“Who were the real men of the Fifth? Were they die-hard Napoleonic veterans, easily swayed to his cause? Were they simply terrified young conscripts unwilling to cross bayonets with the 1,000 moustachioed guardsmen at Napoleon’s back?”
By Dr. Graeme Callister
ON 1 MARCH, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte returned to France after a nearly 10-month exile on the island of Elba. Accompanied by a small force of loyal followers, the former emperor soon set off from Provence for Paris to reclaim his throne.
On 7 March, the outlaw ruler found his route blocked by a battalion of the Fifth Regiment of the Line just south of Grenoble. The epic scene of Napoleon winning over the men of the Fifth to his cause, gaining the day without a shot being fired, has come to symbolize the emperor’s appeal in the army, and for his supporters demonstrates the popularity of his return.
But who were the real men of the Fifth? Were they die-hard Napoleonic veterans, easily swayed to his cause? Were they simply terrified young conscripts unwilling to cross bayonets with the 1,000 moustachioed guardsmen at Napoleon’s back?
An assessment of the men’s service histories listed in the regiment’s registers gives some unique insights into this unit, whose defection turned Napoleon’s tentative gamble into a triumphant procession that would sweep him to Paris and beyond.
When Napoleon returned to France in March 1815, there were 1,308 men registered in the Fifth Line, excluding those definitely on leave, or who had deserted or been discharged (including them, there are 1,932 entries in the register). The regiment was organized into three battalions and was commanded by a colonel named Roussille, who had led it since 1809.
Of the 1,308 men, 812 had served all or most of their career in the Fifth. The vast majority of the other 496 had transferred in from other units; only seven men in the entire regiment were volunteers who first joined up after April 1814, and who had never marched under Napoleon’s eagles. Some 223 came from the 114th Line, 34 from the Imperial Guard (almost all Young Guard), and the rest from a total of 82 different units, including the navy, the Italian army and the Naples Guards (one man each).
Most of these transfers had happened only very recently. A total of 256 men arrived in the Fifth Line from other units between December 1814 and March 1815. Fewer than 100 were explicitly recorded as returning prisoners of war.
On paper, the regiment was a very experienced, proficient and disciplined unit – which was indeed the reason that it was chosen to try to block Napoleon’s march. Across the regiment, the average (mean and median) year of enrolment was 1808; to put that into context, the average first year of service across the regiments of d’Erlon’s I Corps at Waterloo would be 1812, which highlights the comparative wealth of experience in the Fifth’s ranks.
The regiment was also well organized. The three battalions were relatively balanced, and well supplied with non-commissioned officers. They boasted a full complement of adjutant-sous-officiers and sergeant majors, and the few missing sergeants (nine across the regiment, or one in every eight) and corporals (27 across the regiment, or three in every 16) were offset by each battalion being about a quarter below full establishment strength. Moreover, the NCOs were experienced. The average year of first service of corporals was 1809, and of sergeants 1804. They would have known how to keep their men in order.
But raw numbers, as always, can hide some of the detail. To dig a little deeper, the reason for such a long average career is that the Fifth took part in very few of the major campaigns or battles of the empire — and took commensurately far fewer casualties. The Fifth spent time in Italy, Dalmatia, Spain, Catalonia, but only at Wagram (1809) and in 1813-14 did small parts of the regiment serve directly under Napoleon, and the losses in those battalions meant that they made up a disproportionately small ratio of the condensed battalions of 1815. Even the regiment’s Spanish service tended to be in less active areas of the Peninsula.
So, although this was a veteran unit, few soldiers had served under Napoleon himself. The 223 men who came from the 114th Line had also served exclusively in Spain rather than under the emperor’s eye. There were of course some who would count themselves as old comrades of Napoleon – 19 of the Fifth’s 1,308 men had served in his Italian campaign 1796-7, and the 34 former Imperial Guardsmen would have served with him – but the Fifth as a whole were not grizzled veterans who had shared their soup the ‘le petit caporal’. They had never seen him riding at the head of their columns, nor visiting their campfires, nor had ears playfully pulled on parade.
As Napoleon approached Grenoble in early March 1815, the local military commander General Marchand chose the Fifth Line to help block his way. The regiment’s third battalion, under veteran chef de bataillon Lessard (spelled Delessart in some accounts), was selected for the task. The battalion was slightly less experienced than the regiment as a whole, with an average first year of service of 1809 (median 1810), and interestingly was far more of a composite force than either of the other two battalions, with 258 of its 429 registered men and NCOs having arrived from other units. Some 166 men, or nearly forty percent of its strength, came from the former 114th. It had a full complement of senior NCOs, but was missing three-eighths of its sergeants. Yet it was still a unit of veterans, if not a veteran unit, and perhaps importantly had a slightly higher concentration of men who had served in the Grande Armée than either the First or Second battalions.
