The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  Another strategic factor that played a large part in this campaign was, of course, the Russian climate. This is the most often quoted reason for Napoleon’s catastrophe, and yet it is generally misinterpreted. It is true that Napoleon was guilty of failing to order sufficient preparations for meeting the changes in Russian weather, but it is erroneous to attribute his failure to the Russian winter to any large degree. Napoleon was already decisively beaten before the serious frosts began; they served only to increase the scale of his disaster; the cold was not in itself even a major contributory factor to his strategic defeat. Napoleon tried to explain away his losses by blaming the weather, but this was largely propaganda. “My army has had some losses,” he modestly admitted to the Senate on December 20, “but this was due to the premature rigors of the season.”33 From these words and the tone of the 29th Bulletin a celebrated historical myth has emerged.

  In point of fact, Napoleon’s army suffered as much damage from the heat of the Russian summer as from the rigors of the winter. Tens of thousands of cavalry and artillery horses died before Napoleon ever reached Moscow; tens of thousands of men dropped out of the ranks through sickness and heat exhaustion before the battle of Borodino was fought. The hot weather of July and August was as much to blame for Napoleon’s defeat as the frosts of November and December. Indeed, the conditions pertaining at the outset of the retreat were far more favorable than might have been hoped for. The first severe frosts were encountered only on November 12, and these gave way to an unseasonable thaw that proved even more embarrassing to the French as they approached the crucial Berezina crossing, producing muddy roads, impassable countryside and swollen waterways instead of firm going and frozen rivers. This fact explains the importance of Borisov’s bridges, and the reason for the apparently suicidal burning of the French pontoon train at Orsha (at a time when the hard frosts seemed established). “As it happened,” recorded Marbot, “the frost, which at this time of the year should have transformed the water of the Berezina into an easy road, had left them almost entirely fluid when we wanted to cross. Hardly were we over before a severe frost froze them to a point when they were solid enough to carry cannon.”34 Indeed, the real effects of winter were experienced only after December 4, when the temperature plunged many degrees below zero. Well before that date, the Grande Armée had been reduced to a shadow of its former self. However, it is true that the cold served to increase the scale of the disaster during the final stage of the retreat when the strategic outcome had already been long decided.

  It is also necessary to mention the record of the Russian forces to obtain a balanced view of the campaign. Although they deserve praise for dogged endurance and considerable skill in action, the Russian generals were really more fortunate than they deserved. Although there is no doubt that the Russian strategy of trading space for time was the most effective one possible for dealing with Napoleon and exhausting the impetus of his offensive, it is by no means certain whether this was the outcome of deliberate Russian policy or sheer military necessity. The fortification of the Dvina and the Dnieper river lines before the declaration of war would seem to indicate a more static strategic intention. Barclay and Bagration showed considerable skill in successfully uniting their armies at Smolensk without being forced to give battle, but their subsequent half-hearted attempt to launch a counter-offensive would seem to suggest that their retreat was the product of weakness rather than of design. Moreover, Kutusov’s decision to stand and fight before Moscow would seem to indicate divided counsels at Moscow and St. Petersburg, for this was not militarily a sound idea, whatever its political and national motivation, and the Russians were fortunate to escape with so large a proportion of their fighting strength from the battlefield.

  Thus it is difficult to detect a consistently applied strategy underlying Russian operations in the period up to the loss of Moscow. Thereafter a definite plan does emerge. It was clearly a matter of policy to keep Napoleon lingering near Moscow for as long as possible, and then implement a strategy to trap his army at a convenient river line when at last he began to retreat. The plan was sound, but its execution was faulty. Kutusov seems to have had no desire to try conclusions with Napoleon on the field of battle, and he appears to have deliberately set out to ruin the Tsar’s plan by failing to push Napoleon’s retiring columns to the uttermost. Similarly, his colleagues, Wittgenstein and Tshitshagov, do not come very well out of the events around the Berezina. It can be argued that Napoleon owed his defeat to a combination of his own miscalculations and the dogged strength of character displayed by Tsar Alexander in repeatedly refusing to entertain the idea of a settlement. The contribution of the Russian soldiery was only of secondary importance; the raids of Cossacks and partisan bands did more harm to the Emperor than all the endeavors of the regular field armies of Holy Russia.

