"French Soldiers Behaving Badly" Topic

I watched "The Lines of Wellington" last night. The reviews on TMP were accurate. It moves very slowly and there are no battle scenes to speak of. The movie shows scenes of French soldiers, advancing through Portugal to the lines of the Torres Vedras, committing all sorts of acts of barbarism toward the civilian population. I am not so naive as to believe this sort of thing never happened, and I am well aware of Goya's prints, but I figured this sort of thing was part of the guerrilla war and not a general occurrence. Why was the Peninsular War more brutal than the campaigns in northern Europe? I get the impression that the French army did not rape and pillage its way through Austria and the German states.

Yeah. The French were pretty bad in Spain and Portugal. I thought they were pretty bad in the Vendee and Egypt aswell. I think in Germany civilian resistance was less so civilians were not brutalised as much.

The Germans knew when they were beaten

Also they didn't wander around mutilating French stragglers

The British and French did not mistreat each other, nor did the French and Spanish/Portuguese regular military forces on the whole; the nastiness was almost entirely between the French and the Iberian populace (armed or unarmed).

The Mediterranean syndrome: Balkans, South Italy Spain… North Africa..
It always happens there. Guerra a cuchillo, savage war originating from the locals..
As otherwise why would those same French troops just stop when they go ( bzck sometimes) to Germany….
Read memoirs, the locals behaviour was a shock for them, unheard of , as they still function mostly under the 18th century mindset.
Once started it spirals up to savagery and retribution; it also depends a lot on the leaders. When one unleashes the worst in people , he will always find adepts.

The Spanish guerillas were cruel and their mistreatment led to French reprisals, which seldom equaled the abuse, cruelty, and savageness of the Spanish. French atrocities were usually in retaliation the the Guerillas routine bad treatment of French prisoners. Both the French and British were generally disgusted with the Spanish.

The Spanish abused any captured French, man, woman, or child.

Their torture and abuse included:

-Castrating French officers.

-Kidnapping fellow countrymen to 'reinforce' depleted guerilla bands.

-Frenchmen buried up to their necks and used as bowling pins.

-Skinned alive.

-Boiled alive.

-Sawed in half while alive.

-Impaled.

-Grilled over a campfire.

-Crucified upside down.

-Captured women were gang-raped.

-Women and children murdered.

Both sides shot prisoners, and for the French that would be a merciful end. It should also be noted that Goya was an Afrancesado, something that is usually neglected, and his drawings depicted murdered and mutilated French troops too many times. The guerillas mistreated both captured women and children, seldom sparing any.

The Spanish guerillas also mistreated their own citizens and when Spanish guerillas were captured by the French and turned over to the Spanish for justice, it wasn't pleasant either.

Interestingly, the French believed that the Tyrolese were much more deadly than the Spanish guerillas when they conducted anti-guerilla operations there in 1809-1810.

All you describe Bretchel looks like SCW.

This took place in 1936 and the French were not involved for what I know …

Would it rather be correct to evoque some kind of iberian syndrom, rather than a specific (and why not ethnical!) french brutality??

Also, I would had been curious to watch the doings of any other nation's army facing such circumstances, and especially lessons tellers …

Must also be noticed that the french imperial army is not especially pointed out for its exactions, if any, in Italy, Austria, Germany, Holland, Poland, and even in Russia …
All in one, our german friends have recently let a much lesser "souvenir" in all those countries I am afraid.

Spain was staunchly Catholic at the time and considered the French atheists. That could explain some of it.

Plus, Iberia for centuries, changed hands a lot between Islam and Christendom. That heritage probably fed into the culture to some extent. Holy wars always have a fervency about them.

And the Spanish clergy, which had a reputation for abusing the citizenry themselves, and some of whom were recently unemployed because of Napoleon abolishing the Inquisition.

They preached that Napoleon was the anti-Christ and the French were devils which helped recruiting for guerilla bands.

Interestingly, eventually the national junta at considerable risk to themselves offered rewards for live prisoners which cut down on the atrocities.

