General Gudin: The Russian-French hunt for Napoleon’s brother-in-arms
Introduction
On 24 June 1812, Napoleon I’s Great Army crossed the River Neman,
invading the Russian Empire. Numbering in all around 680,000 men,
two-thirds of them French, it was the largest army the world had
ever known.
Its mission: to defeat the Russian Army in decisive battle and
thus force Russian Emperor Alexander I to fall back in line with
the French emperor’s grand plans for Europe.
However, the decisive battle proved elusive as the outnumbered
Russian forces kept retreating and the French penetrated ever
further into Russian territory.
On 17 August, they took the city of Smolensk. Two days later, the Russians
evaded encirclement by fighting a rear-guard action near Valutina Gora.
Losses were heavy on both sides.
One casualty was Napoleon Bonaparte’s schoolmate, General Charles-Etienne
Gudin. After his childhood friend’s death in hospital in Smolensk, Napoleon
had him buried in an elaborate ceremony.
After that, the mystery thickens. The location of the burial was disputed
and Gudin’s remains were never found.
That is, until a joint French and Russian archaeological expedition set
out to find the lost general in the spring of 2019.
French infantry at the Battle of Valutina Gora, by Christian Wilhelm von Faber du Faur. 1830s
Chapter 1
Death of a General and Birth of a Legend
The circumstances of General Gudin’s death and burial are known thanks
to two eyewitness accounts, one by Napoleon’s aide-de-camp Philippe-Paul,
count of Segur, and the other by Louis-Francois, baron Lejeune, who was
in charge of Gudin’s funeral.
They underline the sorrow felt by Napoleon on a personal level, and also
the blow to the Great Army’s morale caused by the loss of a popular general.
Battle of Valutina Gora General Tutchkov counter attacks with the
Ekaterinoslavsky regiment, by Peter von Hess.
However, the way the authors describe the exact location of Gudin’s grave is
not sufficiently detailed and may appear contradictory. Segur places the
burial inside the citadel, that is inside the most fortified area of Smolensk’s
walled city, while Lejeune locates it “towards the great bastion” to or at
(the French preposition “au” could mean either) the south-east of the city.
He also compares Gudin’s resting place to a Gallic tumulus or burial mound.
But did he mean the Sheinov bastion, an elevated mound just south-east of the
fortifications, or one of the five bastions inside the pentagonal King’s
fortress, on the south-western corner of the city’s fortified walls? This
one also included an elevated earth mound.
Gudin’s heart was buried at the famous Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris; his
name is mentioned twice among Napoleon’s generals at the Arc de Triomphe, and a
street in the French capital’s 16th district also honours his memory. Yet for
over 200 years, his burial place remained a mystery, contributing to the poignant
legend of the lost general.
General Gudin, who has been mortally wounded by a cannon shell, hands over the
command of his division to General Gerard, Illustration by Henri Felix Emmanuel
Philippoteaux. Death of General Gudin at the Battle of Valutino, 1830S.
These are the two first-hand accounts that guided the joint team of archaeologists
in their search for Gudin’s remains:
Gudin was taken to Smolensk and received the Emperor’s ministrations there.
They proved useless; he died. His remains were buried in the town’s citadel,
which they hold in honour, a worthy tomb for this warrior - a good citizen,
a good husband, a good father, a fair, gentle and intrepid general, with both
integrity and shrewdness; a rare combination in an age where too often the
decent men lack cunning and the cunning lack character.
Philippe-Paul, Count of Segur, was attached to Napoleon’s personal staff as an
aide-de-camp during the Russia campaign. His memoirs provide an insider’s account
of the battle of Valutina Gora and more generally of the dissensions among the high
command during that fateful campaign.
Two-thirds of the city of Smolensk were still in flames, and while we were still
trying to save from the fire what remained of the Russians’ enormous provisions,
while my comrades from the engineering corps were rebuilding the great bridge
which had burnt down, I was directing the funeral convoy towards the great bastion,
at the south-east of the town; and it was in the midst of this great construction,
which I deemed a mausoleum worthy of this illustrious warrior, that I had his tomb
dug. I ordered that 20 rifles broken in battle and arranged in a star-shaped
formation be placed on the body of the deceased, so that one day when Time, which
destroys everything, would uncover the bones of a hero, this weapons trophy would
call on them the same feelings of attentiveness and respect which we show towards
the remains of our valiant Gauls, placed under their ancient burial mounds.
Louis-François, Baron Lejeune, was a painter by training who also enjoyed a
distinguished military career. He took part in the Russia campaign as a “général de
brigade”, and was in charge of General Gudin’s funeral.
