Schönefeld was the key to Napoleon’s position in the north, just as Probstheida was in the south. It too was made up of mostly two-storey, solidly built stone houses and their gardens, with the whole village surrounded by a stout wall. To complicate the Russians’ problem further, just to the village’s south was a walled cemetery which gave excellent cover to defenders. It was also difficult to outflank Schönefeld from the north since the village lay very close to the marshy banks of the river Parthe. In addition, the attack on Schönefeld ran into the normal problems facing any army attempting to take these Saxon villages. Given sufficient numbers and courage, the attacking infantry would break into the village, albeit at the cost of heavy casualties. But they would then be subject to counter-attacks by fresh enemy troops concentrated out of fire behind the village and supported by their massed artillery. Bringing forward the attackers’ own guns through or around the village in sufficient numbers to match these enemy batteries was extremely difficult. Captain Radozhitsky attempted to do just this at Schönefeld and found his batteries smothered by overwhelming canister fire at short range. Langeron’s first two major attacks took Schönefeld and then lost it again. Only after Bernadotte deployed all his artillery and pounded the village from the south did Schönefeld finally fall at 6 p.m. Even then Langeron’s men had to hold it against fierce French counter-attacks which lasted into the night.44
The fall of Schönefeld posed the risk that the allies would advance into the rear of Napoleon’s troops south of Leipzig and cut off their retreat. In fact, however, even by the morning of 18 October Napoleon had decided to abandon Leipzig. The only issue was whether he would get most of his army and its baggage away safe and sound. Already, early on 17 October, Bertrand’s corps had been ordered down the highway beyond Lindenau in order to secure Weissenfels and Napoleon’s retreat to the west. His corps was replaced at Lindenau by troops sent by Marshal Ney. The army’s baggage train began to move back through Leipzig too. Drawing in his perimeter and using the stout Saxon buildings as strong-points, Napoleon stopped the allies from breaking into his rear or cutting off his retreat on 18 October.
The big test would come on 19 October, when his rearguards needed to hold the allies at bay for long enough for Napoleon to squeeze most of his soldiers, his guns and his still considerable baggage through the streets of Leipzig and over the bridge which was the only route to safety. Inevitably, many of Napoleon’s batteries had to remain on the battlefield as long as possible to protect the rearguard from the allies’ overwhelming superiority in artillery. Equally inevitably, this would greatly worsen the traffic jam in Leipzig on 19 October. Above all, Napoleon had needlessly worsened the situation by failing to build extra bridges to span the Elster. The Russian official history blamed Napoleon’s failure on ‘the usual disorder of French military administration of that time’.45
The allied columns began their advance on Leipzig at 7 a.m. on 19 October. Meanwhile Napoleon had entrusted the task of forming a rearguard to Poniatowski’s Polish corps and to MacDonald’s corps of French, Italian and German divisions. It is probably realistic to note that if Napoleon retreated behind the Rhine very many of these non-French troops would abandon his cause anyway. Nevertheless the rearguards fought effectively outside Leipzig’s walls, using the many buildings and other obstacles to delay the allied advance. Even so, by eleven in the morning the allies were beginning to break through the four gates into the inner city. By midday, though the fight put up by the rearguards had enabled most of Napoleon’s troops to escape over the Elster, many thousands of men and a vast amount of artillery were still trying to force their way through the streets of Leipzig. In these circumstances it is not surprising that a catastrophe occurred.
