The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  Napoleon meantime had determined to shorten his line preparatory to retreating. Leaving a strong outpost line holding their original ground, at 2:00

  A.M. on the morning of the 18th the French corps stationed to the south of Leipzig pulled back a couple of miles amidst pouring rain. Imperial Headquarters were newly situated at Stotteritz. Orders were given for additional bridges to be built at Lindenau—but it was now too late for this to be easily practicable.

  It is only necessary here to outline the day of confused fighting that followed. The Allies were slow to move back into contact, and during the morning battle the only heavy engagement took place on Poniatowski’s section, where by dint of magnificent fighting the Polish leader held his own and repulsed Hesse-Homburg from Connewitz. On the western sector, Bertrand experienced no difficulty in smashing Gyulai’s troops for the second time, and by midmorning IVth Corps was well on its way toward the Saale and its vital bridges. Events on the northern sector were delayed by the nonappearance of Bernadotte, who was still dragging his feet in a most contemptible manner. Over on the eastern side, Macdonald and Sébastiani wheeled back expertly to link with Reynier and thus complete the reduced French perimeter when Bennigsen’s large forces moved up into position.

  During the afternoon, the pace of events quickened. There was more heavy fighting near Lössnig, but once again Poniatowski and Augereau managed to hold on to Connewitz while on their left Victor and Lauriston successfully fought off Barclay. On the eastern sector, however, Bennigsen’s strong forces made considerable headway against Macdonald and Sébastiani, driving them from Zuckelhausen, Holzhausen and then Zweinaundorf, but their attempts to seize Stotteritz were repulsed after a bitter struggle. A little later, however, Bennigsen combined with the latecomer Bernadotte for a new onslaught against Sébastiani and Reynier, and eventually succeeded in taking both Molkau and Paunsdorf.

  Faced with the possible collapse of this sector, Napoleon ordered into action both the Young and Old Guards. Paunsdorf passed back into French hands, but was soon afterward evacuated when Ney (the overall sector commander) decided to pull back the line to Schönefeld, Sellerhausen and Stuntz. The situation seemed well in hand again, but at 4:30

  P.M. two brigades of Saxons and a battery of artillery forming part of Reynier’s corps defected to the Allies, cheered on by the watching French troops who mistakenly believed they were launching an attack. This desertion created a gap in the French line.

  Shortly before sunset, Bernadotte and Bennigsen launched a new attack. Langeron’s corps (attached to Bernadotte’s army for the day) eventually managed to drive Marmont out of Schönefeld, and VIth Corps had no option but to retire to Reudnitz close by the eastern outskirts of Leipzig. The Russians also drove forward, and by the time the battle tailed off the French forces to the north and east had been forced back on the city suburbs; however, to the south, the French still held the line from Connewitz to Probsthayda and Stotteritz.

  It was by this time absolutely clear to Napoleon that the Leipzig position was untenable. There had still been no clearcut decision, but all the advantages were now clearly in the Allied favor. French ammunition reserves were falling dangerously low and the toll of casualties was mounting. Returning to Leipzig, Napoleon dictated orders for the retreat. During the 18th what remained of the trains and part of the cavalry had already crossed the Lindenau causeway, but now it was decreed that the Old Guard, followed by Oudinot’s corps of the New Guard, the 4th Cavalry Corps, the IXth and IInd corps d’armée and the 2nd Cavalry Corps should fall back through Leipzig in that order, covered by the rest of the army. In recognition of his fine services on the southern sector, Poniatowski was awarded his marshal’s baton on the field.

  In the early hours of the 19th, the French began to thin out from the southern sector of the perimeter. Although sounds of movement were reported to the Allied generals, no steps apart from a little local patrolling were taken to clarify the situation. The withdrawal continued unhindered; 30,000 troops (the VIIth, VIIIth and XIth Corps) were designated as the French rear guard, with orders to hold on to Leipzig until the rest of the army had crossed to safety.

