by Jakob Walter
The inherent appeal of that type of writing to which the Walter chronicle belongs has already been noted. The number of such memoirs of Napoleonic war veterans, published since 1900, and still appearing despite the competition of the World War and its literature, is remarkable. But a new narrative is expected to have other particular claims of interest. The Walter manuscript does have these—both literary and historical. Its special claim, however, is that it is seemingly unique among the mass of 1812 narratives as the personal record of a German common soldier in Napoleon’s Grand Army. But while it is largely devoted to the Russian campaign, it is actually the record of a conscripted private of a Napoleonic vassal-state. Presumably he is typical of his group, the more so because his “military-service-time” covers practically the full period of the New Charlemagne’s domination of Germany and most of Europe.
The factors of Jakob Walter’s personality and background have merited emphasis here. They are essential considerations in reading, with full appreciation, this relation by Walter of the military experiences of his three campaigns. He was merely a builder’s helper, when called up with many like him, in the conscription of 1806, for “the campaign which the Emperor Napoleon with the princes then his allies was conducting against Prussia.” This passage (omitted from the second version) is the extent of “political” allusion in the manuscript. Evidently when his regiment marched off in the fall, the Jena-Auerstädt battle (October 14) had just demolished the façade of Prussia potency. There was little for the new auxiliaries to do, after Frederick William had sought the safest corner of his realms, except clean up the remnants of unyielded defenses, in Silesia and Pomerania. During the shifting of forces between these two provinces parts of West Prussia were crossed by Württemberg regiments; but they had no part in the big fighting of the Eylau-Friedland campaign, were never exposed to the kindling close influence of the major leaders. The Walter brothers did their bit in the marchings and requisitionings incidental to various sieges and sorties here and there. Jakob had small chance and less incentive to discern any obvious scheme in the campaign. The incidents he best remembered were rowdy pranks. For the poor discipline of certain Württemberg units was such that the King at the home-coming review addressed them as his brigands. Moreover, when in 1812, the humiliated Crown Prince had to notify his father of his troops’ disorders on the Prussian-Lithuanian march, which had earned Napoleonic wrath, he recalled their misconduct of 1807 in Silesia. Nevertheless those especially interested will find some enlightening contributions regarding the futile Colberg and Glatz sieges, and the general reader will enjoy some vividly portrayed sortie incidents. Quite incidentally also Walter slips in some sound observations on the condition of Jews and peasants in Poland and Brandenburg. They illustrate that personal revelation which will be found the primary appeal and significance of the document.
From the end of 1807, when Jakob Walter went on leave to be with his sisters at Rosenberg, he worked intermittently at his craft until recalled to active service in the Austrian War. Again he missed the major conflict; again he served in a side campaign too much underrated by historians. His contingent was sent to the Alpine frontier to repel attacks of insurgent peasants who were fighting to get back under their old Habsburg rulers. Therefore, instead of sharing in the Ratisbon campaign of April and the May-July battles (Aspern, Wagram) near Vienna, the Walter brothers were only in local brushes at the Vorarlberg corner of the Lake of Constance. As the second and fuller version of this campaign is incomplete, we have but a scrappy account of Walter’s experiences. It shows him as more mature and taking a more soldierly part, as being more interested in people, folkways, and rural economy, perhaps as less devoutly Catholic. The disorders of his contingent seem to have changed likewise. There is little boyish rowdyism but some drunken rioting—despite their being on their own borders. Fortunately the campaign was not long, and after some garrison months Jakob Walter could again return to civil life and his trade at Ellwangen for something over two years.
Truly Walter’s third campaign was one of the most momentous in history. His unit being under Marshal Ney for most the advance, he was in the thick of events. Out of that Grand Army of some 600,000 who about June 25, 1812, crossed the Russian border, he was one of the small number who survived the retreat, recrossed the Niemen in late December, and finally reached home. Naturally the account of his 1812 experiences, about three-fourths of his manuscript, is most detailed, systematic, and vitally—even vividly—interesting. It merits recognition among the many notable memoirs of the Moscow campaign. For many memoirs available for such study, comparative ranking is impracticable because of difference in scope, motive, or nature, and because of the author’s status. Bourgogne, Castellane, Caulaincourt, Fain, Marbot, Roos, and Ségur are examples. But among those of a type more similar to Walter’s, such as Coignet, Lossberg, Steinmüller, Vossen, Yelin, etc., the Walter narrative surely takes high rank.
