Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  Joubert, outnumbered almost three to one, fought a delaying action southward to the village of Rivoli. He arrived there before dawn on 13 January and deployed just to the north of Rivoli along the Trombalore Heights. Flowing from the northeast, the Tasso Brook fronts the heights and swings south, then southwest, west and south of Rivoli. Two miles to the north of the village looms Monte Baldo, snow covered at that time of year. The Adige runs southward through a deep valley to the east, from which Osteria Gorge connects the valley to the plain between town and heights. The Austrians spent the 13th setting up three camps among the Monte Baldo foothills and one to the west at Lumini. Two columns also were approaching down either side of the Adige. Joubert spent the day waiting for orders from Napoleon, which never came. At midnight he decided he could not possibly hold the position and began preparing his troops for withdrawal. Less than two hours later, however, Napoleon arrived himself and stopped him. Quickly looking over the Austrian deployment, Napoleon decided he had plenty of time to place his own arriving forces before Alvintzi would begin his attack. Chandler observes, “It was clear the village of San Marco was one key to the position; its possession by the French would divide the Austrian assault in two, and Bonaparte at once ordered its reoccupation. The battle was obviously going to be a race against time; everything depended on the speed of the reinforcements’ arrival to counteract the progressive commitment of the scattered Austrian detachments.”35

  Joubert’s men redeployed along the Trombalore Heights, with units occupying the chapel at San Marco (anchoring the right flank) and the Osteria Gorge. They managed to occupy the chapel just before Austrian troops arrived with the same mission. A quick attack in the dark drove the Austrians back along the Monte Magnone ridge. At 6:00 a.m. Massena’s division arrived with other detachments, having marched more than twenty miles along ice-covered roads during the night. This gave Napoleon 23,000 men and 40 guns against 28,000 Austrians with 90 guns.36 As Massena’s men arrived one brigade was posted to the west to hold back the Austrian force that would march from Lumini, while the remainder went into reserve in Rivoli. Napoleon decided that in order to buy himself some time he would have to launch a spoiling attack to disrupt Alvintzi’s plans. Accordingly, Joubert attacked with his entire force at dawn, but they were forced back. The Austrian right flank, under General Anton Lipthay, broke the attackers before them and moved to outflank the French, but Napoleon led half of Massena’s reserve forward just in time to stabilize the line back on the heights.

  With the battle now fully engaged along the center, the Austrian forces along the Adige arrived and positioned themselves opposite Osteria Gorge. Philipp von Vukassovic, on the east side of the river, deployed his artillery and began firing on the French holding the gorge. General Quasdanovitch meanwhile positioned his 7,000 men for the assault. He succeeded in pushing the French out of the gorge and sent troops to seize the San Marco chapel, now unoccupied, as its defenders had left to push back the Austrians coming down Monte Magnone. Joubert, his hands already full trying to maintain his position along the heights, had to rush three battalions to the chapel; they arrived just in time to beat the Austrians to it.

  By late morning things were looking grim for Napoleon and the French. The Austrian force from Lumini under General Franz Joseph Lusignan had driven back Massena’s holding force and was now threatening to place the French in a pincer. Quasdanovitch’s forces were massing for an assault up the gorge. Using the last of his reserve from Rivoli to counter Lusignan to the south, Napoleon then thinned Joubert’s line facing a waning Austrian attack in order to place more manpower and artillery above the gorge. When Quasdanovitch’s men charged up the gorge and onto flat ground, they were met by 15 French cannons pouring grape-shot into the close-packed ranks. This was followed by a counterattack of 500 infantry and cavalry. When the leading unit panicked and ran, the gorge became choked with confused, defeated men.37 With his right flank now secure, Napoleon sent the remainder of Joubert’s and Massena’s men on the heights into a general advance against tired Austrian troops who had neither artillery nor cavalry to support them. To complete the turnaround, Lusignan’s flanking force was not only stopped by the last of the reserve but was itself struck in the rear by Rey’s force, which was just arriving on the scene. Lusignan withdrew up the slopes of Monte Pipolo, where he soon surrendered.