On the far right of the allied line north of Leipzig the Halle Gate into the city was finally stormed by the 39th Jaegers of Lieven’s 10th Division. This was a formidable unit, formed out of the Briansk Infantry Regiment in 1810. Most of its officers and every single NCO had served their entire careers in the regiment. The 39th Jaegers had fought against the Ottomans in 1809–12 and then had performed well under Sacken in 1812 and the first half of 1813. Used to tackling strong Ottoman fortresses, the regiment had overwhelmed the defenders of the Polish fortress town of Czenstochowa in no time in March 1813 by their accurate marksmanship, winning ceremonial silver trumpets for themselves and promotion to lieutenant-general for Johann von Lieven. At Leipzig the regiment was commanded by Mikhail Akhlestyshev, an excellent officer who was badly wounded in the final assault on the Halle Gate.46
Meanwhile Alexandre de Langeron’s infantry was moving up in Sacken’s support. Two of his jaeger regiments – the 29th and 45th – advanced westwards through the Rosenthal garden and around the city’s northern wall, getting across an undefended bridge over a small branch of the Elster and advancing into the city past the Jakob Hospital. Both the 29th and 45th Jaegers had fought in all the key actions of the recent war against the Ottomans, from the siege of Khotin in 1806 through the attempts to storm Brailov and Jurja, and concluding with Kutuzov’s annihilation of the main Ottoman army in the winter of 1811–12. In 1812 and the spring of 1813 they had served in Sacken’s corps, winning many plaudits but suffering nothing like the casualties of the regiments which had fought at Borodino or pursued Napoleon from Tarutino to Vilna. When they arrived at Leipzig both regiments were still packed with veterans who had years of experience of sharpshooting, street-fighting and raiding parties.47
The advance of the 29th and 45th Jaegers past Jakob Hospital brought them shortly after midday to within close range of the only bridge over the main branch of the Elster, across which Napoleon’s army was retreating. Explosive charges had been laid under the bridge. Amidst the chaos of the retreat, the officer in charge had abandoned his post to get clarification as to when to detonate the charges, leaving a mere corporal in command in his absence. Coming under accurate musket fire from the 45th and 29th Jaegers and armed with instructions to destroy the bridge when the enemy approached, the corporal quite understandably detonated the charges. Not only Napoleon but also a number of other memoirists subsequently blamed the corporal for the loss of the thousands of men and hundreds of guns which the bridge’s destruction stranded in Leipzig. Rather obviously, when the fate of a huge army is allowed to depend on a single bridge and a solitary corporal the responsibility lies further up the military hierarchy.48
The allies lost 52,000 men at the battle of Leipzig, of whom the largest share – 22,000 – were Russians. It says a great deal for the discipline of the allied armies that despite three days of fighting and this level of casualties there was very little looting or disorder when they stormed into Leipzig. French losses were certainly greater. Perhaps they were only 60,000, as French accounts claim: on the other hand, by the time the army reached Erfurt it had only 70,000 men under arms and 30,000 unarmed stragglers, so overall casualties during or immediately after the battle must have been closer to 100,000. Three hundred guns and 900 ammunition wagons were also left behind in Leipzig. The allied victory was therefore unequivocal and led to the loss to Napoleon of all Germany east of the Rhine.49
Given their superiority in numbers this was a battle that the allies ought to have won. That they came close to losing it on the first day was above all the fault of Schwarzenberg. The battle of Leipzig was Napoleon’s last chance to hold Germany and he was right to seize the opportunity that Schwarzenberg’s mistakes gave him on the battle’s first day. His failure to win decisively on 16 October owed much more to the courage and tenacity of the allied troops than to any mistakes made by Napoleon. Once the chance of victory on the first day had gone, however, the odds were hopelessly against Napoleon and he delayed his retreat too long and failed properly to prepare for it.
Among the allied leaders, the chief hero was Blücher. Without him the three allied armies would never have converged on Leipzig at all. Admittedly, he had taken some great risks and luck had been on his side. Blücher too was responsible for diverting
Marmont’s corps from Napoleon’s attack on the Army of Bohemia on 16 October and for finally dragging Bernadotte onto the battlefield two days later. Great credit does also go to Alexander, however. Only his intervention could have forced Schwarzenberg to change the initial allied deployment for the battle. Without his insistence, the Russian reserves would never have arrived in time behind Gossa on 16 October. His nagging contributed to Schwarzenberg’s release of the Austrian reserves in time as well. It is fair to conclude that without Alexander the battle of Leipzig would probably have been lost. The emperor had finally made amends on the battlefield for the disaster at Austerlitz.
