The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  63

  CRISIS ON THE DANUBE

  Contrary to Napoleon’s expectations, the Austrian blow fell on April 9, almost a week in advance of the anticipated date. There was no formal declaration of war, no demand for the withdrawal of the French ambassador, and consequently a degree of surprise was achieved. The Archduke Charles merely transmitted a brief note to M. Otto, French minister at Munich, and to Marshal Lefebvre, commander of the Bavarian divisions: “In conformity with a declaration made by His Majesty the Emperor of Austria to the Emperor Napoleon, I hereby apprise the general-in-chief of the French army that I have orders to advance with my troops and to treat as enemies all who oppose me.”8 That was the sole intimation of the coming onslaught. Early on the 10th the mass of the Austrian army was crossing the River Inn at Braunau into Bavaria. The only French forces facing them were Lefebvre’s three Bavarian divisions near Landshut, 18 leagues away; once through Landshut, only 12 leagues would lie between the Austrian main body and the Danube at Neustadt. Thus, allowing for a very average rate of advance, the Austrians might have reached the river within a week. Fortunately for the French, however, the improvement in the Austrian army did not extend to its rate of mobility, and it took Charles six whole days to come within sight of even the River Isar and Lefebvre’s foremost positions. At the very start, therefore, the Austrians threw away most of their advantage of surprise and missed a golden opportunity of severing the French forces.

  As it happened, the French army needed every available hour to avert catastrophe. Berthier’s headquarters at Strasbourg only learned on the 11th of the Austrian advance through an urgent note from Otto at Munich. The Prince of Neuchâtel’s first reaction was to order headquarters forward to Donauwörth, from which locality he hoped to gain a clearer idea of what was afoot. This town was reached at seven in the morning on the 13th; analyzing the information that was then to hand, Berthier deduced that the concentration at Ratisbon was still feasible, thus ignoring the paragraph in Napoleon’s instructions ordering a general concentration on the Lech if the enemy moved before the 15th. Consequently, Berthier decided to order Davout (who was already intelligently falling back toward Ingoldstadt in anticipation of a retreat on the Lech) to move forward once more to Ratisbon; similar orders were issued to Oudinot and Lefebvre. Only Massena’s corps was to remain at Augsburg after moving up from Ulm.

  In fact, poor Berthier was already floundering far beyond his depth. The fog of war grew rapidly denser as apparently contradictory orders came from Paris to headquarters. Indeed, Napoleon had been issuing a steady stream of amendments to his original instructions. On April 1, the Emperor signaled by telegraph that Oudinot’s corps, being patently so unprepared, was not after all to move on Ratisbon; instead this duty was to devolve on Davout’s right wing aided by large detachments from the cavalry reserve, together with St. Hilaire’s division. This instruction a perspiring Berthier had been able to implement. Shortly thereafter, however, the transmission of orders both to and from Paris broke down under the press of events. A critical dispatch from Davout to Paris, dated the 3rd, reporting that the bulk of the Austrian army in Bohemia appeared to be in the process of moving southward, inexplicably strayed, and never reached its destination. Similarly, an important signal from Napoleon to Berthier, sent from Paris by visual telegraph on the 10th, failed to reach the army until the 16th owing to fog and slow onward transmission from Strasbourg. However, a subsequent dispatch written within an hour of the first signal and sent off by courier reached Berthier late at night on the 13th, that is to say two and a half days ahead of the signal it was intended to interpret. Had the telegraph message arrived first, as intended, Berthier could not have fallen into the grave error he now proceeded to make. The delayed signal ran: “I think the Emperor of Austria will attack shortly. Proceed to Augsburg, in order to act in conformity with my instructions, and, if the enemy has attacked before the 15th, you must concentrate all the troops on Augsburg and Donauwörth; let everything be ready to march…”9 This would have been straightforward enough. However, the horse-borne letter, read out of sequence, held an ambiguous sentence which Berthier proceeded to misinterpret: “The Duke of Auerstadt will set up his headquarters at Ratisbon; his army will place itself within a day’s march of that town, and this move will take place whatever happens”10 (Author’s italics.) From the earlier gist of the letter, it is clear that here Napoleon was only considering possible events if the enemy attacked at some time after the 15th (as seemed most probable at the moment of writing); Berthier took it to mean that it applied at any date—even before the 15th—and he proceeded to act on this supposition. Had the original telegraph message been to hand, this mistake could not have been made.

