Lazare Hoche: The Finest Hour and Death of Bonaparte's Rival
General Ghosh in a portrait by David, 1793
В previous article The book recounted the origins and early life of Lazare Hoche, his meteoric and fantastic military career. We parted ways in June 1796, when the 28-year-old Hoche was already a lieutenant general. He had just over a year to live, and it's amazing how much he accomplished in such a short time.
Vendée
Vendée on the map of France
Victor Hugo wrote in his novel “93”:
Brittany is a staunch rebel. Every time she rose up for two thousand years, she was right; but this time, for the first time, she was proven wrong.
And then he said through the mouth of one of the heroes (Simurden):
If the revolution perishes, it will perish because of the Vendée. The Vendée is more terrible than ten Germanys. For France to survive, the Vendée must be destroyed.
The Vendée was almost "killed" in 1793–1794—but not by Hoche. The uprising here erupted after the Convention passed a decree on compulsory recruitment on February 24, 1793. The first insurgent detachment was led by coachmaker Jean-Jacques Catelineau and forester Jean-Nicolas Stofflet, a former private in the Swiss regiment. In mid-March, the rebels routed a Republican corps of about three thousand men. The Breton peasants were joined by urban dwellers, whose detachments were led by local nobles—former officers in the royal army. Unrest also spread to Anjou, Brittany, and Poitou. The rebels received active support from the British.
Individual rebel units sometimes united into a single army of up to 40 men, and this was truly a serious matter. At one point, their forces occupied Saumur and were about to march on Paris, but they turned west, capturing Angers and laying siege to Nantes.
The Convention decided to "destroy" the Vendée on August 1, 1793, with Bonaparte to lead the republican troops. He refused to fight the peasants and chose to resign. Kléber and Marceau attempted to replace him, but were defeated on September 19. However, new combat units from the Army of the West were transferred to the rebellious departments, and the rebels suffered a crushing defeat at Chalais. The remnants of their troops and the civilians retreating with them were surrounded and almost completely exterminated at Le Mans in December 1793.
And in 1794, the commander of the Western Army, General Thurrot, began to “kill the Vendée,” which, according to him, was supposed to become "national cemetery"Dividing his troops into two groups of 12 columns each, he began a "cleansing" of the rebellious territories. It is believed that approximately 10,000 people were executed.
The stained glass window of the church of the commune Le Luc-sur-Boulogne, where more than 500 residents were shot by soldiers of one of the “hell columns”
The surviving rebel leaders signed a peace treaty at La Jaunay, according to which the Vendée recognized the republic in exchange for a promise to exempt them from conscription and taxes for 10 years and to cease persecution of priests who had not sworn allegiance to the Republic. It seemed that Brittany had been pacified, but this treaty was not recognized by the peasants of the Maine-et-Loire department (modern-day Mayenne). It was they who entered the history like the Chouans (Chouannerie, from Chat-huant - owl, nickname of the peasants of the local aristocrat Jean Cottreau).
Charles Carpentier. Chouans in Ambush
Their leader was Georges Cadoudal, the son of a Breton miller and a failed priest.
The hero of the article, the young General Lazare Hoche, was now tasked with restoring order in the Vendée. His chief of staff was Emmanuel Grouchy, a capable military general who would lose two horses at the Battle of Trebbia, receive 14 wounds (including four saber wounds and several bayonet wounds) at the Battle of Novi, and be captured by soldiers of Suvorov's army. It was Grouchy that Bonaparte later, somewhat unfairly, blamed for his defeat at Waterloo.
As head of the Western Army, Gosh acted with considerable effectiveness, but not excessive brutality. Incidentally, he said:
If you execute a man by the guillotine, you get rid of one individual, it is true, but then you make all his friends and relatives enemies of the government forever.
On February 15, 1795, a new peace agreement was concluded with the Vendéens, but Cadoudal established contact with French emigrants in England, whose army was to land near Quiberon.
Hoche's triumph at Quiberon
On May 1, 1795, Hoche returned to the Vendée, once again assuming command of the Army of Brest. The 4,000-strong émigré invasion corps was led by the Counts de Puissy and d'Herville, who were fierce rivals. During the operation, they received reinforcements—about 1,500 men. But Hoche's 13,000-strong army pushed the royalists back to the Quiberon Peninsula, and the young general wrote to the Convention:
The English, the emigrants and the Chouans are in the rat trap, and I, with several large cats, am standing in the doorway.
