The military tone is one of the things most difficult to define in the army. This tone differs according to the grades, the time of service, and the kind of service. In reality, there are no military men but those who belong to the line, or who command it. In the opinion of the soldiers, Prince de Neufchâtel and his brilliant staff, the grand marshal, Generals Bertrand, Bacler d'Albe, etc., were merely cabinet officials, whose attainments might make them good for something, but to whom bravery was not indispensable.

The principal generals, such as Prince Eugène, Marshals Oudinot, Davoust, Bessières, and His Majesty's aides-de-camp, Rapp, Lebrun, Lauriston, Mouton, etc., were thoroughly urbane; their dignity never approached arrogance, nor their ease an excessive familiarity; their manners always bore the impress of a wholly soldier-like severity. The army had not the same idea of several of the orderly officers and aides-de-camp. Even while according to them the consideration merited by their education and courage, they were called the army jays, obtaining favors better deserved by others, gaining ribbons and majorats for bearing despatches in camp without ever seeing the enemy, insulting by their luxury the modest uniform of the bravest officers, occupied incessantly with their toilet, and still more foppish in the midst of battalions than in the boudoirs of their mistresses. There was one of these gentlemen whose silver-gilt cartridge-box was a complete little dressing-case, containing, instead of cartridges, perfume bottles, brushes, a mirror, a tongue-scraper, a shell-comb, and — I am not sure that there was not even a pot of rouge. It was not that they were not brave; they would have let themselves be killed for a look; but they seldom found themselves exposed. Foreigners would have reason to lay it down as an axiom that the French military man is light, presumptuous, impertinent, and immoral, if they appreciated him by the standard of these officers by favor, who, instead of study and service, had sometimes no other right to their grades than the merit of having emigrated.

The officers of the line, who had made several campaigns and gained their epaulettes on battlefields, seemed very different to the army; grave, polite, and obliging, there was a sort of fraternity between them. Having had a near view of poverty and suffering, they were always ready to succor others; their conversation was not remarkable for brilliant information, but it was often full of interest. Generally, the habit of boasting quitted them along with their earliest youth, and the bravest were always the most modest. The false point of honor had no great ascendancy over them, because they knew their own worth, and the fear of being supposed cowardly was beneath them. For them, who sometimes united the greatest kindliness to a vivacity not less great, a contradiction or even an insult, uttered by a brother in arms, did not absolutely need to be washed out in blood, and examples of this moderation, which true courage alone is entitled to display, were not rare in the army. The most generous and those who cared least for money were those who were most exposed, — the artillerymen, the hussars. At Wagram I saw a lieutenant pay a louis a bottle for brandy and distribute it on the spot to the soldiers of his company. These brave officers were sometimes so attached to their regiments, especially if they were distinguished, that they would refuse promotion rather than be separated from their children, as they called them. It is here that the type of French military men should be looked for; it is this kindliness blended with soldierly firmness, this attachment of captains for their soldiers, an attachment which the latter know so well how to appreciate; it is this unshaken honor, which should distinguish our soldiers, and not, as foreigners believe, the presumption, the braggadocio, the libertinage which belong only to certain parasites of glory.

At camp Lobau, the day before the battle of Wagram, the Emperor was walking around his tent. He stopped for a moment to look at the grenadiers of the guard, who were breakfasting. "Well, my children, how do you like the wine?" "It won't make us drunk, Sire; there is our cellar," said a soldier, pointing to the Danube. The Emperor, who had ordered a good bottle of wine for each soldier, was surprised to find them dieted on the eve of a battle. He asked the reason from Prince de Neufchâtel; inquiries were made, and it was learned that two storekeepers and a victualling clerk had sold for their own benefit forty thousand bottles intended for the distribution, and that they intended to replace it by an inferior wine. It was valued at thirty thousand florins, and had been seized by the imperial guard in a rich abbey. The guilty persons were arrested, tried, and condemned to death.

At the camp of Lobau there was a dog which all the army, I think, knew under the name of corps-de-garde. He was old, dirty, and ugly, but his moral qualities soon obliterated all memory of his external defects. Hence he was sometimes called the bravest dog of the Empire. He had received a bayonet thrust at Marengo; he had had a paw broken by a shot at Austerlitz. He was then attached to a regiment of dragoons, for he had no master. He would attach himself to a corps and remain faithful to it so long as he was well fed and not beaten. A kick, or a blow with the flat of a sabre, would make him desert the regiment and pass to another. He had a rare intelligence. Whatever might be the position of the corps in which he served, he would not abandon it, and never confounded it with the others. In the hottest of the fray, he was always close to the flag he had selected. If, in camp, he met a soldier of the regiment he had deserted, you would see him drop his ears, put his tail between his legs, and slink away as fast as possible to his new brethren in arms. When his regiment was marching, he scampered everywhere on scout duty, warning them by his barking of all that he found extraordinary. More than once he saved his comrades from an ambuscade.

Among the officers who perished at the battle of Wagram, or rather in a particular engagement which took place when the battle was already over, General Oudet was one of those who were most regretted by the soldiers. He was one of the most intrepid generals of the army; but what brings his name especially to my memory, rather than that of any other lost by the army on that memorable day, is a note I have preserved of a conversation I had some years after the battle with an excellent officer to whom I was united by the most sincere friendship.

