Despite this relative success, Bernelle was furious. The courage of the Legion had been beyond question. But war was an intelligent game, not something to be rushed at like the French knights at Agincourt. While he praised the heroism of men like Corsican second lieutenant Ascagne-Alcide Ferrandi who, isolated with a small number of soldiers, was massacred, he condemned his lack of caution. “He misunderstood his duties as an officer, that of obedience,” Bernelle wrote, and sacrificed himself as well as some of his men needlessly. He castigated the impetuosity of his officers and NCOs who, though covering themselves with honor, had allowed a greater victory to slip away. “Our soldiers [were] carried away by their usual ardor and did not listen to the voices of their officers,” he complained. No military organization can function without courage. However, courage alone is no substitute for the intelligent conduct of war. Bernelle admitted that the battle had been indecisive, but he believed that the Legion had demonstrated its decisive combat superiority over the enemy.36
Despite the general unpopularity of Bernelle among both contemporaries and historians, it is difficult not to admire his period of command. He used the Legion wisely throughout the summer of 1836, not risking ambitious operations that would waste its strength for small strategic gain. Yet at the same time he kept his corps active, maintaining its morale and fighting edge, unlike Evans, who allowed the British Legion to waste away from inactivity or pitched it into operations beyond its skills and capabilities. On August 1, Bernelle inflicted a major defeat on the Carlists at Zubiri with little loss to himself. He kept a notoriously difficult corps in line with firm discipline, and took steps to give it as much operational autonomy as possible through the creation of a cavalry and artillery. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the Legion was actually stronger in August 1836 than it had been a year earlier, more battle-hardened and even more numerous— replacements had far exceeded the 117 men killed in battle and the 380 who had died from wounds or disease, or who had been shot or imprisoned.37 And despite letters to the war ministry from subprefects on the French side of the Pyrenees asking what to do with Legion deserters who walked in from Spain, desertion appears to have been kept well under control.38
But the Legion's situation began to deteriorate rapidly in August and September 1836. The elements of this decline were already present even before cataclysmic events in France and Spain decided the fate of the Legion. First, the confused status of the command arrangements exacerbated the divisions within the officer corps occasioned by Bernelle's strict command methods. Despite the varied origins of the Legion officers, there is no evidence that these conflicts broke down along political or social lines. One was a member of Bernelle's (or was it Madame Bernelle's?) magic circle, or one was not. The man who captured the leadership of the anti-Bernelle party was the second in command, Joseph Conrad. The conflict was a natural and altogether predictable one, as the two men possessed completely incompatible personalities. While Bernelle was dignified, aloof, ostentatious, Conrad was hearty, down to earth, a man of simple tastes. Where Bernelle stressed discipline and control, Conrad was a warrior's warrior, fiery, impetuous, always in the forefront of any attack, which had won him praise, decorations, admiration and several wounds since he had come out of Saint-Cyr as an infantry subaltern in 1808. Legionnaire G. von Rosen described him as “a small man with large shoulders, around fifty years old, with a handsome German face. His attitude and manner were truly military. He wore a full beard which gave him a really martial air, and usually wore a small round red cloth skullcap with gold trim, without visor, which he traded against his will on holidays for the tricorn which Bernelle had imposed upon all officers.”39
The real sticking point between Bernelle and Conrad was the undue influence of Madame Bernelle in the affairs of the corps. In January 1836, following operations in the Arlaban, Conrad tried to do something about it by promoting his own choices to fill vacancies in the ranks, claiming this as his right as colonel of the regiment. Bernelle, a brigadier, was technically in command of the “division” of the Legion. Not surprisingly, Bernelle rejected this spurious reasoning, and when the war minister in Paris decided in Bernelle's favor, Conrad resigned and returned to France in February. The disappearance of the popular Conrad and the obvious discord in the officer corps could not but be felt further down in the ranks, and contributed to Bernelle's decision to resign in August 1836.40
