We received the following press release.--RL

There was considerable interest in the announcement of the hitherto unseen letters and diaries by a Napoleonic officer to be published shortly. We therefore invited Cynthia Joy Hausmann and John H. Gill to write about the background to the project.

"I first became aware of my great-grandfather's letters", writes Cynthia Joy Hausmann "after the death of my grandfather, Franz, Joseph Hausmann's youngest son, in 1951. Although the quality of the paper and ink was probably as good as what one would encounter today, through the years the lettters had clearly been lovingly pored over by Franz's children. In places they were torn or mended with small stirps of brown or transparent paper, some pages were out of order, and here and there my grandfather had pencilled in comments, as was his wont. Although Franz's handwriting was quite good, he used the old-fashioned Gothic script, sometimes squeezed comments into the margins, and generally wrote in a very small hand - in later years he would admonish his children to write as small as possible, so as to save postage by not using much paper.

My great-grandfather Franz Joseph Hausmann served as a young lieutenant with the 7th Bavarian Infantry Regiment and was one of the fortunate few of Napoleon's Grande Armee to survive the Russian campaign of 1812-1813. Later, after the Bavarians changed sides and joined the Allies in the campaign against Napoleon, Franz fought his way across France up to the capitulation of Paris on 31 March 1814. It was Franz's good fortune on these military campaigns to be serving as adjutant to one or another of the Bavarian commanding officers, thereby greatly increasing his chance of survival.

However, by 1951 Franz's only living descendants were in the United States, and only my father and I had sufficient linguistic interest to attempt a preliminary translation of the letter that had been handed down for the benefit of other family members. The older generation was thrilled to learn what an honourable young man Franz had been, and the younger generation by and large merely noted the fact that some ancestor had written letters during Napoleon's time. So matters remained, until I recently realised that my days were slowly running out and that I ought to make a serious effort to learn if there might be any outside interest in what had until then been considered strictly a family curiosity. Family attics have also produced other related treasures, notably Franz's military diaries, his voluminous later letters to his children, and the documents associated with his decorations.

My grandfather, Julius (1849-1951), Franz's youngest child, emigrated in 1869, became an American citizen in 1874, and founded a successful importing business in New York. He spent long periods of time in Germany, around the turn of the century, even maintaining a house there in Weissenburg (in Alsace, now in France) where his unmarried sisters lived. In approximately 1923, when travel between Germany and the United States again became possible after World War I, he came into possession of all his father's letter and diaries. Presumably, these had previously been kept by his half-brother Otto, Franz's eldest son, who had remained in Germany. Otto, however had no children, and after his death in 1917, my grandfather assumed responsibility for the family legacy. In the war-related interim before someone from my family could bring these papers and related momentos to the United States, they were probably kept by Franz's unmarried daughter, Mathilda, who would die in 1939, the last remaining descendant of Franz's to live in Germany."

"Franz Joseph Hausmann lived during one of the most important phases of Bavarian history", writes John H. Gill, "and personally experienced many of the dramatic events that brought transformational change to that realm in the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century. Born in the year of the French Revolution, Franz first entered the army in 1799, left active service in 1815 after the Battle of Waterloo, and finally departed the army in 1818 when the last Allied occupation troops came home from France. Through these years in uniform, he fought in every major Central European campaign of the French Empire: 1805 against Austria and Russia, 1806/7 against Prussia and Russia, 1809 against Austria, 1812 against Russia, and 1813 against the combined Allied powers.

Finally, in 1814, he participated in the invasion of France with the Bavarian Corps of the Allied Main Army. A remarkable collection of military experiences for a young man of 25! Through all the many trials and glories of these years, Franz maintained a detailed march journal and, from 1812, a lively correspondence with his parents in Neuburg on the Danube. It is these often lengthy letters which form the foundation of this book and which provide unique insights into military life during the Napoleonic epoch.

The letters and diaries come from a collection of Franz's papers held by his great-grand-daughter, Cynthia Joy Hausmann.

For those who think of the Napoleonic era as a piece of ancient history only one step removed from the Roman Empire, it is worth recalling that Cynthia is only Franz's great-grand-daughter. Considering that most of us have probably known one or more of our grandparents and some have even been blessed to know great-grandparents, this littler observation helps bring home the fact that the age of Napoleon is not all that far removed in time from our own after all."

The new book is:-

A SOLIDER FOR NAPOLEON The Campaigns of Lieutenant Franz Joseph Hausmann 7th Bavarian Infantry

Translated by Cynthia Joy Hausmann Edited by John H. Gill

October 1998: ISBN 1-85367-336-6. Price: £19.50
Format: 240 x 159mm. Hardback. Pages 288.
Features: 7 maps, 22 illustrations.

Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal Limited
Park House
1 Russell Gardens
London NW11 9NN
Tel: 0181 458 6314
Fax: 0181 905 5245
E-mail: LionelLeventhal@compuserve.com

Distributed in America (available November, $34.95):

Stackpole Books
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg PA 17055
USA
Tel: 717 796 0411
Fax: 717 796 0412
E-mail: sales@stackpolebooks.com

Back to 4th Quarter 98 List of News Items

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