Napoleon the Great

by Andrew Roberts

  The battle began early on the 16th when the Prussians took the village of Mark-Kleeberg from Poniatowski’s Poles in bitter street fighting made worse by racial hatred. Wachau was relatively lightly held and fell quickly to Russian forces backed by a Prussian brigade, but any attempt to push beyond it was stopped by French artillery. When Napoleon arrived there sometime between noon and 1 p.m. he formed a battery of 177 guns, under whose heavy cannonade he launched a major counter-attack, forcing the Russians back onto the Leipzig Plain, where there was no cover and grapeshot cut many of them down.

  The Austrian General Ignaz Gyulai threatened Napoleon’s only escape route to the west – if one became necessary – so General Henri Bertrand’s corps was detached to protect it, significantly weakening Napoleon’s main attack. Gyulai became fixated on capturing Lindenau, near the road, and a real crisis developed in the late afternoon when the Austrians, despite strong artillery fire, stormed the burning village. Bertrand fell back and regrouped before counter-attacking at 5 p.m. He managed to clear the road completely, but Gyulai had made an important contribution by pinning down Bertrand’s corps.

  At 10 a.m. Klenau advanced on Liebertwolkwitz, which fell quite quickly except for the church and the northern end of the village. A swift counter-attack pushed the Austrians straight back out again. General Gérard was wounded leading his largely Italian division against Klein-Posna before Mortier brought up his Young Guard divisions to secure the area. By 11 a.m. the Allies were back at their start lines, exhausted and denuded of reserves. Napoleon, surprised by their aggression, had been forced to move his own reserves in sooner than he would have liked. Friant’s Old Guard took the Meusdorf sheep farm, and two divisions of the Young Guard under Oudinot and the mass of reserve cavalry concentrated behind Wachau.

  As the fog lifted across the battlefield, Napoleon could assess his clear superiority. Seeing an opportunity to split the Allied line at its weakest point at Wachau, he threw Macdonald’s corps in at noon to turn the Allied right flank. At about 2 p.m. he personally encouraged the 22nd Légère to storm the heights dominating Gross-Posna, known as the Kolmberg, teasing them with the taunt that they were merely standing at the base under heavy fire with their arms crossed.45 Although they took the heights, their movement was spotted by Alexander, Frederick William and Schwarzenberg, who sent in the Prussian reserves to stop them. (As earlier in the campaign, the two monarchs were now there in merely advisory and morale capacities, with the military decisions being taken by the professional soldiers.)

  Out on the plain, Murat massed cavalry between Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz in dense columns to support Oudinot and Poniatowski. At 2.30 p.m. Bordessoulle’s cavalry led the charge in the centre, breaking through the Prince of Württemberg’s infantry and getting in among the artillerymen of the Allied grand battery. Eighteen squadrons, totalling 2,500 sabres, charged the Russian Guard Cavalry Division and overthrew it, heading on towards the Allied headquarters. Yet the French infantry failed to follow up this charge, and after Bordessoulle’s force was slowed by marshy ground it had to retreat, and took a good deal of punishment as it did so, including from friendly fire.

  Napoleon had been waiting for Marmont to arrive from the north but by 3 p.m. he decided to launch his general assault with the troops he had at hand. He pushed his artillery well forward to batter the enemy centre, launched continual cavalry charges and counter-charges, ordered infantry volleys at close range and brought the Allied line almost to breaking point, but fresh Austrian troops, some of whom waded up to their waists in the Pleisse to enter the action faster, and the sheer stubbornness of the Russian and Prussian formations prevented a French breakthrough.

  Hearing sustained cannon-fire from the direction of Möckern, Napoleon galloped to the northern part of the battlefield, where Blücher had engaged Marmont. Savage hand-to-hand fighting took place in the narrow streets of Möckern, and when Marmont tried to get onto the heights beyond the village Yorck unleashed a cavalry charge supported by infantry. Marmont’s men were forced back inside Leipzig. Ney had been falling back steadily towards the city, abandoning one strong position after another instead of delaying Blücher’s and Bernadotte’s advance.

