On the margins of that great Napoleonic history that we study in school textbooks, dotted with battles, surrenders, conquests and revolutions, beats the small story of the men who made the French Empire great.
It is estimated that some two and a half million soldiers fought under the emperor's orders throughout Europe. From the coasts of the Atlantic to the icy Russia. Some were driven by patriotism, revolutionary ideas or admiration for the Gran Corso. Others wanted to live the adventure of their lives or escape the clutches of poverty. Most of them went to war forced, victims of an unfortunate draw. Many died. A few survived the battlefield that Europe had become. Some deserted, trying to circumvent the future drawn by the invisible hand of destiny.
Nights in the open, endless walks, famines and atrocious battles marked his future. They were the members of the glorious Grande Armée. Its ending, however, did not enjoy a minimum of splendor on most occasions. Their bodies were frequently swallowed by the anonymity of a mass grave, thousands of kilometers from their home.
These men participated in all the conflicts of the Coalition Wars, in the Spanish War of Independence and in the French invasion of Russia. The vast majority of these soldiers were French, but a considerable number came from other European countries, such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland.
The Geneanet project, started in France in 2014, allows us to follow the trail of our ancestors. Do we have any distant relatives who served under Napoleon Bonaparte? Who were they? Where did they die? What was his appearance?
The answer to many of these questions is just a few clicks away. The project contains information on more than one million Napoleonic soldiers between 1802 and 1815. The files, based on military records kept by the French Ministry of Defense, contain an order number, surnames, first names, names of parents, date and place of birth, military unit, as well as a link to the original digitized image.
But not only that. They also provide a physical description of each soldier. Injuries, decorations, promotions or desertions. From the color of their eyebrows to their height. Valuable information placed in the hands of curious Internet users following a few key words.
Leading the initiative is Alain Brugeat, a former IT scientist at the Ministry of Education. He discovered that several of his ancestors served under Napoleon, and there began his adventure.
Unapproachable by discouragement, he spends twelve to fourteen hours a day collecting, organizing and correcting information. “It's not an obsession. It has more to do with the pleasure of sharing information with people and knowing that those interested can find what they need through this project,” he confesses to Historia y Vida.
This enthusiast's work could not be carried out without the help of the more than two hundred volunteers who work side by side in the search. “The project consists of transcribing the information from the soldiers' civil records (who they are, who their parents are, where they were born) and checking, especially, that the geographical data is correct, because names sometimes change over time. . Without volunteers the project could not be carried out, because the States digitize the images, but the indexing work is always carried out by volunteers.”
“It is very useful to follow the life line of the soldiers, what they may have suffered, who their families are. I try to keep track of the decorations, because Napoleon created specific decorations such as the Legion of Honor, one of the greatest distinctions even today in France,” explains the genealogist.
Who became a soldier in local communities? What was his level of wealth when he joined the army and at the end of his life? Did his social trajectory change? What happened to the demobilized soldiers?
These are some of the questions that could be answered through this initiative, in the opinion of Jean François Brun, researcher at the University of Saint Étienne. “If we follow the logic of the research (studying the local communities from which soldiers come, and therefore the families and family networks), we should get a very detailed social approach to recruitment,” he says.
The promoters of Geneanet have managed to uncover, so far, more than 1,200,000 files on Napoleonic soldiers. More than a million stories lost in time. Like that of Pierre Noël Maury, the ancestor of Sophie Clamaron, one of the volunteers embarked on the project.
Pierre Noël (so called because he was born on Christmas Day 1787 in Saint-Ybars) was a farmer in the south of France. He was 1.60 meters tall, had black hair, gray eyes, a narrow face. He entered the Grande Armée in 1807 at the age of nineteen. He was wounded three times: in the right leg in the Battle of Wagram (1809) and in the shoulder and hand in two other battles during the invasion of Russia.
In 1813 he was demobilized and, shortly after, he married. At the age of 69, Pierre Noël was awarded the Sainte-Hélène medal. He died in his village in 1868. The decoration, together with a letter from the Grande Armée of 1813, is displayed today in the home of his descendant Sophie Clamaron.
Napoleon's foreign troops played a fundamental role in the war at the beginning of the 19th century. Bonaparte had the support of forces from the allied countries (Confederation of the Rhine, Poland, Austria and Prussia from 1812), which fought under their own flags and were integrated into the Grande Armée in autonomous regiments. The Italians were a special case, since Napoleon was also king of Italy.
On the other hand, the French army incorporated units composed of soldiers of foreign origin into its ranks, the so-called “foreign regiments.” Who were the Spanish soldiers who fought under the orders of the French emperor? Jean François Brun divides them into three categories.
“In 1807-1808, within the framework of the Franco-Spanish military alliance, the La Romana division (about nine thousand cavalry, infantry, artillery and sappers under the command of Pedro Caro Sureda, Marquis of La Romana) was stationed in Denmark, Jutland and the island of Funen. Most of them deserted in 1808, were repatriated to Spain by the Royal Navy and fought the French in Spain,” explains the expert.
Between 1809 and 1813, some Spanish prisoners of war (from the La Romana division in particular) applied to join the Grande Armée and formed the José Napoleón regiment, stationed in Russia. This regiment was transformed into two pioneer battalions in 1813, when foreign troops were expelled from the French army. “Finally, there is the army of King Joseph Bonaparte, formed by decree on June 6, 1808, of which documentary resources are preserved in Spain,” maintains the historian.
Soldiers in favor of Napoleon who also appear, from time to time, in the Geneanet files. “What I have seen are the Spaniards from the part of Spain that became a French department after 1812, as is the case of Catalonia. There are Spaniards, fewer than other nationalities, but there are them,” says Alain Brugeat.
“Among the Spanish elites it was fashionable to send their children to study at the French military academies so that they could have a career in Napoleon's army,” adds Antonio Grajal, co-author along with Jorge Planas Campos of the volume Officiers de Napoléon tués ou blessés pendant la guerre d'Espagne (1808-1814) –Napoleon's officers killed or wounded during the War of Independence (1808-1814)–, an in-depth investigation into the future of Napoleonic troops in Spanish territory.
There is a lot of information left to analyze. The Historical Archives Center is based in the Chateau de Vincennes, with documents produced by the Ministry of the Armed Forces. More than 120 linear kilometers of documents created and received since the 17th century related to military affairs. A gold mine for researchers.
“The registration records of the Joseph Napoleon regiment are in the Château de Vincennes. We will try to obtain them and see, specifically, who they were, where they came from and what their fate was probably, in what battle they died,” anticipates Antonio Grajal.
“There are about six hundred thousand soldiers still to be indexed, and what interests me most are the lives that are out of the ordinary, those that are different or unusual for whatever reason,” concludes, for his part, Alain Brugeat. Lives waiting to be told with the small print of great stories. Stories to be unearthed from the muddy soil of a thousand battles.