  Napoleon was preparing a full pursuit when word came from Augereau in the south that the Austrian columns under Major General Johann Provera that had launched the earlier diversionary attacks were now pushing across the lower Adige toward Mantua. Napoleon was obliged to limit the pursuit to Joubert and Rey while he took Massena’s men back to assist Augereau. Even without a massive pursuit effort after Rivoli, the Austrian army collapsed into rout, with half the army either casualties on the battlefield or deserting on the retreat.

  The Battle of Rivoli saw Napoleon start with a spoiling attack, after which he spent most of his time on defense, a rarity for him. He had no chance to deliberately surprise his enemy to start the battle, but his rapid movement of troops on the battlefield allowed him to gain limited surprise at Osteria Gorge; further, Rey’s timely arrival was something Lusignan could not have anticipated. The key to the victory was Napoleon’s ability to concentrate forces in the right place at the right time, giving enough localized victories to demoralize the Austrians before the deliberate attack from Trombalore that won the battle. Pursuit and exploitation occurred, but not to the point of destroying the enemy army, which was always Napoleon’s goal.

  Rivoli proved to be the final turning point in the French campaign in Italy. Some historians have argued that it ranks among the best of Napoleon’s battles and was key to turning the tide against Austria. Not only did it take out almost half of Alvintzi’s army, it secured Napoleon’s reputation.38 Provera’s force was unable to relieve Mantua, being caught between Augereau and Massena, and was forced to surrender. The garrison in Mantua, after a last attempt to break out, was obliged to give up the city owing to starvation. Napoleon controlled northern Italy and quickly used the breathing space to launch an attack on the Papal States, which resulted in a peace treaty and a large monetary payment that kept the war going. Austria created another army under its best general, Archduke Charles, but Napoleon’s moves through the Alps toward Austria (though more bluff than actual threat), along with another push from the French at the Rhine, convinced the Austrians to agree to an armistice that became the Peace of Campo Formio in October 1797.

  Napoleon rode his newfound fame to greater political power, convincing the French government to let him try an expedition to Egypt to threaten Britain’s ties to India. The expedition proved a disaster, but Napoleon demonstrated that his propaganda skills equaled or surpassed his military abilities: he arrived in Paris before news of his failure and just in time to take advantage of political turmoil. He not only landed on his feet, but staged a coup in early November 1799, whereupon he took the title of first consul in a new government.

  Napoleon then reestablished his military credentials with another victorious campaign over the Austrians in northern Italy, ending with a treaty in February 1801. A treaty with Britain the following year ended the War of the Second Coalition, and he was rewarded with a new constitution, which named him first consul for life. This led to a Senate proclamation naming him emperor of France, followed by his self-coronation in December 1804.

  Yet even with this remarkable ascension to power, Napoleon was not satisfied. He decided that in order to achieve his highest ambitions he would have to eliminate Britain, so he began gathering forces at Bolougne in 1805 for a cross-channel invasion.

  It was in the first few years of the nineteenth century that Napoleon had time to mold the army into his own model described earlier. Between 1801 and 1805 fighting was irregular, although only the year in the wake of the Treaty of Amiens (March 1802) was there official peace. The army organized and trained at Bolougne came to be called Le Grande Armée, and it came into being as Napole
on was beginning the recreation of empire. At Bolougne the men trained in large-unit exercises and were officially organized into the corps formations. All the lessons of Guibert and Bourcet were coming to fruition.39

  Politically, 1805 saw alliances coming together. France and Spain signed a treaty in January; England’s William Pitt the Younger and Russia’s Czar Alexander did so in April. England knew Austrian forces were vital to defeating Napoleon, but two unsuccessful wars had Austria wary of trying for a third. However, Napoleon’s 1804 execution of a Bourbon prince involved in an insurrection plot against him raised monarchical ire. The French ruler’s growing ambition scared Austria as well. His proclamation of empire had rattled them, and his ensuing consolidation of northern Italy was a direct threat. Austria had been building up its armies for several years. When Napoleon crowned himself the king of Northern Italy in March 1805, this proved to be too much. Austria joined with Britain and Russia to create the Third Coalition in August 1805.40

