The Prussians divided their forces in two, one of around 60,000 under the Duke of Brunswick and the Kaiser, and another of 80,000 under Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen – a cardinal mistake, as Napoleon’s superior army could pick each off at leisure. Napoleon learnt that the main Prussian army was at Erfurt, to the west.
On 10 October the French advance guard under Lannes intercepted the Prussian advance guard under Hohenlohe and routed it, taking 1,200 prisoners. Napoleon went after the main Prussian force, which was believed to be at Jena, and despatched Davout with some 26,000 men and forty-four guns northwards to cut off the Prussian retreat to the Elbe. The Prussians had already been ordered to retreat.
Napoleon ordered up his main corps, under Soult, Augereau and Ney to reinforce Lannes. In the early morning of 14 October they joined battle, with Lannes and Ney valiantly leading their men. They were unprepared for the ferocity of the Prussian resistance and Ney was soon cut off: Napoleon had to organize a major artillery attack to rescue his beleaguered lieutenant.
The Prussians held off an army twice their size for six hours, and then staged an orderly retreat, until Murat’s cavalry finally broke Hohenlohe’s army, which was also under fierce artillery fire. Losing some 5,000 men themselves, the French inflicted losses of 10,000 on the Prussians and took 15,000 prisoners and 200 guns.
Napoleon was then astounded to discover he had been fighting the Prussian rearguard: the main army was some ten miles to the north at Auerstadt, facing the force that had been despatched under Davout and Bernadotte. However the latter had inexplicably disobeyed orders and marched to Camburg, between the two Prussian forces, missing both fights. Davout was on his own with just 26,000 men and forty-four guns facing Brunswick’s 64,000 and 230 guns. At first it seemed the battle was going the Prussian way: Davout organized his men into squares to resist the cavalry attacks and was pounded by heavy fire from the Prussian artillery, but by lunchtime the French centre was weakening.
At that moment Brunswick was mortally wounded and the fastidious Frederick William was no substitute as a commander. Davout skilfully organized a flanking movement – or ‘envelopment’ – to take advantage of the Prussians’ plodding linear tactics. After four hours of hard fighting, with Frederick William barely leading at all, the Prussians began to give way. The Kaiser ordered a general retreat in the direction of Jena, while Davout ordered an immediate further attack. The retreat turned to chaos as the two Prussian armies, both retreating in opposite directions, ran into each other. Davout had inflicted some 12,000 casualties and taken 3,000 prisoners, but had suffered losses of some 8,000 himself.
The French gave chase to the retreating Prussians, and Murat’s cavalry relentlessly harassed the rearguard as they crossed some 600 kilometres in twenty-three days. The valiant Queen Louise, who had watched the battle, escaped from a squad of hussars who arrived just three hours after she had left her post. Napoleon rode to Weimar and took up residence in the magnificent Sans Souci Palace of Frederick the Great, where he rhapsodized about the enemy Queen, dubbing her ‘an Amazon’ and ‘the lovely Queen, a being as fatal to the Prussians as Helen to the Trojans’.
The Prussians who had earlier fought bravely and well, although hampered by outdated tactics and equipment, now collapsed, with fortresses surrendering and the population panicking before the French advance. Bernadotte, smarting from a furious official reprimand for disobeying orders and missing the battle, led the rapid French advance along with Murat and Lannes.
Only General Blücher’s forces salvaged Prussia’s honour, putting up a spirited stand at Lübeck on the Baltic, where his 20,000 men hoped to be evacuated by a British fleet which never came. He was hopelessly outnumbered by Bernadotte’s forces. ‘The slaughter is awful,’ wrote Napoleon himself. On 6 November Blücher surrendered. There were now only some 20,000 Prussian soldiers left in east Prussia.
From Berlin Napoleon dictated a victor’s peace: all territory between the Rhine and the Elbe was to be ceded and a colossal 160 million francs levied in reparations. Saxony was to be incorporated in the puppet Confederation of the Rhine. The state of Prussia had in effect ceased to exist, with three-quarters of it under French domination. ‘Sir, the war is over owing to the lack of combatants,’ declared Murat delightedly.
