HC:

“Today, of course is the anniverary of Waterloo (18 June 1815). Here is a portion of Louis Dumoulin’s “Panorama of the Battle of Waterloo.” This portion of the painting depicts the beginning of the attack of the French heavy cavalry (at about 4 p.m.) The redhead in the center is Marshal Ney (Prince de la Moscowa), Napoleon’s principal field commander in this battle. To the left of the Marshal, in the red uniform, is his aide Col. Heymes, who accompanied Ney in many of his battles; and, on the Marshal’s right, is Ney’s other aide, Col. Levavasseur.

One reason the French did so poorly in this campaign, and in this battle that it would have been very difficult for them to win, was that the two colonels were the only staff the Marshal had. This was probably because he had been appointed to field command very late, arriving to join the army only the day before the campaign started.

Ney, known in the army as “Le Rougeaud: (“the red-faced one “) and called sometimes by Napoleon “le Brave des Braves” (“the bravest of the brave”). had at least five horses shot from under him at Waterloo. The Prince certainly understood the stakes, telling a subordinate during the battle that if the French “did not beat the English today, the émigrés [the party of the pro-English exiled royalists] will do for us with their bullets.”

Following the defeat of the French and the second exile of Napoleon, the Marshal Prince de la Moscowa, following a kangaroo trial in the French Chamber of Peers, was shot by firing squad in the Jardin du Luxembourg on 6 December 1815. Ney refused a blindfold and as a token of respect was allowed to give the commands to the firing squad, himself. His tomb is located in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.”

Coutau-Begarie
November 18, 2020, 11:00 AM CET
Paris, France

Lot 341: TELESCOPE OF MARÉCHAL NEY (1769-1815). Large rosewood telescope, four-draw model
Est: €2,000 – €3,000
2,000 0 bids

MARSHAL NEY’S TELESCOPE
(1769-1815).
Large rosewood telescope, a retractable model with four draw sections of gilded brass that belonged to Marshal Ney as indicated in the handwritten inscription on the case “Telescope that belonged to The Mal Ney, given to my grandfather, André Philippe former quartermaster of supply and war commissioner under the 1st Empire, Émile Clavel, Honorary Archivist of the Chamber of Deputies.”

Another label accompanying the object specifies that it was acquired on the death of the marshal in 1815: “Telescope of Marshal Ney that my grandfather André Philippe, commissioner of wars under the 1st Empire had at his death (1815).”
Preserved with its original case, missing its lid.
Folded: Diam. 7 cm (2.8″) – L.: 112 cm. (44″).
Unfolded: Diam. 6 cm (2.4″) – L.: 29 cm. (11.4″).

The provenance seems credible, though hardly definitive. Just imagine the sights during countless battles, the retreat from Moscow, and at the moment of crisis at Waterloo seen through this glass by Napoleon’s fighting-est Marshal, “the bravest of the brave.”

Michel Ney, Marshal of the French Empire, Duc of Elchingen, Prince of Moscow, 1812.