The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  Murat continued his retreat with around 15,000 men to Gumbinnen, sixty miles to the west of Kovno. Here he summoned a council of war and advocated withdrawal to Königsberg: he was now openly mutinous towards Napoleon, whom he called a madman whom no nation in Europe could rely upon or conclude treaties with.

  Murat soon learnt that the army of Marshal MacDonald in the north which had been holding Raga had returned to Tilsit; and that General von Yorck, the Prussian commander, had negotiated a peace agreement with the Russians to extricate his 18,000 men without further difficulty: this excited the Prussian people, chafing under years of French domination. Murat, horrified by Yorck’s defection, continued his withdrawal towards the river Oder, still pursued by some 40,000 troops under Kutuzov. On 17 January he decided to abandon his command, taking fast horses to his capital of Naples, which he reached on 13 January.

  Eugène de Beauharnais was left to command the remaining troops on their retreat to the river Elbe, even as Kaiser Frederick William of Prussia chose this moment to join Alexander of Russia in the crusade against Napoleon at the Convention of Kalisch on 28 February. With the crossing of the Elbe the war was over: all but some 10,000 of a total army of more than 400,000 which had crossed into Russia had perished there, 100,000 of them as Russian prisoners of war. The Russians for their part had lost some 450,000 casualties. It was the highest casualty rate and most horrific loss recorded in human history so far; in a campaign that had lasted only nine months. (Casualties in the Peninsular War extended over a six-year period.) To all intents and purposes, Napoleon’s army had been annihilated.

  Napoleon’s Russian war had been the most ironic of all his military adventures. It was the only one which he had entered reluctantly, provoked by the other side. He had been prodded almost beyond measure by Alexander. During its course he had committed a staggering succession of errors entirely atypical of the once great, if far from infallible, general. At every stage he could have extricated himself with fewer losses than he was to suffer as a result of plunging deeper into the mire.

  He could have stopped at Vitebsk or Smolensk. He could have saved himself by withdrawing immediately from Moscow after its immolation and returned before the winter set in. Finally and most disastrously, he could have followed up the taking of Maloyaroslavets and moved to Kaluga. He was to display overweening boldness and swagger before the Battle of Borodino – then only caution and timidity. It is fair to say that he exuded none of his old flair for leadership or genius in war either on the way into Russia or on the way out; virtually every decision was a mistake, usually taken against the angry advice of his own marshals. The campaign had been a terrible self-inflicted wound; the heroes of the Russian campaign had been Ney, Caulaincourt, Oudinot, Davout, de Beauharnais and last but not least the bridgebuilders across the Berezina – but not Napoleon. The campaign had been founded on a single mistake: that the Russians would negotiate. He complete underestimated the implacability of the Russian character and the callow Tsar he had flattered and thought he had befriended at Tilsit.

  Most historians of the Napoleonic War have traced the downfall of Napoleon from the Russian disaster. But this is mistaken on two counts: first, the Peninsular War, extending over several years, had been possibly an even greater defeat for French arms, although the personal prestige of the Emperor was not so involved as he wisely kept away. Second, the superman more than forty years old who had apparently gone to seed, become plump and inert and preferred to surround himself with sycophants rather than accept criticism, seemed to rejuvenate himself and return to the almost manic vigour of his earlier years after the Russian campaign had ended.

  In adversity, Napoleon was suddenly to recover himself; the impossible legend of infallibility had been destroyed forever. Now he had to show he could recover and that, although merely mortal, he was still a commander of energy and skill. Fight back he did, displaying a ferocity none expected and in a manner that could have protected his throne and extended his domination of Europe for years to come. Russia had dealt him a huge blow, but not a mortal one. The sheer speed of his recovery was to take all his enemies by surprise.

  The fightback had begun with his decision to abandon the tattered remnants of the Grande Armée and travel to Paris at the fastest possible speed. The journey of 1,400 miles was itself an epic. His three carriages were accompanied at first by an escort of 600 Poles and Neapolitans, almost all of whom perished from cold on the first leg of the journey. He narrowly avoided capture at Osmania, when a Russian force took the town an hour after he had left. Reaching Vilna in temperatures of–37°C, pretending to be the diplomat Louis de Caulaincourt’s secretary, the latter had to bang on the windows of storekeepers to obtain supplies.

  The Emperor now had to travel on a sledge alone with Caulaincourt and a few outriders – a far cry from the extravagant splendour of his last visit. Caulaincourt took advantage to lecture the Emperor about his oppressive policies and high taxes: the night before, Napoleon, half frozen, had reminisced erratically and contemplated the possibility that they might be captured by the Prussians and exhibited in an iron cage.

  At Dresden on 14 December, where just eight months before this King of Kings had presided over the most glittering convocation of courts ever assembled in homage to him, Caulaincourt had to bang on the door for directions from a local doctor, and was rebuffed. Napoleon remarked: ‘Between the sublime and the ridiculous there is but one step.’ He told Caulaincourt: ‘I am a reasonable being, who does no more than he thinks will profit him. As for the catastrophic outcome of the campaign, we are victims of the climate. The fine weather tricked me. If I had set out a fortnight sooner, my army would be at Vitebsk and I should be laughing at the Russians and your prophet Alexander . . . Everything turned out badly because I stayed too long at Moscow . . . all will be retrieved within three months.’ They were at last in friendly territory: the King of Saxony let him have a good coach, and it took only five more days to reach Paris at nearly midnight on 18 December.

