MEMOIRS OWN OF SERGEANT BOURGOGNE 1812-1813 Authorized Translation
from the Trench Original with an Introduction by the Hon. SIR JOHN
FORTESCUE and Illustrations from the drawings of FABER DU FAUR 1929
NEW YORK ROBERT M. McBRIDE COMPANY PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN I K s I
INTRODUCTION THE conscientious historian will always use the older
volumes of military reminiscences by British non-com missioned
officers and privates with considerable caution. The memories of
the most accurate of us become treacherous with advancing years,
and, unless we have a contemporary diary or contemporary letters to
check us, are apt, in all good faith, to lapse into romance over
past experiences. This is especially true of the experiences of
war, and in particular of battle, when a man can see little
himself, but, after repeated discussion with his com rades, is
liable to confound a multitude of their visions with his own. If by
chance a man be possessed by the demon which is called the literary
instinct, he is the more likely to be misled, not necessarily
through deliberate ill-faith, to record occurrences as within his
actual know ledge, though, as a matter of fact, he is aware of them
only through hearsay. Some little touch, which will heighten the
effect of a sentence or a paragraph, suddenly strikes him, and down
it goes. The private soldier is not as a rule endowed with the
literary gift but he may have friends in the lower ranks of the
literary profession who flatter themselves that they enjoy it and
they pick his brains, as the phrase goes, and make copy of the
result. This is the true origin of most of the books concerning the
Peninsular War which purport to have come from the ranks. They are
mainlythe work of hack-writers, who give their information at
second-hand, having INTRODUCTION gathered It, very likely in a
public-house, from some old soldier, who probably was not above
hoaxing them if sober, and was very voluble of reminiscence if
drunk. The military memories of officers are rather more
trustworthy, as a rule but they too need to be carefully checked.
Some of them seem to lose their hold upon facts directly they take
a pen into their hand others cannot refrain from picturesque
touches because they are effective. One such writer, for instance,
makes great capital out of the supposed coincidence that Badajoz
was stormed upon Easter Sunday whereas study of the almanac shows
that it certainly was not. Even such a writer as Napier sometimes,
for the sake of literary effect, gravely prints a scrap of the
merest camp-gossip. But on the other hand there are reminiscences
which, however startling, bear upon them the unmistakable mark of
truth, and among these must be ranked those of Sergeant Bourgogne
and though they are those not of a British but of a French soldier,
of the great days of Napoleon, they are well worth study by all
British readers who would understand military human nature.
Bourgogne, the son of a cloth-merchant, with some private means and
a superior education, joined the Light Infantry of the Imperial
Guard in 1805, went through the Polish campaign of 1806-7, was
wounded at Essling in 1809, d was then moved to the Peninsula
whence, after having to do with the British army under Wellington,
his regiment was withdrawn in March, 1812, for the Russian
campaign. Of his experiences in Spain and Portugal he tells us
nothing. There is not so much as a reference to them, from which we
may infer that he was not among those who made the disastrous
retreat, under Massena, from Torres Vedras. He mentions that from
Paris the regiment travelled in vi INTRODUCTION waggons, day and
night, to the Rhine, but he does not report what would have been
most interesting to know the condition of the men, their arms and
equipment at the end of the journey. Thence they marched eastward
to the Niemen, crossed it on June 25th and entered on the road to
Moscow...
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