Napoleon

by Andrew Roberts

  By early October Allied forces were moving across the French lines of communication at will, and there were several days when Napoleon could neither send nor receive letters. The situation worsened significantly on October 6 when Bavaria declared war against France. ‘Bavaria will not march seriously against us,’ a philosophical Emperor told Fain, ‘she will lose too much with the full triumph of Austria and the disaster of France. She knows well that the one is her natural enemy, and the other is her necessary support.’35 The next day Wellington crossed the Bidasoa river out of Spain, leading the first foreign army onto French soil since Admiral Hood had vacated Toulon twenty years earlier. With Blücher and 64,000 men crossing the Elbe, and the 200,000-strong Army of Bohemia marching towards Leipzig, Napoleon left Saint-Cyr in Dresden and headed northwards with 120,000 men, hoping to chase Blücher back over the Elbe and then return to fight Schwarzenberg, while all the time posing a credible threat to Berlin.

  By October 10 the three Allied armies under Schwarzenberg, Blücher and Bernadotte, totalling 325,000 men, were converging upon Leipzig, hoping to trap Napoleon’s much smaller army there. ‘There will inevitably be a great battle at Leipzig,’ Napoleon wrote to Ney at 5 a.m. on October 13, the same day he discovered that the Bavarian army had joined the Austrians and were now threatening the Rhine.36 Despite being greatly outnumbered (he could muster a little over 200,000 men), Napoleon decided to fight for the city which the British journalist Frederic Shoberl described the following year as ‘undoubtedly the first commercial city of Germany, and the great Exchange of the Continent’.37 He drew his men up in ranks of two rather than three, after Dr Larrey persuaded him that many of the head wounds he was seeing weren’t self-inflicted, as Napoleon had suspected, but were the result of men reloading and discharging their muskets close to the heads of comrades kneeling in the ranks in front of them. ‘One of the advantages of this new disposition’, Napoleon said, ‘will be to cause the enemy to believe that the army is one third stronger than it is in reality.’38

  On October 14, as the Imperial Guard arrived from Düben, Napoleon spent the night in the house of a M. Wester in Leipzig’s eastern suburb of Reudnitz. As usual the maréchal de logis had chalked the names of the generals who occupied each room on their doors, and a fire was immediately made up in Napoleon’s room, ‘as His Majesty was very fond of warmth’.39 The Emperor then chatted to Wester’s chief clerk.

  NAPOLEON: ‘What is your master?’

  CLERK: ‘He is in business, Sire.’

  NAPOLEON: ‘In what line?’

  CLERK: ‘He is a banker.’

  NAPOLEON: (smiling) ‘Oho! Then he is worth a plum.’

  CLERK: ‘Begging your Majesty’s pardon, indeed he is not.’

  NAPOLEON: ‘Well then, perhaps he may be worth two?’

  They discussed discount bills, interest rates, the clerk’s wages, the present (woeful) state of business, and the owner’s family. ‘During the whole conversation the Emperor was in very good humour, smiled frequently, and took a great deal of snuff,’ recalled Colonel von Odeleben.40 When he left, he paid 200 francs for the pleasure of staying there, which, as one of his aides-de-camp noted, ‘was certainly not the usual custom’.

  The next day Schwarzenberg’s 200,000 men came into contact with Murat to the south, spending the whole day in patrols and skirmishes while Blücher advanced along the Saale and Elster rivers. Riding a cream-coloured mare that day, Napoleon distributed eagles and colours to three battalions. Drums beat as each was taken from its box and unfurled, to be given to the officers. ‘In a clear solemn tone, but not very loud, which might be distinguished by the musical term mezza voce’, a spectator recalled Napoleon saying:

  ‘Soldiers of the 26th regiment of light infantry, I entrust you with the French eagle. It will be your rallying point. You swear to abandon it but with life? You swear never to suffer an insult to France. You swear to prefer death to dishonour. You swear!’ He laid particular emphasis upon this last word, pronounced in a peculiar tone, and with great energy. This was the signal at which all the officers raised their swords, and all the soldiers, filled with enthusiasm, exclaimed with common consent, in a loud voice, accompanied by the ordinary acclamations: ‘We swear!’

  This ceremony used to be attended by band music, but no longer: ‘Musicians had become scarce, since the greater part of them had been buried in the snows of Russia.’41

  • • •

  Among the half-million men who fought at Leipzig in ‘The Battle of the Nations’ – the largest battle in European history up to that moment – were French, Germans (on both sides), Russians, Swedes, Italians, Poles, every nationality within the Austrian Empire and even a British rocket section.42 The battle was fought over three days, on the 16th, 18th and 19th of October 1813. Napoleon had almost the whole of the French field army under him, comprising 203,100 men, of whom only 28,000 were cavalry, and 738 guns. Those absent were Saint-Cyr’s corps at Dresden (30,000 men), Rapp’s besieged at Danzig (36,000), Davout’s at Hamburg (40,000) and some 90,000 who were in hospital. In total by the last day of the battle the Allies had been able to bring up a total of 362,000 men and 1,456 guns, almost twice as many as the French.43 The battlefield was vast, cut in two by the Elster and Pleisse rivers, with open plains to the east and hills that provided artillery platforms and screened troops behind them.*

  Captain Adolphe de Gauville, who was wounded at Leipzig, recalled that on the dark, gloomy and rainy morning of October 16, ‘at 5 a.m. Napoleon had an armchair and a table brought to him in a field. He had a great many maps. He was giving his orders to a great number of officers and generals, who came to receive them one after the other.’44 Napoleon calculated that he could engage 138,000 men against Schwarzenberg’s force of 100,000 to the south of the city and knew he had one or at best two days to subdue him before Blücher, Bernadotte and Bennigsen arrived from the north-west, north and east respectively. (Bennigsen’s advance troops – the Cossacks – arrived on the battlefield on the first day of combat, and the main body late on the 17th, ready for action the next day. Bernadotte’s troops also arrived then.)