Some Spanish clergy actually led guerilla bands and not just enlisted in them.

Anglo-French relations were relatively civil due largely to the fact they, in the main, fought neither in Britain nor France.

See what happened in Hartlepool.

Anywhere in Europe invading armies lived off the land (that is to say stole sorely needed food from the peasantry) you will find some atrocity committed by civilians or troops.

Some accounts of Waterloo concern Prussians butchering French prisoners as reprisals…for what?

Spain and Portugal were the cite of the largest and most prolonged peasant uprisings of he era, unique only in their extent and duration.

"Napoleon's Other War" is a good source to consult on anti-partisan operations of the day.

There are a few other whose titles escape me at the moment.

Bob

I did hear of Prussian soldiers killing French wounded at Waterloo. But I beleive that in Plancoit several hundred Prussian prisoners were bayoneted to death by the Guard…mainly Landwher.. This possibly caused the Prussian brutality.

Spanish guerrillas were brutal, and SOME bands were really bandits who would also attack Spanish and British troops if they thought they could steal something and get away with it. Bandits basically. Others were patriots though who confined their attentions to the French.
The descent into this tit for tat brutality started I think with French massacres of civilians in the initial stages of the war but it became a downward spiral of increasing brutality with the French lashing out at the nearest town or village rather than the actual warbands.

Some of the things brechtal has written about were inflicted on French soldiers, their wives and children. Some being made to watch while their families were tortured to death. That said, the Poles in French service could be just as nasty. Their is a report of them cutting off the ears of a captured British dragoon officer as punishment for not having any money.

The French and British tried to treat each other cordially I think but the French and Spanish militaries, while never reaching the same depravities of the Guerilla war were extremely neglectful of each other's prisoners of war.

Hey, Bretchel, do you know that the infamous story of the boiled down French was purely made up? Spanish peasantry was brutal indeed, but not that imaginative as French memorialist wanted to make believe (well, what can be expected from writers that copied XVIIIth Century French novels and tried to pass the tales as facts?). Not boiled, nor fried (do you know how expensive for a peasant olive oil was?)… beaten to death, on the other hand, was pretty common; or stoned (and no, I do not mean forced to smoke weed until they gave the ghost!); or knifed ; or the all-time favourite: shot.

Yeah, they were brutal, indeed. Although if you think that their meagre sustenance was being stolen by the French soldiers; that their girls were being raped; that priests were shot or hanged; that the "enhanced interrogation" methods used by the French involved the feet of the subject and white hot embers… may be you can imagine why the Spanish peasants felt a little bit upset and behave in not a particularly gentlemanly fashion.

By the way, the French were acting on orders from Napoleon: burn and drown in oceans of blood those cursed rebels! (yes, he ordered that much to Murat: if anyone resists, kill him, burn his village and, in general, make an object lesson of him… you can check the relevant letters in Napoleon's Correspondence)

Sadly, I think wars without atrocities are either the exception or non-existent.

The British certainly had their moments of shame…most pertinent to the subject here would be their actions at San Sebastian.

link

May be of interest.

Excellent article . Thank you for posting the link.

Bob

Bretchtel198 , I have followed West Ham United, mostly at away games, since the late 60s and your description does bring back many memories.

Thank God, now you can bring the wife and kids (two 20 year olds taller than I am) with less risk. The film Green Street was like the Lines of Torres Vedras, but it did suggest that you could pummel a skull repeatedly, without killing someone……

Italy also had its share of Guerilla warfare and atrocities. Southern Italy especially. 1799 campaign and in southern Italy during Murat's reign.

The British and French did not mistreat each other,

What about the Poles murdering the British wounded at Albuera?

The French were also such paragons of virtue that they were welcomed as liberators by the surfs in Russia.

