by Philip Dwyer
That night, thousands of fires seemed to light the plain as soldiers bivouacked and prepared what food they had; the moon rose slowly over the horizon; two neighbouring villages were ablaze; men no doubt thought about the bloody day that had just passed. Duroc died in the night.
The Allies Devise a Plan
Until the battles of Lützen and Bautzen in May 1813, it looked as though the eastern powers were going to fall into the same old patterns that had done them so much harm in previous campaigns. Napoleon was able to fend off the combined Russo-Prussian armies with a number of victories, at least up to June, while the allies were busy arguing among themselves. Despite a façade of unity, there had been intense bickering not only between allied powers but also among individual allied commanders. At the beginning of June, for example, as a result of the drubbing they had received over the preceding weeks, the Russians agreed to an armistice with France – the armistice of Pläswitz – without, however, first consulting with their allies. When the Prussians found out they were furious.132 The implication was that if Russia could sign an armistice, then it could also sign a separate peace.
On 2 June, Napoleon agreed to the armistice, under some pressure from Caulaincourt and Berthier, at first for thirty-six hours, then two days later for seven weeks (until 20 July). But he almost immediately regretted it. Napoleon’s military instincts were right; it was an enormous strategic error, the worst of the campaign, and according to the Emperor himself the ‘dumbest decision’ of his life. Moreover, he had not realized that the allies were so divided; he could easily have pushed on to the Oder.133 The armistice gave the allies time to regroup, but then it allowed Napoleon to do so too.134 The French army was, after all, largely made up of raw recruits who had performed extraordinarily well under the circumstances, but time was needed to gather the stragglers, continue to train them and attempt to strengthen the cavalry.135 Besides, the suggestion for an armistice came from Austria and Napoleon could ill afford to displease his unwilling ally at this stage. Nevertheless, at that moment he lost the initiative, and he would never again recover it.
This could have been a repeat of the Third Coalition in which a couple of decisive battles – in that instance, Ulm and Austerlitz – undermined the confidence of the commanders, including Francis and Alexander. This time, though, the allies reacted to their tactical military losses in ways they had not done previously: they did not sue for peace, they did not collapse nor fall out. They regrouped in order to fight on. The defeats were now seen for what they were, as setbacks, and not as decisive routs that risked the existence of the Russian and Austrian armies. If Austria lost the war in 1809 it was largely because Archduke Charles was not prepared to risk all for victory. This was no longer the case. Now, there was a determination to carry the war through to the end, a resolve to defeat Napoleon once and for all. It is for this reason that, on the allied side, we now start to hear stories of heroism and feats of bravery in battle that were noticeably absent from previous campaigns.
More importantly, after the battles of Lützen and Bautzen, the allies modified their tactics by deciding not to engage Napoleon, if he could at all be avoided. Instead, they engaged his subordinates where possible.136 This strategy, referred to as the Trachenberg Plan (sometimes as the Compact of Trachenberg, after the village in Silesia in which it was devised), was decided on at a meeting on 10–12 July 1813 between the Russians, Prussians and Swedes (Sweden entered the war on 7 July) in an atmosphere, according to the official version of the meeting, of ‘harmony, confidence and mutual satisfaction’.137 The atmosphere was anything but. As we shall see, huge disagreements existed among the allies. Nevertheless, the Trachenberg Plan was the eastern powers’ first attempt at formulating a common tactical doctrine and it proved to be of tremendous importance.