An attempt to break through on July 16 was unsuccessful, on July 19 the Republican army went on the offensive, on July 21 it was all over, 748 French noblemen-emigrants dressed in English military uniforms were shot on the spot.
Jean Sorel. The end of the Battle of Quiberon: émigrés unsuccessfully attempt to break through to the English ships.
Lazare Hoche, a monument on the Quiberon Peninsula
The final pacification of the Vendée
The émigrés made a new attempt to land in France under the leadership of the Comte d'Artois, brother of the executed Louis XVI. They landed on the Île de Dieu, supported by the Vendée detachments of Jean-Nicolas Stoffe and François de Charette. At the head of the combined Army of the Ocean (which included the Armies of the West, Brest, and Cherbourg), Hoche routed these rebels as well. The Comte d'Artois fled to England, Stoffe and Charette were captured and executed, effectively ending the Vendée rebellion.
Attempted landing in Ireland
On September 22, 1796, we find the hero of our article commanding four military districts—the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 22nd. And on November 1 of that year, at his suggestion, a decision was made to launch a retaliatory strike against England by forming an expeditionary force to land on the coast of Ireland. The idea of such a landing operation had already been expressed by Lazare Carnot, who now supported the initiative of the hero of this article.
Hoche, appointed commander, survived an assassination attempt on October 16 near a theater in Rennes, when a local royalist fired at him with a pistol but missed. This didn't stop him from actively preparing for the operation. According to various sources, Hoche had at his disposal either 44 or 48 ships and about 20 soldiers. The plan was sound—after all, the English were hated in Ireland, and if successful, they would have no time to support the French émigrés. But the weather hampered its execution. However, let's not rush into things.
Hoche and his deputy, Grouchy, began the landing operation in Ireland on December 15, 1796, when the ships of the French squadron set sail from Brest. Due to bad weather, they were separated and forced to proceed to Ireland individually or in small groups. Fortunately for the British, Hoche's ship was not among those that managed to reach the intended landing site in time. The fact is that Vice-Admiral Morard de Gall's 32-gun flagship frigate, the Fraternite, carrying Hoche, was spotted by the British on December 21 and, to avoid a clash with superior enemy forces, retreated far out into the Atlantic.
Grouchy was responsible for the decision to land. Admiral Bouvet, who was with him, categorically objected, citing bad weather, and Hoche's cautious deputy never brought himself to give the order. Meanwhile, on December 30, the subject of this article's ship finally approached the Irish coast at Bantry Bay. Upon learning that the French squadron had already departed Ireland, Hoche was also forced to turn back. He arrived in Rochefort harbor on January 13, 1797. For France, this expedition ended with the loss of 12 ships, the largest of which was the 74-gun Droits de l'Homme.
Leopold Le Guen. Battle between the French ship of the line Droits de l'Homme and the frigates HMS Amazon and Indefatigable, 13 and 14 January 1797
It should be noted that after Hoche's death, in 1798, about two thousand French soldiers still managed to land in Ireland, but were unable to gain a foothold.
New victories for Lazar Gosh
Lazare Gauche in a portrait by Jean-Louis Lanneville, circa 1801
Just 11 days after arriving in Rochefort (January 24, 1797), Hoche was appointed commander of the 70,000-man Army of Sambre-et-Meuse. Among his subordinates were the future Marshals François Lefebvre and Michel Ney. Hoche's ally in this area was Jean-Victor Moreau's Army of the Rhine and Moselle. At the same time, Napoleon was conducting his first Italian campaign. Under Hoche's leadership, the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse crossed the Rhine (two days before Moreau's army) and won five victories over the Austrians: at Uckerath, Altenkirchen, Dierdorf, Heddesdorf, and Neuwied. Eight thousand enemy soldiers and officers were captured.
Hoche's triumphal advance was halted by the Treaty of Leoben on April 18, 1797—the day of Hoche's army's victory at Neuwied. Incidentally, Ney (then a brigadier general) suffered a severe setback in this victorious battle for the French: pursuing the retreating enemy at the head of 500 hussars, he encountered Austrian reserve units numbering up to 6,000 men. A little later, the main French army arrived, and about 4,000 Austrians were captured. But by then, Ney had also been captured. Hoche ordered his exchange "in advance": he gave his word of honor that the general would not fight until the French handed over their captured general to the Austrians. And just a month later, Ney received a letter from the Austrians officially authorizing him to fight against them again.
