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    Reminiscences Of Army Life Under Napoleon Bonaparte
    Reminiscences Of Army Life Under Napoleon Bonaparte
    Reminiscences Of Army Life Under Napoleon Bonaparte
    Ebook64 pages1 hour

    Reminiscences Of Army Life Under Napoleon Bonaparte

    By Adelbert J. Doisy DeVillargennes

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    Adelbert DeVillargennes joined the French Navy in 1807 as an apprentice and managed to climb to the post of Midshipman but transferred to the ranks of the Grande Armée. He fought as a lieutenant in Austria, although wounded he returned to active service in Spain where he was captured by the British. Interred in Britain as a prisoner of war he returned to fight at Napoleon’s side in 1815 during the Waterloo campaign. Eventually he emigrated to America and rose to be Italian Vice-Consul. His short but pithy reminiscences are filled with anecdotes of the life of a campaigning subaltern in Napoleon’s army.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWagram Press
    Release dateAug 15, 2014
    ISBN9781782895640
    Reminiscences Of Army Life Under Napoleon Bonaparte

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      Book preview

      Reminiscences Of Army Life Under Napoleon Bonaparte - Adelbert J. Doisy DeVillargennes

       This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – picklepublishing@gmail.com

      Or on Facebook

      Text originally published in 1884 under the same title.

      © Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      REMINISCENCES OF ARMY LIFE

      —UNDER—

      NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

      BY

      ADELBERT J. DOISY DE VILLARGENNES

      Former Vice Consul of Italy at Cincinnati

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

      PREFACE. 5

      REMINISCENCES OF ARMY LIFE UNDER NAPOLEON I. 6

      REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 33

      PREFACE.

      Some six or seven years since, my father, at the request of a member of his family, undertook to write down a few recollections of his former career while serving in the army under Napoleon.

      This work does not pretend to be a connected history of that period. As its title indicates, it is merely a series of reminiscences of events mostly within the experience of the writer; events which had impressed themselves more forcibly upon his mind than did other occurrences of equal or perhaps superior importance.

      At the time of writing these memoirs, the author was about eighty-four years of age, but his memory was unimpaired in regard to all matters relating to the early period of his life. The strong grasp which the young mind had fastened upon the then present events had never released nor even slackened its hold, although the matured memory was dropping daily from its clasp, the more recent occurrences of life.

      In the month of August, 1869, the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Napoleon was celebrated with great enthusiasm by the French citizens of Detroit, Michigan. My father made the closing speech of the occasion; its peroration is here quoted as being a good exemplification of the ruling passion which ran through his life, and was strong even to the end:

      "I never took any other oath of allegiance but that of fidelity to Napoleon and his dynasty; that oath I have kept; I shall keep it. I never uttered but one political exclamation, and it, I hope, will exhale itself with my dying breath:

      ‘VIVE L’EMPEREUR NAPOLEON!"

      L. A. J. D. (Z. Z.)

      REMINISCENCES OF ARMY LIFE UNDER NAPOLEON I.

      THE stirring events of the first decade in the present century were calculated to launch youth prematurely into the troubled ocean of man’s life. I seem to have been destined to follow the tide. At the age of fifteen years I began the world on my own individuality. A tradition in our family asserted that one of its ancestors had been an admiral; this, possibly, together with the fact of my own adventurous disposition, influenced my parents’ decision in regard to my future destiny, and it was settled that I should enter the navy.

      In November, 1807, the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte resolved to wrest Portugal from the domination of England, and sent for this purpose an expedition commanded by Junot. In the harbor of Lisbon was found a small fleet, which the escaped family of Braganza had no time to take away with them to Brazil. The command of this squadron was given to Commodore Magendie, a distant relation of my mother, and he took me with him as his secretary, although I was nominally enrolled as a novice on the books of the Vasco de Gama, the flag-ship. During the nine months, however, that our army occupied Portugal, I was but three or four times on board.

      I may here state that my appointment as secretary was due, not only to family interest, but to my reputation among admiring friends as an English scholar; for had I not gained a premium at school for my extemporaneous translation of a page of Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield?, Did I not glibly enough repeat from my book of dialogues such sentences as the following, pronounced, too, as I endeavor here to represent them: Good mornaing, sair. Haou do you do? Zis is biontayfool oizer, etc.

      After the battle of Vimeira and the convention of Cintra, our army was conveyed back to France in English vessels. But before leaving the Tagus, I must relate a comical incident, which might, however, have had serious consequences.

      On the eve of sailing, General Laborde invited several English army officers, from whom he

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