The story of the meeting at Laffrey, just south of Grenoble, on 7 March has gone down in legend: Napoleon slowly advancing alone towards the ranks of Fifth’s levelled muskets, calling out to ask whether the men recognized their emperor, and opening his coat to offer them the chance to shoot him. The order to fire was barked out by Captain Randon – yet nobody fired. Instead the men erupted into a frenzy of cheers and ‘vive l’empereur!’
The reality naturally differs from the myth. The men and officers of Napoleon’s advance guard had already met detachments of the Fifth as the two forces lined up over the previous few hours, and had begun to implore them to come over to the former emperor’s side. When Napoleon asked if the men of the Fifth recognized him, the honest answer for most would have been no, for they had never served with or near him – albeit they would all have seen a thousand portraits, busts, medals, coins, and other representations. Nevertheless, for the majority of the men of the third battalion of the Fifth Line, their first view of Napoleon was down the barrel of a musket on 7 March 1815. When the order to fire was given many men apparently looked to Lessard for confirmation, willing to obey their respected commander, yet he remained steadfastly silent. Only then did men begin to waver, and did the first cries of ‘vive l’empereur’ ring out.
That the men had mostly never previously served with Napoleon and still went over to his side shows that the army’s loyalty to the emperor stemmed from much more than just shared military experiences with their legendary general – for this regiment had none. There are indications here that the institution of the army genuinely fostered loyalty to Napoleon, even among reluctant conscripts who served many years far from any notions of glorious victory.
Of course, the fact that most men had not experienced the horrors of Russia in 1812 or the dreadful campaign of 1813 in Germany may have helped them to cling onto a belief of Napoleon’s greatness, and Napoleon’s 1,000-strong contingent of Imperial Guardsmen and Elbans possibly persuaded the outnumbered men of the Fifth that Bonapartism was the better part of valour in this situation. But the service history of the men of the Fifth also shows the limits of the men’s personal connection to their former emperor; their apparent enthusiasm was in spite of rather than because of past shared dangers and glories.
Once the third battalion, with their reluctant commander Lessard in tow, had defected to Napoleon’s cause at Laffrey, the Fifth regiment’s other two battalions at Grenoble soon followed suit, prompted by the wholesale defection of the Seventh Line. Yet clearly not all men of the Fifth wished to follow the returning emperor. Some 20 men deserted over the next few days as the regiment joined the triumphal march to Paris, clearly unwilling to be part of Napoleon’s new adventure.
The postscript of that new adventure need not take long. Napoleon rewarded the Fifth’s apparent loyalty by presenting 19 men (18 NCOs and one voltigeur) with the Legion d’Honneur, and the regiment was assigned to VI Corps for the coming campaigning. The three battalions were merged into two ‘war battalions’; promotions were handed out to create one new sergeant major, four sergeants, two fourriers, and 26 corporals from among the men registered in the regiment when they joined Napoleon.
Marching in the Armée du Nord, the Fifth Line fought at Waterloo – of the 1,308 men in the regiment when it met Napoleon in March, 24 were recorded as killed at Waterloo, 12 as wounded, and 181 as prisoners; of the men of the third battalion who had faced Napoleon at Laffrey, the records show six dead, three wounded, and 55 prisoners at Waterloo. Another man – the regiment’s 2eme Porte Aigle – was killed defending Paris on 30 June.
Although sparse in detail, looking at the service histories of the Fifth Line adds to our understanding of motivations of the men who first had to choose between Bonaparte and Bourbon in 1815. The regimental records do not tell us any grand tale of loyalty and devotion of former comrades-in-arms – quite the opposite, they show that most men of the Fifth had never served with or likely even seen Napoleon before. Yet their adherence to his cause remained. The army’s culture, the vicarious enjoyment of reflected glories, and perhaps even the sight of the former Imperial Guardsmen at Napoleon’s back all probably played their part. And even when we cut through the thickets of myth and legend that have grown up around Napoleon, there must still have been something about the man in the greatcoat and the bicorne hat that moved others to follow – even at such personal cost.
Dr Graeme Callister is a senior lecturer in history and war studies at York St John University (UK). He is author of War, Public Opinion and Policy and co-author of Battle: Understanding Conflict from Hastings to Helmand. His next book Waterloo: the Attack of I Corps will be published with Pen & Sword in 2024.