Necessarily the scope of 1812 literature forces its students to be selective, to adhere to a dominant interest or motive. With many the interest is broadly historical. They are concerned with the causes or consequences of the Russian War, its diplomacy, its strategy. For them the sources have been often exploited and digested in scholarly monographs. Some aspects will always be disputed, and some phases of diplomacy, or military topics such as the facts regarding commissariat or hospitalization, may still be live issues. As to these the soldier memoirs may add something, but as to strategy or diplomacy rarely anything fresh. Then a second group of students have a “moral” or propagandist objective. They may be seeking to demonstrate the virtues of patriotic popularism, the vices of despotism and its nemesis, the horrors and futility of war. Honest study of the evidences—including soldier memoirs—may well correct certain of their preconceptions which have become popular legends. They will find from Walter very little about peasants who attacked with flails and scythes, and that little chiefly about defending their villages and themselves against marauders. Of Cossack attacks, they will discover that most were against stragglers during the last stage of the retreat in Lithuania and Poland or East Prussia. They may learn that when Napoleon left his army at Smorgoni he had not only strong justification for rushing back to Paris, but also good reasons to turn the survivors over to capable sub-commanders, he himself having brought them into touch with supply bases, reinforcing new troops, and allied frontiers. But there is a third and most numerous group of readers motivated by the human-interest appeal, being concerned with dramatic incidents and with character portrayal. To them especially Walter’s narrative is commended. His experiences are varied and representative, and particularly significant not merely as those of the army rank and file, but because of Walter’s emotional revelations, thoughts of religion and the ties of home, and a persistent concern over the barbarizing effect of the retreat on himself and others. His mixture of Catholic piety and selfish energy was perhaps typically South German, yet it does show strikingly how the will to live and fend for oneself, joined with some degree of human kindness and providential aid, worked together to bring even a remnant safe home from Moscow in 1812.
Notes
to the
Diary
1. Count Dominique René Vandamme (1770–1830), French general.
2. “Kapuke” (also “Kapusk,” “Kapuska”)—probably a misunderstanding of kapusta, Polish and Russian for cabbage.
3. “Bopen”—from Russian pop (pl. popy), parish priest in common language.
4. Known as the battle of Borodino by the Russians and as the battle of the Moskova by the French.
5. French Guard, or the Imperial Guard (gard impériale), the elite regiments of Napoleon.
6. Alia—possibly the Selnia River.
7. In fact the rivulet Neglinnaia, which used to be a tributary of the Moskva River—now covered over.
8. In fact the reverse was true: Alexander I ignored Napoleon’s approach for an armistice or peace negotiations.
9. Apparently Napoleon
gave the order to blow up the Kremlin, but it was either foiled or not carried out.
10. Glauber salt—sulphate of sodium, a laxative.
11. Princess Maria Luisa of Baden married Alexander I and took the name of Elizaveta Fedorovna.
12. There is no historical evidence for this statement.
Writing Home:
Six
Letters
NAPOLEON SET UP THE Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, and appointed his brother, Jérôme king. Like all member states of the Confederation of the Rhine, Westphalia had to provide recruits to Napoleon’s armies. The Westphalians served in the French Army first during the Spanish campaign. Naturally, they were also called upon to participate in the campaign of Russia. They formed the Westphalian Corps, under the command of General Vandamme, and later under that of Marshal Junot (Duc d’Abrantès)—King Jérôme was with the corps in the beginning stages of the campaign. Several additional Westphalian units were attached to various other corps. All told, the Westphalians numbered 27,000 men at the outset of the campaign of Russia.
Napoleon was one of the first to make large-scale and effective use of what we call psychological warfare; and he did it with the populations at home in view. His famous Bulletins de la Grande Armée served that purpose and, naturally, gave the most optimistic accounts of victories, captured trophies, progress of the campaign, weakness of the enemy. And when the going went from bad to worse, the Bulletins camouflaged the disasters as much as possible. To preserve the credibility of the official news, all correspondence from the front lines was censored. Letters that would have contributed to demoralizing the home front, or that would have reflected the hardships and horrors of the campaign were confiscated. Some of the confiscated letters were forwarded to military or civilian authorities, so that they could take appropriate measures to maintain discipline and preserve law and order at home.
This accounts for the fact that some soldiers’ letters (with or without official comments) found their way into the administrative files of the Kingdom of Westphalia. Portions of the archives of the kingdom fell into the possession of a general in Russian service and were eventually turned over to the Russian Government. At present they are deposited in the Manuscript Division of the Leningrad Public Library.
Mr. S. N. Iskiul’—senior researcher at the Leningrad Division of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.—has discovered the six letters translated below in the course of his work on Russian diplomacy with respect to the German states in the Napoleonic era. He has published them, in Russian, with his commentaries and notes, in Osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie v Rossii (The liberation movement in Russia), No. 7 (Saratov: University of Saratov), 1978, pp. 101–10. He has kindly provided me with a typed copy of the original German text. I am very grateful to him for allowing reproduction of this material. I have made use of his valuable commentaries and Russian translation for the introduction and to clarify some obscure passages. In my own translation, I have attempted to convey not only the meaning but also the manner of writing and the uneducated flavor of these letters, which have an immediacy that memoirs written years after the events do not have as a rule. We have no information on either the background or the fate of the authors—they speak for the suffering, faceless common people.
I
Written in camp, 9 June 1812
To the Master craftsman Figner in Eisleben
Most beloved parents, Father and Mother. If this small letter of mine reaches you still in good health it will be a heartfelt pleasure for me. As to myself, I am, thank God, so far still quite fresh and healthy, and, dear parents, that I could not write you earlier has saddened me much.
