In the era of the Napoleonic Wars, as posterity remembers it, there were not only grand, thunderous battles and the exploits of Marshals and Generals, but also the dazzling variety of brilliant uniforms. By Napoleon’s requirements, French soldiers were to have ten different sets: combat dress, marching dress, field dress, service dress, duty dress, stable dress, social dress, casual dress, review dress, and full grand-review dress. If one then adds seasonal variants for spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the total cost for a French soldier on uniforms alone could reach 500 francs.

  That was an outlay no country—no, not even the deep-pocketed British—could really bear. In ordinary circumstances, a not-very-fierce action or a long forced march would leave half the men’s kit heavily worn, with many accessories lost—epaulettes torn, tassels shed, plumes faded. A soldier’s dress would turn coarse and be caked with blood, dust, and mud, losing both line and color until he looked as shabby as a vagrant or a routed rebel.

  Thus, apart from the Emperor’s most elite Guards, the other French forces seldom received prompt issues of those gaudy, costly regulation uniforms, for the former were funded from Napoleon’s own purse while the latter drew on a desiccated treasury. On ordinary days, officers saw their men in ragged, faded coats; only the full grand-review dress was treasured, brought out for imperial reviews or to celebrate great victories.

  Back in 1790 of another timeline, Lieutenant-Colonel André had no mind to outfit his Champagne Composite Regiment with those costly Napoleonic uniforms. The chief reason, of course, was want of funds. In fact, André had once sketched from memory several Napoleonic-era patterns and had Bordeaux tailors cut a few samples. Once the officers tried them on the reception was excellent, and they petitioned the Lieutenant-Colonel to adopt them for the regiment.

  But when he heard that the entire infantry clothing budget of 600 livres per man would only buy a dozen sets, André promptly vetoed his own Napoleonic plan. He instructed Lieutenant Petiet, the quartermaster, to take the Paris National Guard as a model and, on top of the standard field/service dress and parade dress, add an experimental training suit. These three sets were to be issued in summer and winter variants.

  By reducing the number of sets and substituting inexpensive British cottons for dear woolens, the total uniform cost per soldier in the Champagne Composite Regiment was held to ninety livres; even after adding a flat-topped shako in place of the tricorne (officers to have boat-shaped soft bicornes), the grand total ran only 110–150 livres. Wigs, for both officers and men, were struck from the camp entirely. To distinguish the arm, the gendarmes’ headgear was painted a striking white, with a shoulder sleeve-badge on the left.

  In 1790, National Guard uniforms across the country generally kept to blue and white, but the details varied widely. In Brittany, for example, the tunic resembled Paris—blue coat with white cross-belts—yet the trousers were brown or gray striped, and the headgear often became the Phrygian cap (the “revolutionary red cap”) or even older leopard-pattern helmets.

  On the drill-ground of the Champagne Regiment’s recruit depot today, the instructors and recruits alike wore training suits unlike the National Guard’s blue-and-white: here the palette was gray and dark green—“camouflage” by design—cheap and dirt-resistant. The tight, easily soiled white breeches survived only with the stately parade dress. For both service and training wear, trousers were cut looser in a gray over-pant for ease of washing, while the soldiers still kept their long puttees.

  Coming out of the barber’s, Chassé ran a hand over his new crop and studied himself in the dressing mirror. Stifling a laugh, he patted Macdonald on the arm to console the unlucky soul.

  An hour earlier, Lieutenant Chassé and Second Lieutenant Macdonald had reported to the regimental commander, Lieutenant-Colonel André, only to be received by Captain Moncey, the battalion major, and told to undergo five–seven days of entry training. At first the two regular-army officers had no objection—these were regulations dating to the days of Cardinal de Richelieu.

  Even the prospect of donning the rather ugly training rig—the gray-and-green “camouflage”—seemed acceptable; perhaps, they thought, the Colonel was saving money. In truth, their old unit, the Dillon Regiment, had gone two years without new issues; even basic pay came late and irregular. In late August, when the two were ordered to march south from French Flanders to report to the Champagne Composite Regiment, Colonel Dillon (slated for promotion to General next year) not only failed to make good the arrears due to Lieutenant Chassé and Second Lieutenant Macdonald, but also quietly swallowed their allowances.

