Charles-Pierre Augereau

• 1. Introduction

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  Charles-Pierre-François Augereau was born on the 21st of October 1757 in Faubourg Saint-Marceau, Paris, the son of a fruit seller. Few soldiers of the age traveled a stranger road to a Marshal's baton. Before Napoleon Bonaparte ever noticed him, Augereau had fled France after killing an officer in a quarrel, drifted across Europe for thirteen years, claimed a stint in the Russian Army at the Siege of Izmail, deserted from the Prussian infantry by masterminding a mass escape, and taught fencing in Saxony. By the time he stood at the head of a French division in the Italian campaign of 1796, he had outlasted wars, prisons, and a Portuguese Inquisition. Napoleon would later write that Augereau "has plenty of character, courage, firmness, activity; is inured to war; is well liked by the soldiery; is fortunate in his operations." The question that shadows his entire career is how a man of such raw capability could end it under a cloud, stripped of his title and pension by the very king he had served.

• 2. A Soldier Without a Country

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  At seventeen, Augereau enlisted in the Clare Infantry Regiment, only to be discharged not long after. He then joined the dragoons and earned a reputation as a skilled swordsman and duellist. A fatal quarrel with an officer forced him out of France entirely, and for the next thirteen years he wandered. He claimed to have fought as a sergeant in the Russian Army against the Ottoman Empire, describing himself as present at the Siege of Izmail before deserting. He later enlisted in the infantry regiment of Prince Henry of Prussia and said he also served in the Prussian Foot Guards. He engineered a mass escape from that regiment, reached Saxony, and supported himself as a fencing teacher. In 1781, King Louis XVI proclaimed an amnesty for deserters, and Augereau returned to France. He joined the cavalry in 1784 and eventually traveled to the Kingdom of Naples on a military mission. There he eloped with Gabrielle Grach, and the couple spent the years 1788-1791 in Portugal. When the French Revolution broke out, Portuguese authorities jailed Augereau as a dangerous foreigner; Gabrielle persuaded them to release him, and they returned to France together in time to join the new republic's wars.

• 3. The Revolutionary Apprenticeship

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  In September 1792, Augereau joined a volunteer cavalry unit called the German Legion. His unit was sent to suppress the revolt in the Vendée in April 1793. The German Legion collapsed in battle when many soldiers switched sides, and Augereau, along with François Marceau, wound up in prison. After his release, he served briefly in the 11th Hussars, then as wagonmaster and aide-de-camp to General Jean Antoine Rossignol. He was assigned to train recruits for General Jean-Antoine Marbot at Toulouse, and Marbot was impressed enough that Augereau became a close friend of the Marbot family. He was promoted to general of division on the 23rd of December 1793. When General Jacques François Dugommier reorganised the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees in January 1794, Augereau became a divisional commander. At the Battle of Boulou, fought from the 29th of April to the 1st of May, his feint attacks drew the Spanish Army under General Luis Firmín de la Unión into a false position, contributing to a French victory. At the Battle of San-Lorenzo de la Muga on the 13th of August, he held off 20,000 Spanish troops with only 10,000 of his own. At the Battle of the Black Mountain on the 17th of November, his attack crushed the Spanish left flank on the first day. Dugommier was killed on the second day, but after a pause the advance resumed and the Spanish were routed. The Peace of Basel ended the War of the Pyrenees in July 1795, and Augereau was transferred to the Army of Italy.

