The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  If a large part of the Continent was being rapidly subjected to the Corsican’s will, the ancient and indomitable British enemy remained as uncowed as ever. In Napoleon’s view, the dogged and unreasoning opposition of “Perfidious Albion” seemed unwavering in its perseverance. True, archenemy Pitt was now dead, but his successors seemed in little hurry to come to a settlement. Negotiations were indeed reopened for a time with British representatives at Rheims, but no progress was made, and even politicians such as Charles James Fox, Foreign Minister of England, who had once borne a reputation for pro-Gallic leanings, seemed remarkably unshakeable in their attitudes. Since the battle of Trafalgar, the possibility of a direct invasion of Britain had decidedly receded, and so Napoleon resorted to other measures to ruin “the nation of shopkeepers,” or at least to bring the British Government to its senses. An economic blockade, taking the form of the exclusion of English goods from the Continent, was the chosen method. This policy had been tried before, and after the Berlin Decrees of November 1806 was to be greatly expanded, but earlier in that year the French desire to exclude British trade was one underlying factor behind the flirtation with Russia, the creation of the Kingdom of Holland, and the ruthless bullying of Prussia.

  From the beginning, the policy gained scant success. It was universally unpopular and its regulations were consistently evaded, even by French merchants. And so Napoleon tried one last means of coming to terms with Great Britain; if compulsion was showing few immediate results, then bribery might work the miracle. In June 1806, Napoleon suddenly offered to return Hanover to King George III, its erstwhile Elector, as part of a general pacification. The offer failed to make any impact in England, where politicians had long regarded the Hanoverian inheritance as a burden, but in certain parts of the Continent—and most notably in Prussia—the reaction was both immediate and virulent. The offer of Hanover to Britain proved a mistake, and within a few short months the matter was to plunge Europe into another bitter war, the one eventuality that Napoleon was keen to avoid.

  40

  PLANS FOR WAR

  The changing aspect of Europe had been anxiously watched all this while from Berlin. On the one hand, the humiliation of Austria was noted with a certain satisfaction; on the other, the increase in French power at the expense of the Hapsburgs appeared to imply a future threat to Prussian ambitions vis-à-vis the North German states. As the year proceeded Prussian disillusion with French policies steadily grew. The alliance with France and the economic sanctions led to an immediate British declaration of war against Prussia, and no less than seven hundred sail of German shipping were forthwith impounded in English ports. This represented a heavy blow to the Prussian mercantile marine, while the official rupture of all trade relations with Great Britain threatened many of the great merchant houses with ruin. At the same time, elsewhere in Germany, the first forces of Teutonic nationalism were beginning to assert themselves, albeit practically unconsciously at first, as secret societies and other patriotic institutions came into existence. Discreet propaganda glorified the Germanic ideals and instilled a fervent type of nationalism, especially among the middle classes. The weight of the French yoke and the current humiliation of their governments became increasingly appreciated by the ordinary people and added force to the spread of the movement. Oddly enough, Napoleon became aware of these nationalistic forces before the rulers of Germany themselves. In a misguided attempt to cow the new movement with a show of brutality, the Emperor ordered Berthier, newly made Prince of Neuchâtel, to organize a raid into neutral territory to seize a certain bookseller by the name of Palm. This unfortunate’s sole “crime” was the distribution of certain nationalistic tracts which the French deemed subversive literature. In due course Palm was kidnaped from Braunau, tried and shot. As had happened in the similar case of the murder of d’Enghien in 1804, this unjust act excited a furor of protest and inevitably led to a wider dissemination of the ideas it had been designed to crush.