The architect of the plan has been hotly disputed by historians, particularly in light of its subsequent success, some suggesting that it was Major Carl Friedrich von Toll, others Feldmarschall Josef Wenceslaus Radetzky. It would appear that elements from two different plans were merged. It was, in any event, elegantly simple: wherever Napoleon appeared, the allies would not give battle. Wherever one of his commanders appeared, the allies would attack, and preferably with superior numbers. The aim was to wear down Napoleon, so that he would have to march back and forth against one allied army or another, and then to push him into a corner where they could confront him with overwhelming forces. This would happen, as we shall see, at Leipzig.138
‘Excessive Ambition and Greed’
On 26 June 1813, Metternich was finally able to meet with Napoleon at Dresden where he was staying at the palace of Count Marcolini, grand chamberlain of the King of Saxony. There, he presented Napoleon with the allies’ conditions for a preliminary peace.139 There are only two witnesses to what happened, Metternich and Napoleon, neither terribly reliable. The other accounts we have of this meeting are third hand. In a marathon nine-hour discussion, which saw the Emperor oscillate between rage, harangue and polite conversation, and which at one point saw him accuse Metternich of having accepted a bribe from England,140 Napoleon rejected the conditions, despite Metternich’s insistence that Austria needed and wanted a durable peace. The demands were: the dissolution of the Duchy of Warsaw; the restoration of Prussia to its pre-1806 borders; the return of Illyria to Austria (lost to France after the war of 1809); and the evacuation of the Hanseatic cities and the north of Germany.141
The peace conditions were hardly onerous, but having occupied Dresden and Breslau, Napoleon was in a reasonably strong position and found them unacceptable. Most historians have been critical of his decision not to negotiate a settlement. The problem is, even if Napoleon had settled on the conditions presented to him, it is highly unlikely Prussia and Russia would have accepted them; they were now bent on an independent Germany, or at least one not dominated by France. Metternich portrayed Austrian mediation, and his own actions, many years later as a pretext to gain time so that Austria could gather its forces before the final assault.142 Those assertions should not be taken too seriously. Like any good diplomat, Metternich was more than likely playing both sides to see which would gain Austria the better deal. Austria had far more to gain by procrastinating and appearing to mediate between Napoleon and the allies than in declaring itself either for or against Napoleon.
Napoleon did not trust or believe Metternich. He believed Austria was somehow setting a trap for him. This was not quite the case, but to Metternich’s proposals he simply responded, ‘Stop lying and tell me what you really want!’143 He must have had an inkling that Austria was going to go over to the allies. He had been receiving reports from the French ambassador in Vienna, who depicted the mood there as decidedly hostile towards France, both among the people and, especially, in the army.144 And yet Napoleon does not appear to have taken heed, writing to General Lebrun in Holland that there was nothing to worry about,145 deluded by what he considered to be the solidity of a marriage alliance, which his father-in-law, and Metternich, now had little time for. Francis was acting as a head of state, not as a doting father, even if he took a good deal of persuading to go over to the allies. The very day after the meeting with Metternich, on 27 June 1813, Austria signed the Treaty of Reichenbach by which it agreed to join the coalition if Napoleon rejected the peace terms offered (above). If France failed to accept peace by 20 July, Metternich warned Napoleon that Austria would join the allies. Metternich, both wary of Napoleon’s strategic genius and concerned about what a victorious Russia would mean for Europe, nevertheless kept on trying to come to some sort of arrangement with Napoleon over the coming weeks.146
The Reichenbach proposals put to Napoleon were meaningless.147 The allies were asking Napoleon to withdraw behind the Rhine as the basis for future negotiations, but there was no guarantee that future negotiations would take place. In other words, nothing was said about what Russia and Prussia would do if Napoleon accepted their demands. It is obvious that, given Napoleon’s personal identificati
on with the Confederation of the Rhine, any withdrawal from Germany at this stage was impossible. Not only would it be an admission of weakness, but it would also be giving away an enormous strategic advantage by abandoning his German allies, territories the allies would subsequently be able to exploit fully. His response to Austrian peace overtures was almost provocative. He declared ‘inalienable’ all the territories that France had annexed up to then; this included most of Italy, all of Belgium and Holland, much of western and northern Germany, most of Dalmatia. He constantly boasted of his power and his victories. No one, not even his minister of police, Savary, was allowed to speak to him of France’s own need and desire for peace.148
And yet Napoleon’s situation was becoming more precarious. On 1 July, while in Dresden, he received news of the rout of the French army in Spain. On 21 June, reinforced by troops from Britain, Wellington was able to outmanoeuvre and defeat Jourdan at Vitoria. (Just as Beethoven once dedicated a symphony to Napoleon, he now dedicated one to Wellington – the ‘Battle Symphony’, often called ‘Wellington’s Victory’.) To be fair to those generals fighting in Spain, Napoleon had deprived them of some of their best troops, desperately needed to reinforce the newly conscripted armies destined for Germany. He ordered Joseph to hand over the command of the army to Marshal Suchet and to go into retirement behind the Ebro – that is, to hold the north-east of the Peninsula.149 Even that proved impossible.