But, dear parents and good friends, if I am to write you of my present condition, how pitifully I am faring, me and my comrades, it is not to be described. God would soon take pity and give us, poor folk, soon again rest and peace.
Now, dear parents, as I have so pitifully kept my Easter and Pentecost, so did the poorest man on earth have it better than me and many. For Pentecost we had so little to live on that me had not half a pound of bread in three days. It would have been the same if we had had more, for it was too little to fill one and too much to starve, for we received no meat nor vegetables; so that from hunger thirty men killed ourselves a dog and have picked nettles and have cooked us a greenery dish with the dog’s fat [as shortening] and eaten the meat for much hunger, for in the Polish lands there is so little to live on, that it would be little wonder if one would at the end starve to death, for bread, beer, and brandy is so expensive that our five days’ pay could be used up in half an hour and [still] not know whether one has eaten or not. I get every five days six good pennies [Groschen].1 If at home in Eisleben me buys for one Groschen spirits or liquor [Schnaps], me gets more for it than for twenty farthings [Kreuzer] in Poland, bread and beer. At that, the beer is as bad as the worst in Eisleben. We stand now not far from the Russian border in camp, where we arrived 5 June at twelve o’clock of the night and expect to see the enemy any day and hour. We are from home at least 160 miles away. Now then, dear parents and good friends, if I may ask you if it is possible to help me out with a little money so that I can still the great hunger, and should I return home I’ll know how to thank you, so help me God on Judgment Day. Dear Father and Mother, be so kind to give a greeting to Louise Dordner from her brothers, they both are still quite hale and healthy and they are as pitiful as I am. We are together in camp with the 1st Division, 2nd Brigade. I am still with the 3rd Line Regiment, 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Company and Louise Dordner’s brothers are with the 2nd Regiment, 2nd Battalion of the Voltigeur Company.
Fare well you all and I would wish that this letter not be the last. I remain your faithful son unto death.
WILHELM FIGNER
[On the side added] Dear parents, don’t take it amiss that the letter is so poorly written, it was [written] on the ground. But if you write to me you must write to 3rd Regiment, 2nd Battalion Grenadier Company to Westphalian Army in Poland.
II
To the Widow of Mr. Herrman Kunkel, Marburg, Kingdom of Westphalia
Russian Poland, Grodno, 16 July 1812
Your dear letter from last month arrived properly in Warsaw, however, the one you sent to Mr. Lieutenant Kessmann I did not receive, it must have gotten lost. Not I am in Russia where it is worse for me than in the other Poland.1 Here there is a lack of all foodstuffs. The bread that is delivered is so bad that one can’t eat it, yet very dear to buy, one bread is paid eight pennies [Groschen], it is baked from chaff and at that it is not baked through, it lies like lead on the stomach. Hunger drives it down though. Meat is also very bad, half smelly, and yet it has to be eaten. What else can one eat? Our march from Warsaw to here was good and bad, we quartered under the free sky, God was our host. Thunderstorm rains have at times drenched us thoroughly. For four days I did not have a single dry thread on me and then nothing in the belly but a gulp of wutki [vodka] and a piece of dark bread [Pomzernickel, i.e., Pumpernickel]. We marched with the King [of Westphalia] without rest, ten to sixteen hours a day on horseback. Of rivers we crossed the Narwa [actually the Warthe], Narev, Bug and now we are across the Niemen in Russian Poland. There were ten regiments of Cossacks in this town, but they have been expelled by the Polish army while the Cossacks burned down the bridges behind themselves.2 One hundred Cossacks were taken prisoner, many died. The captured Cossacks were all pitifully dressed, poorly armed. They must have been irregulars. One can’t go far from the town, there is always some of this riffraff around. The Russians have retreated a lot. The[ir] army stands far from here. Our army follows on their heels. The headquarters of Emperor Napoleon is in Wilno, so far did the French army advance. There will be a major battle these days. Tomorrow our march resumes with the King. This town greeted the King with all expressions of honor and swore fealty to Napoleon. Our good life has ended since we left Warsaw. Now one has to learn to suffer hunger and thirst. Our faces look different. Brown in the
face like a chestnut and a mustache under my nose have completely disfigured me. Thank God I am in health, I bite at times in the old army bread, so that it rattles, and drive the hunger away. I could not get any money from Dr. Dieffenbach, for he has none, he would have gladly obliged me if he had not given all his cash against a remittance through a good friend. I am now so broke that I have no money to make myself shirts. I don’t know what to do. Today I’ll speak again to our doctor, if he has none [money] I’ll go immediately to Nan at the field post [office] if he can’t lend me money. It would be good if you would immediately speak with his parents and pay them the money. You have to ask them to write him that if I have money needs he should lend me [some]. I have to have two louis d’or to pay off my debts to my comrades and buy myself three shirts or have them made.3 One louis d’or can’t help me at all, I got too broke on the march to pay everything with one louis d’or. If I can hunt up money today I’ll let you know and will put a note with the letter for your guidance. I greet my brothers and sisters. Farewell and stay nicely in health.