• 4. Napoleon's Italy

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  On the 23rd of November 1795, Augereau fought at the Battle of Loano against Austrian and Piedmontese forces, where his troops attacked on the right near the coast while General André Masséna's division broke through the Allied centre. The following April, Bonaparte took command of the Army of Italy and launched the Montenotte campaign, beginning Augereau's close association with the general who would define his legacy. Augereau fought at the Battle of Millesimo on the 13th of April 1796, accepted the surrender of the castle of Cosseria the next morning, led his troops at the Battle of Ceva on the 16th, and then served at Lodi and at the Battle of Borghetto on the 30th of May. The peak of his Italian service came at the Battle of Castiglione on the 5th of August 1796. On the 3rd of August, while Bonaparte dealt with the Austrian corps of General Peter Quasdanovich, Augereau held off the main Austrian army under General Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser with 11,000 men, attacking General Anton Lipthay's brigade and driving it back onto the Austrian main body. By the end of that day he faced 20,000 Austrians. The battle cost the Austrians roughly 1,000 casualties; French losses were also heavy, including General Martial Beyrand, who was killed. Augereau's willingness to stand and fight gave Bonaparte the time to mass his strength and beat Wurmser two days later. General Marcellin Marbot wrote in his memoirs that Augereau even encouraged Bonaparte himself in the confused hours before the battle, though Marbot acknowledged he had not witnessed the events directly. Shortly after Castiglione, Bonaparte described Augereau's qualities in a terse phrase: "Much character, courage, steadiness, activity; is used to war, liked by the soldiers, lucky in his operations."

• 5. Politics and the Marshal's Baton

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  In 1797, Bonaparte sent Augereau to Paris with a mission that was more political than military. Augereau and the troops under his command coerced the moderate members of the governing councils and carried through the Coup of 18 Fructidor on the 4th of September 1797, pushing France decisively toward the Jacobin Directors. He was then posted to command French forces in Germany. When the Coup of 18 Brumaire toppled the Directory in November 1799, Augereau played almost no part and did not distinguish himself in the Rhenish campaign that followed. Even so, because he ultimately aligned himself with Bonaparte's fortunes, he received a Marshal's baton on the 19th of May 1804, at the beginning of the First French Empire.

• 6. Jena and Eylau

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  During preparations for the planned invasion of Britain, Augereau commanded a camp in Brest, Brittany. When Napoleon abandoned the invasion plan in the face of threats from Austria and Russia, that camp became the VII Corps of the Grande Armée. His corps was charged with protecting the army's lines of communication during the Ulm campaign. He fought at Konstanz and Bregenz, then on the 13th of November 1805 tracked down and destroyed General Franz Jellacic's Austrian division at Dornbirn in Vorarlberg. This was followed by the occupation of Frankfurt am Main. While he was on campaign, his wife Gabrielle died. At the Battle of Jena on the 14th of October 1806, Augereau again commanded the VII Corps and led the left flank with distinction. Then came Eylau. By February 1807, he had fallen ill with fever, and at the Battle of Eylau on the 7th of February he had to be supported on his horse. His corps was sent into a charge and met a snowstorm; the corps was nearly annihilated. Augereau himself received a wound in the arm from grapeshot, directing his men throughout despite his physical state. Augereau became Duke of Castiglione on the 19th of March 1808, a hereditary title created in honour of the 1796 victory, though the title carried no actual fief.

• 7. Decline and Disownment

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  In 1809, Augereau married Adélaïde Josephine Bourlon de Chavange, who was nineteen years old at the time of the wedding. She was the daughter of Gilles Bernard Bourlon de Chavange and his wife Jeanne Françoise Launuy. They had no children, and the ducal title became extinct when Augereau died. While serving in Catalonia during the Peninsular War from February to May 1810, he gained some military successes but tarnished his reputation with cruelty. His brother Jean-Pierre, serving under Louis Baraguey d'Hilliers, was taken prisoner by the Russian vanguard near Smolensk during the 1812 campaign. Augereau sat out the German campaign in spring 1813 due to illness. Before the Battle of Leipzig in October, Napoleon reproached him for not being the Augereau of Castiglione; Augereau replied, "Give me back the old soldiers of Italy, and I will show you that I am." He led the IX Corps at Leipzig with skill and brought his command off in good order. In 1814, he was given command of the army of Lyon, but his slackness exposed him to accusations that he had reached an understanding with the Allies. He then served the restored Bourbon King Louis XVIII while publicly reviling Napoleon. When Napoleon returned during the Hundred Days, Augereau went over to him, but Napoleon repulsed him and formally charged him with being a traitor to France in 1814. After Napoleon's final defeat and Louis XVIII's restoration in 1815, the king stripped Augereau of his military title and pension. Augereau died on the 12th of June 1816 at his estate of La Houssaye. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, his ducal title already extinguished; Adélaïde eventually remarried Camille de Sainte-Aldegonde, and their daughter Valentine de Sainte-Aldegonde married the 3rd Duke of Dino.