  Thus, on the 14th, Berthier repeated his order to a bewildered Davout, requiring him to return toward Ratisbon, and the Bavarian divisions were told to continue to line the banks of the Isar, although hourly the Austrians were drawing closer. Therefore, instead of falling back to the Donauwörth-Augsburg concentration area, the Grand Army was about to be caught en flagrant délit (or hopelessly scattered), its two wings separated by a distance of 75 miles, with only a thin Bavarian cordon in between. Berthier, the supreme chief clerk, was by now well aware that the situation was passing beyond his powers, although he still believed he was carrying out the spirit of the Emperor’s behests if not the very letter. In a pathetic note written at midnight on the 16th, he attempted to shift the blame for the developing chaos onto Napoleon’s shoulders: “In this position of affairs, I greatly desire the arrival of your Majesty, in order to avoid the orders and countermands which circumstances as well as the directives and instructions of your Majesty necessarily entail.”11 Meanwhile his disgruntled corps commanders and even less amiably disposed rank and file marched and countermarched with little idea of what they were meant to be doing. Davout knew what should be done, but loyally decided to obey Berthier’s orders, and for two days confusion reigned as Berthier wearily rode hither and thither “in order to be present everywhere that danger threatened.”

  Fortunately help was fast approaching. Leaving Paris at four in the morning of the 13th, Napoleon rattled at full speed in his coach toward the frontier, pausing only to change horses; the Rhine was crossed on the 15th, and before dawn on the 17th the Emperor reached Donauwörth. The master had come, and not a moment too soon. The previous day the first action of the campaign had been fought between the Austrian advance guard and the Bavarians near Landshut; the outcome was of little significance in terms of casualties, but the Bavarians were pushed back and the Austrians secured a good crossing place over the Isar by evening. No natural obstacle and precious few troops now lay between them and the Danube. The Austrians were almost within grasp of the invaluable “central position.”

  There was no sign of Berthier at headquarters; he was away toward Augsburg on one of his unending peregrinations, hoping to meet Napoleon on the road, and there was no one competent enough to put the Emperor fully into the picture. There was no clear news about the actual location of Davout, although General Vandamme (commanding the local forces) alarmingly reported that he believed the foe to be already in possession of Ratisbon. However, by 10:00

  A.M. the Emperor had reliably learned that Davout was still in fact holding Ratisbon, and that Lefebvre’s divisions were in full retreat, pursued by leading elements of what appeared to be a single enemy corps presently moving through Landshut. A glance at his maps revealed the extent of the peril already facing the Grande Armée. Much depended on discovering the location of the rest of the enemy forces. One thing was clear, however. The first requisite was to reconcentrate the French army with the minimum of delay. As Davout was so far from the River Lech, it would be better to order the massing of the army around Ingolstadt and Geisenfeld, almost halfway toward Ratisbon, instead of at Donauwörth. Davout must retire at once through Neustadt; this could not be avoided, but Lefebvre’s Bavarians should be able to provide at least some cover for the move and hold up the Austr
ian advance. “You know how important it is for you to keep your corps together in order to assist the Duke of Auerstadt and give him time to retreat toward Neustadt and Geisenfeld,”12 Napoleon wrote to the commander of the VIIth Corps at 11:00 o’clock. Shortly after this a breathless but very relieved Berthier made his appearance and lost no time in handing over command of the army and in confirming Napoleon’s general impressions of the situation. In particular he reaffirmed that a considerable body of the enemy, probably a corps in strength, was apparently heading for Ratisbon over the Isar.