  With the Allies closing in on three sides, Napoleon was forced to spread the French attacks too thinly to be decisive at any one point. By 5 p.m. both armies were ready to end the first day’s fighting. The casualties were great, amounting to around 25,000 French and 30,000 Allies.46 That night, he ought to have slipped away along the road to the west, extricating himself before Schwarzenberg received massive reinforcements. Yet instead he allowed the whole of October 17 to pass by in rest and recuperation, requesting an armistice (which was refused) and sending the senior Austrian general captured that day, Maximilian von Merveldt, to Emperor Francis with a crudely anti-Russian message. ‘It’s not too much for Austria, France, and even Prussia to stop on the Vistula the overflowing of a people half nomad, essentially conquering, whose huge empire spreads from here all the way to China,’ he said, adding ‘I have to finish by making sacrifices: I know it; I am ready to make them.’47 The sacrifices he told Fain he would be willing to make for peace included an immediate renunciation of the Duchy of Warsaw, Illyria and the Rhine Confederation. He was also willing to consider independence for Spain, Holland and the Hanseatic Towns, although that could only be part of a general settlement that also included Britain. For Italy he wanted ‘the integrity and independence of the Kingdom’, which sounded ambiguous, unlike his actual offer to Austria to evacuate Germany and withdraw behind the Rhine.48 Francis did not reply to the offer for three weeks, by which time the situation had radically altered to Napoleon’s disadvantage.49

  Wellington later said that if Napoleon had withdrawn from Leipzig earlier, the Allies couldn’t have ventured to approach the Rhine.50 But to retreat from Leipzig without an armistice would effectively mean abandoning tens of thousands of men in the eastern fortress garrisons. Napoleon feared that the Saxons and Württembergers would then fall away from him as the Bavarians already had done. So instead of retreating towards Erfurt he organized his munitions supply – the French artillery was to fire 220,000 cannonballs during the battle, three times more even than at Wagram – and concentrated his whole army in a semicircle on the north-east and southern sides of the city, while sending Bertrand and Mortier to secure the exit routes should an escape become necessary.51 He succumbed to a heavy bout of influenza on the night of the 17th, but he had decided to fight it out. However, the arrival of Bernadotte’s and Bennigsen’s divisions meant that while Napoleon had been reinforced by the addition of 14,000 men of Reynier’s corps since the start of the battle, Schwarzenberg had been reinforced by over 100,000 men.52

  After riding out towards Lindenau at about 8 a.m. on October 18, Napoleon spent most of the day at the tobacco mill at Thonberg, where the Old Guard and Guard cavalry were held in reserve.* By that time, the sun was shining and the armies were ready to engage. For the renewal of the battle Schwarzenberg had organized six great converging attacks, comprising 295,000 men and 1,360 guns. He hoped to take Connewitz, Mark-Kleeberg, Probstheida, Zuckelhausen, Holzhausen, Lindenau and Taucha before crushing the French army in Leipzig itself.

  When Bennigsen arrived later in the morning he captured Holzhausen and its neighbouring villages from Macdonald. To Macdonald’s left were Reynier’s reinforcements, who included 5,400 Saxons and 700 Württembergers, but at 9 a.m. these fresh arrivals suddenly deserted to the Allies with thirty-eight guns, leaving a yawning gap in Napoleon’s line that General Jean Defrance’s heavy cavalry division attempted to fill.53 The Saxon battery actually turned around, unlimbered and began firing on the French lines. They had fought for Napoleon for seven years since deserting the Prussians after Jena, and such cool treachery was bad for French morale.

  Von Bülow soon captured the village of Paunsdorf. Napoleon threw in units from the Old and Young Guard to recapture it, but the sheer weight of Prussian numbers forced even these elite units ou
t. Probstheida, defended by Victor and Lauriston, became a veritable fortress that could not be seized at all that day despite the Tsar taking a close personal interest in its capture. Two Prussian brigades tried three times without success, and the 3rd Russian Infantry Division had to fall back sullenly behind its screen of light infantry. Napoleon was so concerned by the weight of these attacks that he pushed Curial’s Old Guard Division up in support, but was thankful they weren’t needed.

  North of Leipzig a battle raged for Schönefeld between Marmont and Langeron, a French émigré general fighting in the Russian army. By bringing up all the guns of Souham’s corps to add to his, Marmont managed to oppose Langeron’s 180 cannon with 137 of his own. The ground between these two enormous batteries was swept clear: six French generals were killed or wounded in cannonading that carried on until nightfall, when Marmont evacuated back to his entrenchments outside Leipzig. While Langeron engaged Marmont, Blücher pushed for the suburbs of Leipzig. Ney launched two divisions in a counter-attack, contesting the village of Sellerhausen. It was in this engagement that the British fired their noisy and highly lethal Congreve rockets with powerful effect, not least on French morale. Although rockets had been known about for sixteen years, and their efficacy had been attested at Copenhagen in 1807, Napoleon hadn’t developed a rocket capacity of his own.