  Any study of the campaign’s grand tactics will also reveal grave deficiencies on the French side. Napoleon is personally to blame for most of his subordinates’ errors that compromised his repeated attempts to secure victory. His system of command was gravely at fault. It was beyond the powers of any one man to control the movements of half a million men, and yet Napoleon was insistent that he should be the sole source of authority. His marshals were not allowed to think or act for themselves, and consequently when the exigencies of distance separated them from Napoleon’s all-controlling presence their showing was often far from impressive. As Caulaincourt related, “The staff foresaw nothing, but on the other hand, as the Emperor wanted to do everything himself and give every order, no one, not even the general staff, dared to assume the responsibility of giving the most trifling order.”35 Jerome accordingly failed to carry out his proposed role in the maneuver of Vilna; Macdonald, Oudinot, Victor and St. Cyr failed to coordinate effectively their efforts against Wittgenstein on the River Dvina, thereby missing several opportunities of annihilating the Russian right wing; Davout and Eugène hesitated when temporarily cut off on the retreat toward Vilna; and Schwarzenberg acted with complete disregard for the moves of the main army through lack of proper supervision.

  And yet, although the Emperor insisted on his own omnipotence, there are many signs that his physical and moral energy were no longer sufficient for the calls he placed upon them. He lingered for two weeks at Vilna instead of supervising the vital enveloping moves by his corps. En route for Smolensk, he wasted a crucial day holding a review to mark his birthday; he dallied for a month at Moscow instead of busying himself devising new methods of bringing pressure to bear on the Tsar. His record on the field of battle was often even less impressive. At Smolensk he retired to his quarters at 5:00

  P.M. before the outcome was settled, and thus was not at hand to force Junot to take his opportunity. At Borodino, he scoffed at Davout’s suggested encircling move, imposed his own idea of an unsubtle and wasteful frontal attack, and then spent the whole day in complete inactivity making little contribution to events apart from repeatedly refusing to send up the Imperial Guard. At Malojaroslavets, he was sufficiently disconcerted by a near-brush with a party of Cossacks to prevent his generals conducting a reconnaissance beyond the nearby ridge which would have revealed the road to Kaluga completely empty of Russians. These are evidences of a decline in his military powers, but conversely he must be awarded full credit for this conduct of the brilliant actions at Krasnoe and Berezina which were masterpieces of the military art.

  In the last analysis, Napoleon’s defeat can be explained in terms of two circumstances. First, a general decline in the quality of his generalship, shown first of all in a lack of energy which led to poor supervision of subordinates and repeated failure to intervene personally at the decisive point (as had ever been his practice in the years of his prime); this is also reflected in growing indulgence in wishful thinking concerning the military capabilities of his troops (which he persistently overestimated) and the character of the Tsar (whom he consistently underestimated). The second circumstance was the sheer size of the enterprise he att
empted to undertake; it is doubtful whether any other soldier in history would have achieved a larger measure of success, both in the preparatory and the executive phases under the military conditions of 1812. But, in the words of the philosopher Montaigne, quoted by the American historian, Dodge: “Great and distant enterprises perish from the very magnitude of the preparations made to ensure their success.”36 The problems of space, time and distance proved too great for even one of the greatest military minds that has ever existed, but it was the failure of a giant surrounded by pygmies.