Jena-Auerstadt was very different to Austerlitz. Napoleon won through superior numbers at Jena but was saved by Davout’s brilliant stand at Auerstadt. He had been overconfident, his tactics had been unimaginative, and he had shown dismally inadequate knowledge of the enemy’s movements. It was a victory, but not an impressive one. By contrast the Prussians had fought well, if unimaginatively – an achievement marred by their subsequent rout and the collapse of resistance.
Talleyrand caught up with his master in Berlin. Count Haugwitz, seeking to preserve a vestige of Prussian self-respect, wrote to his representative in Paris: ‘Provided that Monsieur de Talleyrand arrives, I do not despair of your being able to arouse some sounder political ideas than this terrible principle of the destruction of Prussia as a guarantee for the future peace of France. That enlightened minister will easily understand that when Prussia is rendered powerless to restrain Russia or to threaten Austria . . . those two powers will be in a stronger position to disturb the peace of France.’ He was to prove prophetic. But Napoleon was implacable in his revenge and determination to dismember Prussia: only a rump of some 5 million people remained. Queen Louise announced that she would fight on at the head of what remained of Prussia’s patriots.
Napoleon chose that moment to inform Talleyrand of his determination to bring the Bourbons of Spain to heel. The minister was horrified, realizing for the first time that there were no limits to his master’s ambition: ‘I then swore to myself that I would cease to be his minister as soon as we returned to France.’
Napoleon also issued his fateful decree of 21 November at Berlin prohibiting all trade, commerce and correspondence with Britain. This was the formal recognition of the blockade already in place and is regarded as the day of the imposition of what was called ‘The Continental System’. It was to have fateful consequences: it was a declaration of economic war on Britain, and from then on the balance of opinion in London tilted in favour of all-out war. All real hope of peace – which had burned quite brightly in Britain during the previous decade – was extinguished.
The economic war also ravaged Europe, causing, in the end, more suffering to the French and their subject peoples than to the British, and sparking arguably all the successive wars, from that with Denmark to those with Portugal and Spain and ultimately Russia. The names of the great battles of the Napoleonic wars still resonate today; but the Berlin decree of 1806 and the economic war are perhaps more significant still.
The Emperor’s immediate gaze was still fixed on the east: he had successfully isolated and defeated the Prussians: now he sought to lure the troublesome Russians into battle and inflict a defeat which would discourage them from ever dabbling in European politics again. The strategy made sense. He informed the chiefs of the Polish independence movement that he was sympathetic to their cause and demanded that they put 40,000 men into the field to fight the Russians. Kosciusko, their leader, a hero of the American War of Independence, declared angrily, ‘He will not reconstruct Poland; he thinks only of himself and he is a despot.’
The distrust was mutual. Napoleon wrote: ‘The Poles who show so much prudence, who ask for so many conditions before declaring themselves, are egotists who cannot be kindled to enthusiasm for love of their country. I am old in my knowledge of men. My greatness does not depend on the help of a few thousand Poles. It is for them to take advantage of the present circumstances with enthusiasm; it is not for me to take the first step.’ Napoleon had, however, a loyal supporter in the gallant Prince Poniatowski, one of the leaders of Polish irregular forces. Napoleon also tried to stir up trouble for the Russians by inveigling the Ottoman empire to attack in the south. The Russians were forced to divert some 20,000 men there. Napoleon ordered his
armies into Poland, and himself arrived in Warsaw on 19 December.
The winter enveloped his troops, while the port of Danzig – which received supplies from the sea – was still held by the Prussians, who also controlled the east. Large Russian armies were circling. The Russians had reorganized their armies into mixed divisions, roughly similar to the French corps, having learnt the lessons of Austerlitz. Each of these had six front-line infantry regiments, twenty horse squadrons and eighty-two guns. The Russians had two armies on the northern front led by Buxhovden and by Count Bennigsen, a Hanoverian cavalry commander who loathed Napoleon and was passionately pro-British. Between them these armies were 90,000 strong and had some 450 guns.