  Meanwhile, the Archduke Charles was congratulating himself on the successful opening of his campaign. To exploit the situation on the 17th, he devised a plan whereby Hiller was to be detached westward to guard the Austrian left flank while Charles led his remaining five corps toward the Danube to effect a crossing at Kelheim. His aim was still the isolation and destruction of Davout, for he felt certain that the IIIrd Corps would have no option but to fall back to the river in the face of the simultaneous advance of the Bohemian Corps. However, the next day he changed his mind. News came that Davout was already beginning to transfer his troops to the south bank. It would thus serve no useful purpose if the Austrians proceeded with their Kelheim crossing, indeed, Davout might well slip across their lines of communication as he made his way west. If this happened, Hiller’s detached command was almost certain to be destroyed. Therefore Charles decided to attack Davout from two directions at once. While Kollowrath pressed from the north, Charles would advance against the French from the south. All being well, both Davout and Lefebvre would be destroyed between the converging pincers.

  Once Napoleon was convinced that a sizeable force of the enemy was already over the Isar and moving toward the Danube, he formulated a plan with customary rapidity. Shortly after one in the afternoon of the 17th, messengers were spurring from Donauwörth bearing new instructions to the outlying commanders. The Emperor was insistent that the whole army of 170,000 men should be closed up behind the Ilm in a bataillon carré within 48 hours; Vandamme was to move his 13,000 Württembergers to Ingolstadt, where they would be joined by more German contingents and the heavy cavalry; by the 19th Massena and Oudinot, commanding 57,000 men between them, were to have reached Pfaffenhoffen from Augsburg to form the army’s right, ready to advance toward Freising and Landshut to threaten the Austrian flank and rear. Lefebvre’s Bavarians, meanwhile, would continue to link the two wings of the army, specially charged with covering the planned retirement of the IIIrd Corps from Ratisbon. Finally, Davout was instructed to leave only Friant’s division on the left bank of the Danube with orders to retire westward down the Altmlihl valley as a diversionary bait for the Austrian Bohemian corps, while the rest of the IIIrd crossed to the south bank through Ratisbon and fell back toward Geisenfeld via Abensberg, brushing aside with Lefebvre’s aid any intervening Austrian formations. These measures, Napoleon hoped, would mend the damage caused by Berthier’s bungling and place the army in a concentrated position from which it could regain the initiative. He realized that the price for this “concentration to the rear” would be the abandonment of Ratisbon.

  In two respects, however, Napoleon’s orders were unrealistic. In the first place, he entirely misjudged the strength of the Austrians pushing north from Landshut, believing that Charles had only a single corps over the Isar, when in fact he was deploying at least five besides Hiller. Secondly, there was no chance of Massena or Oudinot reaching Pfaffenhoffen in the time allotted—they were too far distant. Thus Napoleon unwittingly placed his left flank (Davout) in even graver jeopardy and called for impossible exertions on the part of his right.

  It was only late on the 18th when General Savary returned from a reconnaissance that Napoleon realized that Davout might in fact be intercepted by no less than 80,000 Austrians. The only way out of this dangerous quandary was to mount such a threat to Charles’ left flank that he would be compelled to move most of his men west instead of north. Massena therefore was ordered to cross the River Ilm without delay to create this diversion and constitute a threat to the Austrian communications with Landshut. “Activity! Activity! Speed! I greet you,”13 the Emperor scribbled as a postscript to Massena’s orders. This move should serve to draw more Austrians westward to counter the danger, or, rather less probably, cause Charles to order an immediate retreat. In the former instance, once Davout had made contact with Lefebvre and Vandamme, their combined corps were to crash through the weakened Austrian center near Abensberg. After this strategic penetration had been achieved, all forces would coordinate their moves to fall upon and destroy the Austrian left and right successively. Some commentators, most notably the German von Schlieffen, have criticized this plan on the grounds that Napoleon would have done better to order a broader concentric attack against the Austrian army, leaving Lefebvre to hang on grimly in the center while both Davout and Massena swung into the enemy’s rear from Ratisbon and Augsburg respectively. This possibility, however, was not likely to commend itself to the Emperor, who always envinced scorn for a scheme necessitating concentration on the actual field of battle; massing prior to action was almost always his golden rule.