  If the embryonic forces of German liberalism were aroused by these acts of overt French tyranny, the forces of hidebound reaction in Prussia were almost equally indignant about their country’s humiliation. The army—intensely conservative though its military ideas might be—also regarded itself as the repository of the pride of the Prussian people, and the insults heaped upon the head of their monarch did not go unnoticed or unresented. A party of patriotic senior officers, led by the Duke of Brunswick and Prince Hohenlohe, soon formed around the person of the beautiful and warlike Queen, and pressure for a declaration of war was applied to Frederick William and his ministers on an increasing scale. Left to themselves, the King and his new Chief Minister, Haugwitz, might have been prepared to condone any French action in the pursuit of a quiet life, but the new party at Court rapidly gained influence. Naturally, Napoleon was soon aware of the new shift in the wind, and it induced him to make a belated attempt to humor Prussia by declaring that he would not obstruct the formation of a North German Confederation under Prussian leadership. This offer, however, came somewhat too late to check the growing resentment inspired by the blatant increases in French power, and the vacillating Frederick William III began to bend before the new storm. The neutralist Haugwitz was dismissed from office, and the patriot Hardenberg partially restored to favor, assuming control of foreign affairs. Then came the revelation of Napoleon’s treacherous offer to restore Hanover to George III. This proved too much for even the King, and on August 7, 1806, the Prussian Government secretly determined on war against France. Napoleon had goaded Prussia too far, and the army of Frederick the Great ponderously prepared to avenge the country’s injuries.

  Napoleon remained unaware of the Prussian decision until September, and even when indications of what was afoot reached Paris he still refused to believe that Prussia would be so rash as to take on the Grande Armée in a straight fight. At this time the French had at least 160,000 troops in South Germany, quartered in a broad sweep of territory from the Rhine to the Danube and along the River Main, army headquarters being situated at Munich. Besides the six corps of the line, there were 32,000 cavalry, many of them newly mounted on captured Austrian steeds, and more than 300 pieces of artillery, and also a subsidiary force of 13,000 Bavarians and other allies. More important than its numerical strength, however, was the incomparable morale of the French army at this juncture. Although their uniforms were in tatters, the victors of Ulm and Austerlitz were all seasoned soldiers at the very peak of their training, only the divisions of Generals Gazan and Dupont containing a high proportion of raw conscripts. If the peacetime discipline of the men left a great deal to be desired, their record on the battlefield had been consistently excellent. The infantry was flexible, quick and intelligent, although decidedly starved of fire drill and range practices. The cavalry was better equipped than ever before, and imbued with a fierce courage and incomparable élan; its training for reconnaissance, screening and pursuit roles was well advanced, although Napoleon still had reservations about its standard of action in battle. The gunners were also at the peak of their form, and their skill and marksmanship largely made up for a shortage of certain kinds of equipment—gun carriages, limbers, and the like. Above all, the officers of all arms were young yet experienced men with confidence both in their own ability and in the talents of their Emperor. All in all, the Grande Armée of 1806 was probably the most integrated and best trained force that Napoleon ever commanded.

  Notwithstanding his faith in his army, Napoleon did not underestimate the military prowess of the renowned Prussian army. In fact, however, beneath an imposing facade of Prussian invincibility there existed serious flaws. In size it was impressive, some 254,000 troops being theoretically available on mobilization (including a large contingent of mercenaries), but this total was reduced to 171,000 effectives in August 1806 owing to numerous garrison detachments (many of them superfluous), and on account of the failure of the Prussian bureaucracy to call out all the available reserves. In doctrine, however, the Prussian army w
as hopelessly outdated in its concepts. Everything was related to the days of Frederick the Great, and deviations from the master’s precepts were not countenanced. The tradition of ferocious discipline had produced an army of automatons or “walking muskets.” Tactically, “the Prussian army was a museum piece,”7 clinging without question to a rigid linear system of shoulder-to-shoulder drill better suited to an earlier age. Precision was accounted far more desirable than speed or flexibility. The supply trains were enormous, and a distance of 12 miles seemed a long day’s march. The army’s utter dependence on magazines and depots for food and munitions was a further weakness that reduced mobility to a minimum; “slow but sure” was the general rule.

