FROM SLAVKOV TO WATERLOO - OCTAVE LEVAVASSEUR

FROM SLAVKOV TO WATERLOO

OCTAVE LEVAVASSEUR - cavalry artilleryman and adjutant of Marshal Ney.

In a decade of Napoleonic wars filled with campaigns and battles, there is no more illustrious and colourful figure than Marshal Michel Ney. For one of the first battles of the Danube Campaign in 1805, which ended in the brightness of the Slavic sun, he was given the title of Duke of Elchingen; for what he accomplished during the tragic retreat from Russia in 1812, he received the title of Prince of Moscow; but the greatest accolade was given to him by the soldiers themselves when they called him the Bravest of the Brave.

Octave Levavasseur, whose memoirs you are now holding in your hands, was Ney's aide-de-camp for most of his military career, which in itself amounted to a distinction and recognition of courage, for the Marshal wanted the same from his officers as he wanted from himself, and often these were deadly actions. In his memoirs, therefore, you will find stories that are dramatic and gripping. Moreover, from the point of view of the military and political history of the Napoleonic Wars, they are extremely valuable testimonies, for their author completes the psychological profile of Ney not only in moments of combat, but also at key moments in history when this man forced Napoleon to abdicate and literally put him back on the throne a year later. He received little gratitude for this, and the fateful decision in May 1815 then cost Ney his life. Levavasseur was closest to him at the time, and although he makes no secret of his love and devotion to his marshal, he does not hide his critical reservations about what Ney did.

Octave Levavasseur, however, left other testimony. It is no less crucial, for it documents the transformation of the revolutionary army into an imperial one, and the change in the mindset of the soldiers who fought against the monarchy until they eventually helped to create it in a different guise. In terms of our history, Levavasseur's account of the Battle of Austerlitz/Slavkov is certainly not without interest.

Levavasseur's memoirs are to some extent the antithesis of the memoirs already published in Czech by Elka Press. In them, the cavalry officers Marcellin Marbot and Charles-Denis Parquin, like the plain grenadier Coignet, often cry out the legendary Vive l'Empereur, Long live the Emperor. Nothing of the sort is heard in these memoirs, and one would search in vain for admiring sentences about the charismatic man in the grey redingot and the famous double-cornered hat. This is not simply due to the Ney-Napoleon counterpoint; rather, it is the critical thinking of a man who was not fooled by either Napoleon's victory or later legend.

• Elka Press, Prague 2018
• Bound book
• 148 x 210 mm
• 288 pages
• ISBN 978-80-87057-37-7

This book is in Czech language only!