“It was a poignant sensation, standing in the nocturnal silence and gazing on the battlefield, which during the day had been a theatre of fighting and now was so calm and silent, the actors spread on the bloodied soil, their pallid faces turned to the cold rays of the moon which reflected off the helmets and breastplates! Now and then, a figure would rise up from the ground, to fall down again with fresh cries of desperation. Others raised themselves slightly and pitifully, or having been less injured, stumbled over the battlefield looking for help. Many of these I followed with my eyes became lost in the distance. But many – alas – after having staggered a few steps, fell to the ground again, never to get up again. It was harrowing! But I still watched.” Thus Alexander Cavalié Mercer describes the battlefield on the evening of 18 June 1815. At the head of a battery of the reserve of the prestigious Royal horse Artillery Regiment, at the heart of General Uxbridge’s cavalry corps – positioned at the centre, between the crossroads and the Hougoumont farm -, the latter supported the two assaults of the French heavy cavalry, flattening “men and horses like blades of grass under the reaper’s scythe” with each shot.
This breastplate, blown open by a cannonball, attests to the violence of the fighting, much like Mercer’s account. Given to the Musée de l’Armée during its creation by colonel de Liechtenstein, it is one of millions of objects that were found on the Waterloo Battlefield and taken as souvenirs or relics by those who visited. A booklet which was once in an inside pocket of the padding but has since been lost, bore the name François Antoine Fauveau, 23 years of age, a dairyman by profession, who was incorporated into the 2nd rifle regiment in May 1815. His height – 5’8 – destined him for this elite force. His statement of service records him as having ‘a long face’: “a large forehead, blue eyes, aquiline nose, small mouth, a face marked by freckles”. Family tradition maintains that this was not François, who had to get married, but in fact his brother, who stood in for him and died at Waterloo.
The service records of François-Antoine Fauveau, born in Le Haulme (Val-d'Oise) on January 18, 1792, make it possible to associate a face with this breastplate.
The rifleman Fauveau practiced the butter-making profession before his incorporation. “Elongated face, open forehead, blue eyes, aquiline nose, small mouth, dimple chin, brown hair, and eyebrows; face marked with freckles ”, it measured 1.79 m, which probably favored its entry into the elite corps of riflemen. Assigned May 21, 1815, to the 2nd Carabineer Regiment commanded by Colonel François Beugnat, and transferred to the 4th Squadron, 4th Company, he died on the field of honor less than a month later, June 18, 1815, in Waterloo.
Pierced right through - and from the front - by a ball (piece of 4) at chest level just under the right shoulder, his breastplate attests to death in full load: to receive this injury, he had to stand facing enemy fire, in an uncovered position on the side of his armed arm.
In Waterloo, the 1st and 2nd carabinier regiments are part of the 3rd cavalry corps commanded by General Kellermann, Duke of Valmy, in the 12th cavalry division, 1st brigade. Unlike the cuirassiers who were decimated there, the carabinieri brigade, commanded by General Baron Blancard, did not take part in the famous cavalry charge led by Marshal Ney between Hougoumont and La Haie-Sainte. It was also at this time that the desertion of the captain of the Barail of the 2nd Carabinier regiment occurred, who betrayed and went to Wellington - a fact rare enough to be noted. For two hours, Kellermann - who, however, was ordered to support the attack on the Haie-Sainte - carefully kept his carabinieri in reserve with a battery of the Imperial Guard. It is from there that, around 6:45 p.m. Marshal Ney drags them into a final charge against the English squares which occupied the slope of the hill. Desperate, improvised, the charge resulted in the death of almost half the brigade.
Although it is incomplete - it misses the padding, where was the small ventral pocket which allowed the soldier to keep his papers and, of the fastening system remains only the leather belt with brass buckle; the shoulder pads which united the chest and back have disappeared - the armor of the Fauveau rifleman remains, for all these reasons, a very particular object in the collections of the Army museum. Between bravery, despair and betrayal, the terrible end of the 2nd rifle regiment echoes the fate of the whole army, and the dream of Napoleon, this June 18, 1815.
In itself, breastplates of this type are not exceptional. However, the mutilations inflicted by the war give it an evocative power which made it, from its discovery, a witness to history, a museum object.
His journey resembles that of the many relics sought by enthusiasts the day after Waterloo. Exhumed by a cultivator, it was immediately acquired by Colonel Lichtenstein, a descendant of an officer of the First Empire, who collected memories of the imperial epic. However, Philippe Lichtenstein (1831-1892), as an officer of the President of the Republic between 1879 and 1887, lived in the Elysée Palace. A curious destiny is that of a relic of the Emperor's ultimate defeat, who thus comes to embody, in the Palace of the Republic, the sacrifice of French soldiers. The collector patiently reconstructed the course of the breastplate and its carrier. And it was to keep this story alive long after the protagonists died, that he gathered it.