The uniforms of the French Army under Napoleon I (1800 - 1815) - Medical services

The medical service of the Napoleonic army was inadequately organized, although this was also true for all other European armies of that time (see in general: The care of combat-wounded soldiers in Napoleonic Europe - 1805-1813. Diss. Nebiha Guiga, University of Heidelberg).

However, it must be admitted that the state of medicine at that time was very limited; in particular there was a lack of sufficient hygiene. Sterilization or decontamination (not introduced until the early 1880s) had not yet been discovered. There were also no antibiotics (e.g. penicillin, not developed until 1928). Severe injuries to limbs were usually treated by amputation. A common fatal consequence was then gangrene. Moreover, epidemic-like diseases often overwhelmed the medical facilities of the time.

The personnel were mostly poorly trained and not up to the demands. "Military doctors were mostly incompetent people, and their ranks were further filled with young gentlemen of standing who saw this as a way to avoid conscription" (Funcken; see also: Miguel Angel Martin Más, La Grande Armée. The history of Napoleon's army, Berlin 2005, p. 100).

There were, however, outstanding exceptions, in particular

Pierre-François Percy (28 Oct 1754 in Montagney/Franche-Comté - 18 February 1825 in Paris)

and

Dominique Jean Larrey, also Dominique-Jean Larrey and Jean Dominique Larrey, from 1809 Baron (08 Jul 1766 in Beaudéan (Hautes-Pyrénées) - 25 Jul 1842 in Lyon).

The latter was appointed in 1805 as Inspector General of the Army Medical Service and was very active in the campaigns in Germany, Austria and Spain.

"Larrey was one of the first physicians to observe the local anaesthetic effect of cold. After the battle of Preußisch Eylau fought in bitter cold on 7 and 8 February 1807 he performed amputations (in −19° cold) without some of the wounded uttering cries of pain. The hypothermia induced by the subzero temperatures had rendered the peripheral nerves of Larrey's patients largely insensitive to pain. Furthermore, he observed that the survival chances of wounded who remained on the battlefield were greater than those who were immediately brought to the hospital. The reason was likely flies' maggots settling in the wounds of untreated soldiers, which produced a faster cleaning of the wounds and thus prevented blood poisoning. In addition, he neither sutured gunshot wounds nor amputation wounds, but enlarged and treated them openly. He vividly described how, after the battle of Smolensk on 17 August 1812, two French officers of a Polish corps under Prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski, who had been treated with amputation by Polish doctors, died of gas gangrene as a result of the suturing of their wounds. Larrey's "flying ambulances" were later copied by many other countries. One of his aims was also to provide comprehensive aid to wounded enemy soldiers" (Wikipedia)."

While the French medical service during the Revolutionary Wars was extremely deficient, Napoleon energetically sought to improve the organization.

The medical service in the Napoleonic army was divided into two areas, namely

the Service de Santé (military doctors, military surgeons, military pharmacists) and

the Administration des Hôpiteaux Militaires (administration of military hospitals).

In the campaigns rear hospitals were organized spontaneously, e.g. at the beginning of 1807 there were 21 military hospitals in Warsaw alone. According to Rogers (same author, The Army of Napoleon, ibid., p. 193), a total of 421000 sick and wounded were treated in the hospitals in the period from 01.10.1806 to 31.10.1808. Of these, 32,000 died.

"The regulation of the military health service in Napoleonic times consisted of laws enacted between 1793/1794 and 1813. The decree of 2 Ventôse Year II with its associated ordinances is by far the longest and most complete text of that period. Regarding the orientation of the army health service and its administrative organization it has been modified in many respects, while the rest of its provisions remained largely valid. The decree dealt with the recruitment of personnel by examination in the selection process; the relations with the administration, which had control over the service; and the organization of hospitals and evacuations. The Consulate also changed the leadership of the army health service. With the decree of 9 Frimaire, Year XII (30 November 1804) the corps of General Inspectors was created. A final decree of 6 April 1813 changed the organization of the army health service. This decree contributed significantly to clarifying the organization of the regiment and division ambulances by specifying the equipment and personnel assigned to each unit and thus creating a legal framework for the partially differing practices" (The care of combat-wounded soldiers in Napoleonic Europe - 1805-1813. Diss. Nebiha Guiga, University of Heidelberg, pp. 12-13 of the German summary)."

