Rough Draft of the Article "Brune"

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The rough draft of the article "Brune" is written in English, with some French and German words inserted here and there and a few French quotations at the end. Some aspects of Brune's activity are given in more detail than in the final version. In the manuscript there is hardly any division into paragraphs, and in the present publication this has been done mostly by the editors. p. 397

Brune (Guillaume-Marie-Anne), Marshal, was born at Brives-la-Gaillarde, in the department of Corrèze, in 1763. His father, an advocate, sent him to Paris, there to study the law. On leaving the university, financial difficulties induced him to become an apprentice-compositor, and in such quality, in 1.788, he printed a literary essay of his own entitled: “Voyage pittoresque et sentimental dans plusieurs provinces occidentales de la France”. Having acquired a small press of his own (Setzerei), he published, in the first time of the Revolution, together with Jourgniac de St.-Méard and Gauthier, the Journal general de la Cour et de la Ville, one of the aristocratic papers which disappeared after the 10th of August.

Brune, however, soon turned his back to this aristocratic print, enlisted in the guard-national, there drew attention upon himself by his martial figure and the ardour of his patriotism, became an adept of the club of the Jacobins, and decided partizan of Danton. To the protection of the latter he owed, during the famous days of September 1792, his appointment as adjunct to the adjutants généraux of the Interior, and his sudden promotion (on October 12, 1792) to the rank of colonel-adjutant-general. In this quality he first served under Dumouriez in Belgium. Sent afterwards against the federalists of Calvados, advancing under General Puisaye, he carried an easy victory since the federalist army, from different causes, melted down to a handful of men. In reward for his exploit, he wanted now to be created minister-ofwar, but was put off with the advancement to the rank of general of brigade, in which quality he assisted at the battle of Hondschoote. The Committee of the Public Weal called him back, and intrusted him with the mission of putting down the symptoms of insurrection manifesting themselves in the Gironde, a task he vigorously executed.

After Danton’s imprisonment, Brune was expected to put himself at the head of a mob in order to deliver his friend, but he stood prudently aloof. The storm having passed away, he insinuated himself with the family Duplays, with whom Robespierre lived, and thus contrived to be not molested during the reign of terror. After the 9th Thermidor, he again appeared on the public stage in company of Robespierre’s deadliest enemy, Fréron, whom he followed as “pacificator” to Marseilles and Avignon. On the 13th Vendémiaire he was employed by Barras as one of the under-generals (mitraillade), commanding the royalist sections of Paris under the command-in-chief of Bonaparte. After the affair of September 9, 1796, in which he had displayed all his energy against the Babouvists, he joined Bonaparte in Italy, and commanded a brigade of division under Masséna. He distinguished himself by his intrepidity during the whole of this campaign. (Sieh Schlosser.) Brune’s old connexion with the Dantonists, whose ranks were composed of bold adventurers, made it desirable to Bonaparte to secure him as one of his tools. Hence he made him general-of-division on the battle-field of Rivoli, mentioned him honourably in the bulletins, and induced the Directory to confide him the second division of the Italian army, become vacant by the depart of Augereau.

After the peace of Campo Formio he was sent by the Directory to lull the Swiss into security, to divide their councils, to fall at the proper moment upon the canton of Berne with an army concentrated for this purpose, and there to plunder the treasury of Berne, which latter delicate mission peculiarly answered Brune’s rapacious instincts. In plundering the treasury of Berne, Brune took care to forget drawing up an inventory of it. It was again by manoeuvres of a diplomatic rather than a military character that, as commander of the army in Italy, he persuaded Charles Emmanuel, the king of Sardinia, then the apparent ally of France, to deliver into his hands the citadel of Turin (3 July 1798). The Batavian campaign against the Anglo-Russians who had invaded Holland,—a campaign lasting 2 months, opened on 22 Août 1799, the capitulation of the Duke of York, signed on then18th October of the same year—forms the great event in Brune’s military life.

An English squadron debarked on the coasts of Holland with 45,000 men under the Duke of York; Brune’s army 25,000 men only; Brune charged the generals Daendels and Dumonceau, the one of the defence of the province of Holland, the other of the Eastern provinces, reserving for himself a reserve with which he would be able to turn on any points menaced. The Anglo-Russians having disembarked their matériel after a lively combat with Daendels, entered the Texel, occupied the Helder and seized upon the Dutch fleet, Brune concentrated his forces before Alkmaar and attacked the allied on the 9th September, but without success. On the 18th, the Anglo-Russians, in their turn, attempted dislodging him, but a Russian column being cut off and forced to capitulate, the Duke of York retreated, and both armies re-occupied their prior positions. (This battle at Bergen.) Both armies did nothing from the battle of Bergen to the 2nd of October.