If Bernelle had to fight both the Carlists and his own officers simultaneously, he also was locked in combat with the French and Spanish high commands, a fight he was destined to lose. For while the Legion was fighting well, even brilliantly, in the summer of 1836, it was operating on an increasingly short string. Perhaps it was the date that caused the brooding exiled general to explode, but on July 14, Bernelle dispatched a long screed to the war ministry in Paris in which he enumerated his complaints: the reintegration into regular regiments of all officers who had refused to follow the Legion to Spain in 1835 and even of those who had resigned in Spain “after having done everything to convince their comrades and their subordinates to follow their example”; the indifference of the French government to the massacre of Legion prisoners by the Carlists; the refusal of the French government to honor his proposals for promotions and decorations of officers and legionnaires; inadequate policing of the frontier, which allowed a continued supply of arms and recruits to reach the enemy; the absence of replacements from France; and finally the criminal neglect of the Legion by the Spanish government, which paid, fed and supplied them at irregular intervals, if at all. Paris replied in conciliatory terms, but the pressures of the past year proved too much for Bernelle. As the government had not kept its word, he considered himself released from his. He quit, and twelve officers resigned with him.41
It may have been that Bernelle's precipitous resignation was meant to forestall his relief. Bernelle's divisive command methods, and especially the conduct of his wife, who was rumored to be showing more than ordinary interest in a Polish officer in the corps whom she insisted on accompanying to the battlefield, had been brought to the notice of Thiers. Already in July, the prime minister had toyed with the idea of replacing Bernelle with General Thomas Bugeaud or Marshal Bertrand Clauzel.42
The resignation of Bernelle in itself need not have produced immediate consequences. But with his departure, Legion morale began to unravel and performance seriously to decline. The first indication that all was not well in Spain occurred on August 16, when a Spanish military rebellion forced Isabel to accept a more liberal constitution, considerably to the left of that favored by France. The reaction of Paris was not long in coming. The liberal revolution in Spain simply reinforced the desire of King Louis-Philippe to have done with the whole Iberian mess. Don Carlos, if not yet a spent force, had been contained. Events in Madrid no longer posed any direct threat to France, which made further intervention unnecessary. Besides, the king had become increasingly annoyed with his prime minister, Thiers, who had begun to raise a replacement corps at Pau near the Spanish border whose numbers he had secretly swelled beyond those authorized by the king, agitated for General Bugeaud to take command and even announced to the press that they would soon march to Isabel's aid. That was simply too much. On August 25, Thiers tendered his resignation and was replaced on September 6, 1836, by the anti-interventionist Count Louis-Mathieu Mole. The “auxiliary corps” at Pau was marched off toward Algeria, and the Legion was well and truly marooned in Spain.43
The wound was a mortal one. But life remained yet in the Legion. Before he retired, the war minister, Marshal Maison, had named Colonel Jean-Louis Baux, called Lebeau, to replace Bernelle. Lebeau came with the highest recommendations of Bugeaud, perhaps because, like him, he had been a demi-solde for the fifteen years of the Restoration. But more than that, the fifty-six-year-old Lebeau had a distinguished military record going back to the Revolution and the Empire. He had been in the thick of the fight, with a wound to prove it, at Waterloo. He also enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as a ta
lented tactician. Alas, Lebeau, although an officer of exceptional ability, was the wrong man for this job. Intellectual, incorrigibly modest, he lacked the panache and commanding presence to impose himself upon a polyglot, multinational regiment. Lebeau cut an awkward, disheveled figure in this monosyllabic world in which gesture, attitude and stylish appearance counted for so much. And how could it have been otherwise when his uniform consisted of an old cape, a pair of britches that barely covered his knees, shapeless boots from which protruded a pair of impossibly long spurs, and an outsized hat that looked as if it had been purchased from a traveling circus?