  The Austrian minister of war, Field Marshal Archduke Charles (Emperor Francis’s brother), had begun the process of reforming the army in 1801, but with irregular results. The light infantry units raised in 1798 for the War of the Second Coalition had recently been disbanded for the old Prussian reason that they could not be controlled. The frontiersmen the Austrians had been using for the purpose, the grenzers, were being forced into a regular army discipline that stifled their irregular warfare skills. Additionally, the vast number of ethnic minorities in the polyglot Austrian Empire required that the army be widely dispersed in order to maintain the government’s authority and spread the cost of maintenance. Unfortunately, that dispersion meant that mobilization would be slow.41 England, as usual, provided money rather than manpower, which removed the economic objection to war. Political infighting at the court in Vienna also brought the war party into influence over Emperor Francis; throw in Russian manpower to support the offensives and the next war was under way in late summer.

  The Russian army that contributed to the coalition effort was of mixed effectiveness. In the 1790s it had been undergoing erratic reforms under the equally erratic Czar Paul, whose assassination in 1801 brought Alexander to the throne. Although a Russian army had performed well under one of the premier generals of Russian history, Alexander Suvarov, in Italy in 1799, it was for the most part an untested force. As has always been the case with Russia, its vast distances obliged a widely scattered army, which meant training standards were haphazard and coordinated peacetime maneuvers virtually impossible. Nevertheless, the soldiers were solid and at times inspired, when well led.42 The officers were drawn from the upper classes, as was normal at the time, but some foreigners served as well. At the regimental level, the gentry often started as noncommissioned officers and then moved up, but they were so poorly educated that many were illiterate. They were usually loyal and stubborn, but were not self-motivated.43 The upper classes also provided officers by purchase or appointment, but although they attended cadet schools they had no training for the staff positions to which they were appointed. The cavalry forces of the Russian army were adequate, but not up to the standard of either Austria or France. There were vast numbers of Cossack light cavalry, but they were relatively effective only in raiding and harassment; additionally, forces stationed to protect the frontiers with the Ottoman Empire and Sweden limited the numbers that could be committed to a central European war.

  Archduke Charles was replaced as Austrian minister of war by General Karl Mack von Lieberich, a member of the war party, who promptly told the emperor the Austrian army was ready for action. Archduke Charles retorted that this was nonsense, but the court swayed the emperor to commit to action against France. Mack proposed an offensive while Napoleon’s army was still stationed on the English Channel. Unfortunately for the Austrian army, he also tried to introduce some immediate reforms, though they could not possibly be implemented in the weeks before combat was joined.

  Charles took command of some 100,000 men along the Adige in northern Italy, along with his brother John who commanded smaller forces holding the passes through the Tyrol. Mack’s force (originally under the command of Archduke Ferdinand), numbering roughly another 75,000, was to march up the Danube toward the French frontier, where they were to be joined by a 55,000-man Russian force under Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov at the city of Ulm. This would be the main thrust of the allied offensive, with Strasbourg as its initial target. In Prussia, a northern army under Russian general Levin Bennigson with some 45,000 men was trying to encourage the reluctant Prussians to join in. Mack predicted it would take Napoleon sixty-nine days to move his army from the Channel to the frontier, five days longer than it would take Kutuzov to join him. Had the French army been as slow as the Austrians and Russians, he may well have been correct.

  It was in this transition from the English Channel to the frontier that the training and reorganization of the French army began to be illustrated. Napoleon, correctly predicting Ulm (in southern Bavaria) as the Austrian destination, knew he was closer to the city than were the Russians. All he had to do was move faster than the Russians and defeat Mack alone at Ulm; once that was accomplished, he could move toward Vienna to take care of Kutuzov. Everything depended on speed, and that was Napoleon’s watchword.44 The strategy of marching separately and fighting united meant that 200,000 men in seven corps had to move along parallel routes at similarly high speeds—an ambitious advance that would test Napoleon’s newly implemented tactics and training.

