Lazare Hoche: Bonaparte's Failed Rival
Among Bonaparte's potential rivals, Jean-Victor Moreau is traditionally singled out, whose military reputation was only slightly tarnished by Suvorov, who defeated him twice in Italy (at the battles of Trebia and Novi). The Russian commander also defeated the future Marshal MacDonald and captured three generals—Gruchy, Pérignon, and Colli-Ricci (two of whom would become marshals). General Barthélemy Joubert, considered a rising star of the French army, was killed at the Battle of Novi.
Moreau was truly a very good commander, and he won the greatest victory of his life, equal to Austerlitz (at Hohenlinden on December 3, 1800), before Bonaparte. Napoleon himself called this battle one of the greatest in storiesHe generally had a very high opinion of Moreau's military talents and wrote to him on May 16, 1800:
I would gladly exchange the purple robe of the First Consul for the epaulettes of the brigade commander under your command.
Jacques Luc Barbier-Walbonne. Jean Victor Moreau
Moreau was arrested for his never-proven connection with the royalists and General Pichegru and was exiled to the United States in 1805.
Jean-Charles Pichegru, the young Bonaparte's former tutor in mathematics, was also considered a rival of this Corsican for a time; it was him, in a conversation with Doctor O'Meare on the island of Saint Helena, that Napoleon called "the most capable of the generals of the time of the Republic."
Charles Pichegru. Portrait by Alexandre-François Caminade
Over time, Pichegru came to sympathize with the royalists. He resigned as early as 1795. He was sent to hard labor after Augereau dispersed the Council of Elders and the Council of Five Hundred on September 4, 1797. He fled and in 1799 found himself in Switzerland with the army of General A. M. Rimsky-Korsakov, defeated by Masséna. Due to Rimsky-Korsakov's defeat, Suvorov was forced to change his route and abandon the march on Paris. Later, in England, Pichegru joined the famous Breton Chouan leader Cadoudal and traveled with him to France. There, he was arrested and found strangled in a cell in Temple Prison on April 6, 1804. We will probably discuss him in a separate article.
And the aforementioned General Barthélemy Joubert had a real chance of becoming a military consul, ahead of Bonaparte, who was stuck in Egypt.
Statue of Joubert on the facade of the Louvre
It was to him that Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, one of the founders of the Jacobin Club and an active member of the Feuillants Club, a former member of the Committee of Public Safety, president of the Convention and the National Assembly, and a high-degree Freemason of the Nine Sisters lodge, proposed to “restore order” in Paris and France.
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès in a portrait by David
30-year-old Joubert proudly replied to the experienced intriguer:
If I want, twenty grenadiers will be enough to end all this.
By early summer 1799, a plan for a coup d'état had already been drawn up, but the conspirators decided that Joubert needed one more brilliant victory, after which he would return triumphant to an applauding Paris. But the young general's rival, Suvorov, emerged, and Joubert died at the very outset of the Battle of Novi, on August 15, 1799.
However, Bonaparte himself agreed to recognize a completely different general as his equal and his only rival – Louis Lazare Hoche, about whom he said:
If Gosh had crossed my path, I would have had to either retreat or break him.
And he said, upon learning of his death:
In the end, there were two of us, but one was needed.
Lazare Hoche at the Battle of Quiberon in a painting by Charles Porion
Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of the Bridge at Arcole in a painting by Horace Vernet
Marshal Emmanuel Grouchy in his memoirs directly calls Hoche "a hero, a rival of Bonaparte and an equally great military leader."
A contemporary of those events, the Belgian Jesuit and encyclopedist François-Xavier de Feller, reports:
Hoche's proud character, as well as his enormous influence on the soldiers, had for some time aroused fear in the Directory and Bonaparte, who saw him as a formidable rival.
And this is the opinion of the French writer Jacques Marquet de Montbreton:
Hoche, a great politician and a great commander, greedy for glory and adored by his troops, was the most dangerous rival for Bonaparte of all the generals of that time.
British historian Richard Holmes called Gosh:
Quick-witted, stern and ruthless... a general of genuine talent whose early death was a loss to France.
By the way, what do you think of this saying from Gosha:
If your sword is short, step forward!
And in the army they said that of all the generals, Gosh had “the longest saber and the shortest speech.”
Quite revealing, isn't it? We'll talk about Lazar Gosha in today's article.
Origin and early military career of Louis Lazare Hoche
The hero of this article was born on June 24, 1768, in the village of Montreuil, located near Versailles and considered a prestigious location for the construction of mansions for the French royal court. From 1783, the estate of Louis XVI's sister, Elisabeth of France, was located here, and in 1787, Montreuil became part of Versailles.
The future general's father, a retired soldier named Louis Hoche, served as a groom on the royal hunting grounds. His mother, née Anne Merlier, died when the boy was only two years old, and he was subsequently raised by his aunt, a fruit seller in the village. The future general was educated by his maternal uncle, a parish priest, and Hoche even served for a time as a choir singer in his church.
