Napoleon’s plan seems to have been formulated on August 12 and 13. The prospects facing him were hardly cheering; his appearance at this time, according to d’Odeleben, was “extremely grave and pensive,” 24 as well it might be. Indeed, the Emperor took the almost unprecedented step of asking his marshals for open comments on his proposals. St. Cyr objected that the power of the Swedes was being underestimated. Marmont, even more prophetically, pointed to the perils inherent in dividing the French effort into two largely disconnected parts: “I greatly fear lest on the day on which Your Majesty gains a great victory, and believes you have won a decisive battle, you may learn you have lost two.”25 However, the Emperor’s plan was based on certain sound premises. If he assumed the offensive in the south, the effect would probably be to cause an Allied retreat deep into Poland whence he would per force have to follow, extending his weak communications and exhausting his undernourished conscripts, who had proved that they could fight but not march. On the other hand, a secondary effort leading to the capture of Berlin would undoubtedly constitute a great moral advantage if successful, and might split the Allies irretrievably. However, to achieve this meant the division of his own forces at a critical time, and the irrational tendencies of a vendetta against Prussia and Bernadotte were undoubtedly present in the plan: Napoleon wanted revenge on his former ally and colleague for their treachery.
79
DRESDEN
The opening events of the campaign proved somewhat different from what Napoleon had foreseen, and this led to considerable hesitation and fluctuation—characteristics rarely displayed by Napoleon during his prime. On reaching Bautzen from Dresden on the 17th, he learned that a large force of Russians was reputedly moving westward from Poland to join the Army of Silesia. His reaction was to change his plans there and then, and to move every available man eastward to destroy the weakened Blücher before this reinforcement could reach him. To cover this move, Vandamme was ordered to Bautzen, and Marshal St. Cyr was instructed to hold on to Dresden at all costs against Schwarzenberg, disputing the neighboring terrain in order to gain time.
The very next day on reaching Görlitz Napoleon changed his mind again, and determined to head for Zittau prior to falling on the flank of Wittgenstein’s 40,000 Russians, still wending their way to join Schwarzenberg. No sooner had this idea been formulated than he equally abruptly reverted to his plan of August 17 when he heard that Blücher was still advancing against Ney, Marmont and Lauriston. The 21st accordingly found the main French army crossing over the River Bobr moving east, but Blücher promptly began to retreat in accordance with the agreed allied strategy. Napoleon of course had no means of telling that this was deliberate policy on the Prussian’s part and continued to follow up.
However, no sooner had he reached Löwenburg on the 22nd than a dispatch from St. Cyr caught up with him. That marshal, faced with the advance of the whole Army of Bohemia toward Dresden, was appealing for urgent and immediate assistance. “The worst feature of our situation, generally speaking, is the scant confidence my generals have in themselves,” grumbled Napoleon in a letter to Malet. “Whenever I am absent, they exaggerate the enemy’s strength.”26 Although he discounted St. Cyr’s anxiety, he decided to return to Dresden in person with Vandamme and the Guard (to be followed by Marmont and Victor), leaving Macdonald in charge of the Silesian operations with strict orders to drive Blücher back on Jauer and thereafter fall back to a strong position behind the Bobr in order to form a defensive flank.
The Allied advance toward Dresden (instead of Leipzig) had been occasioned by Napoleon’s appearance at Zittau on the 20th. This change of march direction caused no little confusion, but by the 22nd, St. Cyr’s outposts near Hellendorf were being forced back toward the city. The following day Wittgenstein reached the southern outskirts, but on the 25th St. Cyr counterattacked so violently that the Allied advance guard was driven back in confusion. As a result of this setback the Allied leaders decided to play safe. They did not know how many men St. Cyr had at his disposal, nor the exact position of Napoleon; they accordingly decided to delay their main attack upon Dresden until the 26th, by which time their disordered columns should have had time to sort themselves out.