Unearthing the mysteries of Valutina Gora battlefield
During May 2019, a joint Russian and French team conducted an archeological survey of
the site of the Napoleonic battle of Valutina Gora near Smolensk in Western Russia.
The field work was led by Maria Nesterova and Anastasia Ivanova, with the
participation of anthropologist Tatiana Shvedchikova. They managed a team of
archeologists from the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Archaeology’s Sambian
expedition, whose director is Alexandr Khokhlov. They worked together with specialists
from the French National Institute of Preventative Archaeological Research, as well as
students from both countries.
This was the first time professional archaeologists had surveyed the site, although
archeological looters had already been there. They made important findings which
confirmed the written accounts of the battle, including the story of how General
Gudin was mortally wounded. “We can now say precisely how it happened and where it
happened”, Alexandr Khokhlov declared.
The team took aerial photographs of the area around the Strogan river valley and
proceeded to map the battleground, comparing their topographical survey with existing
sources, including written accounts and paintings. They found traces of the old road
from Smolensk to Moscow and of the bridge over the Strogan river that was causing
problems for the French Army.
The archeologists were able to locate the probable position of Russian artillery that
was firing at General Gudin’s columns from high ground on the left bank of the Strogan
river, and were able to determine where the general was hit. They also found the remains
of several Russian Jaegers in the marshy flood plain of the Strogan River, that is light
infantrymen, some human bones, as well as uniform buttons, and a large quantity of bullets
and shrapnel.
The first attempt to find Gudin’s body at the Sheinov Bastion
Initially, the Smolensk 1812-2019 joint French and Russian archeological expedition
searched for General Gudin’s grave at the site of Smolensk’s Sheinov Bastion during
May 2019.
Alexandr Khokhlov, the director of the Sambian expedition of the Russian Academy of
Science’s Institute of Archeology headed the fieldwork, which was carried out by
Marina Nesterova and Dmitry Soloviov, in partnership with archeologists from the
French National Institute of Preventative Archeological Research.
Baron Lejeune, who had directed his funeral and his superior, Marshal Davout, claimed
in their memoirs that Gudin had been buried in a mound at the South-East of the citadel.
As a courtesy to the French side, who favoured this hypothesis, it was decided to dig
up the only mound in this area. Known as the Sheinov Bastion, it is located next to
the old city walls in a public park.
The defensive element dates back to the 17th century. At that time, Polish and
Lithuanian troops had besieged Smolensk and breached its fortified walls in several
places. To close the gap in the city’s defences , an earth mound was later erected
there, which was named after Shein, a military commander, and became known as the
Sheinov Bastion.
The archeologists discovered that the upper layer of the bastion dating from the
beginning of the 19th century had been destroyed by bulldozers when the public square
was laid out in the 1960s. This meant there was no chance of finding bodies buried
during 1812.
“There used to be wooden and earthen constructions there. We were able to retrace
the specifics of construction of this defensive element”.
Once it became clear that no graves of any kind would be found, the team decided
to abandon excavations at the Sheinov Bastion.
The Search at the King's Fortress bastion
After the search for General Gudin’s remains at Smolensk’s Sheinov Bastion was stopped,
the French archeologists went home and the Russian archeologists decided to explore
the second hypothesis: that Napoleon’s friend was buried in the King’s Bastion. The
fieldwork was carried out by a unit led by Marina Nesterova and Dmitry Soloviov from
the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Archeology’s Sambian expedition, whose
director is archeologist Aleksandr Khokhlov.
The “King’s Bastion” is the name locals use to refer to an area of the city’s
fortifications known in historical documents as the King’s Fortress, the Sigismund
Fortress or Smolensk Citadel. This is a fortification made up of five bastions. It
was built in the 17th century following the destruction of part of the Smolensk
Kremlin (meaning fortified city in Russian) walls, and was intended to host Sigismund,
King of Poland.
One set of written accounts placed Gudin’s funeral in the Smolensk Citadel. However,
they diverged as to the bastion where the general was buried. Some indicated he was
buried in the centre of the citadel, and others that his grave was dug in the bastion
to the right of the main entrance. The central part was inaccessible, because it was
covered in concrete by a concert area, so the team opted for the bastion next to the
gate. They started off by delineating a rectangle measuring forty square metres, and
then added another forty, and commenced excavations.
How Gudin’s skeleton was found
It was doubtful that anything remained of the Napoleonic era, since fighting had been
particularly destructive during World War II in Smolensk. Moreover, a dance area had
been built there following the war. It was subsequently removed and replaced by grass,
but the brick foundations remained and made the initial work difficult. Once they got
beyond that, Aleksandr Khokhlov recalls, they used the horizontal excavation method.