Just to be clear, atrocities were not limited to Spain and Italy…

" In July 1794, in the Saar region, for example, the village of Edesheim was burned down, as was the town of Kusel, to ‘serve as an example'. In October 1795, the village of Westhofen
was burned to the ground. Repression included the practice of using ‘infernal columns', if on a smaller scale than the tactic practiced in the Vende´e at the height of the Terror: in southern Italy in the summer of 1806, the French army killed thousands of locals and devastated more than twenty-five villages in an attempt to wipe out all armed resistance (about which more below); and in Galicia in 1809, when the Redondela valley rose up in revolt, French troops received the order to ‘put everything to fire and the sword (mettre tout a` feu et a` sang
). More than sixty villages, according to one account, were consequently burnt to the ground."

--Violence and the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars: massacre, conquest and the imperial enterprise
Philip G. Dwyer Published online: 22 May 2013

David Bell provided an excellent study of increasing atrocity in the Era in his book, The First Total War. He points the finger at the French experience in the Vendee, coupled with the ideological nature of the early conflict.

I've read Bell's book, and truth be told I am not convinced by his arguments. I mean, while brutality against civilians in the Napoleonic Wars is indisputable, I don't believe it was particular of the times. See, for instance, the two invasions of the Palatinate by Louis XIV's armies one century earlier; or the war in Sicily in 1674. Actually, what I see in the Napoleonic period is the opposite: a new sense of awareness about what war meant for and its effects on civilians populations. In other words, it wasn't more brutal than before, but now the societies were being forced to explain and justify that brutality; the American and French Revolutions, with their emphasis on the idea of citizenship, had forced into the political language the need to find explanations for the all too common savagery of war and its effects on the civilian populations.

There's a difference between wars between states and suppressing revolts. In normal military campaigns I'd expect violence against the locals would be casual, while in revolts the violence would be systematic. In a revolt the combatants on the revolting side are by definition criminals.

In normal military campaigns I'd expect violence against the locals would be casual

Not quite, actually. Many military campaigns were carried with the express purpose of exercise violence against civilians, in order to cut down the power base of the oponent and curtail its economic base. What else were the (in)famous chevauchées of the Black Prince but a deliberated exercise of violence against non-combatants?

Another example was Marlborough's brief but systematic trashing of parts of the Bavarian countryside before the battle of the Schellenberg. This was a calculated act to force the Elector to battle to defend his lands, before the main French armies could join in.

I don't know whether this shows Marlborough as restrained or cynical in his approach, but the trashing basically started on his command and was stopped as soon as his strategic objective was achieved.

Post 30yw. It was deemed that resisting in a town beyond reasonable or irregular resistance was bound to bring in retribution, unleashing the soldatesque.
That civilians do not attack troops especially when not in " proper fighting" was also a generally accepted rule of war. If things go that way, officers will have, if they don't let themselves get sucked into the anger and revenge heat, very little way to stop it. The troops were expecting to vent their anger / look for revenge.
They would not be able to think ahead much, nor have high morale values.
When it starts then it grows snowballing in massacres. The link given for this very good article shows this too well.
During the rebellion in Algeria post 1954 one can follow the same trends, and the guerillas could want to start this chain of events as a recruiting aim.
The memoirs of Aussares are very clear about this. Officers who can think clearly about the consequences should not let themselves be drawn in.

There was a definite change in accepted rules of warfare after the 30 yw. It did not apply to Civilian revolts nor to "barbarians". When religion, racial/ societal prejudices started to allow in self indulgence then, back in old ways.

Post 30yw. It was deemed that resisting in a town beyond reasonable or irregular resistance was bound to bring in retribution, unleashing the soldatesque

Actually, that "rule" of war predates the 30YW at least by two centuries.

That civilians do not attack troops especially when not in " proper fighting" was also a generally accepted rule of war. If things go that way, officers will have, if they don't let themselves get sucked into the anger and revenge heat, very little way to stop it. The troops were expecting to vent their anger / look for revenge.

True, but in the case of the revolts in Spain, Portugal and Italy it went beyond mere revenge killings. It was part of an official policy, that was applied regardless the attack was made by civilians, semi-regular or even regular troops. French troops entered villages and burned them to the ground after shooting or hanging hostages, even if the attack suffered was part of a military operation of the regular Spanish army.