In 1782, his father arranged for 14-year-old Lazare Hoche to work in the royal stables, but in October 1784, he opted to enlist in the military. Initially, he wanted to enlist in the colonial troops in the distant East Indies, but ultimately became a quartermaster in a unit of the royal guard. In November 1785, we see him as a guard grenadier, and by May 1789, Hoche had risen to the rank of corporal. It is said that he spent almost all of his salary on books, which he read and became a staunch republican.
After the outbreak of the Revolution, the royal guard was disbanded, and Hoche took an active part in many of the events of the time, including the storming of the Bastille. He then served in Lafayette's detachment during his march on Versailles on October 5, 1789, and the following day accompanied King Louis XVI and his family during their forced move from Versailles to Paris.
Jacques François Joseph Swebach. Louis XVI enters Paris on October 6, 1789.
In September 1789, Hoche joined the new National Guard as a sergeant, and on January 1, 1792, he was transferred to the 104th Infantry Regiment, where he became a senior sergeant. Finally, on May 18, 1792, he received his first officer rank – he became a lieutenant in the 58th Infantry Regiment.
Hoche in the army of Republican France
Hoche's baptism of fire took place in August 1792, during the defense of the city of Thionville, besieged by Austrians and French émigrés. During this siege, in response to a demand to surrender, a wooden fairground horse was placed on the city wall with a haystack at its feet and the inscription:
Thionville will give up when this horse eats the hay.
Having distinguished himself here, Hoche received the rank of captain on September 1, 1792, and was sent to the Army of the Ardennes, where he became adjutant to General Alexis Leveneur de Tillières, with whom he developed a very good relationship.
Alexis Le Veneur in a portrait by an unknown artist
On March 18, 1793, Hoche took part in the Battle of Neerwinden, an unsuccessful battle for General Dumouriez's French army. In August of that year, following Dumouriez's betrayal and flight, Hoche and General Leveneur were arrested on suspicion of treason, but were soon (just 12 days) released. Once in Paris, Hoche presented a plan for a new military campaign, which received high praise from Lazare Carnot. Resigning his position as a battalion commander, Hoche returned to his duties as Leveneur's aide-de-camp, but was soon appointed chief of staff of General Souham's division and commander of the Dunkirk garrison. For his successful defense of that city against superior British forces (two thousand to 40 thousand), he was promoted to brigadier general on September 13, 1793. On the 22nd of that month, he became chief of staff of the Army of the Ardennes. A month later, on October 23, he was promoted to divisional general. And already on November 2, 1793, he was appointed commander of the Moselle army.
A comparison with the young Bonaparte might be instructive here. Napoleon was born a year before the subject of this article. Unlike Hoche, he received a professional military education and, before the revolution, already held the rank of officer—a junior lieutenant. However, we then see Hoche catching up and then overtaking the famous Corsican. They both achieved the rank of brigadier general in the same year: Hoche in September 1793 at the age of 25, Bonaparte at the end of 1793 after his triumph at the siege of Toulon—a little later, but still at the age of 24. However, just a month later, Hoche became a division general and almost immediately an army commander. Bonaparte, on the other hand, achieved the rank of division general only in 1795, at the age of 26 (after the suppression of the royalist rebellion), and command of the army in 1796.
So, Lazare Hoche became a general in September 1793 at the age of 25 and died four years later, on September 19, 1797. He spent almost four months in prison, released after Robespierre's fall. What did Lazare Hoche accomplish in those less than four years?
Republican Army General Lazar Ghosh
François Gérard. Portrait of Republican General Lazare Hoche.
On November 17, 1793, at the head of the Army of the Moselle, Hoche successfully fought the Prussians at Bitsch and Blieskastel, but on November 28, 1793, after crossing the Saar River, he was defeated at Kaiserslautern. However, in the second half of December, Hoche's Army of the Moselle and Pichegru's Army of the Rhine were able to go on the offensive again.
A few more words about the character of the article's hero.
As Hoche was giving his final orders before the Battle of Wörth-Fröschwiller, a cannonball split the tree trunk under which the general stood, and then a stray enemy bullet killed his horse. Rising from the ground, Hoche calmly said:
Apparently, these gentlemen want me to serve in the infantry.
He then ordered the soldiers to be told that he would buy the captured artillery guns, and kept his promise: he paid for 18 of them.
Thus, Hoche defeated the Austrians at Wörth-Fröschwiller, the Austrians and Prussians at Geisberg, and, building on this success, the French besieged Landau on December 27 and liberated it on December 31. Ultimately, the Austrians were forced to retreat across the Rhine, while the Prussian troops retreated to Oppenheim and Bingen. Finally, on January 17, 1794, the French occupied Fort Louis.
Meanwhile, the Army of the Rhine was placed under the operational control of Hoche, which greatly displeased Pichegru, an influential member of the Convention and people's representative in the Army of the Rhine, Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just.
The most famous portrait of Saint-Just (by an unknown artist) from the Musée Carnavalet, 1793. Note the "slave ring" on his ear (there is a second one on the other ear).