  Indeed, the cult of the past was deliberately carried to extraordinary lengths, and no arm of the Prussian service escaped its deadening hand. The infantry were brave and well-disciplined, but their muskets were the worst in Europe, being mostly of the pattern of 1754, while over-regimentation had led to formalized tactics that discouraged initiative. The cavalry was bold and dashing, though intensely conservative in organization and role. The artillery arm was large in size, but badly handled and often misemployed. The morale of the army was, however, very high. Feelings of effortless superiority pervaded all ranks, but, as Clauswitz remarked, “behind the fine facade all was mildewed.”

  The gravest weakness of the Prussian army lay neither in the men nor their weapons, but in the leadership. Frederick the Great left no comparable military heir, and by the first years of the nineteenth-century the Prussian high command had degenerated into a junta of septuagenarians. Under the King, whom nobody pretended was a soldier, the chief command was theoretically exercised by the Duke of Brunswick, seventy-one years old, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War. The senior royal adviser—von Mollendorf—was even older at eighty-two. He had enjoyed a fine career under Frederick, but for the past thirty years had been solely concerned with maintaining his reputation by counseling safe and cautious measures. The more junior generals were hardly younger; indeed Blücher—the ablest of the bunch—was already sixty-four years old. Prince Hohenlohe and General Schmettau were relative striplings of sixty. The former possessed some military talent, but was inclined to rash and hotheaded decisions and was somewhat unimaginative, while the latter was a retired warrior who insisted on getting back into harness. These, then, were the men who were responsible for the employment of the Prussian army, but their advanced age, variegated experience and mediocre abilities made firm leadership and unity of direction practically impossible to achieve.

  Had the Prussian army of this epoch possessed even a rudimentary staff system, some of these disadvantages might have been overcome. However, there was no proper staff corps yet in existence, and no less than three soldiers shared the duties of chief of staff, namely Generals Phull, Scharnhorst and “the evil genius of Prussia,” Colonel Massenbach. Their ideas were often at variance, and their personal ambitions frequently brought them into direct collision one with another. Under this uncertain inspiration, the Ober Kriegs Collegium, the organization that performed the motions of a staff, although its chief functions more closely resembled those of an inspectorate, produced a proliferation of theoretical plans of campaign that had little relevance to the realities of Napoleonic warfare. Beneath these men, not even a rudimentary chain of command existed. There were no corps headquarters and even the divisional staffs were poorly organized. Orders issued from general headquarters therefore had to go into fantastic detail, giving ample scope for delay, miscomprehension and confusion on the part of subordinate commanders, and generals frequently found it necessary to brief their regimental commanders in person. Such an army, under such a leadership, bore little comparison to Napoleon’s finely geared and ruthlessly efficient war machine. Yet it was these same Prussian generals who commenced to hold meetings in early August with the intention of choosing a strategy that would, they confidently expected, once and for all encompass the ruin of the “Corsican Ogre” and his vaunted army. From the very beginning, as might have been expected, their councils were divided.

  During the month of August the Prussian junta and its myriad of advisors were agreed upon only one point—that Napoleon “would take up a defensive position and await attack behind the Upper or Franconian Saale, or indeed upon the Main,”8 and that consequently the Prussian forces should assume the offensive as soon as possible. It might seem that even the most superficial study of Napoleon’s previous campaigns would have proved the error of this basic Prussian assumption. Moreover, good intentions notwithstanding, it was not until the end of September that any attempt at definite action was made. During the intervening period the complexities of Prussian military protocol absorbed all attention as the conflicting claims of jealous senior officers were slowly resolved into something approaching an order of battle. Eventually three field armies emerged. The first, commanded by Brunswick in person, comprised some 70,000 men, and by September 25 this force had moved from its original locations about Berlin and Magdeburg to a preliminary concentration area between Leipzig and Naumburg; the second, commanded by the mercurial Hohenlohe, initially totaled 50,000 troops, but following the forcible incorporation of 20,000 Saxons its strength rose to equal that of the commander in chief, and by the end of September almost 70,000 men were drawn up around Dresden. The last army, 30,000 strong, was divided between Generals Rüchel and Blücher stationed respectively at Mühlhausen and Göttingen. Of the grand total of some 171,000 effectives, 35,000 were cavalry and 15,000 more were artillerymen serving the 300 heavy cannon and 250 “infantry pieces” (three- and six-pounders) of the Prussian trains.