  By contrast, the Champagne Regiment reimbursed travel, advanced one month’s pay, and even issued three brand-new summer sets to replace the tattered kit they had worn for over two years. The first day looked promising—though not to Second Lieutenant Macdonald.

  Sergeant Penduvas, newly posted to the gendarmerie, led Chassé and Macdonald to the barber’s and, citing the Champagne Composite Regiment’s standing orders, said: “All incoming officers and men are to remove superfluous hair—scalp, sideburns, and beard.” To lend force, the sergeant doffed his tall, flat-topped cap and displayed a crisp close-crop.

  “Why?” For Macdonald, his flowing blond hair was his best signature; he could not have been less willing.

  “Alexandre, my friend—regulations are regulations. No explanations,” Chassé answered in a soldier’s tone. He sat first and signaled the barber to begin with him.

  Twenty minutes later Chassé was at the side of a fallen Macdonald, who sat clutching a great fistful of shorn gold, on the verge of tears.

  “Enough gawking—it’s your turn to suffer!” Sergeant Penduvas shoved the grinning Suchet and Masséna toward the chairs.

  Resigned, the Lyonnais rich boy could not care less about his hair. He muttered, “Hair isn’t a head; give it a little time and it grows back.”

  Masséna frowned. He knew his former partner was baiting him: the handsome full beard he had groomed for years would not regrow in a month or two. But inside the wire, orders and regulations rule. This, at least, the future Marshal understood.

  Smiling, Masséna walked to the station to have his fine beard “executed”…

  Both scenes played out within André’s view. He nodded slightly. Lieutenant Chassé’s self-discipline softened earlier doubts; Masséna, for all his coarse exterior, knew his place and observed discipline; Macdonald likewise, though he mourned his shorn gold; as for Suchet—well, he was twenty, still a boy—expectations should be modest.

  André beckoned Second Lieutenant Augereau and pointed at Chassé, Macdonald, Masséna, and Suchet: “Mark these four recruits. On the field this afternoon, put them through their paces.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant-Colonel!” Augereau rubbed his hands, plainly delighted. Since his promotion to Second Lieutenant, the distance between him and the Colonel seemed to have vanished overnight.

  There was no doubt the Colonel was taking Augereau into his confidence; only Lieutenant Hoche stood higher. Advancement would come in due course. Augereau understood well that the Champagne Composite Regiment was still in its founding phase: only twenty-one commissioned officers, an officer-to-man ratio of 1:50—far below the normal 1:25 (in the 21st-century French Army it is about 1:10.5). When the regiment was fully formed, a swathe of junior and middle officers would be nominated or promoted.

  Like other French units, the Champagne Composite Regiment ran separate messes for enlisted men and officers to maintain strict hierarchy. By custom the Colonel inspected the three enlisted messes at 11:45 and lunched at noon in the officers’ small dining room.

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  “Wait a bit longer, Larrey,” said Percy, checking his watch. He turned to the young man beside him: “The Colonel is inspecting the enlisted messes and will be back in a quarter hour.”

  “Oh? Inspecting what?” asked the young Larrey, curious.

  “Everything,” the medical officer replied with a shrug. “From ingredients on hand to bread-baking and the taste of the meat-and-vegetable stew—especially hygiene. Yes, that’s the word: kitchen hygiene, the cooks’ personal hygiene, and so on. Heh, you’ve guessed right—the Colonel is a stickler for cleanliness.”

  Percy glanced at Larrey’s pale, clean-shaven face and light-blue eyes, and at the surgeon’s long, very clean fingers, and smiled. “The Colonel will like you. When he first met me, his first order was to bathe, get a haircut, shave, and trim my nails. Said I was a medical officer to save life and limb, not a filthy butcher from hell.”

  “You didn’t challenge Lieutenant-Colonel André to a duel?” Larrey quipped—he knew Percy’s temper was not gentle.

  In truth, Dr. Larrey was much the same—quick-tempered. Two weeks earlier, during advanced study at the Paris medical faculty, he had been expelled for publicly challenging a venerable professor’s authority and refusing to apologize afterward.

