by Philip Dwyer
That was some years away yet. Napoleon was necessarily oblivious to what was to come, confident that he could deal with the Russians, and with what was left of the Prussian army. He left Berlin on 25 November, and entered Warsaw on the night of 19 December 1806, somewhat discreetly under the circumstances. The preparations made to receive him in the city – he was meant to drive through a triumphal arch on which was inscribed ‘Long Live Napoleon, the Saviour of Poland. He was Sent to us Straight from Heaven’ – were frustrated by his late arrival.135 Four days later was the start of what is referred to as the Polish campaign. A couple of smaller battles were fought in pursuit of the Russians – at Pultusk the day after Christmas in 1806 and again at Golymin twenty kilometres further north on the same day – but the main Russian army continued to elude the French and to withdraw further east.
Walewska
While the troops were, for the most part, lodged in the countryside, headquarters were in Warsaw, and the French, by all accounts, had a delightful time of it. ‘With the exception of theatres,’ wrote Savary, ‘the city presented all the gaieties of Paris.’136 Warsaw, with a population of around 85,000 people (about 18 per cent were Jewish), was situated on a huge plain on the Vistula, with an imposing castle that was once the residence of the kings of Poland.137 According to the legend, it was here, on New Year’s Day 1807, at an inn near Blonie, that Napoleon first laid eyes on Maria Walewska. She approached Napoleon’s marshal of the palace, Michel Duroc, and asked to be presented to him in the street. She obviously made an impression on the Emperor, exciting him no doubt with the prospect of an easy conquest. Duroc, who often played the palace pimp, was afterwards sent to look for her, but was unsuccessful. So too was the chief of the Warsaw police, a man by the name of Bielinski. It was Prince Joseph Poniatowski, governor of Warsaw, who identified her.
So much for the legend. Everything about their first meeting remains obscure, including where and when it may have taken place. They may have met at Blonie, but then it would have been 18 December 1806; Duroc was not by Napoleon’s side, he had been wounded the preceding day; Napoleon was probably not, as is often asserted, riding in a carriage but on horseback, as the mud was too thick for a carriage. An alternative version is that Murat, or possibly Talleyrand, was sent to find Napoleon a woman for the night, a Polish conquest of sorts.138 We do know that Maria and Napoleon met (again) on the night of 17 January during a ball given by Talleyrand. Napoleon must have been smitten; he sent numerous invitations for her to visit him at the royal palace, which she just as persistently refused, until others, Polish patriots, interceded. As for Walewska, from an old noble family, married off at the age of eighteen to a man fifty years her senior, Athanasius Colonna-Walewski, she was persuaded to seduce Napoleon, or at least approach him, by Polish patriots who hoped that she would then be able to influence him to restore Poland. That, in any event, is the way she preferred to present things in her memoirs.139
However they may have met, the outcome is better known; Napoleon decided to have an affair with Maria. It was not the first time he had dallied with other women, but despite his discretion – apart from a few people in his entourage, the public remained unaware of his liaison with Maria until the publication of the memoirs of his valet, Constant, in 1830 – Josephine must have suspected something. She wrote to him repeatedly asking for permission to join him in Warsaw. Napoleon fobbed her off with excuses – she was needed in Paris, the roads were bad, the weather was terrible, the distances too great – but the more he did so the more suspicious she became, no doubt aware that the end of their relationship was close.140 At one point he even declared how humiliated he was to think that his wife did not trust him. He forbade her to cry any more; ‘it is very ugly’.141 At Josephine’s hints that he was having an affair, Napoleon’s responses were a mixture of feigned surprise – ‘I don’t know what you mean by ladies’; hypocrisy – ‘I love only my little Josephine, good, sulky and capricious’; and condescending reproach – ‘she is ever lovable, apart from the times when she is jealous’.142 The tenderness he felt for Josephine was still there – when on campaign he often reproved her for not writing enough while he wrote two or three times a week – but the passion was definitively gone.143 If Napoleon’s letters to Josephine were reserved, this was not the case for the little notes that he was passing to Maria. ‘I see only you, I admire only you, I want only you.’ Or again, ‘Oh, come! come! All your hopes will be fulfilled,’ he promised.144 ‘Whenever I have thought a thing impossible or difficult to obtain, I have desired it all the more.’ It said as much about his attitude towards women as about his desire to get his way in all things. But now, as Emperor, propriety was thrown to the wind.