Hoche's popularity in France and the army reached its peak. He was reportedly called the "Rhine Bonaparte," but this is most likely a later nickname. Hoche's authority at that time was clearly no less than Napoleon's, if not exceeding it.
In July 1797, Hoche was appointed Minister of War, but less than a month later he was forced to resign, as Paul Barras declared a violation of the constitution: the post of minister could not be held by a person under 30 years of age.
An attempt at royalist revenge
In 1797, the pro-monarchist party of the Clichy Club won the elections to the Council of Elders and the Council of Five Hundred. The power of the "directors" was hanging by a thread, and Paul Barras began searching for a "sword"—a decisive general who would help him get rid of his political opponents. He considered both Hoche and Moreau as candidates, but ultimately chose Bonaparte, commander of the Army of Italy, who had already helped him suppress the royalist rebellion of October 1795 (11–13 Vendémiaire, Year IV of the Republic). However, Napoleon, along with his nickname, General Vendémiaire He also received a wave of cold contempt for interfering in the civil conflict. And so, in his place, he sent the ardent republican Charles-Pierre Augereau, who immediately declared to the "directors":
I came to kill royalists.
Augereau on an engraving by Charon based on a drawing by P. Martinet from a painted original by C. Thévenin, 1798.
On September 4, 1797, Augereau, at the head of 10 soldiers, dispersed the deputies meeting in the Tuileries, arresting many of them (including the popular General Pichegru). In response to the deputies' outrage, one officer mockingly declared:
The law is a saber.
Augereau's coup d'état, Tuileries, 8 Fructidor
The election results were annulled.
On September 2, Hoche received command of the Rhine-Moselle Army and established his headquarters in Wetzlar near Koblenz.
The unexpected death of General Gosh
On September 13, Lazar Gosh suddenly fell ill, and his condition only progressively worsened.
The French historian Abel Hugo describes the general's illness as follows:
This illness was initially dismissed as a common cold, which he did not wish to treat and which could initially be easily cured by giving himself a few days' rest... The illness progressed rapidly: Gauche became very irritable, but, despite the advice of doctors, he did not stop attending to the affairs of the Republic.
Lazare Hoche died on September 19 at the age of 29 (13 of which he served in the army). The dying general's main symptom was a "bloody cough." An autopsy revealed numerous black spots in his intestines, which many interpreted as a sign of violent death. Alexandre-Charles Rousselin, in his biography of Hoche, reports:
The stomach and intestines were opened along their entire length... broad black marks were found in the center and less distinct marks around the circumference, as well as multiple dots that in places almost merged.
Four days later, Hoche was buried at Fort Petersberg in Koblenz, next to General François Séverin Marceau, who had died a year earlier (in September 1796). Curiously, the design for the mausoleum in which the two French generals were now buried was drawn up by their "colleague," Kléber. In 1797, a monument to Hoche was erected in the northern German town of Weißenturm (near Neuwied):
Monument to General Hoche in Weissenturm
In 1919, the French, who occupied the Rhineland, reburied the remains of their revolutionary general there.
Versions of General Gosh's death
Gosh's illness was so unexpected and progressed so rapidly that theories immediately began to circulate about the popular general's poisoning. For example, Grushi, who, it should be recalled, served under Gosh in 1796–1797, wrote in his "Memoirs":
The young hero, Bonaparte's rival and no less a great military leader, died in Wetzlar. In fact, it is believed he was poisoned.
Here is a quote from Edouard Bergougnoux's "Essay on the Life of Lazare Hoche," published in 1852:
It's equally difficult to accept and deny the accusations of poisoning. In a few lines of his report on Gosha's illness, Pusselg affirmatively asserts that the general was not poisoned; on the other hand, the nature of the intestinal damage he noted in his autopsy report seems to contradict his own conclusion and points to the presence of poison. Clearly, the general's friends saw this contradiction as evidence of foul play.
And the aforementioned Abel Hugo writes:
There were many versions of General Gosh's death; many of them suggest that poison was the real cause.