We can pass over the details of the farce that was the Congress at Prague, the negotiations that took place while the armistice was in operation. No one took the Congress seriously and nothing of any importance came of it. Prussia and Russia sent diplomats of the second order, respectively, Alexander von Humboldt, who was pro-war, and Count Jean Anstett, a relatively unknown French émigré who hated Napoleon. Humboldt whiled away the time working on a translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon; Metternich spent most of his time pining for a woman with whom he was having an affair, Wilhelmina von Sagan, but who took little interest in him, distracted as she was by another lover. Metternich’s letters to her remind one of Bonaparte’s letters to Josephine during the first Italian campaign.150 Caulaincourt arrived three weeks late without full powers, with instructions to stall the negotiations for as long as he could, and had informal talks with Metternich.151 Napoleon was using the Congress to seek a tactical advantage, hoping to prolong the armistice indefinitely, possibly to drive a wedge between the allies.152 It is obvious, however, that neither Alexander nor Frederick William wanted peace. When, for example, the British representative at Prague, Lord Cathcart, received instructions from the foreign secretary, Lord Castlereagh, to the effect that Britain would be prepared to accept Austrian mediation, Alexander asked him not to inform Metternich. He was worried that peace could be brokered, in which case he would no longer be able to present himself as the saviour of Europe.153
Napoleon, on the other hand, was working under the mistaken impression that Austria was bluffing and would not declare war against France. He was intent on trying to outmanoeuvre the allies diplomatically rather than come to some kind of accommodation. It was a foolish thing to risk under the circumstances. When he realized it was a mistake to dither and not accept the conditions the allies were demanding, it was already too late. He sent off a courier at the last minute instructing Caulaincourt to make peace at any price, but the courier did not arrive until two days after the expiry of the armistice.
At the stroke of midnight on the evening of 10 August, Metternich declared to the company gathered at his palace that Austria was at war with France. When Austria’s declaration of war was received by Napoleon he wrote to Marie-Louise that her father had ‘wanted war out of ambition and disproportionate greed’.154 This was a bit rich coming from a man who was accused of the same thing by every statesman in Europe. We do not know what Marie-Louise thought about this or whether she was shaken by it. The French people, on the other hand, were kept in the dark. No mention of the declaration of war reached the newspapers, nor was an official announcement made. Napoleon now found against him the largest allied coalition that France had ever had to face. For the first time since the beginning of the revolutionary wars in 1792, not only were all the great powers united against France, but they also had a minimum programme of conditions from which they could negotiate a general peace. This did not automatically ensure an allied victory, or guarantee allied unity, but it made success more likely than at any stage in the last twenty years.
22
The Deliverance of Europe
‘A Weak, Rotten, Poorly Designed Structure’
The face-off was still roughly equal at this stage but the advantage was swinging towards the allies.1 On the one side, Napoleon still controlled about 420,000 troops in central Europe (two-thirds of whom were French), 1,284 cannon and about 40,000 cavalry. In addition, another 250,000 troops were tied up in fortresses along the Elbe and in Poland, in northern Italy and in Bavaria. On the other side, now that Austria had entered the war, the allies had about 550,000 troops divided into several armies: 110,000 in the Army of the North, commanded by Bernadotte around the Berlin region; 110,000 in the Army of Silesia commanded by the Prussian general Gebhard von Blücher; an Army of Bohemia made up of Austro-Russian troops about 230,000 strong under the Austrian Field Marshal, Prince Karl Philip von Schwarzenberg, and Barclay. Another 60,000 Russian troops under Bennigsen were in Poland and 30,000 Austrian troops were about to enter Bavaria. The allies had a cavalry of about 60,000 men and 1,380 guns. There were, however, another 350,000 troops in reserve that could be called upon if necessary. The allies, in other words, now had one great advantage – depth of resources. While Napoleon was scraping the barrel to re-establish a respectable army, and could not easily replace the men he lost, the allies were constantly replenishing their ranks and their supplies. That factor was to decide the fate of Napoleon and his Empire.
