Grasse's Napoleonic general and the return from Elba

Gazan hotel (house) on rue Gazon (rue de Commune, when the general lived there)

On each of two guided tour of Grasse recently (thanks Gilles and Laeticia!), we passed by an eighteenth century town house (now apartments) on rue Gazan between Rue Droite and the cathedral. It was once the home of the Gazan family.  The building has just been freshly painted and very smart it looks.

Over the richly carved door still survives the badge of the head of the family, General Honoré Théodore Maxime Gazan (1765-1845). His personal story connects with the bd Jeu du Ballon segment of the Route Napoleon just a little to the north.

Door of Hotel Gazan, rue Gazan

Unlike his Grassois near-contemporary, Maximin Isnard, as a soldier Gazan was little involved in politics during the long turbulent years between the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the final return of royalty in 1815. 

Perhaps fortunately for him, he was only in his mid-twenties and in the armed forces during the murderous early 1790s.  He distinguished himself first in the revolutionary armies of that decade, becoming a colonel in 1794 and a brigadier general in 1799. As a major-general under Napoleon’s regime, he served in Switzerland and then in Italy. He was involved in Napoleon’s victories at the battles of Ulm and Jena and was made a count in 1808.

Then he took part in the Peninsular War. Ultimately of course, he was on the losing side, and he was to an extent blamed for the loss of the battle of Vitoria, Wellington's final victory in Spain. There’s a long, detailed and, unless you’re a military buff, rather boring description of his soldierly career here.

After Napoleon’s abdication, Gazan was honoured by the new regime of Louis XVIII, which needed the talents of men like him, but he opted to return to Grasse in 1814. Here he is, in Grasse’s Provence Art and History Museum, painted by Grasse's own Charles Nègre. 

Portrait of General Gazan by Charles Nègre

The Musée label dates it at some time between 1839-1860, but it seems to me likely to have been painted during Gazan’s lifetime, especially since Nègre had largely switched to photography by 1850. It’s not a great painting, certainly not by comparison with Nègre’s jewel-like ‘Quartier des Moulins’, but, hey, an artist has to make a living!

Napoleon's return

Napoleon returned from his first exile in Elba in 1815. He had only around 1,000 men with him and he was far from confident about his welcome, especially in Provence. So rather than taking the obvious route up the Rhône valley, he crept into France through the ‘back door'. He landed on a deserted beach at Golfe-Juan and marched first to the little fishing village of Cannes.

On his inland journey, heading for Grenoble over the mountains, the first town of any size to which he came was Grasse.

Almost impossible to imagine today, but these buildings on bd Jeu du Ballon are approximately where the fourteenth century walls stood when Napoleon's little column passed by.

Worried that if he passed through the town gates, he might not be allowed out again, he skirted the town on the outside of the walls along what is now the bd Jeu du Ballon. He stopped briefly in Grasse and carried on via St Vallier-de-Thiey to an overnight stay in Séranon.

In the second volume of his history of Grasse*, one of our local historians, Emile Litschgy, recounts what happened.

The maire of the day, Lombard de Gourdon, heard about Napoleon’s landing and, as a loyal royalist, he placed the local Garde Nationale and gendarmerie on alert. He set patrols out around the town, and he summoned Grasse’s most senior soldier, General Gazan. Then he spent the night of 1st March in the mairie, waiting to see what would happen next.

Napoleon approached Grasse at 8 am in the morning of 2nd March. Following what is now the bd Jeu de Ballon, he took no chances and stayed outside the walls. His aim was to head for Grenoble over the mountains. But he thought that there was a proper road from Grasse to Castellane. Actually there was only a mule track, and he was obliged to abandon his carriage. Meanwhile, the townspeople and the maire, in trepidation of choosing the wrong side, kept quiet.

Napoleon send his senior aide de camp, General Cambronne, to look for Gazan. Cambronne seemingly hammered on the door of his house saying ‘Dis-y que c'est Cambronne... Dis-y que c'est un lâche!...’ (‘Tell him it's Cambronne... Tell him he's a coward!...’). But Gazan had made himself scarce. Conveniently, he was at his country seat, La Peyrière, near Mougins.

Having been supplied with a roast chicken for his lunch by an innkeeper in the Place aux Aires, Napoleon continued his journey via the Plateau Roquevignon (now the Plateau Napoleon).

One can well understand Gazan’s thinking.  He was certainly, like all the rest of the army, conflicted.  Should he go over to Napoleon and remain loyal to the Bourbons?  Was a return to military dictatorship preferable to incompetent royalist absolutism?  The wrong decision could mean exile, prison or worse.  After the army rallied to Napoleon and Louis XVIII fled, Gazan seems to have opted for Napoleon but also sat on the fence, bribed by being made a peer but managing to be assigned to a role well away from any action.

Lombard de Gourdon soon realised that his ambivalence had been unsuccessful.  He was summarily replaced by a Napoleonic maire on 31st March.  But after Waterloo, and after a brief occupation by Piedmontese troops who had to be paid to go away by a levy on the townspeople, he regained his position.

Gazan survived the return of the monarchy and even managed to disqualify himself as a judge in a court established by Louis XVIII to convict his old superior Marshal Ney (although without ultimate success since Ney was shot). But in 1816 he was delisted as both general and peer. Then in 1830 French politics changed again and with another change of regime King Louis-Philippe gave him back his peerage as Compte de la Peyriére and made him a general once more.

He died in Grasse, one hopes in his bed in his house on rue Gazan, in 1845.

Memorial plaque to Theodore Gazan, rue Gazan, Antibes

He’s commemorated not only by his street name here but also by a plaque in another rue Gazan, this one in Antibes, the original location of an army barracks named after him there.

So the Route Napoleon passed by, not through, Grasse, and her most distinguished soldier of the time was fairly ambivalent about his emperor's return!

*'On lui disait. Maubert-la-pièce', Emile Litschgy, 2000, TAC Motifs. Litschgy's books are more a series of stories and word pictures than rigorous history, and maybe one should take this one with a pinch of salt.