Quite frankly, Lebeau appeared to be intimidated by his legionnaires, and with good reason, for they were in a foul mood. Most were existing on a short ration of poor-quality bacon that had put many in the hospital, and the only thing regular about their pay was that it was constantly in arrears: “In the middle of so much discontent, I am always afraid that I may lose control,” he wrote to France. “I will hold on, but if you only knew what sort of men these are! Otherwise they are very courageous.”44
Lebeau's lack of confidence may well have affected his performance. On September 14, the Legion joined with Spanish forces to attack the heights above the town of Estella southwest of Pamplona, which were strongly held by Carlist forces. Legion losses were light despite a fairly vigorous use of the bayonet. Below sat the town, which served the Carlists as a capital, in an extremely vulnerable position. Amazingly, the constitutionalists withdrew on the very threshold of what could have been an important victory, perhaps because they lacked ammunition, but the reason is not entirely clear.45 What was clear, however, was that Lebeau had had enough, discouraged by the poor condition of his corps for which he was blamed, the growing discord in the officer corps and the “surprising, incomprehensible” abandonment of the Legion by the French government. In November, barely three months after assuming command, he followed Bernelle over the Pyrenees to France.46
Now, at last, the Legion acquired the commander whom they had so long admired, Joseph Conrad, but in conditions that could hardly have been worse. Hunger was so great that “eight officers of the Legion reported to the hospital yesterday to eat,” reported Major Jean-François de Cariès de Senilhes. “One cannot have an idea of their misery.”47 Soldiers asked to be freed from their contracts, and Conrad, eager to get rid of useless mouths, often allowed them to go on condition that they renounced all claims to back pay and indemnities. Others began to desert, some to the Carlists, “and the Queen will find them as relentless against her cause as before they were her warm partisans,” wrote French general Jean Harispe, commander at Bayonne and in close touch with the Legion, in a prophetic message. Indeed, according to Major de Senilhes, desertion, especially desertion to the enemy, was the result of their loss of faith in the constitutionalist cause rather than the harsh conditions of service per se: “Yesterday, there were threats in the cantonments from entire companies to leave with arms and baggage,” he reported in December 1836. The Legion had been bivouacked for too long in the midst of a pro-Carlist population and were beginning to realize the futility and hopelessness of the whole Spanish mess: “When the insurrection has become second nature and when it is sustained by an entire population, it is not an extra effort without antecedents and isolated from its consequences which can destroy the [enemy] army,” he continued. “A victory over this can only modify the elements which sustain it, and it will soon reproduce itself in another form or around other ideas.”48
In fact, what surprised de Senilhes was how well Conrad “has maintained [the Legion] until now as a regular organization and in a condition which still imposes the terror of its arms on the enemy.”49 How indeed? The departure of the less dedicated officers and men may have acted as a bond to those who remained, whose shared hardships strengthened the sense of comradeship. Also, the fact that between three and four hundred men each month were eligible for liberation from February 1837 on may have encouraged many to wait out their enlistment contracts rather than run the risks of desertion. Nevertheless, the losses had been substantial. In January 1837, an attempt by sixty legionnaires to desert en masse was prevented at the last minute, “and they are encouraged by a good number of officers who are completely disgusted and demoralized,” de Senilhes reported, two of whom Conrad had locked up for “uttering opinions subversive to order and discipline.”50 In the first week of February, 161 legionnaires deserted, including a sergeant-major, four sergeants and nine corporals. So bad had desertions become that Conrad considered pulling his soldiers out of Zubiri because its proximity to France tempted his exhausted legionnaires to make a break for the frontier.51
In early February 1837, the Legion numbered 239 officers and 3,841 men,52 substantially down from a peak strength of 298 officers and 6,134 men and probably reflecting a loss of about 37 percent.53 And the situation would only get worse. In August 1835, six Legion battalions had arrived in Spain, reinforced by a seventh battalion in 1836. By the end of 1836, the Legion still counted six battalions. However, by March 1837, it was capable of putting three in the field, by April only two, and by June only one Legion battalion remained. In July 1837, the journal Le Siècle, quoting Spanish sources, claimed that the Legion in Spain had lost 1,510 men, or one quarter of its original strength of around 6,000 men, through desertion, while 1,376 men, about twenty-three percent, had been released from service, and 875, or 14 percent, had died in battle or of disease.54 The days left when the Legion would remain militarily effective were limited. If it was to be used, it had to be used before its troops melted away completely.