Edwulf

If I remember rightly the rebels in the Vendee, and that is what they were-rebels, were pretty nasty to their fellow countrymen. Amongst other things, they were known to have nailed the genitals of Revolutionaries on the doors of their homes for the victim's wife and family to see.

Brutal. But technically aren't the revolutionaries the rebels? Vendeeans were Loyalists.

Either way. It kind of set the tone for French conduct in "enemy" territory?

Some Russians were also very cruel to French prisoners during the 1812 campaign.

'Alexandr Samoilovich Figner took sadistic pleasure in slaughtering his prisoners, often when they least expected it. General Yermolov also ill-treated prisoners, particularly Poles, whom he despised as traitors to the Slav cause. After Vinkovo he spat in Count Plater's face and instructed the cossack escorting him to feed him only with lashes of his whip.'

'Our soldiers took some prisoners among the French', noted a young Russian officer after the fighting at Smolensk, 'but all the Poles fell victim to vengefulness and contempt.' When one officer reported in after a patrol in the course of which he had taken some French soldiers who were looting a church, he was told by the senior officer that he should not have bothered to bring them back. So he went out and told his men to bayonet them to death.'

'The Tsar himself wrote to Kutuzov complaining of reports of ill treatment of prisoners and insisting that all captured men must be treated humanely, fed and clothed. But the example set by his own brother undermined any chance of his complaints being heeded. General Wilson was riding along with other senior officers behind Grand Duke Constantine when they passed a column of prisoners. Their attention was attracted by one of them, a distinguished-looking young officer, and Constantine asked him if he would not rather be dead. 'I would, if I cannot be rescued, for I know I must in a few hours perish by inanition, or by the Cossack lance, as I have seen so many hundred comrades do, on being unable from cold, hunger, and fatigue to keep up,' he answered. 'There are those in France who will lament my fate-for their sake I should wish to return; but if that be impossible, the sooner the ignominy and suffering are over the better.' To Wilson's horror, the Grand Duke drew his sabre and killed the man.' (pages 402-203, 1812 Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski, 2005)

I think, in terms of atrocities, it is a case of both cast ye the first stone and those who live in in glass houses.

Rene Chartand's verdict on the French in Spain:

The root cause of the savage actions of the (Spanish) guerillas was the extraordinarily wanton behaviour of the officers and men of the French army from the time it entered Spain in 1808. Not only did the French troops kill, rob, maim and rape, but some also carried off scores of girls and young women to be used by the troops as sex slaves. There were many stories about this, and all these rumours were intolerable to any family. And, sadly, the stories were based on fact. Kidnapping expeditions to secure a 'supply' of pretty young Spanish girls for the soldiers' harems were indeed organized.

Edwulf

No, the Vendeeans were the rebels, since their main rebellion didn't really start until March 1793, which was after the king had been beheaded, which meant the Revolutionaries were the government and those rebelling in the Vendee were rebels.

But I guess any civil war is brutal and acts of cruelty and atrocity were certainly undertaken by both sides.

Are French government files on the Vendee War still secret?

Concerning the British retreating in 1809.

'While some battalions held together well enough, the path of the army was therefore marked by a trail of arson, theft, rape and murder.' (page 151. The Peninsular War by Prof Charles Esdaile)

And of the 'patriotic' guerrillas-
'Nicknamed 'El Empecinado', he is supposed from early April onwards to have led a group of twelve men in a series of attacks on French couriers in the neighbourhood of Aranda de Duero. In several cases, meanwhile, these actions were accompanied by a brutality that set the scene for the entire war, there being reports – possibly exaggerated – of men being stoned to death, boiled in oil, sawn in half, or buried up to their necks in the ground and left to die.' (page 254, The Peninsular War)

Possibly exaggerated doesn't mean it did not happen.