Alphonse de Beauchamps, in his "History of the War in the Vendée," even names the poisoner—a certain blacksmith named Guillaumet. Others write of one of the Chouan commanders, Charles Martial. And those who support the poisoning theory often blame General Pichegru as the mastermind. Especially since Hoche himself, as he lay dying, whispered:
I am dressed in Nessus's poisoned clothes.
This is an allusion to the fate of Heracles, who died after his jealous wife, Deianira, gave him a tunic soaked in the poisoned blood of the centaur Nessus, who had attempted to abduct her (the woman, deceived by Nessus, was thus attempting to regain her husband's love). However, perhaps Gauche was trying to convey not the poisoning, but the torment he experienced before his death.
The official cause of Gosha's death is still considered to be a sharp exacerbation of tuberculosis, which had been latent until then, or acute pneumonia.
On September 16, General Debelle reported to Paris:
I write to you in tears: Citizens Directors, I find myself in the midst of weeping friends, and I cannot offer any explanation for the circumstances that deprived France of General Hoche. Possessing a strong and ardent temperament, General Hoche was, however, remarkably sensitive, experiencing only vivid and burning sensations. He took the slightest events extremely seriously. The revolution only developed his temperament; thrown into this great maelstrom, Hoche used all his abilities to worthily play the role destined for him. About a month ago, he began to suffer from a runny nose and chest tightness. This had begun in Brest, but he paid no attention to it then. All efforts were thrown into saving him; For seven or eight days he had been suffering from severe attacks of suffocation... Finally, last night, after a relatively calm day, when he was even able to go about his business, his suffering intensified, the terrible suffocation led to loss of consciousness, and after several hours of indescribable agony he died in my arms.
Gosha's death
Here is how the chief of staff of his army, General Rainier, described the last minutes of Gosh’s life in a letter to Jean-Victor Moreau on September 17:
I was present during General Gosh's final moments. His asthma prevented him from speaking and caused him to choke during the night. He sent me a series of written questions about the situation in the army, but he was no longer able to speak.
It should be clarified that Renier uses the word "asthma" not as a diagnosis (bronchial asthma or cardiac asthma), but in its literal meaning—"shortness of breath," "difficulty breathing." There is no evidence that Gosh had a chronic lung disease; on the contrary, those who knew this general well point to his endurance, health, and strength.
On October 1, at the initiative of Deputy Malibran, the Council of Five Hundred organized a ceremonial funeral for Lazare Hoche on the Champ de Mars in Paris. His bust was carried by four veterans who had served in the units he led, and the honor guard included Generals Hédouville, Tilly, and two future marshals, Augereau and Bernadotte. Another former subordinate of Hoche's and a future marshal, Lefebvre, delivered the farewell address, saying:
Humanity and we all have lost a true friend, victory - its son, the fatherland - a defender, the republic - a support.
The President of the Directory was another speaker, after which a choir of 40 girls performed a hymn composed by Luigi Cherubini with words by Marie-Joseph Chénier (brother of the poet André Chénier, who died at the guillotine).
And 8 days later, on October 9, 1797, the frigate "Muiron" entered the port of Frejus, from which Hoche's rival, General Bonaparte, who had left Egypt, landed on French soil.
Louis Meyer. Arrival in France of Bonaparte after his return from Egypt, October 9, 1799.
On October 16, he was already in Paris, where, playing to the crowd, he publicly declared to the envoy of Paul Barras:
What have you done with France, which I left you in such a brilliant position? I left you peace; I found war. I left you victories; I found defeats! I left you millions from Italy; I found poverty and predatory laws! What have you done with the hundred thousand Frenchmen I knew, my comrades in glory? They are dead!
In Memory of General Gosha
The French remember their hero. His name is inscribed on the Triumphal Column in Paris's Place de l'Étoile, and Avenue Hoche is also nearby. A statue of the general can be seen on the façade of the Louvre:
Another monument was erected in his birthplace, Montreuil (remember, this village is now part of Versailles). There are Places Hoche in Versailles and Rennes, and streets in Nîmes, Thionville, and several other cities bear his name.
In 1890, it became part of the French Navy. fleet The armored battleship Hoche, laid down in France in 1881, was commissioned - a unique "hybrid" of barbette and turret types of warships:
Let us clarify, by the way, that a barbette is a protective round armored support for artillery guns:
A 16-inch American gun on a barbette mount. Photograph from 1928.
Gosha's portrait can be seen on a French postage stamp from 1948:
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