The legendary Napoleonic Marshal Michel Ney arrived into this world on January 10, 1769. The son of a barrel-maker from Lorraine, Michel Ney, by a whim of Fate, was catapulted to head-spinning military glory. 

Known as the Bravest of the Braves, Michel Ney was as hard-working as he was courageous, the hot-tempered soldier’s soldier often letting his dash get in the way of sound military thinking.  Entrusted the most difficult operations by Napoleon Bonaparte, Ney became a general at the still tender age of 20, and 15 years later was elevated to the rank of a Marshal of France. In recognition of the crushing charge he led during the battle of Borodino Michel Ney was created Price de la Moscowa, in addition to the title of Duke of Elchingen he had earlier received for routing the Austrian troops led by General Mack. Ney blamed Napoleon’s ambition for the crushing defeat the Grand Armee suffered in Russia and was one of those who pressured Napoleon to accept his first abdication and exile. When Paris fell and the Bourbons reclaimed the throne Ney pledged allegiance to King Louis XVIII. When Napoleon landed in the south of France after escaping from the Elbe Island, Marshal Ney promised the Bourbons to bring the deposed Emperor to Paris in an iron cage. Sent out to arrest the returning Napoleon, Ney was convinced to switch sides and fight for his old leader again. Especially after he received a note from Napoleon where the Emperor promised to accord him as warm a welcome as the one he had once given him after the Battle of Borodino. After the Waterloo debacle, Ney, instead of fleeing the country, chose to hide in the house of his wife’s parents. Accidentally leaving unattended his saber once presented him by Napoleon, Ney was identified and arrested.  Shortly after, a royalist court handed him a death sentence…

When they woke him up to read out the verdict, the Marshal cut short the lengthy enumeration of his many titles. “Tell them that Michel Ney will soon turn into dust…” he said. The execution took place on December 7, 1815 on Observatory Square in Paris, near the Luxembourg Garden. Ney refused to wear a blindfold and facing the firing squad, reportedly said, “Soldiers, straight for the heart!”  That was his last command… The soldiers fired and the Marshal went down hit by six bullets. The body was moved to a nearby hospital and from there to Pere Lachaise cemetery without anyone, even the wife, allowed to attend the secret burial. 

One of more colorful legends of Ney that have grown up after the Marshal’s execution was that Ney had managed to escape. To disprove the unwanted rumor, the Royalists published a detailed account of the execution. Shortly after, there came out the memoirs penned by Ney’s mistress Ida Saint-Elm. The woman claimed that the Marshal had agreed to secret abduction and that the firing squad shot with blanks and Ney used a bag of red dye to imitate the wounds. That Ney’s friends were waiting for him in the hospital and there was someone else’s body placed in the grave. When they opened the Marshal’s grave in 1903 only to find the casket empty. Next day’s issue of Le Figaro said, “This draws a final line under the discussion that’s been going on for more than half a century now. Michel Ney was not executed in 1815 and spent the next 31 years living under a different name in America.”

In 1819 an impeccably attired and well-mannered redhead Frenchman settled down in North Carolina. His name was Peter Stuart Ney. The name of Marshal Ney’s father was Pierre, while his mother was a Stuart. The French emigres, many of them Bonapartists, gave the newcomer a hero’s welcome immediately recognizing in him the legendary Napoleonic Marshal.  Lechmanowsky, a Polish immigrant, embraced his onetime commander. Peter Stuart kept insisting they were wrong, that he did not know a thing about his namesake. He started teaching at local schools, was widely admired by his neighbors. Well informed about everything that was happening in Europe,  Peter Stuart was a perfect shot and horse rider, played the flute (just like Marshal Ney did), was writing poems and was an avid reader of books about Napoleon making occasional  corrections. He eventually started taking to the bottle though and when drunk, wowed his friends and students with tales of military glory and claimed to be the executed Napoleonic Marshal. And, moreover, the man could draw extremely vivid descriptions of Marshal Ney’s wife Aglaya…

Ney died in December 1846 and many say he told several people on his deathbed that he was in fact Marshal Michel Ney. And that he had assumed the name of Peter Stuart to mislead the Royalist spies. It wasn’t before the doctors examining the dead man’s body said the two men shared identical wounds, that people finally believed his words. When, years later, a leading New York criminologist, David Carvajo, examined writing samples by the Marshal and the deceased schoolteacher, he concluded it to be of the same hand. Skeptics still wonder why the Marshal did not reveal his true identity in 1830 when the Bonapartists were fully exonerated, given handsome pensions and his own son had wed the daughter of the French Prime Minister. 

Well, and how about those who came to say their last farewells to the Bravest of the Brave right after the execution?  They said the execution was no imitation. And, last, but not least, Marshal Ney had a poor if any command of English while the North Carolina schoolteacher commanded impeccable knowledge of the language. The American Ney never once tried to get his wife coming over from France. The most credible version is about a redheaded Scot, a onetime Napoleonic soldier, settled down in the United States got trapped by his incredible likeness to the famous French Marshal. And still, anyone coming to Peter Stuart’s grave will see the inscription saying that here lies a French born soldier of the French Revolution under Napoleon Bonaparte written on the tombstone…
 
 
 

01/10/2006