Louis-Nicolas Davoust was born into a noble Burgundian family on 10 May 1788, and would become one of Napoleon Bonaparte‘s greatest generals and France’s most devoted Minister of War and Marshal of the Empire.
In spite of his illustrious birth, Davoust was anything but a royalist. He loved the French Republic every bit as much as he would come to love his commander, Napoleon.
Davoust first came to Napoleon’s attention when they served together in Egypt, and the general liked Davoust so much that he introduced the recently divorced Davoust to his brother-in-law’s sister, Louise Aimée Julie Leclerc. Napoleon, it seemed, wanted Davoust in the family. Aimée and Davoust fell in love, and were married on 9 November 1801 with Napoleon and Joséphine in attendance. The couple would remain devoted to one another, and – unusual for the time – faithful to one another even when separated for long periods by the fortunes of war.
When Napoleon became Emperor of the French on 14 May 1804, he promoted Davoust to the position of a Marshall of France and gave him command of the III Corps of the Grande Armée. This caused an uproar, since Davoust was on of Napoleon’s youngest and least experienced generals. The other generals didn’t like it one little bit, and they complained bitterly about the nepotism. Davoust, who was much better on the battlefield than he was in the drawing room, didn’t help matters by freely calling lesser-skilled generals idiots to their faces.
However, Davoust proved Napoleon right to trust him on 14 October 1806 during the Battles of Jena and Auerstädt when Davoust and a single corps defeated the main division of the Prussian army, even though the French troops were outnumbered 63,000 to 28,000 by their foes. Historian François-Guy Hourtoulle wrote: “At Jena, Napoleon won a battle he could not lose. At Auerstädt, Davoust won a battle he could not win.”
One of the main reasons that Davoust’s troops were so effective was because Davoust was such a strict disciplinarian. He was known as the “Iron Marshall” for the rigid code his men had to follow, and was sometimes considered to be outright cruel. His cruelty, if that was what it was, came about for a reason – such as when he “forbade his troops from plundering enemy villages, a policy he would enforce by the use of the death penalty.” His troops were trustworthy and followed orders and didn’t rape and pillage their way through occupied Germany; that was worth a little cruelty in my opinion.
Napoleon certianly appreciated his stalward Iron Marshall. In 1807 the Emperor created Davoust the Duke of Auerstädt, and in 1809 Napoleon created him the Prince of Eckmühl following his heroic victories in Eastern Europe. The following year Davoust was named the Commander in Chief of the Army of Germany. Napoleon also put Davoust in charge of the massive army assembling for the invasion of Russia, which Davoust did with honor and dispatch. Alas for Davoust, he was finally up against an enemy he could not defeat. Although he won every engagement against the Russian troops, the Russian winter was too much for even Davoust. The bitter weather of 1813 destroyed the Napoleonic forces.
Napoleon unfairly blamed Davoust for the slow retreat of the French army from Russia, and for losing the Battle of Berezina, even though Davoust pulled a miracle out of his butt simply by not being totally destroyed. Even Napoleon himself was defeated in the brutal retreat. Nonetheless, the Emperor was vexed with Davoust, who seems to have blamed himself as much as Napoleon did.
As a kind of punishment, Napoleon sent Davoust to Hamburg with orders to defend the non-defendable city. The city had neither the provision or the fortifications needed to hold out against an allied siege. Nonetheless, Davoust followed his Emperor’s instructions, including some fairly savage orders regarding non-combatants: he “expelled up to 25,000 of Hamburg’s poorest and weakest citizens out of the city into the cold winter, many of whom perished of cold and starvation.” As heartless as it was, it worked; Davoust only surrendered the city under “the direct order of the new King Louis XVIII, who had come to the throne after the fall of Napoleon in April 1814.”
Napoleon may have been sent to exile on Elba, but Davoust wasn’t going down quietly or kowtowing to the kings of the Bourbon Restoration. He resigned from the military rather than fight for the Bourbons, and the minute Napoleon returned to France on 20 March 1815, Davoust rushed to his side. Although Napoleon’s return would only be for Les Cent-Jours (The Hundred Days), Davoust helped the ousted Emperor raise almost 200,000 soldiers for L’Armée du Nord (the “Army of the North”) and once more served as the head of Napoleon’s military machine.
As the Minister of War, Davoust was so important in Paris that he was never able to join Napoleon on the field of battle, and some historians have speculated his presence may have thrown Waterloo to the French if Napoleon had been wise enough to use Davoust. After Napoleon’s final defeat, Davoust manfully prepared to defend Paris, only meeting the Allies for parley when order to do so by Joseph Fouché, the president of the provisional government. It was on behalf of the provisional government that Davoust was also sent to ask Napoleon to leave Paris to prevent a full-scale siege.
Napoleon never forgave Davoust for being the one to ask him to leave the city, and would later snarl that that “I thought that Davoust loved me, but he loved only France.” Napoleon was right – Davoust loved France more than he loved anything, and he would always choose county over a cult of personality.
Davoust was also more loyal that Napoleon realized, or gave him credit for. He made the Allies come to reasonable terms by threatening to fight to the last man if they tried punitive measures against the remaining French army. He also tried to be punished in place of the generals who had followed his orders, demanding “to be held responsible for their acts.” He also tried his best to prevent the condemnation of fellow former Marshal, Michel Ney. Sadly, Davoust’s efforts were in vain, and Ney was executed by firing squad by the new government on 7 December 1815. Ney’s death so appalled the French public that it probably saved Davoust’s life; no more generals were sacrificed. Without a reason to remain intractable, Davoust made peace with the newly re-restored monarchy, and in 1817 his rank and titles were returned to him.
The former Minister of War died of tuberculosis at the age of 53 on 1 June 1823 in Savigny-sur-Orge, a suburb of Paris, where he was serving as mayor at the time. He was interred at the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris, where his youngest daughter and a war-hero cousin who admired him, Léopold-Claude-Etienne-François Davout, share his tomb. Davoust’s name is inscribed on the 13rd column of the Arc de Triomphe, a fitting memorial to Napoleon’s Iron Marshal.