  Percy laughed. “Have you forgotten the Colonel’s other identity—the roughneck prosecutor? Back in Paris half a dozen hotheads tried to call him out; the constables promptly arrested them for breach of the peace and sent them to the quarries for a week or two of hard labor.”

  Larrey chuckled. He knew many of André’s Paris exploits, a man much praised and much cursed—loved by some, hated by others. For now, André stood on the winning side. So when the expelled Larrey received Percy’s invitation, he packed at once and came south to Bordeaux.

  With a self-mocking tone Percy went on: “I did think of a duel—more likely his guards would have done for me first. But Lieutenant-Colonel André advised me not to leave. He wagered I’d stop wanting to resign if I stayed for two weeks.”

  “You took the bet?” Larrey asked, and regretted the silly question as soon as it left his lips.

  “Of course. In fact, it took me five days,” Percy said, laughing. “My friend, you know at the Tuileries they said the Colonel is the God-Favoured.”

  The young doctor nodded. The story had, in fact, come from Versailles: a man gravely ill with tetanus and fever above 39°C for more than thirty hours surviving in full health—by any light a medical miracle. Both Percy and Larrey heard it first-hand from a court physician friend; otherwise, they would have doubted it.

  “Larrey, tell me—among troops in garrison, beyond ordinary surgical trauma, what is the main burden of disease?” asked the medical officer.

  “Diarrhea from intestinal disease,” Dr. Larrey answered without hesitation; common knowledge.

  Percy nodded. “Believe it or not, in my two-week wager I found only four cases of diarrhea in a camp of over 1,000; one was an outside wall-painter.”

  Larrey stared at his senior in disbelief. Around Paris, at least a third of recruits came down with diarrheal illnesses within two weeks of entry. Yet here, in a garrison of more than 1,100, Percy claimed an incidence of roughly 1 in 350.

  Plainly, André had, wittingly or not, wrought another medical “miracle.” From the outset, he had issued seemingly harsh orders, to be obeyed without fail.

  All water entering the camp was to be unpolluted spring water; any water drunk by the troops must be settled and boiled. Spoiled food was banned; no food kept more than six hours, or touched by flies or crawling insects, was to be eaten. Soldiers were to keep up personal appearance: frequent bathing and changes of clothes, regular haircuts and nail-trimming, daily cleaning of quarters—especially dining rooms, barracks, and latrines—and proper disinfection indoors and out.

  In war, famine is the greatest killer of civilians; for soldiers, wounds—and above all infectious disease—are the chief cause of non-battle losses.

  André recalled clearly that in 1812, when Napoleon led 600,000 east, the Grande Armée was nearly destroyed; one root cause was that over half the casualties came from foul water and diseases carried by fleas, lice, and bedbugs (syphilis included), far exceeding combat losses and those from hunger and cold during the retreat.

  Bordeaux, where the Champagne Composite Regiment now lay, was entering the late-summer/early-autumn season when contagions were rife. André would not have a sudden diarrheal outbreak gut his ranks. So beyond strict rules on environmental and personal hygiene, he personally led the gendarmes on patrols through camp, investigating and punishing each offense on the spot. Even civilian cooks and cleaners, if found at fault: the first time a warning, the second time flogging and dismissal.

  In late-eighteenth-century France—especially in the traditional Catholic provinces of the north and center—priests still preached in public that keeping one’s body dirty honored the saints of old, and many absurdly believed washing opened the pores to disease. Thus, the public baths of Roman times had long vanished, and bathing was taboo.

  Thanks to Enlightenment ideas and the Encyclopédie, bathing spread through the southern provinces—perhaps the Mediterranean heat and the nearness of sea and rivers helped. The famed Turkish bath took root in southern France in this period.

  Whether as the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court or as the regiment’s commander, André could not reform the folkways of France at large, but he could require unconditional obedience to new rules inside his camp. Understanding or not was irrelevant—only enforcement mattered. In a stratified army, there is no “democratic style” or “absolute officer-ranker equality.” If there is, it is either self-destruction or mere talk.