Napoleon’s retreat from Leipzig bore some resemblance to his retreat from Moscow. The French army moved at great speed, at the price of many stragglers and much indiscipline. Russian Cossacks and light cavalry harried the retreating columns, picking up thousands of prisoners. Schwarzenberg pursued Napoleon no more quickly than Kutuzov had done. Even Blücher was left well behind by the French and then swung too far to the north because he misjudged their line of retreat. The role of Chichagov was played by the Bavarian-Austrian army under Marshal Wrede, which tried to cut across Napoleon’s march at Haynau and was defeated. Since the Bavarians had just changed sides the French took particular pleasure in this victory over ‘traitors’. As at the Berezina, Napoleon’s army showed great courage and resilience with its back to the wall and its very survival in question. Nevertheless Napoleon could not afford the almost 15,000 additional casualties he sustained at Haynau. On 2 November he crossed the Rhine back into France.
No doubt the retreat from Leipzig lacked many of the horrors of the march from Moscow to the Russian border exactly one year before. There was little snow, fewer avenging peasants and no tales of cannibalism. There was, however, plenty of typhus: Napoleon got back to the Rhine with perhaps 85,000 men but thousands succumbed to the disease within days. Meanwhile the allied armies occupied Frankfurt, the old ‘capital’ of the Holy Roman Empire, and moved up to the Rhine. Germany east of the river was theirs. The foundations of the European balance of power had been restored. The objectives of the Russo-Prussian-Austrian alliance had therefore largely been achieved. The 1813 campaign was over.
13
The Invasion of France
In the 1814 campaign military operations were entangled with diplomacy and with French domestic politics. This was the inevitable result of allied success in 1813. The treaties of alliance signed at Teplitz in September 1813 had committed the Russians, Prussians and Austrians to pushing Napoleon back across the Rhine and restoring German independence. By November 1813 this goal was achieved. The allies now had to decide whether to stick to their previous limited war aims or to increase them. If they chose to do the latter, then they needed to agree on new goals. Whatever they decided, they required a French government which would negotiate a peace settlement and then stick to it. War-weariness might well persuade Frenchmen to welcome peace in the short run but after twenty-two years of war the allies longed for lasting peace, not just a temporary armistice. Designing a settlement which would guarantee European peace and stability, satisfy the allied powers’ interests and also be acceptable to French society was bound to be hard.1
Should the allies offer France its so-called ‘natural frontiers’ – in other words the border marked out by the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees and envisaged in the Teplitz treaties? Or should they seek to reduce France to its ‘historic’ borders, meaning the territory ruled by the French king in 1792? This was not the same question as whether the allies should negotiate with Napoleon or try to overthrow him, but the issues were linked. It was perhaps conceivable that Napoleon would tolerate a peace based on ‘natural borders’, but only a great optimist could believe that he would see a settlement linked to the old royal frontiers as anything other than a temporary truce. The allies knew, however, that it was neither in their power nor in their interests to impose a regime on the French. Their armies could not occupy France for ever. Sooner rather than later they needed a French regime with sufficient legitimacy to accept a peace settlement and survive in power, once initial war-weariness had faded in French society. There was plenty of room for honest disagreement among the allies about what kind of French regime would best fit this bill. The one obvious point, though, was that the more a regime was seen to be imposed by the allies, the harder its task would be to win acceptance among the French people.
These questions were complicated and without clear answers. Suspicion and arguments in the allied camp were made far worse, however, by clashes of interest over the final peace settlement for Europe as a whole. Directly or indirectly, Napoleon had ruled over most of Poland, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries. The fate of all of these territories now had to be decided, and this had enormous implications for the power, status and security of all the allied states. Above all there was Poland, or more specifically the Duchy of Warsaw. The whole Duchy was former Prussian or Austrian territory. Alexander wanted it for Russia. The balance of power in east-central Europe between the three major continental allies was widely seen as turning on this issue. Disagreements about how Poland should be partitioned had broken up the First Coalition against Revolutionary France. They were the likeliest source of disintegration for the present coalition too. Nor could the Polish issue be kept separate from the question of how to deal with Napoleon and France. Faced with Russo-Prussian solidarity, Austria looked to France as a possible ally. If too weakened or humiliated by the peace, the French could not fulfil this role. On the other hand, a France indebted to Vienna for a moderate peace settlement and ruled by Francis II’s son-in-law, Napoleon, might be a useful check to Russian power.2
Though some tensions existed between all the allied powers, the most important conflict was between Austria and Russia. One key area of rivalry was the Balkans. In 1808–12 the Russians seemed on the verge of conquering all of present-day Romania and turning Serbia into their client state, thereby increasing their prestige and leverage throughout the Balkans. Only the threat of Napoleon’s invasion had persuaded Petersburg to draw back, but no one in Vienna could be naive enough to believe that this was the end of the story. More broadly, the Austrians feared growing Russian power, of which 1812 had been a reminder. Her geographical near-invulnerability, the quality of her army and the scale of her resources all made Russia an empire to be feared.
