THE ARMY OF GERMANY
The forces that Napoleon assembled in Germany in 1809 were no longer the well-trained army of 1805. They necessarily contained a great many new recruits as well as newly commissioned junior officers and substantial numbers of foreign troops. Even some French regiments from the recently incorporated départements in France itself were composed of foreigners. Moreover, given the relentless pace of Napoleon’s campaigning, training standards had inevitably declined.
There were no changes in corps or divisional organization. Since 1808, French infantry battalions had been organized into six instead of nine companies: one of grenadiers, one of voltigeurs and four of fusiliers. In theory, each company should have had 140 men; in practice, this target was never reached and battalions rarely had over 600 men. Their main weapon was the modified 1777 musket, 175cm long, weighing 4.375kg with a calibre of 17.5mm. Although regiments still were designated as line of light, in reality all could be deployed as skirmishers. On the battlefield, French infantry usually operated in columns of divisions, a formation two companies wide and three deep, firing in three ranks and forming squares to repel cavalry charges. Finally, except for the Imperial Guard, especially the grenadiers of the Old Guard who always fought in their regulation dress complete with bearskins, French infantry uniforms no longer conformed to the official pattern. French industry was unable to keep up with campaign wastage. Many soldiers lacked basic items of clothing and departed on campaign in a great variety of gear, even in captured uniforms.
Cavalry consisted of heavy and light regiments, the heavy normally in four squadrons 250 strong, formed in two ranks, while light cavalry regiments tended to be larger. The heavy cavalry consisted of cuirassiers, carabiniers and dragoons designed as the main strike force in battle. The first two carried breast armour and back-plates and were armed with a heavy straight sword and two pistols; the dragoons also had a short musket. Chasseurs à cheval, lancers and hussars formed the light cavalry, used mainly for reconnaissance though sometimes also in battle. French cavalry was well mounted and trained, and their most useful capability was that they could fight in large, division-sized formations.
Artillery was in the process of transformation, replacing its 4- and 8-pounders with the newly introduced light 6-pounders, the so-called ‘System of the Year XI’. But the transition was far from complete in 1809 and contributed to the initial shortage of artillery in Germany. The organization of the French artillery remained much the same throughout the army, with all batteries having guns as well as howitzers. Foot as well as horse batteries normally fielded six guns and two howitzers. A variable number of batteries were allocated to each division, while reserve artillery, including the heavy 12-pounders, was kept in corps and army reserve parks. From 1807 on Napoleon used massed artillery to pave the way for the assault. ‘Fire’, he asserted, ‘is everything; the rest does not matter.’ For all that, his artillery always remained quite small. His Grande Armée of 1805 had only two pieces for every 1,000 men. The ratio thereafter rose only slowly. Between 1807 and 1809 it stood at three per 1,000 men. Napoleon never reached his target of five guns per 1,000 soldiers, though the ratio was partially increased by using captured Austrian guns. Once it had arrived in Germany, the artillery of the Old Guard, sixty guns strong, constituted the army’s artillery reserve.
As always, a strong point of the French Army was its combat leadership. In 1809, with the French facing not just a larger army but one that had adapted many French methods, this was particularly important. Not only was Napoleon clearly superior to Archduke Charles, his staff and senior commanders were unequalled by the Austrians. All were personally brave and experienced in leading and controlling corps and, when necessary, using their own initiative in tactical situations. If out of his depth in independent command, Berthier was the most able chief-of-staff in Europe, while Davout, Masséna and Lannes were, after Napoleon, the best commanders in the French Army. Lefebvre and Oudinot were adequate in corps command. Bernadotte, on the other hand, despite a highly inflated opinion of himself, was the least reliable of the marshals. Below this level, French divisional commanders and staffs, as well as regimental commanders and specialist officers, all remained far superior to their Austrian counterparts. But perhaps the most important factor was that Napoleon was adored by his troops, French as well as foreign, and that his presence, and the hope of his approval, spurred them on to great efforts.
FIRST MANOEUVRES: AUSTRIA
In March 1809 Austrian army headquarters and six corps (five line and one reserve) had deployed in north-west Bohemia but were then shifted south to the Inn, joining one line and one reserve corps already there. This force formed the main Austrian army, the Hauptarmee. Operating on its southern flank in Italy was the two-corps Army of Inner Austria, while in Galicia there was one strong corps. In addition, a small corps was mustering in Croatia to recover the lost territory in Dalmatia, and another was deployed facing Saxony. Altogether the eight corps of the main army numbered about 200,000 men, the Army of Inner Austria had 60,000, the Galician corps 30,000 and the Croatian corps about 10,000. Another 8,000 or so were placed in brigades along the Saxon border as a core for expected popular anti-French insurrections. Finally, reserves to fill the third battalions and form Landwehr units were becoming available slowly. While far short of its projected paper strength of 470,000, the main army was considered adequate to defeat the still-dispersed French and its related allied forces in Germany.