  Only at seven o’clock did the Allies begin to investigate seriously, and by that time the withdrawal had been proceeding for almost five hours. Abortive attempts at negotiation earned the French a further respite and it was not until after ten o’clock that the struggle in the suburbs really commenced. Napoleon crossed the causeway to Lindenau about an hour later, passing through crowded streets and scenes of growing disorder. However, there was no immediate cause for alarm as Oudinot and the rear guard were easily keeping the Allies at bay well away from the causeway. The withdrawal consequently continued with hardly an interruption, and it appeared that Napoleon was on the point of bringing off a model combined evacuation and river-crossing in the face of the enemy fit to rival the celebrated passage of the Berezina in 1812.

  Unfortunately, however, Napoleon delegated responsibility for preparing the causeway for demolition to an unreliable general officer of the Guard named Dulauloy. He in turn passed on the task to a Colonel Montfort, who soon decided that the whistle of musketballs was coming uncomfortably close and quitted the scene, leaving one miserable corporal in charge of the demolition charges. This unfortunate individual panicked at one o’clock and without the least need blew the bridge in spite of the fact that it was still crowded with French troops. This criminal mistake turned a successful withdrawal operation into a disaster, for the rear guard was trapped in Leipzig with no means of making good their escape. Oudinot managed to swim his way over the Elster, but Poniatowski, handicapped by his wounds was drowned attempting the same feat—a mere twelve hours after being appointed a marshal. The trapped troops did their best to continue resistance, but by late afternoon the survivors were compelled to surrender, Marshal Lauriston and General Reynier among them. And so the hard-fought battle of Leipzig came to a close.

  Over the four-day period the Allies lost probably 54,000 killed and wounded, although accurate figures are extremely hard to calculate. As for the French, their battle casualties were probably in excess of 38,000, but a further 30,000 fell into Allied hands during the 19th. Additionally, 5,000 German troops defected to the enemy during the battle. The French losses included six general officers killed, a further twelve wounded, and no less than 36 fell into Allied hands as prisoners of war, a fate also shared by the King of Saxony. In terms of matériel, Napoleon abandoned at least 325 cannon, most of his trains and transport columns and large quantities of military stores.

  This long battle was the severest of the Napoleonic Wars save only for Borodino; over 200,000 rounds of artillery ammunition were discharged, and by the 19th the French stocks were down to a mere 20,000. The ultimate result was to destroy what was left of the French Empire east of the Rhine. Bavaria had already deserted Napoleon’s cause; Saxony (apart only from Dresden where St. Cyr and Löbau held out until November 11) was occupied by Allied forces and forced into a form of agreement with the Allies. Within a few days the ruler of Württemberg was forced to follow Bavaria’s lead, and this event inevitably led to the remaining principalities of the Confederation following suit. Militarily, Leipzig dealt a heavy blow to Napoleon’s martial reputation, and eventually destroyed over two thirds of France’s hard-found forces outside Spain. Politically, it marked the emergence of Prussia as a leading power in Germany once more, and prepared the way for the birth of modern Europe.

  81

  BACK TO THE NATURAL FRONTIERS

  Napoleon’s retreat to the Rhine was on the whole a remarkably successful operation. On the one hand the Allies were still sufficiently daunted by the magic of the Emperor’s reputation to conduct their pursuit of his columns respectfully, while Schwarzenberg was not a general of sufficient caliber to trap the French before they could find sanctuary. For his part, Napoleon was retiring along his main set of communications towards Frankfurt and Mainz, absorbing the supplies and munitions of his depots on the way
. On October 23 some 100,000 French troops (many of them in ragged condition, it is true, but by no means in a state of utter dissolution) reached Erfurt, and much new equipment was issued from its huge arsenals before the retreat was recommenced on the 24th. The discipline of some units began to break down, and large numbers began to maraud, but apart from nuisance-raids by bands of Cossacks, light cavalry and partisans, the retreat was not seriously interrupted. However, Blücher’s army was marching westward on a parallel route to the north, Schwarzenberg’s Austrians and Russians were pressing in upon the rear, several sharp rear-guard actions had taken place over the previous week, and so it behoved Napoleon to continue his retreat toward the Rhine.