In an interview which I had with Lieutenant-Colonel B——, in 1812, he said to me: "I must tell you, my dear Constant, the curious adventure that happened to me at Wagram. I did not tell you at the time, because I had promised to keep silence; but now that no one can be compromised any longer by my indiscretion, and that even those who would then have dreaded most that their singular ideas (for I have never called them otherwise) should be revealed, would be the first to laugh at them, I may very well acquaint you with the mysterious discovery I made at this period.

"You know that I was in very close intimacy with poor F——, whom we have so greatly regretted. He was one of the gayest and most amiable of our young officers, and his good qualities made him dear, especially to those who had, like him, a constant propensity to frankness and good humor. Suddenly I found his manners changing, as well as those of some of his habitual companions; they appeared sombre, no longer assembled for cheerful pleasantries, but on the contrary were always mysteriously whispering together. This sudden change had struck me on several occasions; I had chanced to meet them frequently in out-of-the-way places, and instead of greeting me cordially, as they had been accustomed to do, they seemed desirous to avoid me. At last, tired of this mystery which I could not understand, I one day took F—— aside and asked what this strange conduct signified. 'You have forestalled me, my dear fellow,' said he; 'I was about to make you an important communication; I don't want you to accuse me of a lack of confidence, but swear to me, before I confide in you, that you will not tell to a living soul one word of what I am about to say.' When I had taken this oath, which he demanded in a tone very serious, and to me most surprising, F—— added: 'If I have never spoken to you of the philadelphians, it is because I knew that reasons which I respect would prevent you from joining them; but since you ask me for this secret, it would be a lack of confidence, and perhaps an imprudence not to reveal it to you. Several patriots have united under the title of philadelphians to save the country from the dangers to which it is exposed. The Emperor Napoleon has tarnished the glory of First Consul Bonaparte; he has saved our liberty, and he has torn it from us by the re-establishment of the nobles and the Concordat. The society of philadelphians has not as yet any settled means for preventing the evil which ambition would continue to do to France; it is when peace shall be restored to us that we shall see whether it is henceforward impossible to bring back Bonaparte to republican institutions; meanwhile we are overwhelmed with sorrow and despair. The brave chieftain of the philadelphians, the virtuous Oudet, has been assassinated. Who will be worthy to replace him! Poor Oudet! Never was any one more audacious, more eloquent, than he! To a noble loftiness of character and unshaken firmness he joined an excellent heart. His first battle showed all the energy of his soul. Knocked down at San-Bartolomeo by a shot, his comrades wished to raise him. "No, no," he cried, "don't busy yourselves with me; at the Spaniards! at the Spaniards!" "Shall we leave you to the enemy?" said one of those who had approached him. "Well, repulse them then, if you don't want them to have me." At the opening of the Wagram campaign, he was colonel of the 9th regiment of the line; he was made general of brigade on the eve of battle. His corps formed part of the left wing, commanded by Masséna. It was on this side that our line was broken for a moment. Oudet made incredible efforts to reform it. Struck three times by a lance, losing quantities of blood, dragged along by those of ours who were forced to recoil, he had himself tied to his horse so as not to leave the combat.

" ‘After the battle he was ordered to go forward and place himself and his regiment in an advantageous post for observation, and to return at once to headquarters with a certain number of his officers to receive new orders. He executed this movement and returned during the night. All of a sudden a discharge of musketry was heard; he fell into an ambush; he combated furiously in the darkness without knowing either the number or the nature of his adversaries. At break of day he was found stretched out, riddled with wounds, in the midst of twenty officers massacred around him. He was breathing still. . . . He lived three days, and the only words he could utter were to mourn the fate of his country. When his body was taken from the hospital to receive the last honors, several wounded men tore off their bandages in despair; a sergeant-major threw himself upon his sword beside his grave, and a lieutenant blew out his brains. This,' added F——, ‘is what plunges us into the most profound affliction.' I tried to prove to him that he was mistaken, and demonstrate that the schemes of the philadelphians were follies, but I did not altogether succeed, and even while listening to my advice, he strongly recommended me to secrecy."

I think it was the day after the battle of Wagram that a rather large number of officers came to breakfast near the Emperor's tent. The generals sat on the grass, and the officers stood around them. There was a great deal of talk about the battle, and several very remarkable incidents were related which have remained graven in my memory. An orderly officer said to His Majesty: "I thought I had lost my finest horse. As I had ridden him on the 5th, and wanted him to rest, I gave him to my servant to rein him in; he left him for a moment to rebridle his own; the horse was stolen in a moment, between him and me, by a dragoon who, without delay, went and sold him to a dismounted captain, saying that it was one of the horses taken. I recognized it in the ranks and reclaimed it, proving by my portmanteau and my effects, which were upon it, that it had not been taken from the Austrians. I reimbursed the captain for the twenty louis he had given the dragoon for this horse which had cost me sixty."

Perhaps the finest incident of the day was this: M. Salsdorf, a Saxon surgeon of Prince Christian's regiment, had his leg fractured by a shell in the first part of the battle. Extended on the ground, he saw M. Amédée de Kerbourg, an aide-de-camp, who, bruised by a ball, fell and began to vomit blood. He saw that this officer would die of apoplexy if he were not assisted: collecting his forces, he crept and crawled through the dust until he reached him, bled him, and saved his life.

M. de Kerbourg could not embrace his preserver. M. Salsdorf, transported to Vienna, lived only four days after his amputation.