  The wretched-looking Caulaincourt found it impossible to get the guards to admit him into the Tuileries. ‘The porter, who had gone to bed, came out with a lamp in his hand and dressed only in his shirt, to see who was knocking. Our faces looked so strange to him that he called his wife. I had to repeat my name three or four times over before I could persuade them to open the door. Meanwhile, a crowd of footmen and ladies-in-waiting had gathered and proceeded to gape at Napoleon from head to foot, until eventually the penny dropped: “It’s the Emperor!” one of them shouted . . . They could scarcely contain themselves.’

  Napoleon’s reaction to disaster was entirely in character: he staged parties to celebrate the Russian expedition as though it had been a triumph; had not the French captured Moscow itself? This was a mistake, for the disaster could not be concealed from the French people.

  He was also fully appraised of a comic-opera plot that had taken place in his absence staged by the half-insane General Malet who on the night of 22 October had announced that Napoleon was dead and proclaimed himself ruler. When the commander of the crucial Paris garrison failed to support him, the half-cocked conspiracy quickly collapsed and Malet was executed bravely by firing squad, himself giving the order for his own execution. Napoleon’s two most dangerous civilian rivals, Fouché and Talleyrand, were to his relief not involved nor were any senior generals – most of whom were with him in Russia or in Spain. Napoleon was bitterly disappointed that no one had rallied to his infant son, the King of Rome during that fateful night.

  Chapter 82

  THE FIGHTBACK

  The Emperor now embarked on a frenzy of propaganda and activity that showed he was anything but the spent force his enemies assumed. He despatched a letter of typical vainglory to the Emperor Francis of Austria.

  Every time I met the Russian army I defeated it. My Guard was not once engaged, never fired a shot, nor did it lose a man in the presence of the enemy. It is true that between the 7th and the 16th of November 30,000 of my c
avalry and artillery horses died; I abandoned several thousand wagons for lack of horses. In that frightful storm of frost, our men could not stand bivouacking; many wandered off to seek houses for shelter; there was no cavalry left to protect them. Cossacks picked up several thousands. As for France, I could not be more satisfied with her: men, horses, money, everything is offered me. My finances are in good order. I shall therefore make no advances looking to peace.

  He volleyed orders at his generals, notably Berthier:

  On hearing of the treachery of General Yorck I immediately decided to issue an address to the nation, which will be out tomorrow, and to raise an extraordinary levy. I have formed a corps of observation of the Elbe which is concentrating at Hamburg, and will have a strength of 60 battalions; I have given the command to General Lauriston. I have formed a corps of observation in Italy, which is concentrating at Verona, and that will have a strength of 40 battalions; I have given the command to General Bertrand. I have formed a first corps of observation of the Army of the Rhine, of 60 battalions, commanded by the Duke of Ragusa, whose headquarters will be at Mainz. I shall form a second corps of observation of the Rhine, which will also have 60 battalions. I am calling to the colours 100,000 conscripts left over from 1810, so that we shall have men of over 21 years of age. The conscription of 1814 will give us 150,000 men, and will be levied some time in February.

  He attacked his sister Caroline for Murat’s abandonment of the French army in Russia. ‘The King left the army on the 16th. Your husband is very brave on the battlefield, but weaker than a woman or a monk when out of sight of the enemy. He has no moral courage. He has been frightened; he has never for one moment been in danger of losing what he can only hold from me and with me. Show him the absurdity of his conduct. I can still forgive him the harm he has done me.’

  He also decided to seek support from the Pope, whom he had previously treated so badly, and offered a new Concordat. He wrote ingratiatingly to Pius VII:

  Holy Father:

  I hasten to send one of the officers of my household to express all my gratification at what the bishop of Nantes has told me of the satisfactory condition of Your Holiness’ health; for I had been for a moment alarmed this summer on hearing that Your Holiness had been seriously indisposed. The new residence of Your Holiness will give us an opportunity for meeting, and I have it much at heart to declare that, notwithstanding all that has passed, I have always maintained the same sentiments of friendship for Your Holiness. Perhaps we can now reach a settlement of all those questions that divide State and Church. I, on my side, am altogether disposed that way, so that it will depend entirely on Your Holiness.

  The Pope, however, quickly repudiated the new Concordat, driving Napoleon to fresh fury, arresting and expropriating priests.

  Napoleon’s main concern was the re-creation of his power base, a fresh French army to replace the one all but destroyed during the Russian campaign. He set himself a target of recruiting 650,000 new soldiers in 1813. He would raise only 140,000 of them in France: soldiers, gendarmes, national guardsmen were conscripted into the new army, along with peasant sons, many of whom now sought desperately to evade conscription by giving themselves injuries or entering into false marriages, as it had become apparent that soldiery, far from entry into an elite as of old, was a probable death sentence.