Maria was hardly in a position to resist. When she finally went to him he may very well have forced himself upon her. His valet talks of a woman ‘overcome by events’, who constantly cried, and who left about two in the morning (still crying).145 But she returned, several times, whether out of duty, fear or misguided love, and spent a few weeks with him at the Finckenstein Palace, living together as husband and wife (he called her his ‘wife’). Between 1 April and 6 June, when he finally took the field again in pursuit of the Russians, Napoleon virtually transferred the centre of power to the palace. He was in love, and in love there was a newfound energy the likes of which he had not seen in years. In the two months he was at Finckenstein, from the beginning of April till the end of May 1807, he dictated and wrote something like 775 letters on everything from the reorganization of the army to the Opera in Paris, the education of young girls and the creation of a chair in history at the College of France.146
Francois Pascal Simon, Baron Gerard, Marie Laczinska (1786–1817), comtesse Waleska, puis comtesse d’Ornano (Maria Laczinska (1786–1817), Countess Walewska, then Countess Ornano), 1810.
12
Zenith
The Great Debacle
Morale in the army was not good. During the campaign in Poland, the French had to face three enemies: the mud, the cold and the Russians. The joy they felt at having conquered Prussia in less than two months soon gave way to despondency at having to pursue the enemy into a country that could not adequately supply them, where the roads were bad or consisted of dirt tracks that turned to mud when it rained. Conditions on the road to Pultusk were so bad, wrote Captain Coignet, that ‘We were obliged to tie our shoes around our ankles with cord, and when we pulled our legs out of the soft sand, our shoes would stick in the wet mud. Sometimes we had to take hold of one leg, pull it out like a carrot, lift it forwards, and then go back for the other, take hold of it with both hands, and make it take a step forwards also . . . the older men began to lose heart; some of them committed suicide rather than face such privations any longer.’1
The country was so poor that, unable to loot, soldiers were reduced to begging for small sums of money – the men had not been paid in months – and articles of clothing.2 The troops were living like refugees rather than conquerors, and the further east they went the worse it got. The lack of supplies led to an incredible breakdown in discipline the likes of which had not been seen since the worst days of the revolutionary wars. Sergeant Lavaux complained that the troops had not eaten anything other than potatoes for three weeks, with the result that many came down with diarrhoea and were incapable of walking more than a couple of kilometres without rest.3 The troops were unhappy with Napoleon for continuing the war, especially in such harsh conditions – it was during this period that the term grognard (grumbler) was coined to describe the Old Guard – and they were not afraid to show it. Some questioned why they were fighting there at all. ‘That we fight in and for a good country, well and good, but the blood that has flowed to ensure the possession of such a kingdom, which I would not want for anything, is pointless.’4 Eventually, Napoleon decided to abandon the pursuit and to take winter quarters north of Warsaw.
The Poles greeted the French as liberators. Their country had been partitioned out of existence in 1795 between the thre
e eastern European powers (Austria, Russia and Prussia), and the Prussians, who had claimed the land around Warsaw, had practised a policy of cultural assimilation; everything had to be done in German. So when the Prussians were defeated at Jena, and news of the French approach reached Warsaw, the city’s youth filled the restaurants to clink glasses, sing patriotic songs and shout for their liberators and brothers.5 The retreating Prussians were hooted out of the city. When the French arrived, on 21 November 1806, the city was illuminated, tables were laid out in the streets and squares to celebrate, and the people of Warsaw supposedly vied with each other to house the troops.
Napoleon had meant to stay put all winter, spending his time in Warsaw encouraging Russia’s traditional enemies, the Porte and the Shah of Persia, to open secondary fronts.6 But fighting broke out in north Poland that soon had troops on both sides mobilized and heading towards what looked like a major clash. Napoleon used the fighting as a pretext to try and deliver a knockout blow to the Russians around the village of Jonkendorf (present-day Jonkowo). However, the Russian commander, Bennigsen, learnt of Napoleon’s plans through dispatches captured by Cossacks and managed to avoid the trap that was being set. A short battle was fought on 3 February 1807 at Jonkendorf, but the French took time to get everything into place. It was not till three in the afternoon that the cannonade started in earnest; by four or five o’clock it was already dark. It meant the action had to be broken off for the night. However, as day broke the next day, it revealed an empty field; Bennigsen had retreated north towards Landsberg.