Austria was the key to Napoleon’s defeat. It provided most of the troops, and as a result was consequently able to manoeuvre two key figures into important positions and thereby (largely) shape the campaign to come. They were Schwarzenberg, who became allied commander-in-chief, and his exceptional chief of staff, Feldmarschall Count Radetzky, perhaps two of the most underrated and forgotten personalities in the allied effort to defeat Napoleon. Schwarzenberg was a diplomat capable of harmonizing the conflicting interests of the three eastern European sovereigns (in this respect, he has been likened to General Eisenhower).2 While Schwarzenberg imposed a semblance of unity on the allied powers, Radetzky dealt with the strategic dispositions.3
They both had their jobs cut out for them. The Austrian army had never been immune to political interference and this was the case in 1813. Now, however, Schwarzenberg had not only to contend with the meddling of his own Emperor, Francis I, but also with interference from Alexander I and Frederick William III, all of whom seemed more prepared to listen to their own courtiers and armchair generals than to the advice of the supreme commander in the field.4 Politics and military affairs were so closely intertwined that it was difficult to distinguish between them. The biggest problem facing Schwarzenberg was Alexander who, at times and in Metternich’s words, could be ‘silly’; he not only challenged Schwarzenberg’s position when he arrived in Prague in August 1813, convinced that he should be in overall charge, but he often issued orders on the battlefield and maintained a correspondence with the Prussian general, Blücher, without the supreme commander’s knowledge.5 Alexander reserved the right to maintain command over the Russian contingents in one of the armies (the Bohemian) and over the reserve troops.6 Apart from that problem, Russian commanders who received orders that they did not agree with would simply ignore them and issue their own orders.7 Nor did the nominal command of the armies by Schwarzenberg overcome the bickering that took place between commanders in the field, not only within individual armies, but also between commanders of different nationalities. Blücher’s chief of staff, August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, who once wrote that Napoleon coul
d be defeated only by ‘war, war and more war’, constantly challenged Radetzky’s plans.8 Frederick William III had enormous difficulty reining in some of his more radical officers like Gneisenau, Blücher, who continually disobeyed orders and never saw eye to eye with Gneisenau, and Karl Wilhelm Georg von Grolman, who had led a corps of volunteers against the French in Spain. Alexander’s insistence on appointing Peter Wittgenstein to replace Kutuzov, who died suddenly after a brief illness in April 1813,9 led to a refusal on the part of some Russian army commanders, notably Generals Mikhail Miloradovich and Alexander Tormasov, to follow their new commander-in-chief. Alexander consequently split the army into two, one part under his direct orders and a smaller part under Wittgenstein’s.10 When Wittgenstein resigned after the battles of Lützen and Bautzen in May he was replaced by Barclay, who immediately fell out with Blücher. While Metternich, Frederick William and Alexander eventually attempted to come to some sort of political arrangement with Napoleon, the Prussian military were steeped in and largely motivated by fantasies of revenge that took on the form of a crusade. At Blücher’s headquarters, for example, one could find the presence of mystical demagogues and publicists like Ernst Moritz Arndt, Joseph Görres and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, for whom this was the final battle in the struggle against the Antichrist.11 The British diplomats at allied headquarters in Germany, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Cathcart and Sir Charles Stewart, did not get on with their Austrian counterparts let alone with each other. Metternich’s assistant during these months, Friedrich von Gentz, described the coalition as ‘a weak, rotten, poorly designed structure in which hardly two pieces fitted together’.12 Aberdeen noted on his arrival at allied headquarters in September 1813 that the three allied armies were ‘full of mutual discontent and recriminations’.13