'So general is the picture of the brutality and oppression associated with the guerrillas that it is impossible to deny it.' (page 160)

'They were very much feared. No Spanish municipal authority would have dared to refuse them anything. Even the inhabitants of small towns submitted to their orders without complaining. Let me give you an example of this. One of my muleteers had a young and extraordinary pretty girl with him…One afternoon…a guerrilla dashing past, suddenly halted and…peremptorily commanded her to jump up behind him on the horse's back and galloped away with her. The parted couple did not dare to protest this treatment one syllable of complaint.' (page 169)

And the Spanish view of them-
'The guerrillas who go by the name of Patriots should be exterminated: they are gangs of thieves with carte blanche to rob on the roads and in the villages. If some of them have brought benefits, the damage that others have wrought is one thousand times greater.' (page 161)

'Caught by surprise, the French garrison was quickly driven into the castle, whereupon the guerrillas fell to sacking the town.' (page 138 Fighting Napoleon by Prof Charles Esdaile)

'But the fault did not lie with just a few officials. On the contrary, the partidas were extremely burdensome to the populace. Little more than gangs of bandits, many oppressed the populace quite unmercifully, supporting themselves by pillage and rapine.' (page 146)

Partidas can mean band of guerrilla and also detachment of Spanish troops.

A Spanish cleric on the guerrillas-
'Because they have killed twenty or thirty Frenchmen one day, they think they have the right to burn a Spanish village and commit 1,000 disorders the next' (page 170)

And of Spanish regular troops-
'This month has been very vexatious for the inhabitants on account of…the fear and terror imposed by the soldiers of the Fifth Regiment of Navarre, who, being in garrison, every night robbed everyone they could lay their hands and beat up anyone who resisted or proved to have no money. So bad have things become that nobody dares to go out except on the most urgent business. People have complained to the justices, but nothing has been done to contain them, and they carry on robbing just the same.' (page 182)

I think the lesson here is that if one bothers to search them out, atrocities by all sides can be found and often by those supposedly on the same side. It also highlights how it is quite hypocritical to just pick on one nation or one particular army.

Gazzola all of the atrocities you cite took place AFTER the French entered the nation in which the offenses took place.

Why do you suspect the natives felt such antipathy to their liberators/saviors?

While you point out Kutusov calling for better treatment of prisoners Dwyer at the links posted above cites Napoleon ordering the execution of random civilians and burning of cities.

Nicknamed 'El Empecinado', he is supposed from early April onwards to have led a group of twelve men in a series of attacks on French couriers in the neighbourhood of Aranda de Duero. In several cases, meanwhile, these actions were accompanied by a brutality that set the scene for the entire war, there being reports – possibly exaggerated – of men being stoned to death, boiled in oil, sawn in half, or buried up to their necks in the ground and left to die.

Yeah, exactly the same acusations made against Vendean rebels.

Actual reports, written shortly after the facts, were more pedestrian: shot or hanged, with at least one confirmed case of five French soldiers beaten to death by an angry mob in Asturias… the previous day a French column had entered Pola de Siero and gang-raped and killed a 12 years old girl.

By the way, the rest of the quotes are taken out of context. One of them is particularly misleading, as the author was a regular officer trying to justify his loathing of the partisans (he was upset because they were more successful at recruiting men, than the regular army was).

Charles Esdaile's narrative on the guerrilla war has been debunked by many specialists in the subject, as John Tone or Francisco Miranda.

The difference is though the British and Spanish atrocities were crimes/ breakdowns of discipline. French troops wholesale raped and murdered and stole as permitted by their generals… It was a tactic.

MCMonkeyDew
basileus66
Edwulf

Ah, it is all so clear now. Allied atrocities were either exaggerated or just a case of lack of discipline, but the French were certainly guilty of anything anyone claimed.

And anything Professor Esdaile says on the Peninsular is debunked but anything against Napoleon is fine.

But I should think all atrocities are crimes, no matter who did them. But the fact remains, troops from all the nations were guilty of doing them, not just the French.

