The Gardes d'Honneur and
Charge of the 3rd Regt
at Reims, 13th March 1814

Gardes d'Honneur 1813-1814

by Andrew Field

1814

The Gardes d’Honneur were raised by a Senatus-Consulte of the 3rd April 1813 in an effort by Napoleon to rebuild a viable cavalry force after the catastrophic losses suffered in Russia the previous year.

The illustration shows a Garde d’Honneur in Tenue de campagne 1814 (after Maurice Orange).

Four regiments were to be raised from across all the departments of the Empire and to be recruited from noble families and the bourgeoisie who had generally evaded conscription through the purchase of replacements. With the motherland threatened with invasion it was now time for them to be prepared to ‘do their bit’. Each regiment was to be 2,500 strong, giving an overall strength of 10,000; they were generally to be armed, clothed and mounted at their own expense. Each department was given a quota to raise, and to make service more appealing they were to be considered as part of the Guard and after a year’s service they would be commissioned into the line. The uniform was to be “à la hussarde” (see illustration).

Although recruiting varied considerably from department to department, by 24 Oct 1813 10,000 men had in fact been raised. By 15th Dec, 5,000 were in the field; the rest being trained and organised in the depots. To all intents and purposes it seems that the plan had been a success.

However, there were some fundamental problems. Firstly, a third of recruits came from the Dutch, Belgian, German and Italian departments and only the Belgians proved to be willing and loyal. All the others suffered from an almost universal unwillingness to serve, which manifested itself in chronic desertion, occasional mutiny and serious ill discipline: very few of these made it to the field. Even amongst those recruited in France itself there were many reluctant to serve, through their royalist leanings or lack of courage, and many had to be escorted to the depots by the Gendarmerie! It is of little surprise to learn that those who came from the Vendée were particularly prone to mutiny and desertion.

The second problem was the lack of a professional NCO cadre. The officers came from many sources, some of them reputable, many of them not so; but at least most were trained and had some experience, although not all were keen to serve in this new formation. The Colonels were all very professional and experienced: Générale de Division Compte Pully for the 1st Regiment, Générale de Division Compte Lepic for the 2nd (later replaced by Lagrange), Générale de Brigade Compte de Ségur for the 3rd and the 52 year old Générale de Division Saint-Sulpice for the 4th. In contrast, the appointment of the vital NCO structure was apparently allocated almost at random from amongst the recruits; none had any idea of their responsibilities.

To get around this problem Napoleon attached the four regiments to his Guard cavalry who were to assume responsibility for their training; but in the circumstances of the campaign of 1813 this could not have been very satisfactory. About 1,000 Gardes were with the army by the time of Leipzig where they were attached to the Guard cavalry. Consequently they played little part in the battle, spending much of their time in reserve. However, at one stage they were exposed to the fire of the Saxon artillery that had recently defected and suffered a number of casualties. General Nansouty, who commanded the cavalry, commented favourably on their steadiness during this time.

Reinforced from the depots after this action they were more seriously engaged against the Bavarians and Austrians at Hanau on 30th Oct 1813. Here they were again attached to the Guard and repulsed a number of charges by the Bavarian cavalry. The 3rd and 4th Regiments conducted successful charges of their own; the 3rd Regiment being particularly distinguished. Despite the almost continuous stream of reinforcements from the depots, losses through casualties, sickness and desertions meant the strength of the regiments in the field remained almost constant. However, there is little doubt that combat effectiveness was particularly hit by orders from Napoleon that each regiment was to provide 250 men for the raising of the 1st Éclaireurs of the Guard and a further 200 to bring the other Guard regiments up to strength for the coming defence of France.

Although none of these men were drawn from the squadrons in the field, the threat of Napoleon’s wrath if poor material was sent to his Guard meant these requirements must have ripped the hearts out of the regiments of Gardes d’Honneur. A compensating strength reduction in the establishment could have been little comfort.

The Gardes D’honneur in 1814

At the end of 1813 came an order that the four regiments were to be united into a division of Gardes d’Honneur, which was to be commanded by Générale de Division Compte Defrance. It proved impossible to carry out this reorganisation immediately. With the Allies threatening the borders of France, the Gardes were already deployed along the line of the Rhine from Mayence to Strasbourg, with each regiment under command of a different formation.

By this time the effective strength of the regiments had been substantially whittled away by the drafts to the Imperial Guard, sickness, desertion or the sending back out of the line those who were likely to desert. Each had a total of about 1,500 men of whom 5 to 600 were with the war squadrons in the field and the rest in the depots. If all had gone well therefore the division would have had an effective strength of about 2,000 men. However, this did not reveal the true picture: Napoleon started to bring order from the chaos, aided by the inactivity of the Army of Silesia who believed Napoleon was incapable of further on the 27th December the 2nd Regiment reported a field strength of 600 men, but of these 250 were sick or on leave and 100 others were to be sent to the rear as likely to desert, leaving a mere 250 men available for duty!

There was also a tendency to send newly formed squadrons to where they were most needed rather than to their parent regiments. Thus several new squadrons found themselves sent to the armies being formed in Lyons and the Netherlands rather than to the regiments where they were also desperately needed. Finally, the Allied advance across the Rhine in the New Year saw 1100 Gardes, including virtually the entire 2nd Regiment, caught up in the garrisons of Mayence, Landau and Strasbourg in which they were blockaded.

On the 13th Jan 1814 Defrance was finally able to concentrate his division. By this time, for all the reasons given above, it numbered a mere 900 Gardes in the remaining three regiments. To bring it up to a reasonable strength the 10th Hussars (about 500 strong) were attached to the division, giving it an order of battle that remained to the end of the war. It was organised into two brigades: the 1st Brigade was commanded by General Picquet and consisted of the 1st Regiment of Gardes d’Honneur and the 10th Hussars, and the 2nd Brigade was commanded by General de Ségur and consisted of the 3rd and 4th Regiments of Gardes d’Honneur.

Although the division took little part in the opening actions of the campaign at Brienne and La Rothière, it continued to shrink from the strategic consumption from which all formations were plagued in this campaign, and by the constant detachments that light cavalry units are accustomed to when fulfilling their particular role. By the battle of Montmirail on the 11th Feb the division was rarely able to concentrate more than 8 to 900 men. Bearing in mind that around 400 of these were from the 10th Hussars it can be seen to what level the regiments of Gardes d’Honneur had been reduced from the 10,000 that had been recruited only five months before!

Their plight was not helped by the trickle of reinforcements being sent off to other armies and a reluctance to send out 700 armed and mounted Gardes from the depots towards the end of the campaign when Paris itself was threatened, despite the orders of Napoleon himself. At Montmirail, despite their miserable numbers, the division made a distinguished charge after Napoleon had watched them ride past onto the battlefield. Their charge against the withdrawing Russian infantry turned a retreat into a rout, and this action, with the support they gave the Guard cavalry during the pursuit of Sacken’s and Yorck’s corps the next day, earned the division 65 crosses of the Legion d’Honneur.

More Gardes d'Honneur

Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #62
Back to First Empire List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2002 by First Empire.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com