Jan BakhuizenThis post is about the experiences of Jan Bakhuizen, my fourth great grandfather. Jan w

Jan Bakhuizen

This post is about the experiences of Jan Bakhuizen, my fourth great grandfather. Jan was born on 9th december 1790 in Zaltbommel, Gelderland as a child of Hendrik Bakhuizen and Hendrijntje Hanegraaf. I have found the document stating his birth but sadly I do not know a thing about his childhood. Jan Bakhuizen was 1,62 meters tall, slightly shorter than average for the time period, and had blond hair and blue eyes.

Like so many other young Dutch men of his time, Jan got dragged in the Napoleonic wars but in his case not through conscription. Jan was barely an adult when he volunteered, becoming a Dutch hussar serving under king Louis Bonaparte. It didn’t take very long before he saw his first combat action. During the same year that Jan joined the army, 1809, Jan was deployed to Walcheren to repell the English who attempted their second invasion into the low countries.

The British deployed 40,000 soldiers, 15,000 horses, field artillery and two siege trains which arrived at Walcheren on 30th july. Even though this was a large British expedition, surprisingly little fighting was done between the French/Dutch and the British. Thankfully, for the Dutch and French at least, the British got struck with the ‘Walcheren fever’, probably malaria, which cost the lives of over 4,000 British soldiers. To put in comparison, only 106 died in combat. The campaign eventually ended in failure for the British and Jan Bakhuizen managed to remain unscathed.

In 1810, Napoleon annexed the kingdom of Holland, which now became part of the French empire. Not only did the country itself change, some military units transformed as well. Jan Bakhuizen’s hussar regiment was turned into a completely new unit: 2e régiment de chevau-légers lanciers de la Gard Impériale or better known as the red lancers. Their uniforms changed drastically, they wore scarlet red uniforms, received new weapons and a new commander, Colonel Edouard Colbert. The regiment was then included in the prestigious old guard, the elite corps of Napoleon, basically an army inside an army made up of the most skilled soldiers.

On 31th july, the men of the red lancers were ordered to travel to Paris to join the other royal guards. Before they left for France, they were inspected by marshall Oudinot in Amsterdam. On the place d'armes near the Versailles they listened to a speech given by French officers of other imperial guard regiments. After this speech, they were invited to join the officers for a feast in order to fraternize with the French units. On the 23th of september in the same year, the unit was inspected by Napoleon himself in the courtyard of the Tuileries, 895 men were present during this inspection, (including Jan Bakhuizen) the unit itself consisted of 1,038 men. During the end of September of the following year, 1811, Napoleon Bonaparte visited the Netherlands, some of the Dutch lancers, like my ancestor Jan, acted as Napoleon’s personal bodyguard while he toured through the country.

During the winter of 1811, the red lancers took part in ceremonies and parades around Paris and Versailles which lasted two weeks. Many of the officers in the regiment took this time to enjoy the sights of Paris such as the theaters and monuments. Several French officers joined the regiment as well in order to really engrain French influence and culture inside the mostly Dutch regiment. The regiment was expanded the following year to five squadrons with men from French regiments and from a Dutch hussar regiment that served in Spain. There was a big reason for the expansion, the biggest ever campaign in military history until 1812, the infamous Russia campaign.

Unfortunately my ancestor, Jan Bakhuizen, didn’t write any of his experiences down during the 1812 campaign (and even if he did, his words got lost) so I have used the experiences of his regiment to reconstruct his journey to Russia. The regiment left France in February 1812 and arrived in the Netherlands in March. Many of the Dutch men took advantage of this opportunity to visit their family members and for almost all of them, it was also the very last time that they would ever see their families. On 14th of June they arrived at Königsberg, most of them men still did not know the destination of their march. The regiment was also tasked with finding translators and guides for Napoleon.

After crossing the rivier Niemen on 24th of june, the regiment was ordered to march towards Vilna and catch up with Murat’s cavalry to provide cover to his right flank. The lancers marched through Russia with success, they defeated several Russian units and captured settlements but it came with a human price. At the start of the campaign around 1127 men were marching but by the time they reached Smolensk, only 700 of them were fit enough to parttake in battle. The other 500 were either dead, captured or sick inside a hospital.

On 7th of September the red lancers witnessed the battle of Borodino although they did not have an active part in it. Two days later the regiment was on the march again towards Moscow but on the 17th of September, an unfortunate accident took place. One of the lancers was killed after colliding with a group of Kozaks. The next day, 12 more lancers died after falling in a trap near Borovsk but the rest of the regiment managed to reach Moscow. On 11th of October, only 556 were still fit enough to fight.

One week later, the red lancers got the order to retreat from Moscow. Napoleon ordered all wagons and equipment between Moscow and the river Desna to be destroyed, the red lancers guarded the banks of the Desna river, providing safe passage to the rest of the imperial army. After the army passed the bridge, the lancers crossed the bridge themselves and set it on fire to prevent the Russians from chasing them.

On the 25th of October, the Dutch and Polish lancers faced a regiment of Russian Kozaks which resulted in a skirmish which lasted for several hours. The lancers managed to drive off the Kozaks but they lost 4 officers and 24 men during the skirmish. After this battle, it began to snow and the infamous Russian cold struck the army without mercy. They managed to reach Smolensk where they got 130 reinforcements. The red lancers now only had 330 fit men of which only 130 still had a horse, the others were killed by the cold or captured/killed by the Russians.

Then the most horrible part of the Russian campaign occured, the crossing of the Berezina river. While several other family members of mine died during this crossing, Jan Bakhuizen simply vanished and was reported by the French as 'missing in action’. This usually means that the person in question had either been killed, captured or deserted. Initially I thought that Jan, like the others, didn’t survive the Russian campaign but the child that would become another ancestor of mine wasn’t born until 1814 so he must have made it out of Russia alive. In fact, Jan Bakhuizen died in 1845 back in his old home town after fathering a few more children. It is therefore very likely that Jan deserted the army and with an incredible amount of luck, made it back home to be reunited with his family, without this decision, I wouldn’t be alive and able to write this.

Of all the red lancers that left for Russia, only 20 officers and 40 cavalry men survived the entire ordeal, the fact that my ancestor managed to reach home again is quite amazing and the thought that my entire existence depends on this extreme hardship is stunning.

Here are images of:
Birth paper of Jan Bakhuizen,
Jan Bakhuizen’s military record,
Napoleon inspecting the red lancers,
Red Lancers near the Versailles,
Red lancer at the Berezina crossing,
Portrait of a red lancer,