  Meanwhile, Marshal Massena in Italy would keep Archduke Charles busy. As Ulm was on something of a traditional invasion route, Napoleon obliged Mack’s assumptions by sending his cavalry to the Black Forest, the traditional eastbound invasion course. While they held Mack’s attention, Napoleon and his army crossed the Rhine between 27 September and 3 October. Mack’s force (minus small garrisons scattered through Bavaria) held Ulm and awaited Russian reinforcement. He was therefore shocked when he learned that the troops to his east were French, not those of his allies. Before it was too late, Archduke Ferdinand managed to escape the city with some cavalry. As the French corps arrived in line, each one moved further east and then south, encircling Mack who tried desperately to break out. Every probe met French troops. Hopelessly outnumbered and outmaneuvered, Mack was obliged to surrender his 24,000 men and 80 pieces of artillery on 20 October.45

  Napoleon’s victory at Ulm was one of the most brilliant and complete of all time, one that would have made Sun Tzu take notice. As Weigley observes, “Napoleon did not worship battle. He made battle serve him; he did not seek battle for its own sake. … Napoleon could be a strategist of finesse as well as a strategist of overpoweringly forceful blows.”46 Although not without casualties, the victory was more one of maneuver than combat, though a number of small battles took place as each arriving corps placed itself farther and farther around Mack’s position until he was surrounded. Between the skirmishes, the encirclement, and the pursuit the Austrians suffered some 60,000 casualties to no more than 2,000 Frenchmen.47 This victory was quickly followed up by the capture of Munich a few days later and the news from northern Italy that Massena had inflicted a defeat on Archduke Charles, immobilizing his forces for a time. This news was dampened somewhat, of course, by that of the French navy’s virtual destruction at the Battle of Trafalgar.

  Actually, the defeat at Trafalgar was the beginning of a series of incidents that had the emperor screaming at his subordinates. The Russian army under Kutuzov began withdrawing eastward immediately upon hearing the news from Ulm. Napoleon sent his marshals in pursuit, but by doing so lost the ever-important close communication needed to make his style of warfare effective. First, assuming Kutuzov would stand before Vienna, Napoleon sent Joachim Murat and Jean Lannes dashing for the city. When Kutuzov instead retreated northeast in order to link up with other Russian forces, Murat and Lannes let him go in favor of being the first to the Austrian capital. They managed to bluff their way into capturing a key bridge across the Danube, but
they failed to remember Napoleon’s dictum that the center of gravity was the enemy army, not a physical location. Vienna meant nothing to Napoleon except as a source of supply. Other marshals also moved too slowly in the pursuit; the one force that kept contact, E.A.C.J. Mortier’s 8th Corps, was alone and out of touch with the others and fell victim to an ambush by Kutuzov. All this incompetence was made worse by the fact that the army was exhausted to the point of collapse by the marching and fighting. Supplies had not been provided along the way, and the resultant looting of the local population did nothing to make for a welcoming populace. Further, one of the corps had passed through the Prussian province of Anspach, potentially provoking Frederick William III into succumbing to Russian and Austrian pleas to join the coalition. Sensing the potential for disaster, Napoleon began establishing supply dumps to assist his advance or, if necessary, a withdrawal.48

  The Battle of Austerlitz

  KUTUZOV’S RETREAT TOOK THE RUSSIANS closer to their reinforcements while stretching Napoleon’s lines of communication almost to the breaking point. On 19 November Kutuzov, having passed through the Moravian frontier city of Brunn (Brno), reached Olmutz and met the Russian 2nd Army and Czar Alexander. The Imperial Guard arrived soon thereafter, as did Austrian emperor Francis with some 35,000 to add to the Russians, bringing their total up to 89,000. Things now seemed to be going the allies’ way: they outnumbered the forces Napoleon could gather into the area; the Prussians were seriously considering joining in and launching an offensive over the Rhine; and Archduke Charles and his brother John had broken away from Massena and were marching out of Italy with another 80,000 men. With both Czar Alexander and Emperor Francis on hand, however, political ends began to weigh more heavily than military realities. Although Kutuzov was technically in command, real orders now came from the czar, “whose military experience qualified him to drill a battalion on the parade ground.”49 Kutuzov’s recommendation, along with that of Emperor Francis, was to keep withdrawing and so pull Napoleon even farther from his supplies and reserves. Delay would only strengthen the allied armies with new reinforcements while obliging the French to pursue them over territory empty of supply. A little patience, a Prussian alliance, and the arrival of Archdukes Charles and John, and a half million men could be brought to bear.