Although St. Cyr was thus successful in winning a little time, Napoleon had already decided to change his plans yet again. He suddenly realized that a golden opportunity to rout the Army of Bohemia was presenting itself. With almost all his forces drawn up to the south of Dresden, Schwarzenberg was exposing his communications to a sudden blow through Königstein and Pirna. The Emperor at once set about collecting men from near and far. He hoped to gather the Guard, Ist, IInd and VIth Corps together with the Ist Cavalry Reserve at Stolpen by the 23rd, and then launch an immediate onslaught over the Elbe. Vandamme’s march to Dresden was accordingly canceled. Ney was to ride over from Macdonald’s army to assist in the operation, leaving his IIIrd Corps under the temporary command of General Souham. The communications linking Dresden with Leipzig were to be rerouted along the less exposed east bank of the Elbe. St. Cyr must hold on as best he could at Dresden without direct reinforcement.
If this plan was to succeed, it was vital that St. Cyr should continue to defy and pin the Allies at Dresden until Napoleon’s master stroke could fully develop. It was also important that Macdonald should succeed in keeping Blücher fully occupied away to the east, and that Oudinot should continue to dominate Bernadotte to the south of Berlin. In the event, however, complications arose on all these sectors which eventually ruined the plan’s implementation. Ney started the rout by insisting on setting out for Stolpen with his whole corps and Sébastiani’s cavalry in direct contravention of his orders, thus depriving Macdonald’s Army of the Bobr of almost half its strength and indicating to Blücher that the French pursuit was definitely slackening. Still unaware of this complication, Napoleon reached Stolpen on the morning of the 25th and issued orders for Vandamme to prepare to cross the Elbe.
Then news of a new complication arrived. It appeared that Oudinot had suffered a severe check on the Berlin sector, and that this might place the new French communications along the east bank of the Elbe in danger. Originally Oudinot’s part of the campaign had opened well. Between August 19 and 21 both his and Davout’s advances had met with considerable success, severely shaking Bernadotte’s nerve. Berlin might well have fallen to the French, but Oudinot allowed his columns to become widely separated during the advance, and on the 23rd General Reynier was thrown out of Grössbeeren by a determined counterattack by General Bülow whose resolution was far stronger than Bernadotte’s. This reverse—although comparatively minor—was too much for Oudinot, and he ordered an immediate retreat to Wittenberg, thus partially exposing Napoleon’s north flank; Davout had no alternative but to comply with Oudinot by falling back on Hamburg. The details of these upsets did not reach Napoleon for some time, but the first hints of what had transpired reached headquarters on the 25th, giving him cause for anxiety for the safety of the rerouted Elbe communications. His fast reaction was to order St. Cyr to detach l’Heritier’s Cavalry Corps from the already hard-pressed Dresden garrison and send it northward to Grossenhain in order to form another flank guard. This detachment at such a critical moment did nothing to improve St. Cyr’s confidence.
The Emperor, although he still intended to launch his stroke on the 26th, now became increasingly anxious about the true position at Dresden, and sent off General Gourgaud to inspect the defenses and report on St. Cyr’s capacity to hold out. Late on the night of the 25th Gourgaud returned with anything but a cheering report. In his opinion St. Cyr would crack within twenty-four hours unless immediate assistance was rushed to his aid. This was grave news. On the one hand, Napoleon could not afford to lose Dresden with its massed supplies and army parks; on the other, the chance to launch a decisive blow against the enemy rear was extremely tempting. At one in the morning of the 26th the Emperor decided on a compromise. Vandamme’s corps should proceed with the Pirna attack on its own; the Gua
rd, the reserve cavalry, followed by Marmont and Victor, would march without delay directly to Dresden, the head of the column setting out at 4:00
A.M.27
As it turned out, this compromise robbed Napoleon of what might well have been the decisive victory of the entire campaign. If only he had sent Vandamme to Dresden as originally envisaged, St. Cyr would have been strong enough to withstand Schwarzenberg practically indefinitely, and the manoeuvre sur les derrières could have continued unchecked if a trifle weaker in numbers. Alternatively, had Napoleon left only two corps with Vandamme at Pirna to carry out the envelopment on the 26th, this force would almost certainly have proved strong enough to destroy the Army of Bohemia in conjunction with the pinning effect exerted by the reinforced Dresden garrison. As it was, Vandamme’s single corps proved unequal to the task, and the opportunity slipped Napoleon by. The decision to switch practically the whole army to Dresden cost Napoleon the campaign.