Using very fine trowels, the archeologists scrape the cultural layer that corresponds
to this or that historical period, so that the different coloured soils indicate how
the site was used at that time.
This is when the team made their key find: they uncovered six circular pits in a
different colour of soil set up in a circle around one central rectangular pit of
the dimensions of an adult’s coffin, first spotted by Marina Nesterova. These fitted
with Lejeune’s description of Gudin’s funeral (Death of a General and Birth of a
Legend).
Lejeune wrote that they had placed broken cannons vertically around the coffin, to
serve as columns supporting a metal roof. Once the French had moved on from Smolensk,
locals took the cannons because their bronze was a valuable material, leaving only
the pits.
“After this, we called Pierre [Malinowski, leader of the project] and told him,”
Aleksandr Khokhlov related. “From that time on, we started uncovering the grave very
carefully and slowly. We dug out what had filled the hole of the grave, and we got
to the level where there were human remains and decayed planks, remaining from the
coffin. […]
They were in a very poor condition. Planks that were originally 2.5 cm thick now
measured only 2-3 millimetres. We obviously cleaned these remains of the coffin very
carefully.”
They found what remained of the lid, and then started to see the skeleton of the
deceased. “Very importantly, the buried person’s right leg was whole, but the bones
of the left leg were missing below the knee. That is, there was a fracture just
above the knee,” the archeologist added. “And that was the final evidence supporting
the fact that this was the resting place of Charles–Etienne Gudin, division general,
and Count of the empire. Because all the written sources repeated that he had lost
his leg and due to loss of blood had died three days later in a Smolensk hospital.”
The one–legged skeleton found in Smolensk in July 2019 seemed to be that of
General Gudin. The fact that he was missing his left leg, and that his skull
bore signs of having been cut open, which is consistent with a post-mortem
examination,, as well as the location of his grave, corroborated the written
accounts of his death and burial. However, only DNA analysis could confirm his
identity.
This was carried out in France by the bio-cultural Anthropology, Law, Ethics
and health (ADES) research unit at Aix-Marseille university, led by Professor
Michel Signoli, a specialist in funerary anthropology with a focus on Napoleonic
wars. To do this, they needed to compare the General’s DNA with that of close
relatives and then work out the probabilities of a match. The team included
Caroline Costedoat (genetic anthropology), Emeline Verna (forensic anthropology)
and Loïc Lalys (anthropology of the living).
Obtaining the necessary samples turned into a nail-biting adventure. First Pierre
Malinowski took a skull fragrment, the femur and four teeth of the deceased from
Russia to France, carrying the body parts in his hand luggage. Then, in what proved
to be the lengthiest part of the process, permission was sought and finally granted
to exhume the bodies at the family grave in the cemetery of St-Maurice-sur-Aveyron,
in the Loiret district close to General Gudin’s birth place. The ADES team took
some bone from his mother, father, son, grandson and father's twin brother, and
extracted Gudin’s DNA from his femur, Emeline Verda recalls.
Following this, the laboratory of Marseille’s scientific police examined everyone’s
DNA. They analysed both their mitochondrial DNA, which is only passed on by mothers,
and several markers for nuclear DNA, which is transmitted by both parents.
Within two weeks, all the results were available: it was established with 99.9%
probability that the remains were indeed those of Napoleon’s friend, Charles-Etienne
Gudin. All samples apart from those of his uncle, proved usable. The exciting news
was made public on 4 November 2019.
Although the Napoleonic general has a direct living descendant, Alberic d’Orleans,
his DNA could not provide conclusive evidence. On the one hand, with each generation,
the increase in the number of relatives competing to pass on fragments of their DNA
means that more and more information gets lost. On the other, since Mr d’Orleans
descends from one of the general’s grand-daughters, the Y chromosome was lost at
that point, and with it irreplaceable genetic information.
Chapter 4
General Gudin’s homecoming
After resting for two hundred years in Russian soil, Charles-Etienne Gudin's
remains are finally going home to France.
Following a meeting between the French and Russian presidents at the Paris summit
in December 2019, French officials submitted a formal request for Russia to release
the General's remains, according to French magazine Le Point, quoting Elysées
Presidential palaces sources.
The current plan, which has not yet been confirmed by the Russian or French Presidency,
is to rebury the General in the Dome church of the Invalides, France's historic military
complex, next to his friend Napoleon's grand tomb, during a special ceremony attended
by Presidents Putin and Macron.
To avoid possible embarrassment, French military historians reviewed the General's
biography to make sure there are no incidents that might make him unworthy of the
tribute. They concluded that General Gudin was "an honourable man", according to
the French magazine,
Le Point.