Yet another reason why the Legion maintained its combat effectiveness despite adverse conditions became apparent on March 21. In the course of a series of seemingly pointless promenades up narrow river valleys, Conrad was ordered to occupy Larrainzar, a village that stood at the foot of a steep wooded hill about twenty miles north of Pamplona in the valley of the Ulzama. The Legion occupied Larrainzar at eight o'clock on the evening of March 20 after a difficult march in appalling weather: “Those unfortunate ones who could not follow died,” wrote Jean-Jacques Azan. “In the night, the peasants brought in frozen soldiers.”55 At dawn on March 21, Conrad sent his first battalion to secure the high ground above the town while the remainder of his two battalions, which formed the rear guard of the twelve-thousand-man column, awaited the order to continue toward Pamplona. At ten o'clock, just as the rear guard was about to follow the torrent of retreating Spanish troops, those in the town heard an explosion, followed by a ragged volley of returned fire in the wood above them.
Conrad immediately ordered his men up the hill. The second battalion moving up the steep slopes soon mingled with the first battalion, whose soldiers had been driven off the crest by the Carlist attack. Perhaps it was from these legionnaires in retreat that they learned that a company under Captain Johan Albrecht Hebich had been abandoned at the summit. The second battalion, followed closely by the third, moved to the rescue, bodies bent forward against the mountain and the hail of musket balls fired by the insurgents above. But no insurance salesman would have touched Hebich at that moment despite the rescue attempt, for his position appeared utterly hopeless. His company was surrounded by an estimated two battalions of Carlists, and their defensive position was no more than a few tree trunks hastily arranged around the stone foundations of a tumbled-down mountain barn. However, the Carlists were soon forced to acknowledge that in Hebich they had taken on the wrong man.
The forty-four-year-old Wurttemberg native was a soldier of the sort who craved action and was prepared to go anywhere to find it. By the time the Napoleonic wars had come to an end, Hebich already counted several wounds received fighting for and against France. But even a commission in the Wurttemberg cavalry was not enough to keep him home. In 1820 he traveled to Greece, where he was again wounded several times in the independence wars. In 1823, he came to France. How he lived is not clear, but he did establish contacts with the Orleans family, who, in 1831, secured
a commission for him in the Legion. Hebich's record in the Legion was abysmal. He established a reputation as vulgar and insulting even in a corps that placed little value on social refinements. “He is excessively drunken, without any dignity,” his superior Colonel Combe wrote of him in 1832. “He is brutal beyond belief, unjust to his inferiors, arrogant and vulgar toward those above him. He insults and provokes all with whom he comes into contact. He is profoundly ignorant for his position, listless, lazy, always claiming to be ill when asked to perform the smallest service, even refusing to do it. He is unworthy in every way to be counted as a French soldier.”56 In 1833, Hebich came within an ace of expulsion by an army board, saved no doubt by his royal connections. After that, he calmed down somewhat, but continued to drink heavily and in 1836 was punished with thirty days prison by Bernelle for threatening a sergeant with his saber. Nevertheless, he received grudging admiration for his unquestioned bravery, and at no time more so than on March 21, 1837.
The case of Hebich is interesting beyond the scope of his acts at Larrainzar, for while he was certainly atypical of the officer corps of the Legion, his type was a fairly common one in the ranks—violent, drunken, headstrong, lazy, impossible to control in the garrison. But in a firefight, men like Hebich almost made one feel sorry for the enemy. Abel Galant, who wrote a chronicle of the Legion in Spain, thought him magnificent in the face of what looked like certain death, holding off repeated charges for at least two hours in his primitive redoubt. Conrad's battalions struggled up the mountainside to discover Hebich standing on a stone in the middle of his improvised fortress directing the fire of his men. He had lost seven legionnaires, but at least three times that number of Carlist corpses lay around the barn.
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