  Napoleon personally led some Old Guard and Guard cavalry over to counter-attack at Zwei-Naundorf at about 4.30 p.m., standing aside only at the last minute as they went into action. But the Allies fought them to a standstill and a tide of Russians and Prussians drove the French steadily backwards. ‘Here, I saw the Emperor under a hail of enemy canister,’ recalled Johann Röhrig, a company sergeant-major of French voltigeurs. ‘His face was pale and as cold as marble. Only occasionally did an expression of rage cross his face. He saw that all was lost. We were only fighting for our withdrawal.’54 After having to pay 2 crowns (that is, six francs, or three days’ wages) for eight potatoes from some Old Guard grenadiers, Röhrig wrote of that day:

  I cannot understand that such a clever commander as the Emperor could let us starve. It would have been a very different life in that army if sufficient food had been available. And yet, no one who has not experienced it can have any idea of the enthusiasm which burst forth among the half-starved, exhausted soldiers when the Emperor was there in person. If all were demoralized and he appeared, his presence was like an electric shock. All shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and everyone charged blindly into the fire.55

  Each side lost around 25,000 men in the bitter cannonades and hand-to-hand fighting that day.

  On the morning of October 19, Napoleon finally decided that the army should retreat. He told Poniatowski, to whom he had awarded a marshal’s baton three days earlier, ‘Prince, you will defend the southern suburbs.’ ‘Sire, I have so few men,’ replied the Pole. ‘Well, you will defend yourself with what you have!’ said Napoleon. ‘Ah! Sire,’ answered the newly minted marshal, ‘we will hold on! We are all ready to die for your Majesty.’56 Later that day, he was as good as his word. Napoleon left the city at about 10 a.m. after visiting the King of Saxony, whose battlefield commander had not defected to the Allies as so many of his men had. ‘Napoleon had the appearance of composure on his countenance when he quitted Leipzig,’ recalled Colonel von Odeleben, ‘riding slowly through St Peter’s Gate, but he was bathed in sweat, a circumstance which might proceed from bodily exertion and mental disturbance combined.’57 The retreat was chaotic, with ‘Ammunition wagons, gendarmes, artillery, cows and sheep, women, grenadiers, post-chaises, the sound, the wounded, and the dying, all crowded together, and pressed on in such confusion that it was hardly possible to hope that the French could continue their march, much less be capable of defending themselves.’58 The confusion worsened considerably once the Allied assault on the city began at 10.30 a.m.

  Pontoon bridges had not been built over the Pleisse, Luppe or Elster rivers, so everyone had to cross by the single bridge over the Pleisse in the city, which was reached at the end of a series of narrow streets. Catastrophically, the bridge was blown up at 11.30 a.m., long before the whole army had got over it, which led to well over 20,000 men being captured unnecessarily and turned the defeat into a rout. Napoleon’s 50th bulletin blamed Colonel Montfort by name for delegating the duty to a ‘corporal, an ignorant fellow but ill comprehending the nature of the duty with which he was charged’.59 People and animals were still on the bridge when the explosion shook the city, raining the body parts of humans and horses into the streets and river.60 Some officers decided to try to swim across to avoid capture. Macdonald made it, but Poniatowski’s horse, which he had ridden into the river, could not climb up the opposite bank and fell back on top of him. Both were swept away by the current.61 The fisherman who hauled Poniatowski’s corpse out of the river did well from selling his diamond-studded epaulettes, rings and snuffboxes to Polish officers who wanted to return them to his family.62 Napoleon’s red-leather briefcase for foreign newspapers, emblazoned Gazettes Étrangères in gold lettering, was captured, along with his carriage, and opened in the presence of Bernadotte.*

