| LITTLE BIG MAN - THE LIFE OF JEAN-ROCH COIGNET |
|
Written by John Tarttelin (Napoleon)
Jean-Roch Coignet was born at Druyes-les-Belles-Fontaines in Yonne in 1776. He very nearly shared the same day of birth as the seven year old future Emperor, for Coignet’s birthday was August 16th, a day later than his more famous counterpart. He lived a very full life at an epoch making period in history and was destined to play a part at the epicentre of the Empire in the very presence of Napoleon. But all this was far-off in the future. Coignet’s beginnings could not have been humbler, while his early life was dire in the extreme.
Coignet’s initial years could have been a horror story penned by the Brothers Grimm or a dark tale told by Hans Christian Andersen. He was virtually abandoned by his wastrel father, nicknamed The Lover, for his siring of more than thirty illegitimate offspring as well as his issue of having three wives. Coignet’s mother was the second of these and, when she died, the orphaned Jean-Roch and his three siblings were plunged into a veritable nightmare of pain and want. His eighteen year old stepmother, formerly the family servant and now his father’s third wife, was called The Beauty on account of her looks, but she had a heart as cold and black as obsidian glass. She resolved to get rid of her unwanted charges as soon as possible. There is an old English saying that: ‘Many of the fairest without are the foulest within.’ And The Beauty was a wicked stepmother of proverbial proportions.
She so starved young Coignet and Pierre, his elder brother by a year, the two of them decided to run away from home. As Coignet put it: “We poor little orphans were beaten night and day. She choked us to give us a good colour.”1 They headed for Étais, an hour’s walk away and arrived the day of a fair: “My brother put a bunch of oak leaves in my little hat, and hired me out as a shepherd.”2 Years later, Coignet would find himself shepherding the Imperial baggage wagons in the heart of Russia.
Coignet at eight years old, found himself guarding a flock of sheep next to a forest by the village of Chamois. His job was to prevent the sheep from straying into the dark wood. Suddenly a huge wolf ran out of the trees and tried to pull down one of the finest specimens in the flock. Young Coignet was soon holding the sheep by its hind legs while the wolf was pulling at the other end in a bizarre life and death struggle. Fortunately, two trained dogs took the wolf down, but here is an early indication of the pluckiness and toughness of this peasant boy.3
Later, at the fair at Entrains, he hired himself out for thirty francs a year to two farmers of Les Bardins. His job was to gather wood and take it to the wharves in three ox-drawn wagons: “I became covered with vermin, and was perfectly wretched.”4 Every night, he slept alongside his oxen in a wood beneath the stars. Once, his charges wandered off whilst he slept and he had to look for them amidst the gloom. Soon his legs were torn to shreds by briers and blood was running into his wooden sabots: “Often, on my way, I used to encounter wolves, with eyes shining like sparks, but my courage never abandoned me.”5 He was relieved to find his wayward teams. For three years the child who had once danced with a wolf, saw more of these predators than he did of other human beings. Verminous and dejected, he endured his torment with admirable fortitude and resolve.
At the age of twelve, Coignet returned to his home village, where even his father no longer knew him. At Sunday Mass: “I had at once recognized my father who sung among the choristers; little did he know that one of his children whom he had abandoned was so near him.”6 Only now did Coignet learn the fate of Alexander and Marianne, his little brother and sister. The Beauty had taken them to the forest of Druyes and left them there to die. Fortunately, after three days of tearful wandering they were found by a miller, Father Thibault, who took them into his care. Not surprisingly, Coignet could not stand the sight of his stepmother and he did his best to avoid her.
Hiring himself out to his half-sister, who had no idea they were related, he became a stable boy at an inn and a go-for – ‘go for this…go for that’. Red-headed Coignet felt bitter and must have cried himself to sleep on many an occasion: “so great was my mortification at the idea of being a servant in my sister’s house and that at my father’s door.”7 But life for young Coignet was about to change.
“Chance makes a plaything of a man’s life,” Seneca wrote.8 And so it was that by sheer chance, two gentlemen horse-traders stopped at the inn on their way to the fair at Entrains. Asked by them to be their guide, Coignet made the acquaintance of Monsieur Potier and Monsieur Huzé. Potier proved to be his saviour. Although short and ugly in Coignet’s eyes, Potier had a heart of gold. When he heard of the terrible treatment the boy had received at the hands of his own family, he decided to take the intelligent twelve-year-old under his wing. At a tearful denouement with his father, stepmother and half-sister, the whole village turned out to wish Coignet a safe journey.9
His new home was at Coulommiers, only fifteen leagues from Paris. Coignet was full of praise for his new employer: “He did not seem like a master, he was a father to everyone. A disagreeable word never fell from his lips.”10 After saving Potier’s prized pigs during a flood, Coignet became his acting ‘secretary’. For this bright but illiterate peasant boy this was like a dream come true. Eventually, he accompanied Potier to the Reims fair to buy horses to sell to the new peers of the Republic. Suddenly, he found himself with fifty-five horses to train. It took him two months: “At the end of that time I was worn out; my lungs were affected, I spat blood, but I had acquitted myself with honour.”11 Then the peers came to inspect the new horses in person. Coignet rode all the horses and was praised for his skill. One very special animal was reserved for the procureur of the Republic. He decided to present it to the president of the Assembly and so pleased was the procureur that he offered Coignet a job. Loyal to Potier, he refused, but what social circles young Coignet was now moving in!12 Accompanying Potier to the École Militaire in Paris, he again demonstrated his talents as a trainer and rider. As a result of Potier’s fair-dealing, there was a further order for 200 artillery horses with tight specifications as to the type of animals accepted by the Military. Potier found 300 and all were accepted. A decade later, it was the lack of such fine animals that cost Napoleon his Empire, after thousands of artillery and cavalry horses were lost in Russia.13
Despite his abilities, the École Militaire did not give Coignet the customary personal fee and he was most disappointed. Potier, however, gave him a watch, two hundred francs for training the peers’ horses and two louis (forty francs), for the special mount: “What a fortune it was for me!”14 Coignet wrote. Potier made 30,000 francs from the two deals. The quality of French cavalry depended upon such men.