  The Prussian forces could hardly claim to be fully concentrated or ready for immediate concerted action when Brunswick summoned the first of his formal councils of war to decide upon a plan of campaign. Broadly speaking, three possible courses of action presented themselves. By far the most sensible plan would have been to await the arrival of Russian aid from the east (where 50,000 troops were already assembling at Brześć on the River Bug) but against this course were bitter memories of the misconduct of Russian forces in previous wars; they habitually wrought devastation, whether to friend or foe. Nevertheless, if Napoleon struck first, the Prussians could trade space for time, fighting a series of delaying actions through the Thüringerwald, along the River Elbe, and even on the banks of the Oder until Bennigsen came into action in their support. Only Scharnhorst (Blücher’s chief of staff) was bold enough to suggest this plan, but opinion was against him. Such a Fabian strategy had little to recommend it in the eyes of the heirs of Frederick, who considered that the sacred honor of their army, besides the safety of their capital, would be gravely compromised by any such dilatory policy. Alternatively, if a bolder scheme was required, the Prussian army might well have concentrated around Erfurt or Hof to the north of the Thüringerwald and there taken up positions to outflank the Grande Armée. Once again, however, this plan savored too much of the defensive, and although force of events was in due course to lead to the adoption of a similar strategy, this possibility was not seriously considered in late September.

  Queen Louise, consort of King Frederick William III, who Napoleon once described as “the only real man in Prussia”

  The third possibility seemed superficially the most attractive. A full-scale drive by the concentrated army through Erfurt toward Würzburg and thence on to Stuttgart, hoping to catch the French army in its scattered cantonment areas, or, at the very least, threaten its communications, with the Rhine and France. This plan was put forward by Brunswick at the first council of war, but he was not strong-minded enough to override the protests of the jealous Hohenlohe, who was in favor of a more easterly move towards Hof and Bamberg. In its detail this latter scheme was foolhardy enough, involving the division of the army into three parts along a ninety-mile front with only a small reserve in the vicinity of Naumburg, but it was capped by an even wilder plan put forward by the incompetent Massenbach who argued in favor of an apparently p
ointless parade militaire by the Silesian army through Hof to the Danube and thence back to Saxony. The wrangle continued until Frederick William intervened and tried to please everybody by ordering the implementation of the main features of both Brunswick’s and Hohenlohe’s plans at one and the same time.

  In fact, this unworkable compromise pleased nobody, but the initial orders had nevertheless been issued when the junta decided to follow Brunswick’s original plan after all, on the 27th. Chaos and uncertainty reigned as the rusty cogwheels of the ancient Prussian military machine were put into reverse, but even now the Prussian plan had not been finally decided. By the time the new movement toward Erfurt was under way, Brunswick had received tidings indicating that the Grande Armée was already on the move, and once again he convened the council to reconsider the Prussian moves. In an attempt to throw light on the exact whereabouts of the French communications, Captain Müffling was sent out on a rapid reconnaissance on October 5. Three days later he reported to the assembled generals that Napoleon had already left the Würzburg-Bamberg area, and was advancing toward Bayreuth and Coburg as if intending an invasion of Saxon soil. This alarming news was sufficient to return the whole issue to the melting pot. Hot controversy raged once more at Prussian headquarters and more invaluable time was lost around the conference table. Some asserted that the only wise course in the light of the new situation was to hold the line of the Saale; others, that the whole army should unite to defend Leipzig; none, that they should retire to the Elbe. “What we ought to do I know right well,” lamented Scharnhorst; “What we shall do, only the gods know.”9