Nevertheless, one must not exaggerate: in 1814 Austria was not yet greatly inferior to Russia in power. We are still far from the era of 1914, by which time Russia had been strengthened by huge population growth and the Austrian army weakened by the conflicts between the Habsburg Empire’s many nationalities. Even on their own in 1814 the Austrians could hope to put up a stout defence against Russia. Allied to Prussia they had every chance of defeating it. In many ways the main problem for Metternich in 1814 was Russo-Prussian solidarity, which increased Russian confidence and gave Russia a secure gateway into central Europe. The Russo-Prussian alliance threatened to isolate Austria and cut across Metternich’s desire for a Germanic bloc which would largely exclude French or Russian influence from central Europe. Within that bloc Austrian resources and Habsburg history would give Vienna a natural pre-eminence. Meanwhile Metternich envisaged that peace and equilibrium in Europe as a whole would be protected by a balance of power between France and Russia.3
Austrian perspectives had some support within the Prussian government. When the Treaty of Kalicz had been negotiated between Russia and Prussia in February 1813 there had been much tension over the fate of Prussia’s former territories in the Duchy of Warsaw. The Prussian king’s closest military adviser, Major-General Karl von dem Knesebeck, shared the Austrian high command’s fears about attempting to march on Paris and unseat Napoleon.4
Against Knesebeck stood Blücher, Gneisenau and the Army of Silesia.
Their views are sometimes belittled as stemming from nothing but desire for revenge and military glory. This is unfair. The Army of Silesia’s quartermaster-general, B
aron Müffling, was a cool-headed staff officer, personally much closer to Knesebeck than to Gneisenau or Blücher. But he shared their view that lasting peace required Napoleon’s removal. He believed that if the emperor remained in power, after a short respite to rest and regroup his resources he was certain to try to overturn any peace settlement. All his veterans currently in allied captivity or in hospitals would stand ready to support him. Meanwhile, Müffling added, as Napoleon advanced over the Rhine, the Russian army would be 1,000 kilometres away and unable to come to Prussia’s assistance.5
In the end, Prussian policy depended on Frederick William III. The king shared Müffling’s views and was satisfied with the deal struck at Kalicz. Once Frederick William had gone through the agony of making the great decision to back Russia in February 1813 he was temperamentally very disinclined to review it. In any case he trusted and admired Alexander. The king was also grateful for the fact that the tsar had refused to abandon Prussia at Tilsit and had rescued his kingdom from Napoleon in 1813. Very soon the Russo-Prussian alliance was to be drawn even closer by the marriage of the king’s eldest daughter to Alexander’s younger brother and eventual heir, the Grand Duke Nicholas.6
Amidst the rivalries of the continental allies, Britain stood somewhat apart. Her role in the alliance which liberated Germany in 1813 was mostly limited to subsidizing her allies’ armies. By the winter of 1813–14, however, matters had changed. With Germany free and a final peace in the offing, Britain moved to the centre of the picture. The continental allies knew by bitter experience that if Britain and France remained at war they would end by being dragged in. Demobilizing their armies, restoring their finances and rebuilding international trade would be difficult. Britain therefore had to be brought into the peace settlement and her continental allies hoped that she would help to reconcile the French to peace by restoring many of the overseas colonies conquered between 1793 and 1814.
Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace Page 60