The famous chief surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey introduced the so-called flying ambulances. These were light mobile vehicles (two- and four-horse teams) equipped with bandaging material and stretchers, whose task after battle was to collect the wounded. The first tests of these carriages are said to have taken place in 1793 at the Battle of Metz.

More details can be found in the biography of Napoleon's chief surgeon by Max Hondrasch (Bonn 1948, p. 91): "These are assembled exactly as had been the case in northern Italy. In the ambulance there is a first-class surgeon, six second-class surgeons, two apothecaries and eight well-mounted and well-supplied hospital assistants. There are six spring-suspended wagons for the transport of the wounded and two wagons in which instruments and bandaging material are brought. These ambulances must carry the wounded away from the turmoil and bring them to places where they can be operated on or bandaged. The wound surgeons of each regiment of the Guard have at their disposal two packhorses with which they can transport all immediately necessary bandaging material. Auxiliary ambulances and provisional hospitals were then set up at places where a longer stay was necessary." The line regiments, however, were not as well supplied as the Imperial Guard; in some cases the Guard's units then provided assistance.

The French military surgeon Pierre Francois Percy invented "a large sanitary wagon, six-horse-drawn like the Bavarian artillery teams and, because of its appearance, called 'sausage'. It contains dressing materials and instruments for 1,200 wounded. They are not transported very comfortably on its cover. They sit astride it eight at a time and have to see how to hold on during a rapid ride. This 'ambulance' is capable of bringing the military doctors of the mobile surgical corps very quickly directly to the battlefield, close to the fighting line, with materials for dressing and rescuing the wounded" (Armin Schroll).

Given the mass numbers of lightly or heavily wounded after the bloody battles of the Napoleonic era, transporting them to rear dressing stations or to the military hospitals set up further back was a real challenge.

In individual cases an entire cavalry regiment could dismount to take in wounded (Rogers, The Army of Napoleon, Stuttgart 1976, p. 196).

Or one improvised and requisitioned suitable vehicles in the vicinity. Thus Napoleon ordered, following the costly Battle of Wagram (5 and 6 July 1809), all fiacres from Vienna to the scene of battle (Horndrasch, ibid., p. 129).

However, these facilities often proved insufficient in a serious emergency, and it always depended on the conditions of the particular campaign. Thus Philippe Paul Count de Ségur reports in his work: Napoleon and the Grand Army in Russia (licensed edition of the publishers Carl Ed. Schünemann, Bremen, p. 174) after the very bloody Battle of Borodino (7 Sept 1812): Larrey, the chief surgeon of the army, had summoned assistants from all regiments, but nothing would suffice. He later complained in a printed report that he had been left with virtually no staff to procure the most necessary necessities in the surrounding villages."

For the 1813 campaign in Germany up to 600 ambulance vehicles were to be made available.

In the chaos of lost battles the difficulties could worsen; after the Battle of Leipzig (1813) the entire ambulance train was lost.

The well-known French General Marcellin Marbot (edition Stuttgart 1907, Vol. III, pp. 72 ff.) reports in his memoirs on a gunshot wound during the Russian campaign in the engagement at Kljastizy and the subsequent treatment as follows: "Since my wound (note: on the left shoulder) was a serious one, I was brought to the post station. I was lifted off the horse with great pain. The good Doctor Parot, my regimental surgeon, bandaged me at once and said that if the thick shoulder straps of the ball had not given another direction and weakened its force, the wound would have been fatal. In any case the blow had been so severe that I was almost thrown back to the top of the horse, so that my men thought me dead and I would have fallen off if my trumpeter had not supported me. Applying the bandage was very painful because the ball had penetrated at the spot where the upper arm joins the collarbone. To extract it the wound had to be enlarged. The scar from that is still visible today." Marbot then did not have himself taken back to a hospital in Lithuania, but had his arm placed in a sling and returned to his regiment for service reasons and with an eye to a possible promotion.

