Napoleon Bonaparte’s report of his victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, dictated and annotated during his exile on the island of Saint Helena, was offered for sale in Paris for € 1 million (£ 880,000).
The description of the battle, the strategy of which is still taught in military schools, is considered by historians as proof of Napoleon’s desire to record his glorious hour for posterity after his humiliation in 1815 in Waterloo and the subsequent captivity by the British.
It was dictated to his loyal assistant general Henri-Gatien Bertrand, who lived with him in exile on the volcanic island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean.
The manuscript is densely written over 74 pages and tells of the collision of the day of the three emperors in December 1805 with Russian-Austrian forces, which is considered to be Napoleon’s greatest military victory. It takes readers through preparations for the battle and the battle itself, and is completed by a battle plan drawn by Bertrand on tracing paper.
The document contains several corrections made by Napoleon, who crossed words and added comments in small margins. Napoleon does not refer to himself in the first person, but adds his remarks before “the emperor says”.
The auction is Wednesday at the start of a year celebrating the celebration of Napoleon’s death. Jean-Emmanuel Raux, a gallery owner and collector of French imperial memorabilia, found the manuscript in a crowd of documents belonging to Bertrand’s heirs.
“This is the most wonderful document on French history that you could find in a private collection,” he said. His daughter Alizee, who studied the manuscript, said it was a ‘decorated account of the battle’.
“It can be seen in the intonation of the sentences,” she added.
The Battle of Austerlitz took place on the first anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation as emperor. The day before the fight, he wrote: “I regret that I will lose many of these brave men. I feel bad, it makes me compensate that they are truly my children, and in fact I sometimes blame myself for this feeling, because I’m afraid it will ultimately not enable me to wage war. ‘
Within about nine hours on December 2, 1805, about 75,000 soldiers of Napoleon’s Grande Armée outsmarted a larger Russian-Austrian force in Austerlitz, in the then Austrian Empire. Part of the Russian force drowned in frozen lakes.
This helped to end the coalition between Francis I of Austria and Tsar Alexander I of Russia funded by Britain. The fight is still being studied in military schools, including the prestigious Saint-Cyr in France.
Napoleon describes all the tactics he used to deceive his opponents into believing that the French forces were weak – including earlier retreats and negotiations that obscured the fact that he had already chosen the place of battle. His sublime report trumpets the heroism of the French, from troop to officer, claiming that even wounded soldiers greeted the emperor.
The manuscript makes a lot of heroism and enthusiasm for the fight. “Not an officer, not a general, not a soldier, was not determined to win or perish,” Napoleon says. Laying the battlefield dotted with the dead and wounded after the battle, he adds: ‘Nothing was more moving than to see how these brave people recognized him. They would forget their suffering and say: the victory was at least assured. ”
The enemy is treated with pity and generosity. Napoleon recounts how he addressed a wounded Russian soldier: “Because one is defeated, one does not cease to be among the brave.”
The manuscript will be on display at the Arts et Autographes Gallery in Paris until the end of the month, as well as online for potential foreign buyers.
The sale is part of the Brafa in the Art Fairs Galleries taking place from 27 to 31 January in 126 galleries in 13 countries.