The French went in pursuit. They caught up with Bennigsen eighty kilometres to the north, on the evening of 5 February, near a small town called Preussisch-Eylau. There Bennigsen turned and faced the French. It took another two days for the French forces to gather, the first substantial body of troops not arriving till the early afternoon of 7 February.7 Fighting took place in the streets of the town that same day, although there does not appear to have been a plan by Napoleon to seize the town before nightfall, and what started as a skirmish escalated into heavy fighting.8 By the beginning of the next day, between 63,000 and 90,000 French troops were lined up against 60,000–90,000 Russians.9 If those figures are uncertain, what is not is that the Russians considerably outgunned the French – 460 Russian against 200 French cannon. At Eylau, Napoleon witnessed the devastating impact massed Russian guns could have. The Russian army traditionally carried more cannon than any other European army, and used them in support of its troops to deadly effect. At this particular battle, the Russian army had six cannon to every 1,000 men. The French in contrast had two cannon for the same number.10 Napoleon would attempt to increase that ratio over the next few years to five in 1,000, but he never succeeded in getting much more than half that of the Russian army.11 After Eylau, he changed tactics and almost invariably undertook a massed artillery assault before launching an infantry attack.12
The battle that followed on that overcast, cold winter’s day, some of it conducted in the thick of a snowstorm, was a scene of butchery. At one point, Augereau’s advancing troops came under fire from both Russian and French guns; of the 1,500 men in his corps, 1,200 were killed and 300 were wounded. One can still walk over the fields where they were slaughtered, about 700 metres east of the town cemetery. The battle itself was complete chaos, littered with mistakes, misunderstandings and close calls. By mid-morning, the situation had deteriorated badly for Napoleon. The Russians had gained the upper hand and it looked as though they would pierce the French centre and drive them off. Russian troops stormed into Eylau and came close to taking Napoleon, who was using the church steeple as a lookout. It was only because his personal escort sacrificed itself that Napoleon was not killed or captured. He was saved at two other decisive moments in the battle, first by Murat whose cavalry charge into the Russian centre forced them to retreat, and again later in the day by Ney, who did not reach the battlefield until seven in the evening. By ten o’clock that night, after fourteen hours of battle, fighting came to a standstill. After a rowdy council of war, Bennigsen decided to withdraw during the night. The story goes, undoubtedly apocryphal, that as Napoleon prepared to pull back, Davout put his ear to the ground and heard the sounds of the Russian retreat.13
Pierre-François Percy, the chief surgeon in Napoleon’s army, lamented after the battle that ‘everywhere, you saw corpses and dead horses. Carriages passed over them. The artillery chopped them up and crushed their skulls and limbs.’14 On the second day of the battle Percy rode around and later described what he saw: ‘Never had such a small space been covered with so many bodies. The snow was stained everywhere by blood . . . The noise of the artillery, the smoke from the fires, the smell of powder, the cries of the wounded being operated on, all that I saw and heard will never leave my memory.’ The next morning the Comte de Saint-Chamans went to find Napoleon to deliver a message from Soult. He found him in a ‘kind of little farm’ in the village of Eylau, lying fully dressed on a mattress in the corner next to a stove. He looked tired, worried and demoralized. When Saint-Chamans delivered Soult’s message, that the Russians had retreated, Napoleon’s physiognomy changed completely; his face became radiant.15
