeting in two of his published memoirs, and it's interesting to look at all three side by side.

First, in his journal of 1813, held in the Wellcome Collection (my transcription):

Interview with the Grand Marshal of the Palace Duke of Frioul - mortally wounded by a cannonball, he was laid in a [illegible] cottage near where he had received the fatal blow. He sent for me immediately and did not stop asking for me. I had still not rejoined the general staff however I arrived and [illegible]. He was drowsing and his eyelids were closed. I gently approached his deathbed and took his left hand with care to take his pulse and judge the condition he was in. "What is that hand that touches me and does me so much good?" he said in a trembling and plaintive voice. He opened his eyes and recognized me. "Ha! I was sure of it. It's you, my dear Larrey. I've wanted you for a while now and have waited for you impatiently. You see the state I'm in. You can't fix me up this time. But give me something that will let me end the horrible torments I'm suffering. Render me this service of a true friend. Don't let me suffer any more, my dear Larrey, I'm counting on you." My heart seized. My senses fled. I couldn't muster a single word, my tears couldn't fall and I felt my strength vanish. My friend Ribes who was nearby, took me and led me away from that awful spectacle. A new motion of drowsiness [illegible] the eyelids of my illustrious and too unlucky friend - he clutched my hand for the second time at the same instant and without a doubt his soul bade me an eternal farewell. What a sad day for me - It's one of the greatest losses I could have experienced [illegible] - the general's shade will undoubtedly pass to the abode of my two other great friends.

Then in his 1817 Mémoires de chirurgie militaire et campagnes, which gives only a short summary of the event:

On my arrival at headquarters, a short trip from Hainaut, I learned the sad news of the deaths of Generals Kirgener and Bruyeres, and the mortal injury of Marshal Duroc, Duke of Frioul. This general had asked for me several times, and was extremely impatient to see me. He had been put in a cottage belonging to one of the inhabitants of the village where he had been wounded. On entering this cottage, where I found the marshal stretched out on a pile of straw and still dressed in his uniform, I was seized with the fear of seeing that he had been struck a mortal blow. My sinister presentiment came true only too soon. Only with difficulty could he articulate a few words. The effects of his wound could be seen through the trappings that covered him, and his face was marked with a deathly pallor. He had had the wall of his lower belly carried away by a large ball, the intestines torn at several points and thrust through the abdomen. I realized, with the greatest sorrow, that all the aid of our art couldn't save him from the near and inevitable death that awaited him. Indeed, a few hours later, this general officer, one of my honorable companions in Egypt, concluded his career. His name and those of Desaix and Lannes are deeply graven in my heart in recognition of the friendship that these illustrious warriors, raised to the highest honors, always kept for me.

And finally his 1841 Relation médicale de campagnes et voyages de 1815 à 1840, which, while still cleaned up for an audience, gets a bit closer to the anguish (and the dying man's desperation) in his journal:

General Duroc (Michel), Duke of Frioul, Grand Marshal of the Palace of Napoleon, was my intimate friend and my companion in Egypt. I saved his life by the attentive and fortunate care that I gave him for a very serious wound in the right thigh, made by the explosion of a shell at the siege of Saint Jean d'Acre (see my Egyptian Campaign); I was not so lucky for the last wound he received at the end of the battle of Wurschen, in May 1813. A cannonball, fired with full force from the enemy camp, after passing through the body of General Kirgener, shaved General Duroc's belly from right to left; his clothes were torn, a large portion of the skin of his abdomen carried away, and many circumvolutions of the small intestine pierced. This interesting wounded man was nearly in his last moments, when I arrived at the cottage where he had been left. "I've waited for you very impatiently, my dear Larrey," this unfortunate General cried, once he saw me; "You can render me the last service of a friend: I feel that my wound is beyond the resources of your art, but put an end, I beg you, to the horrible torments to which I've been subjected for thirty hours, and you will have my tenderest and last farewells." He expired a few hours later. This interview was for me one of the cruelest moments of my life. The Emperor, who had visited the Marshal some hours before me, lost his most faithful friend, his surest counselor, and one of his wisest and most intrepid warriors.