On the 7th of December, 1815, Madame Ney sought an audience with the King to implore her husband’s pardon. At the Tuileries, she was informed that it was already too late: the Marshal had been shot. On the preceding evening, the Chamber of Peers had pronounced his condemnation to death after hearing his defense; he had refused to suffer its continuance unless he were permitted to appeal to the convention upon which he claimed to have relied. The soldier arrested for joining Napoleon during the Hundred Days had, in a matter of days, become the prisoner at the bar in a trial that contested not merely his treason, but the sanctity of a pledged word and the bitter meaning of defeat.
Ney had stood among the most renowned captains of the Empire. Upon Napoleon’s return in March 1815, Louis XVIII had entrusted him with an army to repel the invader. At his trial, Ney affirmed that he had been upon his private estate when he received orders to proceed to Besançon, and that he learned of Bonaparte’s landing only upon reaching Paris. He addressed the vaunt attributed to him—that he would bring back Bonaparte “in an iron cage.” If he had indeed spoken thus, he declared, it was a forgivable piece of folly, proving at least his sincere intent to serve the King. This phrase, half rodomontade and half plea, was now to be weighed against his conduct on the 14th of March.
Following weeks of sittings, the arguments turned entirely upon the choices made by Ney in that fateful spring and upon the convention of July. On the 4th of December, the Count de Bourmont contested the notion that the Marshal had acted under duress or without agency. He recounted that in mid-March the Marshal had explained that the troops could well go over to Napoleon, that the King would depart unharmed, and that they must forthwith “join Bonaparte.” Bourmont also recalled an intimate confession: Ney could no longer bear to see his wife return home in tears each evening, wounded by the humiliations and slights she suffered at court.
Ney retorted with vehemence. Bourmont, he declared, had himself approved his proclamation and now stood before him only after fearing he might be dealt with like Labédoyère. He demanded that Bourmont confirm whether he had not, at the time, found the proclamation entirely satisfactory. Bourmont made a gesture denying the assertion. The two men offered irreconcilable accounts of their interview; it fell to the witnesses and the recorded actions of March, rather than their present word alone, to determine the Marshal’s guilt.
M. Batardy testified that he had apprised Ney of Bonaparte’s landing on the 7th of March. According to him, the Marshal had cried out: “Good God, what a misfortune!” General Heudelet described the insurrection at Dijon as nearly impossible to quell, and the troops as having been seized by an evil spirit of mutiny. When questioned as to whether Ney could have successfully opposed Napoleon’s advance with the forces under his hand, he cited the four incomplete regiments at the Marshal’s disposal.
Marshal Davoust was heard regarding the military convention negotiated in early July and signed at Saint-Cloud on the 3rd of that month. He recounted how the French authorities had inserted explicit stipulations concerning the demarcation line and the security of persons and property, and why he had ordered the parley to be broken off had these terms been refused. Ney’s counsel sought to plead Article XII, which guaranteed that the inhabitants of the capital and all persons then present within it should preserve their rights, without ever being disturbed or called to account for their public functions, conduct, or political opinions. Ney maintained that this solemn protection alone had persuaded him to remain in France.
The President of the Chamber refused to permit the defense to cross-examine Davoust as to the construction the Provisional Government had placed upon that article. He ruled that the text must be construed according to its own terms, and not by the private intentions of those who framed it. Bondy, who had signed the capitulation, affirmed that the amnesty had been accepted without demur; Guilemot testified that he had received express orders to break off negotiations if that guarantee were rejected. The prosecution countered that the King had never ratified the convention. The President likewise cited the Royal Ordinance of the 24th of July, which had remanded to the tribunals certain individuals whom the convention might otherwise have shielded.
On the 6th of December, Maître Berryer rose to plead the convention. The Procureur-Général entered an immediate protest; the President consulted the Peers, and thereupon forbade the defense from making any further use of the instrument. Maître Dupin then attempted another course: the Treaty of the 20th of November had altered the eastern frontier of the kingdom. Dupin submitted that the Marshal’s native soil now lay beyond the borders of France, and that he had, by that fact, ceased to be a French subject. Ney rose, visibly moved: he was a Frenchman, he cried, and a Frenchman he would die. He demanded that he be suffered to defend himself fully, or not at all. Thereupon, he forbade his advocates from speaking further so long as they were denied the use of all arguments they deemed essential to his cause.
The Chamber fell into a momentary silence. The Procureur-Général declared that he waived his right of reply, since the accused had abandoned his defense. Ney had not retracted his testimony; he merely refused to allow his counsel to plead within the narrow bounds imposed upon them. The Peers retired to deliberate. While his judges weighed his fate, Ney returned to his chamber and embraced his counsel. “It was your own wish,” the lawyer told him. Ney replied that they would meet again in the other world.
He called for his dinner and ate with composure. Observing his guard watching an ordinary table knife with an uneasy eye, he asked the man whether he thought him afraid of death, and cast the utensil aside. Having dined, he smoked a cigar and lay down; Borrow records that he slept, or appeared to sleep, for two hours. After six hours of deliberation, the Peers found him guilty and condemned him to the penalty of death, together with the costs of the trial. Ney was not brought into the hall to hear the sentence pronounced; the clerk was charged with serving the decree upon him in his cell.
In the dead of night, the Secretary of the Chamber entered to read the judgment. Ney cut him short, bidding him pass directly to the conclusion. When the clerk began the recitation of his long list of titles, the Marshal observed that all of it meant nothing to Michel Ney, who would soon be nothing more than a handful of dust. He entered a solemn protest against the application of an article concerning the succession to the crown. His wife and children were admitted shortly thereafter. Madame Ney collapsed upon entering; Madame Gamon, the Marshal’s sister, fell upon her knees before him; the children stood by in silence. Ney addressed them in a low voice and then requested them to withdraw. The historical records do not preserve his words.
A grenadier of the Guard exhorted him to turn his thoughts to God. In the morning, when the hour of departure was announced, Ney extended his hand to assist the priest into the carriage, remarking with grim irony that he himself would arrive above before him. The cortège passed through the Luxembourg gardens toward the place appointed near the Observatory. Ney expressed surprise at not being conveyed to the plain of Grenelle, where he had expected the execution to take place. He stepped down without hesitation, handed his snuffbox to the priest for his wife, and distributed a few gold coins to the poor.
According to Borrow’s account, he walked firmly to the wall, placed himself before the firing squad, and cried to the soldiers: “Comrades, straight to the heart—fire!” On the 7th of December, 1815, upon the Avenue de l’Observatoire, Ney died before his wife could reach the presence of the King. At the Tuileries, the Duke of Duras informed the Maréchale that an audience could no longer serve any purpose.
The Chamber had judged the act of the 14th of March and Ney’s allegiance upon Napoleon’s return. Article XII, meanwhile, had been struck from his defense. The trial had thus not merely transformed a wartime defection into a capital sentence; it left standing, in the very heart of the courtroom, a question the peers had refused to entertain upon the prisoner’s terms: how far the solemn word of a convention may shield a soldier who has changed his sovereign.