  As the days passed, there was an inevitable increase in the disorganization of the Grande Armée. An Allied observer noted that “the numbers of corpses and dead horses increased every day. Thousands of soldiers, sinking from hunger and fatigue, remained behind, unable to reach a hospital. The woods for several miles round were full of stragglers and worn out and sick soldiers. Guns and wagons were found everywhere.”40

  Nevertheless, there was a spark of fire still left in the defeated army, as was convincingly demonstrated in the last days of October. A force of 43,000 Bavarians and Austrians under General Wrede, newly committed to the Allied cause, had rushed northward from the Danube into Franconia to block the French line of retreat. In due course this force reached Hanau, a few miles to the east of Frankfurt-on-Main, Napoleon’s next sanctuary. Through a complete misappreciation of the situation, Wrede came to the conclusion that the Emperor and the main body of his army were retiring along the more northerly road to Coblenz, and that his force would only be faced by a dispirited flank column of 20,000 men at the most. Confident of success after several days of snappy skirmishing, the Bavarian general placed his troops in hastily selected positions on the 30th, with the River Kinzig behind his center and his right wing in isolation to its south with only a single bridge linking it to the main body.

  Initially Napoleon had only the 17,000 men of Macdonald’s infantry and Sébastiani’s cavalry available to deal with this obstruction, but the French were able to advance to close contact virtually unseen owing to the dense forests lying to the east of Wrede’s position. The Emperor soon decided to attack the Bavarian left with all available manpower. By midday, the woods facing the Bavarian center had been cleared by Victor and Macdonald, and General Drouot soon thereafter found a track through the trees towards Wrede’s left capable of taking cannon. Within three hours, Grenadiers of the Old Guard had cleared the approaches to the French target, and Drouot assembled 50 guns backed by Sébastiani and the Guard cavalry. A brisk cannonade soon silenced Wrede’s 28 cannon, and then the French horsemen swept forward against Wrede’s cavalry guarding his left. The Bavarians gave way before the onslaught. Attacked in flank by the wheeling French cavalry, Wrede’s center was forced to try and cut its way out to the left, skirting the banks of the Kinzig, and suffered a heavy toll of casualties in the process. His right wing became hopelessly involved trying to cross the single bridge, and proved incapable of influencing the issue of the main battle. Hundreds were drowned in the Kinzig before Wrede was able to rally the remnants of his forces on a line running from the Lamboi bridge to the township of Hanau. The next day the French occupied Hanau itself with scant difficulty.

  Napoleon had no intention of wasting further time with Wrede; as the main road to Frankfurt was now reopened, the bulk of the French continued westward without delay, leaving a rear guard to prevent Wrede from attempting anything further. The battle and the skirmishes that preceded and followed it cost Wrede over 9,000 men. The French losses in action were considerably lower, but between October 28 and 31 probably as many as 10,000 stragglers fell into Allied hands.

  Nevertheless, the main body of the French army reached Frankfurt on 2nd November. Here they were virtually safe, for their rear bases at Mainz and the mighty barrier of the Rhine lay less than 20 miles away. However, there is no possibility of minimizing the scale of the French disaster. Although Davout was still firmly positioned on the Lower Elbe, the French Campaign of 1813 had ended in complete failure. Perhaps 70,000 combatants and 40,000 stragglers reached the Rhine in safety, but almost 400,000 troops had been lost. It was true that no less than 100,000 of these still remained scattered in isolated garrisons and detachments from Danzig to Dresden, but there was no longer the least chance of their surviving or being saved, and one by one these outposts began to capitulate. St. Cyr and the Dresden garrison (two corps in strength), after conducting a gallant defense, were induced to surrender on terms on November II. General Schwarzenberg subsequently refused to ratify the agreement, but by then St. Cyr could do nothing but surrender unconditionally. The Allies later played the same disreputable trick against the garrisons of Danzig and Torgau. So the Campaign of 1813 came to its close, with Napoleon and a remnant of his army preparing to defend the natural frontiers of France, his Empire in Germany vanished forever.