  PART FIFTEEN

  Twilight: The Struggle of the Nations

  NAPOLEON’S ATTEMPTS TO HOLD GERMANY AND DESTROY THE ALLIES, CULMINATING IN THE HEAVY DEFEAT SUSTAINED AT THE BATTLE OF LEIPZIG

  76

  NEW ARMIES

  T

  HE CAMPAIGN of 1813 proved to be one of the longest, most I expensive and ultimately decisive of all the struggles of the I Napoleonic Wars. Following the cataclysm of 1812, Napoleon was desperately attempting to regain the initiative and repair the damage sustained by both his armies and his reputation in the depths of Russia. For their part, the Russians—joined successively by the Swedes, Prussians and Austrians besides a number of German princelings—were determined to liberate Germany from the shackles of the French connection and to carry the theater of war to the very frontiers of France itself. With his Empire crumbling away in Central Europe, over 200,000 troops and several of his ablest subordinates tied down conducting a deteriorating struggle in Spain, his ports blockaded by the Royal Navy, his allies falling away—Napoleon was faced with one of the greatest challenges of his career. The true issue was simply one of survival, but in early 1813 no thought of ultimate catastrophe yet darkened the Emperor’s mind and he steadfastly refused all suggestions of negotiating a compromise peace. He was still convinced that complete victory was attainable—and indeed at certain moments during the first part of the campaign such an outcome seemed distinctly possible. In the end, however, a combination of awakening Germanic nationalism and fast-exhausting French resources resulted in heavy defeat and the loss of almost all terrain lying to the east of the Rhine.

  For convenience, it is proposed to give a quick analysis of the successive stages through which the complex campaign of 1813 proceeded toward its climax.

  From the military point of view, the year falls into two distinct major periods. The first really begins on April 6, but as a preliminary it will be necessary to examine the events of the first three months of the year—the progress of the Allied advance into the heart of Europe and the efforts made by Eugène’s scanty army to check its progress. Then began Napoleon’s great counteroffensive, in which he was determined to destroy the various armies of the coalition; la manoeuvre de Leipzig culminated in the considerable French victory at Lutzen, and is followed by the attempt to crush his remaining enemies at Bautzen—another French success. Neither victory, however, was complete, although thereafter the battered Allies were only too glad to agree to an armistice. There followed a pause (June I to August 16) during which both sides made great professions of desiring a negotiated settlement of the war, but nevertheless continued to build up their forces ready for a resumption of hostilities. In the end this lull proved to Napoleon’s disadvantage, for the Allies succeeded in mobilizing considerably more men than their French adversaries, and Austria was induced to abandon her neutral position and join the coalition.

  With the reopening of hostilities in August the second period of the campaign begins, and it was soon clear that Napoleon was very much on the strategic defensive. Maneuvering with considerable adroitness around the central position afforded by Goerlitz, the French forces moved up and down the right bank of the Elbe to engage repeatedly the armies of Silesia and Bohemia, and in due course brought off another indecisive victory at Dresden (August 27). However, the sands were fast running out for the Emperor; the Allied armies steadily converged on his weaker forces, and in due course this led to the desperate Battle of the Nations around Leipzig between October 16 and 19. Undoubtedly defeated, Napoleon had no alternative but to withdraw the remnants of his army to the Rhine, turning at bay once to inflict a sharp check on his pursuers at Hanau. This year of great activity closes with the gradual capitulation of isolated French garrisons in Poland and Germany.

  The first task facing Napoleon on his return to Paris was the creation of a new army with which to meet the inevitable advance of the victorious Russians. The task of making good the loss of over half a million men would surely have daunted the soul of any ordinary mortal, but Napoleon tackled it with all his old energy and zeal, setting himself the ambitious target of finding 656,000 new soldiers by mid-1813. Using the pitiful remnant of the survivors of 1812 as a nucleus, he set out to rebuild his shattered forces. Thanks to the foresight which had caused the Class of 1813 to be summoned to the depots the previous autumn, there were already some 137,000 conscripts on the point of completing their training. This was not enough to meet the immediate crisis, however, and so by a senatus consultum of 11th January 80,000 men of the National Guard were embodied into the army, their cohortes being reformed into 88 line battalions divided between 22 regiments. To stiffen these inexperienced troops, four regiments of the Imperial Guard were drafted from the Spanish theater together with a large number of experienced NCOs to provide the cadres for the newly forming armament. In this way, some 200,000 men were somehow found for the German front by the beginning of April.