Coignet could put his hand to anything. He learnt how to plough and to mill flour: “At sixteen I could lift a bag like a man. At eighteen I could lift a bag weighing three hundred and twenty-five pounds.”15 Young Coignet was one of the very few Frenchmen who could have ‘lifted’ the future Louis XVIII – who spent most of his exile happily, if somewhat lèse-majesté, in England. However, by now, “the position of being a servant began to be exceedingly distasteful to me. My thoughts turned towards a soldier’s life.”16
His trips to the École Militaire, the sight of fine uniforms and the camaraderie of military men, had stirred his imagination. Nevertheless, knowing which side his bread was buttered on, he remained with Potier until he was conscripted. Even then, he was so prized that his master would have bought him a substitute if necessary.17
Jean-Roch Coignet sensed that he had another destiny.
Charging Chasseur – Gericault (1812) Coignet joined the Army shortly before Napoleon returned from Egypt in 1799. He had once told Potier: “If ever I am a soldier, I will do my best to get into the hussars; they are so splendid.”18 In fact, he began his career as a grenadier. Sent to wretched barracks at Fontainebleau, he became part of a battalion of 1,800 men under General Lefebvre. After two months, they heard that Napoleon was on his way to Paris. This electrified them all: “Our officers were full of excitement, because the chief of our battalion knew him, and the whole battalion was delighted by the news.”19 Soon, they heard that Napoleon was coming to Fontainebleau. Impressed by the battalion’s turn out, he gave orders for a march to Courbevoie as cries of “Vive Bonaparte” filled the air. Sent on to the École Militaire, which Coignet knew from his days as a horse-trader, a distribution of cartridges was made to the soldiers. Finally, they reached St. Cloud. Napoleon had decided on a little bill and coup with the discredited, corrupt representatives of the people – the Directory.20
Coignet sets the scene: “The grenadiers of the Directory and the Five Hundred were in line in the front court; a half-brigade of infantry was stationed near the great gate, and four companies of grenadiers behind the guard of the Directory. Cries of “Vive Bonaparte” were heard on all sides…”21.
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY COIGNET PART ONE
* See http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/index-html
N.B. Coignet uses lower case for officers in his book. I have used Captain, Corporal etc., for his own officers to make things clearer.
1. CAPTAIN COIGNET by Jean-Roche Coignet (1850) Leonaur (2007) p.72. Ibid., p.8
3. Ibid., pps. 8-9 4. Ibid., p.9 5. Ibid., p.9 6. Ibid., p.10 7. Ibid., p.12 8. SENECA Roman writer of the first Century AD. Quotation from title sequence of the film ‘Fire in the Sky.’ 9. CAPTAIN COIGNET op.cit., p.21 10. Ibid., p.25 11. Ibid., p.35 12. Ibid., p.38 13. Ibid., pps.39-4014. Ibid., p.41
15. Ibid., p.41 16. Ibid., p.41 17. Ibid., p.55 18. Ibid., p.55 19. Ibid., p.58 20. Ibid., pps.59-60 21. Ibid., p.59 22 Ibid., p.60 23 NAPOLEON by Frank McLynn (1997) p.218 24. See NAPOLEON IMMORTAL by James Kemble (1959) p.63 andNAPOLEON by Vincent Cronin (1971) p.74
25. CAPTAIN COIGNET op.cit., p.62 26. Ibid., pps.63-66 27. Ibid., p.66 28. Ibid., p.71 29. Ibid., p.73 30. Ibid., p.74 31. Ibid., p.77 32. Ibid., pps.78-79 33. A queue was the ponytail customarily worn by grenadiers. This, with a moustache and a couple of gold earrings, was de rigueur for later Imperial Guardsmen. Coignet had a thick head of hair even at the age of 72. 34. Ibid., p.80 35. Ibid., p.80 36. Ibid., p.82 37. Ibid., pps.83-84 38. Ibid., p.84 39. Ibid., p.8640. Ibid., p.86
41. Ibid., p.88 42. Ibid., pps.88-89 43. Ibid., pps.89-90 44. Ibid., p.91 45. Ibid., p.92 46. Ibid., p.93 47. Ibid., p.93 48. Ibid., p.94 49. Ibid., p.95 50. Ibid., pps.95-97 51. Ibid., p.95 52. Ibid., p.97 53. Ibid., p.98 54. Ibid., p.99 55. Ibid., p.99 56. Ibid., p.100
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. CAPTAIN COIGNET: JEAN-ROCH COIGNET (1850) LEONAUR (2007) 2. NAPOLEON: VINCENT CRONIN (1971) 3. SWORDS AROUND A THRONE: JOHN ELTING (1988) 4. NAPOLEON IMMORTAL: JAMES KEMBLE (1959) 5. NAPOLEON: FELIX MARKHAM (1963) 6. NAPOLEON: FRANK McLYNN (1997)
Any further questions? Please use our question section and we will supply you with the answer. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