  What reasons underlay this new cataclysm? Here it is possible to summarize only the main factors involved. We have already noted how the quality of the French forces (both horse and foot) was markedly inferior in quality to the armies of earlier years, but this was not in itself decisive. Far more significant were the deficiencies of the French command system. These were partly due to Napoleon’s shortcomings, and partly to the weaknesses of his subordinates. In the period following the breakdown of the armistice, Napoleon was trying to coordinate the control of half a million men—a task which was simply beyond the powers of any one man with only the aid of the rudimentary communications systems of the day, as the experiences of 1812 should have taught him.

  As a result—again as in 1812—the marshals inevitably found themselves bearing greater responsibilities than they were used to on distant sectors of the front. That they practically always muffed their opportunities was partly due to Napoleon’s failure to train up his subordinates for the exigencies of independent command, and partly to the rapidly dwindling enthusiasm of the marshalate. To compensate his underlings for their complete obedience and subservience the Emperor had showered them with riches, titles and estates; by 1813, the recipients were not wholly unnaturally becoming desirous of enjoying these benefits in a more peaceful setting. Many of the disappointments of 1813 can be explained in these terms.

  The rank and file of the extemporized French armies achieved wonders on at least three occasions during the long campaign, but these successes to some extent contributed to Napoleon’s undoing for he came increasingly to rely on his “Marie-Louises” and decrepit veterans achieving the impossible time after time. Many of the Emperor’s strategic plans were as cunning as of old, but he lacked the means to implement them successfully—and he was very slow in appreciating this. His raw troops could not march and fight incessantly without adequate supplies, and his staff could not operate efficiently without adequate intelligence. Even the Emperor’s funds of energy, both physical and mental, were showing signs of exhaustion; his acceptance of the armistice after two victories is probably one sign of this. Napoleon, in fact, was relying on an unlikely combination of miracles and errors to achieve his total victory; miracles of performance and endurance on the part of his men—errors of judgment and coordination on the part of his foes. Neither lived up to his most optimistic expectations.

  The Allies certainly made mistakes, and several times as we have seen these brought them to the brink of disaster. Their command system was extremely chaotic and poorly coordinated. Selfish national interests often replaced the common weal during their incessant councils; personal rivalries and jealousies dogged almost every move. Nevertheless, after the sharp lessons of Lützen and Bautzen in the first half of the campaign, they somehow hit upon the correct strategy for bringing Napoleon to account By employing their vast numbers of men and cannon against the secondary sectors of the French front and by avoiding as far as was possible a direct head-on clash with “the Ogre” himself, they disrupt
ed plan after plan and severely shook the balance of French operations as a whole. There were times (as at Dresden) when they inadvisedly reverted to their old methods and suffered predictable defeat in consequence, but once they had driven Napoleon and his tiring lieutenants back on Leipzig and successfully linked up their four armies (those of Silesia, Bohemia, the North and Poland), the game was practically in their pockets. Napoleon fought with all his old tenacity, ferocity and skill, but in the end sheer numbers told in the Allied favor.

  Napoleon, indeed, was guilty of several severe political and military miscalculations which between them underlay his failure. He tended to despise his opponents; this was justifiable in the case of Bernadotte, but he completely underestimated the degree of Blücher’s hatred for him or of the Tsar’s persistence. He never expected that his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, would turn fully against him; he never appreciated how sick were the German States of the French yoke, or how unreal were his expectations of military support from those quarters. He left thousands of invaluable fighting men and several of his best generals south of the Pyrenees. But worst of all, he never realized that there was a new spirit abroad in Europe; he still believed he was dealing with the old feudal monarchies which in fact his earlier victories had largely swept away. France was no longer the only country to be imbued with a genuine national inspiration or equipped with a truly national army. France’s foes had at last learned valuable lessons from their earlier defeats, both political and military, and were now learning how to employ their new-found strength against a rapidly tiring opponent. In the words of General Fuller, for Napoleon the battle of Leipzig was “a second Trafalgar, this time on land; his initiative was gone.”41