  ‘Between a battle lost and a battle won,’ Napoleon had said on the eve of the battle of Leipzig, ‘the distance is immense and there stand empires.’63 Between the dead and the wounded, Napoleon lost around 47,000 men over the three days. Some 38,000 men were captured, along with 325 guns, 900 wagons and 28 colours and standards (including 3 eagles), making it statistically easily the worst defeat of his career.64 In his bulletin he admitted to 12,000 lost, and several hundred wagons, mainly as a result of the blown bridge. ‘The disorder it has brought to the army changed the situation,’ he wrote; ‘the victorious French army arrives at Erfurt as a defeated army would arrive.’65 After further desertions and defections, he was able to bring only 80,000 men of the Grande Armée back over the Saale out of the more than 200,000 he had had at the start of the battle. ‘Typhus broke out in our disorganized ranks in a terrifying fashion,’ Captain Barrès recalled. ‘Thus one might say that on leaving Leipzig we were accompanied by all the plagues that can devour an army.’66

  Napoleon conducted a fighting retreat to the Rhine, sweeping aside the Austrians at Kösen on the 21st, the Prussians at Freiburg that same day, the Russians at Hörselberg on the 27th and, in a two-day battle on the 30th and 31st, the Bavarians at Hanau. He re-crossed the Rhine at Mainz on November 2. ‘Be calm and cheerful and laugh at the alarmists,’ he told his wife the next day.67

  Napoleon still had 120,000 men besieged in the fortresses on the Elbe, Oder and Vistula, with Rapp inside Danzig (where his 40,000 effectives were reduced by the end to 10,000), and generals Adrien du Taillis in Torgau, Jean Lemarois in Magdeburg, Jean Lapoype in Wittenberg, Louis Grandeau in Stettin, Louis d’Albe in Küstrin and Jean de Laplane in Glogau, as well as more men in Dresden, Erfurt, Marienburg, Modlin, Zamos´c´ and Wesel. Although Davout held Hamburg and the lower Elbe, most of these eastern fortresses fell one by one in late 1813, often as the result of starvation. A few held out until the end of the 1814 campaign, but none played any useful part besides holding down local militia units in sieges. It was a sign of Napoleon’s invincible optimism to have left so many men so far to the east. By 1814, most of them were prisoners-of-war.

  The 1813 campaign had claimed the lives of two marshals, Bessières and Poniatowski, and no fewer than thirty-three generals. It also saw the defection of Murat, who while he was with Napoleon at Erfurt on October 24, secretly agreed to join the Allies in exchange for a guarantee that he would remain king of Naples. Yet Napoleon was not disheartened, or at least not publicly. Arriving in Paris on November 9 he (in Fain’s words) ‘exerted every effort to turn his remaining resources to the best account’.68 He replaced Maret as foreign minister with Caulaincourt (after twice offering the position to the unemployed Talleyrand in order to show his conciliatory intentions), imposed an emergency levy of 300,000 new recruits, of which he got 120,000 despite the now powerful anti-conscripti
on sentiment in the country, and seriously entertained a peace offer from the Allies, brought from Frankfurt by the Baron de Saint-Aignan, his former equerry and Caulaincourt’s brother-in-law.69 Under what were termed the Frankfurt bases of peace, France would return to her so-called ‘natural frontiers’ of the Ligurian Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine and the Ardennes – the so-called ‘Bourbon frontiers’ (even though the Bourbons had regularly crossed them in wars of conquest). Napoleon would have to abandon Italy, Germany, Spain and Holland, but not all of Belgium.70 At that point, with only a few garrisons holding out in Spain and unable to defend the Rhine with anything more than bluster, Napoleon told Fain he was prepared to surrender Iberia and Germany, but he resisted giving away Italy, which in wartime ‘could provide a diversion to Austria’, and Holland, which ‘afforded so many resources’.71

  On November 14, the same day that the Frankfurt proposals arrived, Napoleon made a speech to Senate leaders at the Tuileries. ‘All Europe was marching with us just a year ago,’ he told them frankly, ‘today all Europe is marching against us. The fact is that the opinion of the world is formed by France or by England … Posterity will say that if great and critical circumstances arose they were not too much for France or for me.’72 The next day he instructed Caulaincourt that if the British army arrived at the Château de Marracq near Bayonne ‘it be set fire to, also all the houses which belong to me, so that they may not sleep in my bed’.73

  Although he ordered the doubling of the droits réunis on tobacco and postage and doubled the tax on salt in order to raise 180 million francs, he admitted to Mollien that the measures were ‘a digestif that I was saving to the last moment of thirst’. As he was down to 30 million francs in the treasury, that moment had now arrived.74 He ordered that all payments of pensions and salaries be suspended so that the orders made by the war administration ministry could still be honoured.