‘Quel massacre,’ Ney is supposed to have remarked, ‘and for nothing.’16 Later that morning (9 February), Napoleon toured the battlefield, unshaven and still covered in mud. It is a moment that has gone down in Napoleonic legend, when he was touched if not shocked by what he saw, an episode memorialized by the painting by Gros. Some veterans describe Napoleon as being ‘broken hearted’; officers and soldiers whose limbs were being amputated cried out ‘Vive l’Empereur’ just before dying.17 It seems improbable, although not impossible, so deep ran the affection of some of his troops. It was not, however, the sentiment of most of the survivors. If before Eylau they had grumbled, now they were in a mutinous mood. During a review of his troops, Saint-Chamans recalled that ‘Amid cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” I heard many soldiers shouting: “Long live Peace!” Others: “Long live Peace and France!”, Others again shouted: “Bread and Peace!” This was the first time I saw the morale of the French army a little shaken, but it had suffered so much only to arrive at the slaughter of Eylau that this could not be otherwise.’18 One regiment flew a black cloth in mourning for the dead rather than the imperial eagle. The army was in a grim mood. ‘The fatigues of a winter campaign in a devastated country, the absolute lack of food and forage, the excessive cold, the active service demanded by the outposts had put men and horses on their knees. Every day our ranks were thinned.’19 The expectation persisted. One of the Tsar’s envoys, Lieutenant-General Prince Dimitrii Lobanov-Rostovsky, recounted that during the negotiations at Tilsit, Napoleon was greeted with shouts of ‘Vive la Paix!’ from the French troops.20
Eylau was the bloodiest battle fought in Europe up to that time. Losses on both sides were horrific. A conservative estimate puts the French losses at around 12,000 killed and wounded but goes as high as 30,000. The Russians lost anywhere between 12,000 and 15,000 men killed and as many wounded.21 It is impossible to calculate the number of casualties because of the subsequent efforts on the part of the imperial authorities to hide the extent of the carnage. According to some estimates, French casualties at Eylau were greater than those at Austerlitz, Jena and Auerstädt combined.22 And, uniquely in the annals of the Napoleonic wars, Napoleon himself remained on the battlefield for eight days in order to help bury the dead and look after the wounded.
The outcome of the battle could have gone either way, and for the French to have described it as a victory was nothing more than propaganda. Napoleon was contemplating a retreat when the Russians decided to move first. Those who had survived realized that the losses had been massive – how could they not? – and some at least wrote home, so that news of the scale of the carnage began to filter back to France, leaving Paris ‘stupefied’, in a state of desolation.23 The potential consequences for Napoleon were serious. Eylau could undermine his reputation, and hence both his authorit
y and his legitimacy.24 He consequently attempted to counter the rumours about the butchery that had taken place.25 Privately, he wrote to people in his entourage; publicly, he ordered Cambacérès to organize celebrations,26 telling him to write up an account of ‘one of the most memorable’ battles of the war in the Moniteur, and asking others to ‘spread the . . . news . . . in an unofficial way’.27
Napoleon’s desire to hide the extent of the carnage is one of the key themes in his letters back to Paris during the weeks after the battle.28 Since it was impossible to overcome the negative impression Eylau had left on public opinion, Cambacérès suggested an alternative approach – an account of the aftermath of the battle. Napoleon was thus to be presented to the public not as a victorious general, but as a man appalled by the losses. The official story was circulated throughout France via the famous 58th Bulletin of the Grande Armée, in which the French losses were reduced to 1,900 killed and 5,700 wounded, while 7,000 Russians were reported dead, although we can notice two words that had never appeared in a bulletin before that date (and that did not do so again) – ‘horror’ and ‘massacre’ – both used to describe the aftermath of battle.29
For the first time, the reader was being asked to imagine the result of a battle: nine or ten thousand bodies, four or five thousand dead horses, the debris of muskets, sabres, cannon balls, munitions and cannon next to which their gunners lay dead, and the whole scene depicted against a background of snow. Napoleon went one step further, personally dictating to General Henri-Gatien Bertrand a supposed eyewitness account of the battle attesting to the exploits of the French. His Relation de la bataille d’Eylau par un témoin oculaire (Account of the battle of Eylau by an eyewitness), presented as a translation from the German, was simultaneously published in Berlin and Paris.30 In it, the battle was portrayed as a victory. Consequently, individual losses or acts of sacrifice were highlighted, such as the supposed last words of a dying officer, absurd and tasteless: ‘I die happy since victory is ours, and I expire on the bed of honour.’31