In November, as the French approached, Bennigsen was in central Poland but he prudently withdrew across the Vistula to the town of Pultuski from which he threatened the over-extended French lines. Napoleon responded by trying to cut the Russian lines of communication. He despatched a force to Pultuski where bitter fighting took place along the Narew river over Christmas. The French captured the town, but the Russians withdrew intact to Rozan.
The French did not give chase: they were exhausted, demoralized and winter had closed in. The roads were a sea of mud and snow. Nearly half of the Grande Armée had simply disintegrated. Napoleon desperately called for reinforcements of 35,000 men from Switzerland and Holland and for a conscription drive in France. He ordered more than 700 million francs to be raised for his campaign, including 160 million from beaten Prussia.
Napoleon now indulged in magnificent parties in Warsaw in his most extravagant nouveau riche mode to shut out the miseries of winter. When Josephine wrote to him from Paris of a dream in which she saw him dancing with a beautiful woman, he wrote: ‘You say that your dream does not make you jealous . . . I think therefore that you are jealous and I am delighted. In any case you are wrong. In these frozen Polish wastes one is not likely to think of beautiful women . . . There is only one woman for me. Do you know her? I could paint her portrait for you but it would make you conceited . . . The winter nights are long, all alone.’
On 31 December he wrote again: ‘I laughed heartily at your last letter. You exaggerate the attractions of the beauties of Poland.’ Undoubtedly she had heard rumours. On that very day Duroc had introduced Napoleon to a shy, stunning blonde, Countess Marie Walewska, the eighteen-year-old wife of a seventy-seven-year-old count. The Emperor was immediately smitten, and rained letters upon her. On 2 January he wrote:
I saw only you, I admired only you, I desire only you. A quick answer will calm the impatient ardour of N. . . . Was I mistaken? You have deprived me of sleep! Oh, grant a little joy, a little happiness, to a poor heart that is ready to adore you. Is it so difficult to obtain an answer? You owe me two. N. . . . Oh come! come! All your wishes shall be complied with. Your country will become more dear to me if you take compassion on my poor heart. N. . . . Marie, my sweet Marie, my first thought is for you; my first wish is to see you again. You will come again, will you not? You have promised that you would. If not, the eagle would wing its way to you!
To Josephine, who wanted to join him, he wrote: ‘It is out of the question that I should allow women to undertake such a journey: bad roads, unsafe, and quagmires. Go back to Paris; be gay and happy; perhaps I shall soon be back myself. I laughed over your saying that you had taken a husband to live with; in my ignorance I supposed that the wife was made for the husband, the husband for his country, his family, and fame.’ At a ball he chided Marie for her severe appearance, and secured the support of Polish activists, eager to enlist the French on their side, in his seduction of her, in a typically cynical act of power rape. Even her aged husband connived.
Surprisingly, this simple, strong-willed girl gradually began to fall for her middle-aged suitor, who showered her with charm and affection. Napoleon had had a string of lovers by that time, not least on the road to Poland. But this time it was different: Napoleon had not been so besotted since he first fell for Josephine; and Marie was soon madly in love with him.
More serious matters required his attention. Towards the end of the month Ney was foraging for fuel close to the winter quarters of the Russians. Bennigsen decided to strike across the Vistula in an attempt to sever his lines of communication. Napoleon was delighted. He decided to withdraw from the Russian border and spring a trap. However his orders fell into Bennigsen’s hands and the latter withdrew towards Konigsberg, stopping at the village of Eylau, which he defended by placing several regiments in the church and cemetery, while occupying the strategic plateau behind.
Napoleon sent forward his advance guard under Soult and Murat, intending to rally his men for a decisive attack on the Russians. It was bitterly cold. The French succeeded in driving the Russians out of the village on 7 February and prepared to assemble their forces for a decisive push. But Bennigsen himself decided not to wait. For once it was the French who were sluggish and ill-organized, and the enemy who seized the initiative. At daybreak the Russians, who had considerable superiority in artillery, some 400 cannon to 200 French guns, opened up on the French positions; as the guns blazed, some 4,000 men were killed on both sides in a cannonade which continued after night fell on the short winter day, with temperatures falling to minus 20 degrees. It was an unprecedented slaughter by artillery alone. The French hesitated to attack, because they were outnumbered by some 70,000 to 45,000 while Napoleon waited for reinforcements from Davout and Ney. At last, though, the supporting armies arrived and Napoleon ordered his men into an attack on the classic pattern. Davout and Ney were to manoeuvre around the flanks, while Soult would wait to launch a frontal attack: behind him Murat’s cavalry would be held in reserve for a decisive push, with the Imperial Guard behind that.