You are partially right, Edwulf. At least in the case of the Spanish. Actually, in February 1810 the Patriot Government passed a bill authorizing -requiring, to be more precise- retaliations against French soldiers captured nearby towns and villages that would have witnessed or suffered atrocities committed by French troops. In April 1810, for instance, General Díaz Porlier explained in a letter to the Regency that he had hanged seven French prisoners in sight of the walls of Palencia -where a French garrison was located- after the French commander of the city had shot three Spanish soldiers from his division captured in an action, earlier in the month. The Regency answered congratulating him for his actions.

In another ocasion, Rovira felt he needed to justify why he had spared the lives of twelve French soldiers captured in an ambush nearby La Selva (a little village in Tarragona, if memory doesn't fail me), which had been burned by the French. He explained that the soldiers were just children from the music band and that he thought they couldn't be made responsible for the atrocities committed by their elders. General Lacy answered that while he understood his clemency, he felt forced to warn him that next time he should show more alacrity in obeying Government's orders regarding retaliation measures.

Edwulf

Crimes were committed by all nations, no matter what the views of their commanders.

'To quote an edict of Marshal Berthier, 'The emperor is unhappy with the disorders that have been committed. Pillage annihilates everything down to the very army that engages in it.' (page 142.The Peninsular War by Charles Esdaile)

Sadly, as we have seen during and after the Napoleonic period and right up to the present day, atrocities have occurred, even though the commanders and governments at the time saw it as a criminal act. Easy to preach but not easy to stop in the field.

Ah, it is all so clear now. Allied atrocities were either exaggerated or just a case of lack of discipline, but the French were certainly guilty of anything anyone claimed.

And from which of my posts have you got to that conclusion? Just wondering.

Oh, by the way, the Emperor's correspondence is pretty clear about which measures were to be used to deal with the rebellion. Just read Tulard's edition of Napoleon's Correspondence. I did. It's illustrative (at least if you can read French, of course). Napoleon was loath of looting for what it did to the discipline of his soldiers, not because what it meant for the populations affected.

However, in the case of the British, in Europe at least, atrocities committed by British troops were due to indiscipline (Badajoz, Corunna's retreat or San Sebastian being the most infamous) rather than to any deliberate policy.

If the emperor didn't want his troops to pillage he should have ensured they received enough food to live on from their supply train.

If he really thought they could "live off the land" and not become pillagers, he must not have been as great a thinker as we all believe him to be.

Napoleon was loath of looting for what it did to the discipline of his soldiers, not because what it meant for the populations affected.

It seems strange that he found continuous employment for Marshals Soult and Massena then!

It seems strange that he found continuous employment for Marshals Soult and Massena then!

Looting, my friend, is what soldiers did. Marshals were into "wealth redistribution".

Certainly! I just meant that, in practice, Napoleon's condemnation of looting was somewhat…"theoretical", since it was practiced my members of every rank of his army. Wellington at least was quite serious about harshly punishing this behaviour.

And here was me thinking that policy of "NtG" was to make war pay for itself. Certainly that was the policy of the Army of Italy…..

Every hour a soldier spends lootoing and pillaging is an hour he is not marching. You can have high rates of daily marches, or you can have an army that largely feeds itself. cant have both, although it is not an either/or. Napoleon frequently did have a reasonably capable logistics train, but that is for the period, nothing a modern army would consider efficient.

It is all so easy to say what should and should not have been done, what is considered bad behaviour etc, with the wonderful but basically useless skill of hindsight. Things happen in war, even now, that should not have happened.

And it far too easy to condemn people or lay the blame on one person or commander, when the person laying the blame is basing his moral condemnation on something they have read about that occurred 200 years ago or more, and of which there are usually different interpretations.

We were not there, we were not in the field. And those in the field at the time did not have the luxury of modern technology and media. We need to keep our heads in the Napoleonic period mode before we open our mouths with 21st Century morality.

We need to keep our heads in the Napoleonic period mode before we open our mouths with 21st Century morality.

Well actually 19th century morality condemned murder, pillage and the gang-rape of young girls by French soldiers at the time . Morality wasn't so different in these matters.

+1 Whirlwind

For that matter Napoleon wasn't "in the field" when ordering his brother to burn villages and execute random civilians in order to provide a "lesson" in Italy.