Jakob Klaus

Jakob Klaus (* 1788 ; † after 1855) was a German barber from Haßloch in the Palatinate , who took part in the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula on the French side from 1808 to 1812 . The memoirs he wrote after his military service , in which he deals with his experiences, everyday life as a soldier, but also the horrors and atrocities of the war on the Iberian Peninsula , are today an interesting and important source for historical studies.

Life

Jakob Klaus, born in 1788, experienced the political upheavals in the areas on the left bank of the Rhine that accompanied the First Coalition War and became a French citizen through the creation of the Département du Mont-Tonnerre (German: Donnersberg ), whose canton Neustadt had been added to his home town. As such, he was placed under conscription in January 1807 and had to move to Neustadt in May of the same year , where he was assigned to the 8th Line Regiment and then sent to Venlo , now in the Netherlands, for training .

Thereafter, Klaus was assigned as a voltigeur , as a light infantryman, to the 117th line regiment ( 117e régiment d'infanterie de ligne ), which was posted to the Iberian Peninsula. Here the French army fought not only against regular Portuguese and Spanish troops since 1808, but above all against countless guerrilla groups , which were soon supported by a British expeditionary corps under Arthur Wellesley , who later became Duke of Wellington, that had landed in Portugal . The war dragged on until 1813 and was waged by all those involved with a hitherto unheard of bitterness and cruelty. For Napoléon I , the military engagement on the Iberian Peninsula meant a permanent bloodletting of people and material, without any decisive military advantage being gained.

In the years that followed, Jakob Klaus, who judged Spain rather negatively, described it as monotonous and hostile to life, experienced the back and forth of the war on the Iberian Peninsula. In November 1808, for example, the 117th Line Regiment had a share in the French victory in the Battle of Tudela . It then took part in the second siege of Zaragoza , which ended in February 1809 with the capture of the city. From April to May 1810 the regiment was involved in the siege of Lérida and at the end of June of the following year in the storming of Tarragona and the subsequent massacre of the city population. In April of the following year, the 117th Line Regiment was deployed in the Alicante area .

Near the town, Jakob Klaus and 25 of his comrades, who had to secure a hill, were attacked by superior Spanish troops on the morning of April 25, 1812. Severely wounded, only Klaus and one of his comrades survived the battle that followed. A bullet had penetrated Klaus in the right chest and came out again in the area of ​​the left shoulder. It was not until the afternoon of that day that a compatriot from the Palatinate found him and took him to a doctor who, however, only bandaged him poorly. When the French army retreated north shortly afterwards, his fellow regiments made sure that Klaus was not left behind. After surviving the attempt to kill one of his Spanish porters during the days of marching back, he was finally taken to a hospital in Valencia . Here, too, Klaus was lucky, because a doctor was on duty in the hospital who also came from his closer home and took care of him according to all the rules of medical art of the time. Still, it took until November before Klaus recovered.

In December 1812, Jakob Klaus was classified as unfit for service and received his departure from the army, plus a lifelong annual pension of 182 francs . When he returned to Haßloch, he married and went on to pursue the profession he had learned. After France had to cede the annexed areas on the left bank of the Rhine as a result of the final defeat of Napoleon I , Klaus changed his citizenship again. Haßloch came to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1816 as part of the now called Rhine District, territorially newly outlined Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine . In his later years, Klaus devoted himself to his professional activity, above all, the tasks associated with his membership in the local council and the writing of his memoirs. In 1855 he retired.

literature

• Joachim Kermann: Palatine under Napoleon's flags. Veterans remember. Experience reports on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. (= Reprint 6 of the Neustadt district group in the Historisches Verein der Pfalz eV), Neustadt an der Weinstrasse 1989.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For comparison: The pay for the lowest rank in the rather poorly paid French army was nine francs a month. Karl J. Mayer: Napoleon's soldiers. Everyday life in the Grande Armée (= story told, vol. 12), Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2008, p. 80, ISBN 978-3-89678-366-0 .