Joachim Murat

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Joachim Murat, born on the 25th of March 1767 in a small town in southwestern France, died facing a firing squad on the 13th of October 1815 in Pizzo Calabro. He was forty-eight years old. In between those two dates, he rose from an innkeeper's son who had nearly become a priest to the King of Naples, the brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the man Napoleon himself called the First Horseman of Europe.

  The arc of Murat's life asks several questions at once. How does a boy who runs away from a seminary end up commanding tens of thousands of cavalry across three continents? What does it mean to be loyal to a man as powerful as Napoleon, and what happens when that loyalty becomes a liability? And in the end, what was Joachim Murat's last request before twelve of his own soldiers raised their rifles?

• 2. The Innkeeper's Son

  ›

  Pierre Murat-Jordy, Joachim's father, was a man of multiple trades in La Bastide-Fortunière: an affluent yeoman, innkeeper, postmaster, and churchwarden. The family had ambitions for their son that pointed firmly toward the church. Joachim was taught by the local parish priest, then sent at the age of ten to the College of Saint-Michel at Cahors. From there he entered the seminary of the Lazarists at Toulouse.

  But in 1787, when a regiment of cavalry passed through Toulouse, something shifted. On the 23rd of February 1787, Murat ran away and enlisted in the Chasseurs des Ardennes. The regiment was later renamed the 12th Chasseurs. Two years on, an unspecified affair forced him to resign, and he ended up back home working as a clerk for a haberdasher in Saint-Céré.

  In 1791, Murat wrote to his brother that he was consumed by revolutionary affairs and would sooner die than stop being a patriot. By 1790 he had already joined the National Guard, and the Canton of Montaucon sent him as its representative to the Fête de la Fédération, the celebration marking the first anniversary of Bastille Day. The world was changing around him, and Murat was determined not to be left out.

• 3. Rising Through Revolution

  ›

  The early years of Murat's military career were marked as much by political maneuvering as by soldiering. When he left the Constitutional Guard in 1792, he did not go quietly. He reported to the Committee of Surveillance of the Constitutional Assembly that the Guard was guilty of treason and that his own lieutenant colonel, a man named Descours, had tried to recruit him into the émigré army of Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, then stationed in Koblenz. The accusation earned him republican credibility. He was promoted to corporal in April of that year, and to sergeant the following month.

  Those promotions mattered to him deeply. By the 19th of November 1792, he was writing with barely contained pride: as a sous-lieutenant, his family could no longer deny he had no inclination for the priesthood. There was a complication, however. Two ministers had accused him of being an aristocrat, confusing him with the noble family of Murat d'Auvergne. It was an accusation that would follow him for years.

  A subtler mark of those turbulent times was the fact that part of his old regiment, the 12th Chasseurs, had been sent to Montmédy to protect the royal family during its failed flight to Varennes. The regiment was forced to publicly prove its loyalty to the Republic, and Murat himself joined its adjutant in making a speech at Toul to that effect.

• 4. The Whiff of Grapeshot

  ›

  On the 3rd of October 1795, two years after King Louis XVI had been guillotined, royalist counter-revolutionaries organised an armed uprising in Paris. General Napoleon Bonaparte was named commander of the forces defending the National Convention. Bonaparte needed artillery, and he needed it fast. Murat volunteered.

  He was tasked with seizing a group of large cannons from the Camp des Sablons, a suburb outside the government's control, and bringing them to the centre of Paris while navigating the rioters in the streets. He succeeded. On the 5th of October, Bonaparte used those cannons in what became known as the "whiff of grapeshot" to suppress the insurrection and save the members of the National Convention.

  Napoleon's official report did not mention Murat by name. But Napoleon did not forget him. That moment forged a connection that would define both men's lives for the next two decades, and Murat would eventually hold the titles of Marshal of the Empire, First Horseman of Europe, Grand Duke of Berg, and King of Naples.

• 5. A Cavalry Commander's War

  ›

  Murat followed Bonaparte to northern Italy in 1796 as his aide-de-camp, and was later given command of the cavalry during campaigns against the Austrians and their allies. He commanded cavalry again during the French Egyptian expedition of 1798, and on the 25th of July 1799 at the Battle of Abukir, he led the charge that broke the Ottoman line.