  By early 1813 he had raised an army of some 350,000, many of whom were just youths in their upper teens. But he had stirred up huge personal resentment among the French peasantry, from which most of the conscripts were drawn; and the taxes needed to maintain his army had fallen on the shoulders of his chief supporters, the propertied classes: in addition the richer families were also expected to raise troops. Discontent with Napoleon within France reached new heights.

  Napoleon’s new army thus consisted largely of raw recruits officered by men with no experience of war. He also had very few horses, most of them having perished in Russia. Nevertheless the sheer frenzy of his activity in the first few months of 1813, as he sought to recover from the Russian disaster, must excite admiration.

  Napoleon soon believed he had managed to turn the tide in his favour, and there was little reason to think yet that he was mistaken. Less admirable were the wider implications: for Napoleonic France had become a kind of perpetual war machine, capable of keeping its balance only in a state of national emergency, mobilizing, plundering other nations, fighting war after war. If war should cease, the whole edifice of repression, colossal military expenditures and subject peoples would come crashing down. A defeat like the Russian one called for a redoubled effort, in case the logic of perpetual warfare and Napoleon’s own military skills were called into judgement by the French.

  The most alarming international development was that the Prussians began to follow the lead given by the rogue General Yorck. After Frederick William had escaped from Berlin he called for his people to raise an army and on 28 February he signed a convention with Russia. The Kaiser had learnt some lessons from his terrible defeat at Napoleon’s hands and the years of servitude. He abolished serfdom.

  An astonishing revolution had also taken place in the Prussian army as the legacy of Frederick the Great, once so innovatory, now a dead hand holding back its modernization, was buried. It had been reduced to just 42,000 men at the time of Tilsit, with only twenty-two of its most able generals remaining out of the old total of 142. Mixed brigades were introduced to make the army more flexible. A school was set up for elite staff officers. The chief of staff was now to be as powerful a figure as the commanding general. In addition, the Prussians were suddenly able to mobilize an army of 80,000. Ingeniously, they had maintained secret regiments on the quiet and recruited new soldiers for the day when they would return to the field.

  The genius behind the Prussian resurgence was August von Gneisenau, a man of humble origins who had adopted his name from a local castle and had fought with the British during the American War of Independence. He had fought at Jena, then in 1807 joined the Military Reorganization Commission. He was something of a political radical in his own country advocating political and social change wedded to a new sense of nationalism: he even urged an insurrection to set up a constitutional government. He masterminded the new Prussian military doctrine of flexibility.

  He joined in a remarkable partnership with the greatest Prussian field general of the age, Gebhart von Blücher, a veteran seventy-two-year-old springing from gentry stock in eastern Germany. The latter had distinguished himself in the earliest campaigns against the French revolutionary government. At the Battle of Auerstadt, Blücher had performed magnificently, having his horse shot from under him several times. One of the last defenders of beaten Prussia in 1807, he was captured, then exchanged for the distinguished French General Victor, who had been captured by the Prussians. He urged continuing resistance to Napoleon, but plunged into depression when Frederick William refused to do so. Nevertheless he secretly trained Prussian troops in defiance of the agreement with Napoleon.

  Thus within three months of Napoleon’s retreat, as he had anticipated, his enemies were beginning to mass. The 80,000 Prussians were supported by the Swedish army of some 25,000 men, under the renegade Bernadotte. In addition more than 100,000 Russians had entered Prussia. Thus a formidable force of more than 200,000 men had suddenly arisen to face de Beauharnais’s defeated and demoralized remnants from Russia, who were steadily beaten back all the way first from the border, then to Dresden.

  De Beauharnais put up a fine fight, as was to be expected. He lamented: ‘The Italians are dying like flies . . . How happy should we be to see our homes one day! It is my sole ambition now. I search no more for glory. It costs too dear.’ He had withdrawn first to the Oder and then to the Elbe, abandoning Berlin. At Magdeburg he stopped and fought around Mockern in early April, before withdrawing behind the Saale river. At last, however, French luck was beginning to improve. The supreme Russian commander, Kutuzov, died on 28 April in Silesia. This left command of the Russo-Prussian forc
es to Wittgenstein and Blücher, although Alexander was constantly attempting to interfere with the operations of the former.

  Part 12

  FIGHT TO THE DEATH

  Chapter 83

  ON THE OFFENSIVE

  Napoleon had regained his old self-confidence. In April he led a huge counter-offensive with an army of 250,000 men altogether, many of them new recruits. He displayed a renewed aggressive spirit. He lunged forward into the Prussian heartland towards Dresden. His strategy was to retake Berlin and relieve Danzig, thus rescuing the 150,000 French troops bottled up along the Vistula. The German minor princes still supported him.

  On 1 May the now united armies of Napoleon and de Beauharnais delivered a first blow at Weissenfeld and then at Grossgorchen. The following day they won the bigger battle of Lutzen where the French artillery, seventy-strong, pinned the enemy down, permitting the infantry to attack in force; a crushing victory was secured which, however, Napoleon was unable to follow up because of a shortage of cavalry: some 20,000 casualties were inflicted on either side. De Beauharnais was able to pursue the Russians to Colditz, where he routed the forces under General Mikhail Miloradovich.