  While the two doctors spoke, several hundred new recruits, under Sergeant Penduvas, marched to the Garonne. At the sergeant’s shout, they stripped to the skin and, under the eyes of curious villagers, plunged nude into the cool river to “bathe.”

  Gendarmes paced the bank with riding-whips, barking at laggards: “Clowns! Use the brushes with soap and scrub one another—hard—scrub off the grime of twenty-odd years. No fleas, lice, or bedbugs are to return to camp. Offenders will run twenty laps of the parade-ground and forfeit half a month’s pay!”

  Ill fortune put Suchet and Masséna in the same file and the same set. Obeying orders, the rich boy had to scrub the elder first; he laid on with all his might, working the brush across his enemy’s back until Masséna howled.

  Not far off, Chassé and Macdonald exchanged a look and burst out laughing—whereupon Sergeant Penduvas treated them to a tongue-lashing.

  The mass bath lasted a full thirty minutes. A few unfortunates drew the first tickets of the day for “insufficient scrubbing.” When the sergeant was satisfied, the exhausted recruits were allowed ashore. Their old clothes had been collected for destruction; on the rocks lay bundles of tough, dirt-resistant gray training suits.

  Hot, red-skinned, the men rushed to dress—only to hear Sergeant Penduvas bellow again: “Pretty white backsides—attention! Before you dress, take ten minutes and clip every fingernail and toenail. Offenders: twenty laps, and no lunch!”

  …

  Back in the officers’ small mess just before noon, Lieutenant-Colonel André entered. From Medical Officer Percy’s introduction, he realized that the young surgeon before him, Dominique Jean Larrey, would one day be the famed Chief Surgeon of the Imperial Guard. For now, Larrey was only a poor doctor expelled from Paris’s medical faculty.

  In another timeline of the Napoleonic age, Percy and Larrey—two celebrated army surgeons—fell out badly over doctrine, particularly the treatment of the grievously wounded: Larrey insisted on immediate amputation when necessary; Percy urged restraint.

  Now, Larrey had come to André by Percy’s recommendation, and after the Lieutenant’s warm-up remarks, the young doctor had many questions:

  “...Why does strict environmental and personal hygiene reduce intestinal disease and diarrhea so effectively?”

  “...Why does seemingly clean water still harbor pathogens—what we call viruses or bacteria?”

  “...What are viruses? What are bacteria? Besides sustained heating above 100°, are there quicker ways to kill these pests?”

  Such questions came like a child’s “ten thousand whys.” André was ready. He called over Lussac, dining nearby, to steer this future master of battlefield surgery; Lussac, the future physicist-chemist, would guide him.

  Before that, André raised a small glass of red wine to welcome Dr. Larrey to the Champagne Composite Regiment and announced that he would confer on the medical officer the rank of Second Lieutenant.

  “Gentlemen,” André coughed lightly and went on, “our sanitation code for the camp is largely formed. But note—this describes peacetime ideals. In war or on long marches, how to find and guarantee clean drinking water, how to reduce surgical infections efficiently, how to build a truly effective field-aid system—these are the chief problems for the medical department. In war, there is little time for perfect disinfection.”

  He paused, then offered his views: “First, urban waterworks commonly use alum powder. In truth, it is inefficient and has serious side effects (aluminum; prolonged intake dulls the mind). Monsieur Lussac has made an interesting trial: a special clarifying tablet from ordinary kelp ash or seaweed ash that settles turbid water collected in the field and kills most microbes, reducing disease.

  “Second—combine kelp ash with sulfuric acid, and you obtain a dark-purple new substance. I shall call it the element iodine. Lieutenant Percy and Lussac have run dozens of trials proving that an iodine-alcohol solution for skin wounds disinfects better and longer, than 75% alcohol alone. For surgical instruments, 75% alcohol remains more economical. For buildings, inside and out, use lime-wash or potassium permanganate solution. As for the garments of diarrheal and other infectious cases—bleaching powder or boiling, or burning them outright.

  “Third—this is the work of Lieutenant Percy and Second Lieutenant Larrey. I have discussed training orderlies and posting them down to the companies and platoons; this must be in place before we enter the Marne. Beyond field medicine and rescue, there is the corresponding nursing system.

  “Well—perhaps the last is better left to the nuns.”