François Bourgogne, member of the Imperial Guard, has a comrade describe his wound at the Battle of Borodino (07.09.1812) in his war experiences (1812) as follows: "I only noticed my shot in the arm when we were in possession of the same (note: redoubt). Pain set in, which prompted me to go back to have the ball removed at the dressing station. On the way I met our little Spanish girl with a bottle of brandy in her hand. She was weeping bitterly because she had heard from the wounded about the misfortune of the regiment (note: IR 61) and begged me to lead her to it, perhaps to refresh some with a dram. So I went back with her, and when we reached our drummers, who lay beside their shattered drums, she went from one to the other, loudly lamenting, examining each to see whether there was still life in him. That was the case with several, also with the drum major. While she knelt by him to give him a restorative sip, the fight suddenly broke out again, for the Russians advanced once more to retake the redoubt. Suddenly the girl gave a cry; a ball had struck the thumb of her left hand and penetrated into the shoulder of the dying man whose head she supported. She sank unconscious. I wanted to pick her up to bring her to safety, but my shattered arm made that impossible. Luckily a cuirassier who had lost his horse just then passed by us. He saw the unconscious girl and my futile attempt, came over, without further ado took the small figure in his arms like a child and said: 'Now quickly away, it's getting bad here,' and hurried out of the increasingly heavy fire toward a small copse where the dressing station of the Guard artillery was located. There Florencia only regained consciousness. The imperial staff surgeon, M. Larrey, who was present there, immediately cut off her thumb and removed the ball from my arm, after which I felt much better soon."

If one fell wounded into captivity, one was at the mercy of the enemy's goodwill. Thus in the memoirs of Capitaine Coignet (ed. Robert Litz, Stuttgart 19110, p. 104), a member of the Imperial Guard, it is written: "A whole Saxon division had been taken prisoner. The poor devils looked pitiable. Half were wounded. Blood trickled from their cut and gunshot wounds. We still had a lot of wine. We gave some of it to them and to those who had taken them prisoner - our exhausted dragoons and cuirassiers."

At the Battle of Eylau (07 to 09.02.1807) the later French cavalry officer Major Parquin was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. In his "Campaign memories of an old soldier of the Empire 1803 - 1814" (Berlin 1910, pp. 108 ff.) he reports: "The field guard galloped back to the village and alarmed there, the brigade had to mount up as quickly as possible, but about 50 men were killed or captured in the village. I was among the latter; my horse was killed under me, and I was wounded on foot by five lance thrusts.... My wounds did not prevent me from walking, although I limped because of a hip injury. The Cossacks tore me out from under my horse, searched me and took my purse in which there were a few Friedrichsdor..." Parquin was taken behind the outposts and the prisoners were first assembled in an unheated church in Königsberg. Later he was brought to a hospital in Vilna and after a few months in Russia he was released.

Military doctors wore a blue single-breasted (interim) coat. This sometimes had braid trim.

Physicians wore black insignia, surgeons' were red and apothecaries' green.

On the full dress uniform the coat had lapels in the aforementioned colors.

The number of yellow double cords indicated the respective rank.

The headgear was a bicorne; as trousers, grey or blue overtrousers were common.

The staff in the fixed hospitals wore grey uniforms.

The uniform of the stretcher-bearers roughly corresponded to that of the infantry, but the long-skirted coat had a brown base color.

According to a drawing by Knötel the younger, the collar and the pointed lapels and pointed sleeve cuffs of the coat were red, each with a white edging. The shoulder straps were also red with a white edging.

Waistcoat and trousers were white, as was the leather equipment. Black gaiters were worn with them.

The typical shako had a white (in Leroux yellow, see above) lozenge-shaped plate.

At the front the shako was adorned — above the cockade — with a red-and-white pompom (with a number) as well as a small red tuft.

The equipment included a pole and a — half — stretcher carried on the back.