The reason for the main army’s original concentration in Bohemia was that when war had been planned it was correctly assumed that the principal theatre of operations would be in Germany, and that victory here required an early offensive. There remained the question of choosing a major line of operations. On 25 December 1808, when Prussian cooperation of 80,000 men was still expected, Charles instructed chief-of-staff Mayer to prepare plans for a strike with the major part of the field army from north-west Bohemia into the Main valley. The troops were ordered into their assembly areas in January 1808. Early the next month, however, the archduke changed his mind. Intelligence reports of increased French and Confederation of the Rhine activities and news that the Prussians were not now coming unnerved Charles. Worried about poor communications across the Bohemian mountains and concerned that his forces were vulnerable to a French offensive from Bavaria, on 19 March the archduke decided to shift his main operational axis from the Main to the Danube, ‘in keeping with the rules of the art of war, while defending the heart of the monarchy’. An Austrian offensive here, he claimed, would not only protect Vienna but would place the army in a better position to support an uprising in the Tyrol, and improve cooperation with the campaign in Italy. Leaving I and II Corps behind in Bohemia, Charles began to redeploy the bulk of his army to the south bank of the Danube.14 When Mayer demurred, he was dismissed, on 13 March.
The change was a mistake. If the concentrated Austrian army had struck from Bohemia in late March it would have caught the French army still mustering and might have thrown the enemy off balance. Given the Austrians’ temporary numerical superiority, it should then have been possible to retain the initiative. But with Charles congenitally averse to risk-taking, this fleeting opportunity was lost. Further, not only did the move back to the Danube and the Inn give the French a crucial extra month to coordinate their forces, it did nothing to improve strategic cooperation with John’s army in Italy. Further, the two corps left behind in Bohemia now operated to no good purpose, while the main army arrived at its new point of departure, Braunau-Schärding on the river Inn, with its troops fatigued, its equipment ruined and its supply arrangements strained.15 None the less, it was from here, on the night of 9–10 April, that the Austrians crossed the river Inn into Bavaria to open their campaign in earnest.
FIRST MANOEUVRES: FRANCE
Detained by domestic matters and in any case not expecting the Austrians to move before the end of April, Napoleon remained in Paris, from where he issued a stream of letters, orders and decre
es to his forces assembling in Germany. That they did not always arrive in sequence was inevitable in a time of improved but still uncertain communication. That said, in good visibility, messages sent by the optical Chappe telegraph could reach Strasbourg from Paris in ten minutes; couriers needed three days. Napoleon had already formed the major outlines of his campaign plan. Italy was to be a secondary theatre of war, while Vienna was his principal objective and he intended to use the Danube as his main line of operations. ‘Nothing’, he wrote, ‘can be of greater advantage than following the course of the Danube.’16 On 30 March he sent his chief-of-staff, Berthier, and his operational staff ahead to Germany. Here, they were not to command, but to transmit and execute the emperor’s voluminous orders.
With his army not yet fully operational, the emperor decided to cede the initiative to the Austrians, though he wanted to prevent the Austrians from getting between Davout and the Danube. ‘If the Austrians attacked before 10 April the army should concentrate behind the Lech, its right at Augsburg and its left at Ingolstadt or if need be Donauwörth.’ As his army strengthened, Napoleon became more confident and decided to make Ratisbon his focal point, with 15 April set as the date for this concentration. If Charles invaded Franconia, the Army of Germany could then attack his rear; if, having divided his forces, he operated along the Danube the emperor would crush the separated Austrian wings singly. Concentration at Ratisbon by 15 April was the key point of this plan.
The immediate consequence of the Austrians opening their campaign earlier than Napoleon expected was that command in Germany was left in the hands of Berthier. Moving forward to Donauwörth, his difficulties were compounded when a critical order sent by telegraph to Strasbourg on 10 April was delayed by fog until 16 April. In the meantime, it was overtaken by a subsequent order, carried by courier and containing a crucial elaboration of the first, which arrived on the 13th. As ever striving manfully to execute Napoleon’s orders, in accordance with this second order Berthier repositioned his corps. When eventually the original order arrived, Berthier had hastily to reposition them again. In this confusion of order and counter-order, Berthier’s plaintive message to Napoleon of 15 April – ‘In the present circumstances,’ he wrote, ‘I should very much welcome the arrival of Your Majesty’ – seems a considerable understatement. The consequence of this muddle was that when Napoleon arrived in Donauwörth early on the morning of 17 April, having left Paris on the 13th, he found his two major bodies 80 miles apart. Davout was at Ratisbon, Masséna at Augsburg. Between them, there were only three Bavarian divisions.17
Ever since, Berthier has been derided as an incompetent and indecisive strategist, a bungler who placed the army in great danger. In the same way, Napoleon has won wide praise for his swift and decisive remedial actions. But this overlooks the fact that Napoleon should have been aware that the telegraph to Strasbourg was down and that he could easily have added a copy of the first order to the second, clarifying his intentions. In any case, Napoleon’s orders, often dictated in haste, were far from clear. It also overrates the danger presented by the Austrian advance, which seldom exceeded 6 miles a day. With the enemy moving at a snail’s pace, Napoleon had time to place his corps in his preferred strategic formation, the bataillon carrée, in which the various corps moved independently but in supporting distance, able to come together rapidly when the main enemy body was sighted. Within a few days the situation in Bavaria was totally reversed.
