The Duellist Fact or Fiction? Part 2
Part 2
by Mark Ashley, UK
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My interest in the story and characters was forced to lay dormant for a number of years and for a number of reasons. It surfaced again whilst reading JR Elting’s book ‘Military Life under Napoleon’. In a chapter entitled ‘Masters of Arms and Duellists’ a Captain Elzear Blaze describes how one General, who he didn’t wish to name, “killed a young man in a duel in a most cruel manner”. Apparently he allowed the young man to fire first and after he’d missed he then taunted him by telling him exactly where
he was going to shoot him and “like a cat that prolongs the agony of a mouse which it holds between its claws, the General looked at his adversary for a long time”. He then told the young man how much he had to lose by dying so young before shooting him dead. A footnote named the General as Resda Fournier, the ‘Demon of the Grand Army’; could this be our man Feraud?
The next clue again came from one of Elting’s books; this time ‘Swords Around a Throne’. This is an excellent book and I strongly recommend it. In the chapter ‘They Also Serve’ Elting describes how officers had a tendency to fight duels and how Napoleon
regarded this as a waste of valuable manpower as it robbed him of some of his best officers. Napoleon particularly disliked the professional duellist whom he compared to a cannibal. Elting goes on to say that there were enough of that sort in the French Army but the outstanding specimen was Resda Fournier.
Fournier was a former choirboy who became a wild Jacobean. He was an excellent light cavalryman who came from Saar. He took sadistic
pleasure from forcing duels on civilians by insulting their wives, then killing the husband; he was careful to always act within the duelling code. Fournier was probably a psychopath and was known as the Demon of the Grand Army. The next fact to interest me was that he became a legend within that army by fighting a series of duels with another officer from 1794 to 1813; the other officer was known only as ‘Dupont’.
More than ever I was convinced I had finally found Feraud and d’Hubert; the characters from the film. A confirmation seemed to come from
another of Elting’s footnotes.
About to be married, Dupont wanted to put an end to the duelling and he suggested to Fournier that they each take two pistols and stalk each other through a walled grove of trees, each entering from opposite sides. (This of course is the final duel in the film.) Dupont teased Fournier into wasting both his shots, then told him to go but always remember that he would be entitled to two free shots. Although in the film Feraud wasn’t tricked into wasting his shots, he fires twice and d’Hubert only the once; a certain artistic licence from the director?
Happy that I had discovered the real man behind Feraud, I then tried to discover more about his war record. I scanned every Order of Battle I could find. The only Colonel Fournier I could track down turned out to be an Anton Fournier of the 5th Hussars and not my man at all. I continued my research and managed to find a copy of Joseph Conrad’s book ‘A Set of Six’ (sadly now out of print); one of the stories is
called ‘The Duel’. Conrad was fascinated by everyday life in Napoleons army. I found that the film and Vaughan-Hughes book followed his story very closely, with the exception of a few minor details; Feraud was from the 4th Hussars, there was no ‘Silent Hussar’ or Laura the camp follower.
The plot and duels remained the same however. Turning to the Author’s note in the hope of finding more clues was a sad disappointment; it told me the film was a complete piece of fiction! Conrad states that his story has a simple pedigree. It springs from a 10 line paragraph in a
small provincial newspaper from the South of France which recounted a duel with a fatal ending between two well known Parisien personalities. it referred to the “well known fact” of them having fought a series of duels in the midst of great wars and on some futile pretext. The pretext was never disclosed.
Conrad goes on to say that he had to invent the cause of the quarrel. He continues, “. . . given the character of the two officers, which I had to invent too, I have made it sufficiently convincing by the mere force of its absurdity”. (Well he had me convinced.) He explains that his story is
a serious and earnest attempt at a bit of historical fiction and he had hoped to capture the “wonderful spirit of that epoch”.
So there I had it; two French officers had fought a protracted series of duels against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, for some long
forgotten reason, the final duel was in a walled garden and they were part of the Napoleonic legend. Conrad was born in 1857, I was born in 1957; the Napoleonic Wars were as recent to him as The Great War was to me. Just as I’ve spoken to veterans of that conflict it is not unreasonable to assume the Conrad had conversed with ‘grognards’.
The year that JR Elting was to speak at the Napoleonic Fair in London I had hoped to be there and obtain an opportunity of speaking to him about Resda Fournier; my work commitments prevented this. Sadly Elting has since died and I will never have the chance of speaking to this unsurpassed Napoleonic historian.
My next breakthrough came on a trip to Paris. I admit I had almost given up on finding out anything else about Fournier. I visited the Musee de
l’Armee at Les Invalides; and a pilgrimage to the Emperor’s tomb! Inside the museum is a book shop which, not unnaturally, stocks books
written in French. Whilst browsing (alright I admit I was just looking at the pictures) a name seemed to jump out of the page at me: RESDA FOURNIER.
The name was followed by some words I didn’t recognise then the name Fournier-Sarlovese. With the assistance of the girl behind the counter, whose English was much better than my French, I discovered the sentence to read, “Resda Fournier, but better known by his post Waterloo title Fournier-Sarlovese”.
Here was a name that had cropped up previously in my research and I now realised that Fournier-Sarlovese was the man I was after. Information was now much easier to collect; and I found plenty!
I wish to point out that most of the information contained in the article The Duellist was from an unpublished essay written by Terry J
Seionr and was used with his kind permission, I apologise for any offence caused.-- Mark Ashley
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The Charge of General Fournier-Sarlovse cavalry at the battle of Fuentes de Onoro where they broke two of Crauford’s squares and the dragoons dispersed a third.