Wanting to see Pichegru as the commander-in-chief of the two united armies, Saint-Just secured Hoche's transfer to the south.
The vicissitudes of fate
On March 11, 1794, Hoche married 16-year-old Anna Adelaide Deshaux, who bore him two children: a daughter, who lived until 1867, and a son, who died in infancy.
Anna Adelaide Hoche with her daughter, 1798
On March 10, the day before his wedding, he was appointed commander of the Army of Italy. However, following a denunciation by Saint-Just and Pichegru, he was dismissed from this post just ten days later. On April 1, 1794, Hoche was arrested in Nice and transported to Paris, where he was first imprisoned in the Carmelite monastery, then in the Carmes prison in Paris. On May 16, he was transferred to the Conciergerie. Even Lazare Nicolas Margaret Carnot, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, who sympathized with the young general and served as acting president of the Convention from May 5 to 19, 1794, and a future member of the Directory, was unable to secure his release. One can imagine the grief of Hoche's young wife.
Hoche remained in the Conciergerie until July 27, 1794, when, during the Thermidorian coup d'état, "scoundrels rid France of fanatics."
Drawing parallels with Bonaparte's career, it's worth noting that Napoleon, by contrast, was on excellent terms with Robespierre's brother, Augustin, and was arrested just after the dictator's fall. But he was soon released—though without his position. Accompanied by his friends Junot and Marmont, he returned to Paris. Marmont recalled this time:
The three of us (he, Bonaparte, and Junot) found ourselves in Paris. Bonaparte without a position, I without a legal leave, and Junot as an aide-de-camp to a general the government refused to recognize. We spent our time at the Palais Royal and the theaters, despite having almost no money and no prospects for the future.
But on October 5, 1795, Bonaparte, summoned by Barras, suppressed the royalist rebellion in half a day, earned the nickname “General Vendémiaire” – and said to Junot:
If these fellows (the rebels) had given me command over them, how the members of the Convention would have been blown away!
Execution of rebels on 13 Vendémiaire, 4th year. Church of Saint-Roch, Rue Saint-Honoré. Etching by S. I. Helman based on a drawing by Charles Monnet.
However, another republican general was completely unlucky – Hoche’s friend and former commander of the Army of the Rhine, Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was executed on July 23, 1794 – a few days before the fall of Robespierre.
Jean-Louis Victor Vigée du Vignaud. Josephine de Beauharnais's Visit to Her Husband Alexandre, Detained in the Luxembourg Palace.
Hoche provided financial support for his friend's widow and consoled her as best he could, becoming her lover. However, some claim that Hoche and Josephine's affair began as early as April 1794, in a Carmelite convent that housed prisoners of both sexes and apparently had a lax regime. Thus, the subject of the article beat Bonaparte to the bed of this amorous Creole.
Finally, on November 3, 1794, Hoche was appointed commander-in-chief of the armies of Brest and Cherbourg, tasked with suppressing the rebellion in Vendée and Brittany. His aide-de-camp was Josephine de Beauharnais's 13-year-old son, Eugène, who would later become Bonaparte's stepson and Viceroy of Italy. Josephine now began to console herself alone, along with her friend Thérèse, a shameless "socialite" whose rescue from the guillotine by Jean-Lambert Tallien led him to deliver a speech in the Convention that brought down Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, and many other ardent Jacobins.
Jean-Lambert Tallien
Their fate was decided by a short note from Teresa to Tallien:
I die because I belong to a coward.
Thérèse Tallien in a portrait by Marie-Guillemine Benoist
Ultimately, three members of the Committee of Public Safety, 10 members of the Committee of Public Safety, 13 deputies of the Convention, and 71 functionaries of the rebellious Parisian communes were executed. And, as some authors claim, the "Madonna of Thermidor" was released at the hour of Robespierre and his comrades' execution.
The execution of Robespierre on 10 Thermidor (28 July 1794)
Returning from Vendée, Eugène Beauharnais learned that after the suppression of the royalist rebellion in Paris on October 11-13, 1795, everything had been confiscated from the townspeople weapon, and went to Bonaparte, who had issued this order, with a request to return his father’s family sword.
In this drawing by Achille Devéria, we see Napoleon returning Eugène de Beauharnais's father's sword:
Napoleon did indeed return the sword, and some, incidentally, claim it was the first sword they came across that more or less matched the description, taken from the Arsenal. However, Eugène was in no position to quibble. Then Eugène's mother, the 32-year-old "merry widow" Marie Rose Josepha de Beauharnais, came to thank Bonaparte. On March 9, 1796, this Creole woman married this relatively unknown general, who was six years her junior, 11 years older than her stepson Eugène, and 14 years older than her stepdaughter Hortense.
In the next article, we'll continue our story about Lazare Hoche. We'll discuss the war in the Vendée, Hoche's triumph on the Quiberon Peninsula, the attempted landing in Ireland, further victories at the head of the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, and the general's unexpected death.
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