Napoleon confidently ordered Soult to advance on the centre – only to discover the Russian main force moving towards them. Soult was driven rapidly back and the Russians attacked the French left under Ney, which had not even begun to march. Davout’s division had not yet attacked on the right. Taken by surprise, and fearing that he would lose the field, Napoleon rashly ordered Augereau forward. But a blinding blizzard descended, obstructing the view of both armies, and Augereau’s corps stumbled directly under the Russian guns, which inflicted massive damage. The French line was now broken, and some 6,000 Russians forced their way into Eylau, where Napoleon, who had taken up his position in the church, narrowly avoided capture. With Augereau’s corps all but destroyed and Soult’s thrown back, it seemed that the French were on the verge of losing the battle.
Desperately, Napoleon ordered Murat’s cavalry forward. Murat then led perhaps the most famous cavalry charge in history, his 11,000 men thundering right into the enemy front line and their guns. This saved the battle for the French. Napoleon’s laconic comment was that this attack was ‘as daring as war had ever seen and covered our cavalry in glory’. Murat lost 1,500 men, but captured the seventy guns that had ravaged Augereau’s forces.
More important still, the ferocity of the attack unnerved Bennigsen, who feared that the French centre was much stronger than it actually was and fatally hesitated to pursue the advantage he had won at midday. This gave time for Davout to encircle the Russians on the right. With his usual skill and ferocity, Davout drove the Russians back and forced them off the higher ground.
The French believed they had victory in their grasp, barely hours after defeat had stared them in the face. But a force of Prussians under General Lestocq, which had managed to evade a corps of 15,000 men under Ney who had been sent to intercept them, fell upon Davout’s unguarded flank and started fighting the French back off the commanding heights at around four o’clock. The French, fighting furiously, fell back, and it seemed the Russians were carrying the day once again.
As darkness fell, at around 7 p.m. Ney’s men, who had blundered about in the blizzards, finally arrived to reinforce Davout and halted the Russian advance. With darkness, snow and plummeting temperatures enveloping the battlefield, Bennigsen held a council of w
ar and overruled his generals, who wanted to fight to the death: he decided to withdraw while he had the advantage.
It is impossible to conclude who would have prevailed if the fighting had gone into a third day. The French had clearly lost – some 20,000 men to the Russian tally of around 10,000 and 2,500 prisoners taken. Yet the Russian tactics of withdrawing in good order allowed Napoleon to claim victory, lying that he had lost only around 2,000 dead and 5,000 wounded. But even he admitted: ‘We had a great battle yesterday; victory is mine, but my losses are very heavy; the enemy’s losses, which were heavier, do not console me. The great distance at which I find myself makes my losses even more acutely felt.’
Ney remarked as he toured the battlefield: ‘What a massacre. And without result.’ The surgeon-general of the Grande Armée, Percy, described the scene:
Never was so small a space covered with so many corpses. Everywhere the snow was stained with blood. The snow which had fallen and which was still falling began to hide the bodies from the grieving glances of passers-by. The bodies were heaped up wherever there were small groups of firs behind which the Russians had fought. Thousands of guns, helmets and breastplates were scattered on the road or in the fields. On the slope of a hill, which the enemy had obviously chosen to protect themselves, there were groups of a hundred bloody bodies; horses, maimed but still alive, waited to fall in their turn from hunger, on the heaps of bodies. We had hardly crossed one battlefield when we found another, all of them strewn with bodies.
In spite of Napoleon’s gloss, it was his first significant tactical defeat. Of the first three great pitched battles under his command he had won the first, Austerlitz, devastatingly; the second, Jena-Aurstadt more by good fortune than by skill, and he had lost the third at Eylau however much he tried to persuade himself it was a victory.
The War of Wars Page 56