However, the die was cast, and “the army advanced like a torrent”28 toward Dresden. At nine in the morning of August 26, Napoleon entered the city. An hour later the Imperial Guard made its appearance; Marmont and Victor arrived only later that night, too late to take part in the first day’s fighting.
However critical one may be of Napoleon’s many changes of mind, there can be nothing but admiration for the marching performance of his troops. Between August 22 and 26, the conscripts of the main corps covered 120 miles of road. Many fell out by the roadside during the latter stages, it is true, but such sustained marching was nevertheless an amazing achievement. Its effect was to provide Napoleon with 70,000 men at Dresden on the 26th and 120,000 the following day.
The great city of Dresden lies on both banks of the River Elbe. In 1813 the greater mass of buildings stood on the left bank, where a number of large suburbs clustered around the nucleus formed by the old town or Altstadt, divided from it by a ditch and ancient town wall. On the right bank stood the smaller expanse of the Neustadt, also surrounded by a moat and rampart. To both the northeast and southwest stretched areas of higher ground, overlooking the city. Following Dresden’s original occupation by the French earlier in the year, Napoleon had ordered the improvement of its fortifications. These had been hastened forward once the likelihood of Austria entering the war became established, and the fortifications of the Altstadt were at least partially renovated. Great care was taken to place the guns at points where the suburbs would not mask their fire, and powerful batteries were established at Fort Marcolini and on the heights overlooking the Neustadt on the right bank of the river.
Faced with the prospect of an immense Allied attack, Marshal St. Cyr had done everything in his power to extemporize additional fortifications to the south and west. An improvised line sprang up along the edge of the suburbs, consisting of barricaded streets, loopholed houses and areas of palisading. Beyond the suburbs five earthen artillery redoubts had been hastily built, but three of these were not mutually supporting, and another (Number Four) had a very restricted field of fire. Two streams—the Landgraben and the Weisserlitz—ran southward and westward from the Altstadt area, and the French defenders hoped that these water obstacles would help protect their flanks. Until the early morning of the 26th, however, St. Cyr preferred to hold an extensive outpost line running through the outlying villages of Striesen, Strehlen, Plauen and Lobtans. The whole area was scattered with walled gardens, houses and other cover which acted in the defense’s favor, the strongest outlying position being afforded by the Gross Garten, a large park with solid walls lying to the southeast of the city.
The Allies intended to carry out a reconnaissance in force during the morning before launching a full-scale attack on St. Cyr’s positions. Their preliminary moves began at five in the morning but were only slowly developed, and it was after nine before a combined Prusso-Russian force succeeded in clearing the French out of most of the Gross Garten. Soon afterward, the greater part of the French outpost line had been driven in, but all initial attacks on the redoubts were repulsed. Two hours later the French were back in their main positions and a pause ensued as the Allies mustered their 150,000 troops in preparation for the great assault.
The Allied leaders, however, watching the changing scene from the Racknitz Heights, were far from happy or unanimous. From 9:00
A.M. onward they had noticed a stir running through Dresden, and eventually the dreaded cry, “Vive l’Empereur!” reached their ears in the occasional lulls in the artillery bombardment. Napoleon had arrived! The Tsar felt that the action should be broken off at once, in compliance with the agreed policy of avoiding fighting Napoleon in person. The Emperor of Austria refused to disclose his mind, but the King of Prussia, the one-time ninny of 1806, was extremely outspoken in favor of fighting Napoleon there and then on such favorable numerical terms. While the matter was being thrashed out, Schwarzenberg was instructed to postpone the main attack. But the passage of orders down the chain of command was slow, and before the new decision could be transmitted the three-gun signal for the opening of the assault had been fired and the masses of the Allied army set themselves in motion, while their aghast commanders in chief stared disbelievingly through their telescopes and swore roundly.