CHAPTER THREE
The initial Austrian offensive into Bavaria
AUSTRIAN WAR PLANS
The Austrians advanced into Bavaria on a broad front, three columns crossing the river Inn on 9–10 April. Their first objective was the river Isar, some 50 miles distant. Crossing at Schärding were IV Corps and I Reserve Corps, at Mühlheim III Corps, while the main force, V Corps, VI Corps and II Reserve Corps, moved through Braunau. Further south, Jellacic’s division marched from Salzburg to take Munich. Finally, a rebellion in the Tyrol that would threaten Napoleon’s line of communications and consolidate the link between the main army and that of Inner Austria was an integral part of the Austrian war plan. To support the revolt a combined division from VIII Corps under FML de Chasteler, Belgian born, crossed the frontier from Carinthia into East Tyrol on 9 April, the signal for the pre-planned rising.
Although encountering no resistance except for fleeting contact with Bavarian light horse, Austrian forward movement was slow. To sunder the enemy before he could concentrate – and Archduke Charles was confident that the French could not do so before 18 April – it was necessary to reach the Danube, a distance of 85 miles, in eight march days. However, encumbered by a large artillery train and massive supply columns, and hampered by the absence of reliable maps and torrential spring rains that turned roads to mud, the advance fell behind schedule.
Austrian sources frequently blamed the bad roads and weather for the slow pace of advance, though conditions were no better for the French. The basic reasons were more complex. Fearful of provoking popular resentment and concerned about troop discipline, at no point was Charles willing to accept the requisitioning system practised by the French. Requisitioning was restricted to replenishing magazines, and each corps was followed at one day’s distance by its supply column, carrying among other requisites the heavy field ovens to bake the bread rations. The most important cause of the slow advance, however, was that the corps commanders had not been trained to march troops in corps formations and so continued the old march system. Their infantry columns were too wide for the available secondary roads, while the inclusion of the brigade batteries in the march column led to frequent traffic stoppages. After only two days, Archduke Charles discovered that his army needed a day of rest for recuperation and maintenance and to allow supplies to catch up. That night, with light drizzle falling and with formations badly mixed up, the troops bivouacked, their mood not improved by a general order to issue a half-litre of wine to all. ‘Unfortunately,’ the official history records, ‘there was no wine to be issued.’1
Matters went little better to the north where I and II Corps also made slow progress. Though they forced Davout to move south towards Ratisbon on secondary roads, Bellegarde and Kolowrat failed to bring him to battle. While good enough old-fashioned soldiers, they were clearly out of their depth in an independent role, their problems compounded by the failure of their light cavalry to provide intelligence. In fact, throughout the campaign the Austrian light horse, and for that matter the French, failed to provide good intelligence.
On 16 April Jellacic reported that he had taken Munich, and the same day V Corps made its first serious contact with the Bavarians, at Landshut, where there was a major wooden pile-bridge across the Isar. Charles had expected to encounter the three divisions of Lefebvre’s 7 Corps there, though in fact only Deroy’s division opposed him. In command of V Corps’s advance guard, the enterprising FML Josef Radetzky had occupied the town the night before and discovered that Bavarian efforts to demolish the bridge had been only partially successful. During the morning, V Corps engineers, covered by an artillery barrage, repaired the damage and after a short skirmish light infantry crossed the structure and cleared the Bavarians from the left bank. That morning, after IV and VI corps had also crossed the river, and with his single division threatened by envelopment, Deroy, whose task had been to observe and delay the Austrians, fell back on Abensberg near the Danube to link up with the other divisions of 7 (Bavarian) Corps.
Having secured crossings over the Isar at Landshut and Moosburg, Charles now planned to exploit his advantage. He decided that while V and VI Corps, supported by I Reserve Corps, would guard his left flank, the bulk of his army, some 90,000 men strong, would march to cross the Danube near Kehlheim west of Ratisbon. He intended to link up there with Bellegarde and attack the outnumbered Davout, whom he believed to be still north of Ratisbon. He reported to Francis that ‘My operations will most probably move to the Danube, where it appears that the enemy is concentrating’.2 On 17 April
he advanced his main army 6 miles on the main road linking Landshut with Ratisbon towards Pfaffenhausen, and was now only two marches away from Kehllheim and Ratisbon. He issued orders to Bellegarde on the right and Kolowrat on the left to move towards Amberg. However, he did little more during the days of 17–19 April, even though he was in a most favourable situation, having seized the central position against two widely separated and individually outnumbered enemy corps.
In this fashion he let his opportunity slip away. Some authors claim that he suffered an epileptic seizure, others hint that he lacked strategic vision and resolve. In any case, the two main French bodies under Davout and Masséna were still separated by several days’ marches and could not have linked up, and even if the Austrians had advanced at only a moderate rate they would have reached the Danube and their strategic objective. But for three days Charles failed to make any major strategic movements.3 Meanwhile, time was running out. On the morning of 17 April Napoleon arrived in Donauwörth. The emperor soon realized the danger facing his army and took energetic measures to save the situation.
NAPOLEON’S COUNTERSTROKE
The Emperor's Last Victory Page 5