  To the end of his life Napoleon was proud of the five days’ fighting that ensued. Although certain errors of judgment robbed him of a complete victory, he certainly regained the upper hand and gave the various parts of the Austrian army a severe drubbing. The actions began early on the 19th. Davout, who had not received Napoleon’s latest instructions relating to the detachment of Friant to guard the northern bank, moved his complete corps over the Danube, leaving only a token garrison of 2,000 men in Ratisbon to face the 23,000 Austrians of Kollowrath’s Bohemian command. The rest of the French were marching toward Neustadt in four columns when their flanking cavalry came into contact with the heads of Charles’ northbound columns in the Kelheim-Abbach area. Charles now believed that the game was in his pocket and that the anticipated opportunity of destroying Davout had materialized. Fortunately for the French, the Austrian attack was only slowly prepared, and as a result two of their three columns struck empty air, only the westernmost corps making contact with Davout’s rear guard, provided by the divisions of Friant and St. Hilaire, near Tengen. These experienced commanders found little difficulty in repulsing the ill-directed and lethargic Austrians with heavy loss, while their compatriots, Morand and Gudin, hurried their divisions westward through the dangerous Saal defile to join up with the Bavarians who were also hotly engaged. The meeting actually took place in the vicinity of Abensberg, whither Lefebvre had retired under pressure from Hiller’s corps during the preceding twenty-four hours.

  Of course Napoleon was unaware of the outcome of these engagements until early the next morning, but from 1:00

  P.M. he knew that heavy fighting was taking place on Davout’s sector of the front. Massena had again been ordered to move towards Freising and Landshut “to attack the enemy army in the rear while he is in disorder and disunited,”14 and Napoleon still hoped that this threat would suffice to cause Archduke Charles’ withdrawal once it became manifest and thus ease the pressure on Davout. Nevertheless, laboring under the uncertainty of how affairs were proceeding around Tengen, the Emperor decided that some direct reinforcement might well be required by the IIIrd Corps, and accordingly ordered Vandamme to move forward from Ingolstadt over the Danube at Vohburg, and added a postscript to Massena’s dispatch indicating that one of Oudinot’s divisions should be detached forthwith from his Freising-bound columns and sent toward Neustadt by way of Au. By dusk on the 19th Massena’s leading formation had reached Pfaffenhoffen by dint of herculean marching, but there were still no certain tidings from the northeast where an ominous silence now prevailed. Consequently Napoleon spent an anxious night at Vohburg waiting for news. He was aware that the situation might well be critical.

  The hours of uncertainty passed slowly; doubts and fears tended to increase as the hours of darkness wore on. Shortly after midnight, Napoleon sent a new order to Massena, increasing t
he size of the detachment going to Davout’s assistance to include the whole of Oudinot’s corps. This, he hoped, would suffice to strengthen the French left and center against anything that might befall. Shortly after three in the morning, a querulous note was on its way to Lefebvre, demanding accurate news of the situation to his front. A little later, however, Napoleon’s mind was at last set at rest when the anxiously awaited dispatches materialized from both the IIIrd and VIIth Corps. Their tidings were far better than anticipated. Both Davout and Lefebvre optimistically reported that Archduke Charles was in full retreat on their sectors, and made somewhat extravagant claims relating to their successes in the previous day’s fighting, which in reality had been little more than secondary combats. However, Napoleon was very relieved to learn that his two exposed corps were now united and capable of offering joint resistance.