Another one of the real giants of the Napoleonic Wars today for #MarshalMonday. This week it’s the marshal who Napoleon called ‘the bravest of the brave’ and who would pay the ultimate price for returning to the Emperor’s side during the Waterloo campaign: Michel Ney, Duke of Elchingen and Prince of Moscow.
The son of a cooper, Ney was born in Sarrelouis in 1769 (the same year as Napoleon, Wellington, Castlereagh and Lannes). Sarrelouis was a French enclave in the largely German region of Saarland and so Ney grew up speaking both languages. He was well educated at the Collège des Augustins and afterwards became a notary.
If there was anyone ill-suited to life in a law office, it was Michel Ney and so in 1787 he enlisted in a hussar regiment. As a commoner, he was prevented from becoming an officer by the regulations of the Bourbons, but he moved quickly up through the non-commissioned ranks and gained a reputation for being an excellent rider and swordsman.
When the Revolution broke out, Ney’s unit was assigned to the Army of the North. He fought at the Battle of Valmy and was commissioned as an officer in 1792. By 1796, he had been promoted to général de brigade. Unlike many of his fellow marshals, who came to Napoleon’s attention in Italy or served with him in Egypt, Ney remained in the North, commanding the French troops in Switzerland.
With the creation of the Empire in 1804, Ney was elevated to Marshal of France. He quickly proved himself one of Napoleon’s fiercest frontline fighters: leading his men to victories at Gunzbourg and Elchingen in 1805 and helping to trap General Mack’s Austrian army at Ulm. Following that battle, his corps seized Scharnitz, Innsbruck, and Hall. 1806 was also a good year for Ney. Though he was reprimanded by Napoleon for his pre-emptive conduct at Jena, he soon made up for it with victories at Erfurt, Magdebourg, Thorn, Soldau, and Lauterbach.
Ney could be hot-headed and impetuous, to put it mildly. He was reprimanded by Napoleon again soon afterwards for disobeying orders regarding winter quarters and thus contributing to keeping hostilities going over a harsh winter. Once more, he made up for it by a timely arrival at Eylau and a strong contribution to the victory at Friedland.
In 1808, Napoleon made Ney Duke of Elchingen in honour of his previous victory and then sent him to Spain. Here he started well; taking Bilbao, Logrono, and Soria. However, he was soon joined there by Marshal Soult and the two clashed badly to the point that Ney had to be talked out of challenging his fellow marshal to a duel.
Soult wasn’t the only person Ney butted heads with. Soon afterwards he fell afoul of Joseph Bonaparte, who had ordered him to take over Victor’s Corps. Ney refused without written proof that this was Napoleon’s wish and so was sent back to France. He was only there a couple of months though and then was sent back to Spain once more.
Next on the list was Marshal Masséna. Ney’s corps was added to the Army of Portugal and he argued with Masséna over the choice of his staff, only narrowly avoiding being relieved of command. When the army had to retreat in 1811, Ney commanded the rearguard with great skill. By this point, he had lost all confidence for Masséna and again refused to obey orders without written confirmation from Napoleon. Once again, he was sent back to France.
Ney came to the fore once more during the retreat from Russia, where his troops replaced those of Davout to form the rearguard. Here the marshal demonstrated outstanding courage and fighting spirit, inspiring his men to keep going in the midst of the most appalling conditions. When asked to surrender, he brusquely declared: “A Marshal of France never surrenders! One does not parley under the fire of the enemy!”
He fought every single step of the way out of Russia, causing Napoleon to say of him: “What a soldier! The army of France is full of brave men, but Michel Ney is truly the bravest of the brave!”. According to legend, he was the very last Frenchman to leave Russian soil.
Ney was wounded a few times in the campaign of 1813-14 but was highly active in the defence of France. When Marmont surrendered and turned all his troops over to the Allies, he became convinced that further combat was useless and ultimately unwinnable. He was one of the chief spokespersons in convincing Napoleon that abdication was the best choice.
Upon their restoration, Ney adhered to the new Bourbon regime and was lauded by them in return. Like many of the surviving marshals, he was made a peer of France, although he was looked down on at the court because of his common birth. True to form, he verbally tore into the Duchess of Angoulême who had reduced his wife to tears by her unkind treatment.
1815 brought Napoleon back onto French soil and the Bourbons duly ran away. Ney, anxious about the impact of civil war on France despite how much he disliked the Bourbons, declared he would bring Napoleon back in an iron cage. However, if Napoleon had a superpower it was charisma and Ney was won over along with all the other troops who refused to fire on their former Empreror. Napoleon welcomed him back warmly.
Waterloo was not Ney’s (or Napoleon’s for that matter) finest battle. He led unsupported cavalry charges which failed to break Wellington’s squares and then failed to spike the canons he had overrun. There is a lot of debate as to how much his performance contributed to the French defeat, but I don’t believe it can all be placed on his shoulders. His energy and ferocity cannot be questioned though – he had at least four horses killed underneath him during the battle and was heard to roar: “Come and see how a marshal of France meets his death!”.
After Napoleon’s last and final exile, Ney was arrested in the August. The Bourbons needed to make an example of someone – they’d taken to their heels the minute they heard Napoleon was in France and now they needed to discourage any further pro-Bonapartist sentiment from rearing its head. Ney was to be the someone. After failing to organise a court martial, the Bourbon regime tried Ney for treason in the Chamber of Peers.
It is interesting to see how the other marshals reacted: Jourdan, Mortier, Masséna and Moncey declared themselves unfit to try him by court martial (Moncey even went to prison for it), Augereau refused to take part, Davout tried to prevent his condemnation and Macdonald did not attend the trial. Not of all of his fellows were on his side however: Kellerman, Serurier, Victor, Pérignon and Marmont all voted for his death.
Ney’s lawyer tried to get him off on the technicality of his birth: his hometown was now Prussian, effectively making him a German. Ney was far too proud a patriot to let this stand though and cried out passionately “I am French and I will remain French!”. He was then sentenced to death.
On 7th December 1815, Ney stood in front of a firing squad. The place of execution had had to be altered as a mob had started to form in Ney’s favour at the original location. The choice to execute him was an incredibly divisive one; he was a popular figure.
Ney’s sobriquet from the Emperor was not ill-deserved; he died with the same unflinching courage as he’d lived. He refused the offer of a blindfold and was permitted to give the order himself:
“Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her. Soldiers, fire!.”
Ney and his wife Aglaé had four sons. One of these bitterly resented the Duke of Wellington for not doing more to intervene in his father’s case – he believed that Wellington could have prevented the execution if he’d chosen to – and challenged the Duke to a duel. Wellington did not accept the challenge. The British, despite spending about a quarter of a century trying to remove France’s government, stated that they could not meddle with French affairs.
Ney is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, like so many of his fellow Napoleonic marshals.
Rachael's Ramblings 
I’m one of the few, that believes Ney made to the United States in 1815. Would live, work, and die in North Carolina. Perhaps someday, by DNA, we could put this to rest.
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