  This figure, however, was still far below Napoleon’s target. To find the balance of 450,000 men, he resorted to every expedient his fertile mind could devise. As a matter of course, the Class of 1814 was called forward in February, and it was optimistically hoped that between 150,000 and 200,000 new soldiers would be the outcome. It was then remembered that a certain number of sick men and “draft dodgers” had evaded conscription for one reason or another during the period between 1808 and 1810, and accordingly a new demand was made on the classes of those three years for a further 100,000 men. The reconstruction of the cavalry appeared an impossible task but a start was made by calling in 3,000 officers and NCOs of the gendarmerie to form a nucleus. Similarly, the French navy was mulcted of 12,000 gunners, and 24 battalions of sailors were rapidly formed for land service. For the rest, Italy was required to provide Marshal Bertrand with 30,000 troops, the French municipalities were induced to produce 20,000 additional levies, and 5,000 Municipal Guards (usually old soldiers retired on pension) were recalled to the colors. Napoleon also hoped that his German allies would provide further substantial numbers of men.

  By dint of such measures, it became apparent that Napoleon might miraculously find his 656,000 men after all. Throughout France there was evidence of superhuman activity. “France was one vast workshop,” noted Caulaincourt; “The entire French nation overlooked his [Napoleon’s] reverses and vied with one another in displaying zeal and devotion. It was as glorious an example of the French character as it was a personal triumph for the Emperor, who with amazing energy directed all the resources of which his genius was capable into organizing and guiding the great national endeavor. Things seemed to come into existence as if by magic.”1

  Between quantity and quality, however, there existed a world of difference; the new armies were vastly different from the old. Caulaincourt goes as far as to describe the new troops as “an organized mob,”2 but their general gallantry in action was to show them in a different light. There was no disguising the fact, however, that the infantry contained a dangerously large proportion of callow youths, near-invalids and aged veterans, nor that the enlistment estimates proved very inaccurate. To cite one example, the embodied National Guard cohortes were supposed on paper to consist of 1,080 men, but in fact few topped the 850 mark. Moreover, a substantial proportion of the conscription classes continued to avoid their responsibilities by taking to the hills or going into hiding; as always, the endemic revolt in La Vendée flared up once more. The response from Germany also proved very disappo
inting.

  The cavalry posed altogether different problems; here the difficulties were mainly shortage of time and suitable horses. While an infantry conscript could be shaken into some sort of shape within a few months, a cavalry recruit took considerably longer to train to a reasonable standard; yet the need for new cavalrymen was pressing, for the French mounted arm had virtually ceased to exist by the end of 1812. Great difficulty was also experienced in procuring even a proportion of the required number of horses. Many of the most famous horse-producing areas of Europe lay in Prussia and central Germany, but the coolness and subsequent defection of Prussia and sundry other smaller states deprived the French army of many of its remount sources. This weakness was never remedied, and no small part of Napoleon’s eventual failure in 1813 was due to his understrength cavalry force. Deprived of vital intelligence through the paucity of his cavalry patrols and unable to follow up his victories with the usual hell-for-leather pursuits, Napoleon was to find himself faced by almost insuperable obstacles.

  The general shortage of horses also affected the artillery and administrative services. Although France and the Empire proved capable of providing the gunners and cannon required to make good the losses of 1812, there was no adequate replacement of the horse teams. Nevertheless, the Emperor insisted on increasing the strength of the divisional artillery to offset the inevitable further decline in the quality of his infantry. Similarly, shortage of horses placed the supply services at a grave disadvantage. Supply had never been a strong side of Napoleon’s armies, but in 1813 it was more urgent to formulate effective arrangements than ever before, for the huge mass of green conscripts forming the backbone of the army had no knowledge of the arts of foraging for themselves and were consequently very dependent on issued rations. The requisite logistical support, however, never materialized.