In Military history there are few men who do any real good for

their troops. Almost everyone is famous for sending men to die,

sure they may be masters of minimising casualties but they still
send men to die. Today I’m going to talk about a man who had the
respect of Wellington, Blucher and Napoleon, the only man in
Napoleon’s will to have his character complimented and a man
who saved hundreds if not thousands of lives. Today I’m going to
talk about Baron Dominique Jean Larrey, The First Modern
military Surgeon.

First the basics he was born in 1766 in France and obviously

became a doctor but that’s not why you’re watching this video so
let’s get to the interesting stuff.

In 1792 Larrey was assigned to the Army of the Rhine where he

would take the first of his many steps down the path of improving
the lives of France’s wounded soldiers.

After watching the French Horse Artillery he started to wonder

whether or not the same principle that moved guns quickly across
the battlefield could also be used to move the wounded back to a
forward medical station.

The Common practice of most armies, except the Russians who

had no method to care for the wounded until 1807, was to go
around after the battle and load all the wounded into big carts
which would then travel to the nearest village where a surgeon or
priest had set up a makeshift hospital, at an incredibly slow pace.
Even worse if you had a broken bone the cart would often jolt you
around so badly that it could kill you or at least ruin any chance of
saving your limb since the bone fragments would be so scattered
and embedded in the flesh they couldn’t be removed safely. To
give you some idea of how slow these things were some sources
give them a speed of only one kilometre every eight hours!
It wasn’t very prestigious to be a military surgeon since you didn’t
really have a rank in the same way as say an Engineer who could
at least expect promotion slow as it was. So being a military
surgeon wasn’t a very promising career but Larrey persisted with
his career.

Back to his observations of the French Flying Artillery. Larrey had

some talks with both engineers and artillery officers and after a bit
of thinking came up with his famous “Flying Ambulances” rather
than bumble through it I’ll let the man himself tell you.

Page 104 of Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature

The Wagons came in two versions the “light and the heavy” one
pulled by two horses the other by four. The Light Wagon could
carry two men while the heavy could fit four into it’s wagon beds.
Larrey was even nice enough to include bottles of liquor in the
ambulances although since this was pretty much the only aesthetic
you were going to get it was a small mercy.

Each Division which is roughly and I mean roughly 4-10 thousand

men had eight ambulances and four of the larger ambulances and
each Regiment was supposed to have it’s own dedicated “Medical
Division” of just over 100 men all mounted for the swiftest
possible response, but this was never truly achieved. Larrey
himself was assigned to the Guard but would often operate on
anyone bought to him, he was an early practitioner of Triage and
famously prioritised men on the severity of their wounds not their
rank.

Ok so Larrey made some ambulances but the Hospitals are still ad

hoc set ups miles from the battlefield and the roads are mostly
going to be clogged with all sorts of things like civilians,
reinforcements and supplies so how could he get around this
issue?

Larrey saw the practice of setting up hospitals miles from the

battlefield as unnecessary and a practice that cost men life and
limb. Instead he ordered Field Hospitals to be set up a few
hundred metres from the battlefield well within cannon range of
the enemy but it allowed him to quickly get wounded men,
regardless of rank and even the enemy nto the hands of a trained
surgeon as quickly as possible.

The number of ambulances each unit got may sound a bit

inadequate but keep in mind they only had to travel a few hundred
metres at a time and could transport half a company at a time and
the numbers of ambulances suddenly become more than adequate.

Prior to Larrey’s reforms a French Soldier had about a 25%

casualty rate if they even made it to a Hospital but from the
Battles Aspern-Essling and Wagram we have data about the Guard
and their casualties to judge how these reforms worked in practice.

Of 1,200 wounded Guardsmen 600 were back in action in a

month, 250 were discharged (only 38 with amputations) and only
45 men had actually died of their wounds. The rest were still
recovering but we can see that by implementing flying
ambulances, the best medical staff of the period, triage techniques,
Larrey’s own brilliance and the Field Hospital rather than seeing
300 men dead we see only 45 men dead.

Admittedly this is the best case scenario, the Guard were

Napoleon’s pride and joy and were given every advantage when it
came to medical care but it’s a good indicator that we can use to
judge the efficacy of Napoleonic Medical Care under ideal
conditions.
Another thing about Aspern-Essling it was here that Lerray eraned
his title of Baron. French Generals General Jean Lannes was
having a conversation with his fellow GeneralPouzet when
Pouzet’s head was removed mid sentence by a cannonball. In
complete shock Lannes dismounted and sat with his head in his
hands on the bank of a small ditch with his legs crossed. That was
amistake and a cannonball hit him in the legs as he sat trying to
process what had just happened.

He reacted quite calmly and said to one of his aides “I am

wounded, it is nothing give me your arm” but since one of his
kneecaps was shatterred and his other leg was missing it’s back
sinews he had to be carried to the field hospital where he was seen
by Larrey. He sat throught eh amputation which larrey managed to
perform in only two minutes and Napoleon himself, who was very
fond of him came and sat with him. For his skill and speed larrey
was given his title. Unfortunately General Lannes died around two
weeks later. Tangent within a Tangent but to drive home just how
much Lannes death effected history Napoleon said after the battle
of Waterloo “ The men of 1815 were not the same as those of
1792. My generals were faint-hearted men…. I needed a good
officer to command my guard. If I had had Bessières or Lannes at
its head I should not have been defeated”

Larrey faced a lot of pressure from the Military who saw

Surgeon’s as just ancillary support troops that came quite low in
the order of importance and more importantly resupply. Luckily
for Larrey in 1794 at Toulon while Sir Sidney Smith was busy
burning the French Fleet the Future Baron Lerray was makign
friends with the French officer in command of the siege Napoleon
Bonaparte. Larrey quickly became Bonaparte’s private doctor and
his go to for any medical needs from private to nation wide.

It was partly thanks to Napoleon that Larrey managed to change as

much as he did as quickly as he did.

Larrey earned the respect of Sir Arthur Wellesly the Duke of

Wellington himself when at the battle of Waterloo the Baron was
in the line of fire collecting the wounded men under fire when the
Duke saw him and asked someone nearby if they knew who it
was. On of his staff officers told him and the Duke ahd his men
cease firing on Larrey and said "give the brave man time to gather
up the wounded" before saluting the man and saying "the courage
and devotion of an age that is no longer ours".

After the battle Larrey was cut off from his men and fled alone
trying to get back to France but was captured by Prussians and
was ordered to be executed. Before this could be carried out
however a Prussian surgeon who knew him by reputation
intervened and had him taken to Marshall Blucher himself who
gave him an immediate pardon and invited him to dinner.

Why did Blucher immediately pardon the Baron. Well at Dresden

Baron Larrey operated on a wounded Prussian Officer and saved
his life, the officers turned out to be Blucher’s son and this
interventon ended up saving both their lives. In gaming terms that
Light Side decision he made way back in Chapter 5 just paid off
big time in Chapter 20.

After the Wars Larrey had a fantastic career in medicine and lived
in peace with his wife and wrote 28 books. His son went on to
become an important Medical officer to Napoleon the Third.

In a bittersweet moment that I’ll use to end the video on the 25th of
July 1842 Baron Dominique Jean Larrey died and is now buried
near Napoleon himself, the bittersweet part is that his beloved
wife of 48 years died two days earlier on the 23rd of July.
Thanks for watching and I hope this video was interesting, please
leave alike and comment below I’ll read and reply to them all and
let me know what type of content you’d like to see in the future.