Since his arrival at Dresden, Napoleon had conducted a whirlwind inspection of the front and visited the King of Saxony. He then busied himself forming three special columns under Murat, Ney and Mortier. The conduct of the defensive action was left in St. Cyr’s hands.
All afternoon the battle raged as the Allies tried to storm their way into Dresden. One or two of the redoubts were silenced or passed temporarily into Allied hands, but otherwise St. Cyr’s line held on all sectors. The French batteries firing from over the river caused fearful havoc on Wittgenstein’s wing. Then, shortly after 5:30
P.M., Napoleon judged that the moment had come for a counterstroke. On the southern sector, Mortier stormed forward at the head of two divisions of the Guard, and soon retook the Gross Garten from Generals Kleist and Wittgenstein. In the center, Marshal Ney and his temporary command of two divisions of the Old Guard were even more successful: the Allied troops facing their onslaught became so shaken that Schwarzenberg was forced to commit his Austrian grenadiers from reserve to save the situation, and by nightfall the French had regained almost all of St. Cyr’s original outpost line. Napoleon personally supervised these successful operations. “I know of no example in war which furnishes clearer evidence of how the numbers and morale of troops, important features as they are, may be so overmatched by the weight of one person of genius,”29 comments von Wärtenburg. As darkness gathered Napoleon returned to Dresden to make plans for the morrow; simultaneously the leading troops of Victor’s and Marmont’s hard-marching corps reached the eastern gates of the city.
With the opportune arrival of these reinforcements, Napoleon’s numerical position was improving. He would be able to field 120,000 troops on the 27th, while the Allied strength only rose overnight to 170,000—an increase of merely 12,000 men. The reason for this scanty Allied reinforcement was largely bound up with events at Pirna during the 26th. General Vandamme had found little difficulty in forcing a crossing over the Elbe, and had severely handled Eugen of Württemberg’s corps covering the Allied flank. As the French could deploy 40,000 men to Eugen’s mere 12,500, it clearly behoved the Allied leaders to reinforce their flank, and this was done by diverting Ostermann’s command (26,000) to the scene. However, the Allies had great hopes that General Klenau with the 21,000 men of their westernmost column would be up in time for the reopening of the battle. In the event this hope proved vain.
The Battle of Dresden, August 26-27, 1813
The Allied plan for the battle on the 27th was to mass two thirds of their strength in the center, leaving Generals Bianchi and Wittgenstein with approximately 25,000 apiece to hold the left and right wings respectively. Klenau, however, was expected to reinforce the left flank to the north of the Weisseritz River on his arrival. For his part, Napoleon was planning a hold
ing action in the center and a double envelopment of the enemy flanks, that against the enemy’s left being closely associated with a wider advance by Vandamme to sever their line of retreat toward Peterswalde. To this end he drew practically every available soldier into the line. Murat with 35,000 men (Victor and Latour-Maubourg) was placed on the French right; Marmont and St. Cyr were told to hold the center with 50,000 men (backed by the sole French reserve—the Old Guard infantry); Ney and Mortier, aided by Nansouty’s cavalry, massed the 35,000 remaining troops (mostly belonging to the Guard) on the left.
Torrential rain fell for the greater part of the night, converting the Weisseritz River into a formidable obstacle. This proved greatly to the Allies’ disadvantage when the battle reopened, for Napoleon knew the ground far better than his opponents and was aware that the Allied left would become completely severed from the rest of their army should they lose the crucial bridge at Plauen.
The French attack on the Allied right opened at six in the morning. Mortier and Nansouty, supported by Ney, quickly drove Wittgenstein’s sodden and dispirited troops out of the Blasewitz woods and began to bend back the right of the Allied line. The garrison of Seidnitz repulsed the French assaults for some considerable time, but the Allies were eventually forced back a further mile. A lull in the French movement then ensued as St. Cyr’s artillery pounded the enemy strongpoints.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 111