  On the 18th of May 1804, Napoleon formally named him a Marshal of the Empire and confirmed his title of First Horseman of Europe. The following year he was made Prince of the Empire and Admiral of France, despite, as the sources note, having very little knowledge about naval warfare. The battles at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau all carried Murat's cavalry at their heart.

  At Eylau, Murat led a massed cavalry charge against the Russians that became one of the defining images of Napoleonic warfare. In the Russian campaign of 1812, he distinguished himself at Smolensk and Borodino and was considered the finest cavalry commander in the Grande Armée. Yet his greatness with horses did not extend to caring for them. Napoleon had assembled a cavalry of 40,000 men and horses, and Murat showed what observers recorded as a total lack of concern for the animals' welfare. He failed to fit caulkin shoes for the horses during the freezing retreat, a preparation the Polish cavalry and Caulaincourt had taken. The horses suffered from hunger, saddle sores, and exhaustion, and Murat's indifference made it worse.

• 6. King of Naples

  ›

  On the 15th of March 1806, Murat was appointed Grand Duke of Berg and Duke of Cleves following territorial concessions made by Prussia. He held that title until the 1st of August 1808, when Napoleon named him King of Naples. In between, he had been in Madrid commanding French forces when the Dos de Mayo Uprising broke out, the popular revolt that ignited the Peninsular War.

  As king, Murat ruled over Naples as Joachim-Napoleon, a title that made plain he was as much a Napoleonic instrument as an independent monarch. His wife Caroline Bonaparte, whom he had married in a civil ceremony on the 20th of January 1800 at Mortefontaine and in a religious ceremony on the 4th of January 1802 in Paris, shared his birthday. Their marriage had made him a brother-in-law to nearly the entire Bonaparte family.

  Before Caroline, Murat had been in a relationship with Francesca Lechi, whom he had met at a ball in Milan. With Caroline he had four children. Their eldest son, Achille Charles Louis Napoléon Murat, was born in Paris on the 21st of January 1801 and later settled in Florida, where he married a great-grandniece of George Washington.

• 7. Tolentino and the Fall

  ›

  Napoleon abdicated on the 6th of April 1814 following military defeats. At the Congress of Vienna, Austria's Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich was under pressure from Britain and other coalition allies to restore Ferdinand IV of the House of Bourbon to the Neapolitan throne. Murat's grip on his kingdom was loosening.

  When Napoleon returned from exile, Murat switched sides again, hoping to regain Napoleon's favor. On the 15th of March 1815, the Kingdom of Naples declared war on the Austrian Empire. Murat marched with an estimated 45,000 troops into the Papal States and Tuscany. Although the Austrian army in northern Italy numbered around 94,000 troops, it was spread thin. Murat's eastern column entered Bologna on the 2nd of April and his western column reached Florence on the 8th of April.

  On that same day, his eastern column met 3,000 Austrian soldiers at the Battle of Occhiobello. The defeat that followed pushed Murat's forces southward and set the stage for the decisive Battle of Tolentino on the 2nd and the 3rd of May. Murat published the Rimini Proclamation in a last attempt to gain Italian allies, though it may have been backdated after his military defeats. He returned to Naples on the 18th of May to find that Caroline had already surrendered to the British.

• 8. The Last Request

  ›

  After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo on the 18th of June 1815, Murat fled to Corsica. From there he attempted what Napoleon himself described with bitter precision as an impossible invasion of Calabria. Napoleon's words, recorded later, made the scale of the collapse clear: Murat tried to reconquer with 200 men a territory he had failed to hold when he had 80,000 at his disposal.

  He was captured quickly, tried for treason, and sentenced to death. On the 13th of October 1815, in Pizzo Calabro, Murat stood before the firing squad. His granddaughter's memoirs preserved what followed. He asked for a bath perfumed with a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. He asked that his eyes not be bandaged. Both requests were granted. By order of King Ferdinand, twelve of his own soldiers were chosen to shoot him.

  When the moment came and Murat saw the emotion on their faces, he told them: "My friends, if you wish to spare me, aim at my heart." The town of La Bastide-Fortunière, where he was born, had already been renamed Labastide-Murat in his honor.