This inactivity a great fault on the part of the army which was more numerous and which received its provisions by the sea only. Brune profited by it for strengthening his position and swelling his army. The vigorous attack made by the enemy under -Abercromby, on the 2nd of October, in which Brune was near being cut off his retreat, he lost 4,000 men, and was obliged to transfer his headquarters to Beverwikcop-Zee and KiommenDig, where Brune occupied an excellent position. It was only on the 6th that the Gallo-Batavian lines were again attacked. York took Limmen and Askerloot, while the Russians rendered themselves masters of Bakkum; but when they had arrived before Castricum, Brune routed them completely.

A cavalry charge completed their defeat, and threw them back into their positions. (This: battle of Beverwyk.) York retired to his encampment behind the Zyp. Having destroyed the maritime establishments, cut upon the digues, laid fire to the buildings of the East India Company, he embarked himself for England; and in order to see this operation not troubled, he negotiated a capitulation, ignominious for the English, which stipulated, among other things, the free and unconditional renvoi of 8,000 French made prisoners before this campaign.

In 1800 he was sent to the army of Italy en remplacement de Masséna. After the battle of Marengo an armistice had been concluded with the Austrians. The hostilities recommenced on 24 November. Brune seized upon 3 entrenched (retranchés) camps at the Volta, threw the enemy beyond this river, and prepared instantly to traverse it. According to his orders, his army ought to pass at two points, one between the moulin of the Volta and the village of Pozzolo, the other at Monbazon. This second part of the operation having encountered difficulties, Brune gave order to delay it for 24 hours, although the right wing, which had commenced to pass at the other point, had already engaged with the Austrians. It was but due to the exertions of General Dupont that the whole right wing was not captured or destroyed, and Brune forced to retreat without ever crossing the Mincio. Napoleon says that from this moment it had become evident that Brune was not made for the command-in-chief of armies.

Returned to the state-council, a member of which he had been since its creation, he was nominated president of the section of war. From 1802 to 1804, as French ambassador at Constantinople, he cut a sad figure. Recalled in December 1804, he was, on his return to Paris, appointed marshal of the Empire. He commanded for a while the camp at Boulogne. Being sent to Hamburg in 1807 as governor of the Hanseatic towns and commander of the reserve of the grand army, he vigorously seconded Bourrienne in his extortions and “concussions”. A truce having been concluded at Schlatkow now between the French and the King of Sweden, he had, with regard to some contested points, a long interview with Gustavus, King of Sweden, near Anklam, in Pomerania, which seems to have given rise to suspicions on the part of Napoleon. When, afterwards, in the surrender of the island of Rügen by the Swedish general Toll, agreeably to a convention with Brune, the latter omitted in the text of the convention the titles of the Emperor Napoleon, and mentioned simply the French army and the Swedish army as parties to the agreement, Napoleon highly incensed. Berthier, by express order, had to write him that “no such scandal had ever been since the time of Pharamond”.

(He made mention of the “French army” instead of “the army of his Imperial and Royal Majesty”.)

He lost his commandment, and retired to the department of Escaut to preside over an electoral college. One moment his indiscreet complaints of the imperial injustice threatened him with being ordered to restitute part of his plunder. Now cajoled Berthier, courtisait the emperor.

In 1814 he sent his adhesion to the acts of the senate against Napoleon and act of adhesion to Louis XVIII, who gave him the cross of St. Louis; but as the royal favours went not farther, Brune became again Bonapartist. During the “Hundred Days”, he commanded under Napoleon a corps of observation on the Var, in which quality he developed all his brutal vigour against the Royalists. After the battle of Waterloo he proclaimed the king, and leaving his corps, was travelling from Toulon to Avignon on the way to Paris, when a furious mob forced its way into the inn at Avignon, where Brune was, insulted him as one of the Septembriseurs of 1792, blocked him up, removed the obstacles which he had thrown up, penetrated to his room, and shot him. The mob seized up his cadaver, dragged it through the streets, and threw it into the Rhône.

Nothing more notorious than his cupidity and greed.

“For more than a fortnight Avignon was consigned to turmoil, carnage and fire when, on August 2, 1815, Brune arrived there with two aides-de-camp and stopped for breakfast at the Hotel Palais-Royal where the horse relay station was. Recognised by an army veteran who had pointed him out to the curious, he regained his carriage about an hour later. A hundred steps from the town gates, where his passport was checked, the populace set upon him, throwing stones at his carriage and forcing him to return to the hotel he had just left. The crowd in the square kept swelling, and clamoured for the head of the man who had been pointed out to it as the assassin of the Princesse de Lamballe.’

Napoleon said at Saint Helena:

“Brune, Masséna, Augereau, and many others were intrepid depredators.”