  The battle began early on the 16th when the Prussians took the village of Mark-Kleeberg from Poniatowski’s Poles in bitter street fighting made worse by racial hatred. Wachau was relatively lightly held and fell quickly to Russian forces backed by a Prussian brigade, but any attempt to push beyond it was stopped by French artillery. When Napoleon arrived there sometime between noon and 1 p.m. he formed a battery of 177 guns, under whose heavy cannonade he launched a major counter-attack, forcing the Russians back onto the Leipzig Plain, where there was no cover and grapeshot cut many of them down.

  The Austrian General Ignaz Gyulai threatened Napoleon’s only escape route to the west – if one became necessary – so General Henri Bertrand’s corps was detached to protect it, significantly weakening Napoleon’s main attack. Gyulai became fixated on capturing Lindenau, near the road, and a real crisis developed in the late afternoon when the Austrians, despite strong artillery fire, stormed the burning village. Bertrand fell back and regrouped before counter-attacking at 5 p.m. He managed to clear the road completely, but Gyulai had made an important contribution by pinning down Bertrand’s corps.

  At 10 a.m. Klenau advanced on Liebertwolkwitz, which fell quite quickly except for the church and the northern end of the village. A swift counter-attack pushed the Austrians straight back out again. General Gérard was wounded leading his largely Italian division against Klein-Posna before Mortier brought up his Young Guard divisions to secure the area. By 11 a.m. the Allies were back at their start lines, exhausted and denuded of reserves. Napoleon, surprised by their aggression, had been forced to move his own reserves in sooner than he would have liked. Friant’s Old Guard took the Meusdorf sheep farm, and two divisions of the Young Guard under Oudinot and the mass of reserve cavalry concentrated behind Wachau.

  As the fog lifted across the batt
lefield, Napoleon could assess his clear superiority. Seeing an opportunity to split the Allied line at its weakest point at Wachau, he threw Macdonald’s corps in at noon to turn the Allied right flank. At about 2 p.m. he personally encouraged the 22nd Légère to storm the heights dominating Gross-Posna, known as the Kolmberg, teasing them with the taunt that they were merely standing at the base under heavy fire with their arms crossed.45 Although they took the heights, their movement was spotted by Alexander, Frederick William and Schwarzenberg, who sent in the Prussian reserves to stop them. (As earlier in the campaign, the two monarchs were now there in merely advisory and morale capacities, with the military decisions being taken by the professional soldiers.)

  Out on the plain, Murat massed cavalry between Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz in dense columns to support Oudinot and Poniatowski. At 2.30 p.m. Bordessoulle’s cavalry led the charge in the centre, breaking through the Prince of Württemberg’s infantry and getting in among the artillerymen of the Allied grand battery. Eighteen squadrons, totalling 2,500 sabres, charged the Russian Guard Cavalry Division and overthrew it, heading on towards the Allied headquarters. Yet the French infantry failed to follow up this charge, and after Bordessoulle’s force was slowed by marshy ground it had to retreat, and took a good deal of punishment as it did so, including from friendly fire.

  Napoleon had been waiting for Marmont to arrive from the north but by 3 p.m. he decided to launch his general assault with the troops he had at hand. He pushed his artillery well forward to batter the enemy centre, launched continual cavalry charges and counter-charges, ordered infantry volleys at close range and brought the Allied line almost to breaking point, but fresh Austrian troops, some of whom waded up to their waists in the Pleisse to enter the action faster, and the sheer stubbornness of the Russian and Prussian formations prevented a French breakthrough.

  Hearing sustained cannon-fire from the direction of Möckern, Napoleon galloped to the northern part of the battlefield, where Blücher had engaged Marmont. Savage hand-to-hand fighting took place in the narrow streets of Möckern, and when Marmont tried to get onto the heights beyond the village Yorck unleashed a cavalry charge supported by infantry. Marmont’s men were forced back inside Leipzig. Ney had been falling back steadily towards the city, abandoning one strong position after another instead of delaying Blücher’s and Bernadotte’s advance.

  With the Allies closing in on three sides, Napoleon was forced to spread the French attacks too thinly to be decisive at any one point. By 5 p.m. both armies were ready to end the first day’s fighting. The casualties were great, amounting to around 25,000 French and 30,000 Allies.46 That night, he ought to have slipped away along the road to the west, extricating himself before Schwarzenberg received massive reinforcements. Yet instead he allowed the whole of October 17 to pass by in rest and recuperation, requesting an armistice (which was refused) and sending the senior Austrian general captured that day, Maximilian von Merveldt, to Emperor Francis with a crudely anti-Russian message. ‘It’s not too much for Austria, France, and even Prussia to stop on the Vistula the overflowing of a people half nomad, essentially conquering, whose huge empire spreads from here all the way to China,’ he said, adding ‘I have to finish by making sacrifices: I know it; I am ready to make them.’47 The sacrifices he told Fain he would be willing to make for peace included an immediate renunciation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, Illyria and the Rhine Confederation. He was also willing to consider independence for Spain, Holland and the Hanseatic Towns, although that could only be part of a general settlement that also included Britain. For Italy he wanted ‘the integrity and independence of the Kingdom’, which sounded ambiguous, unlike his actual offer to Austria to evacuate Germany and withdraw behind the Rhine.48 Francis did not reply to the offer for three weeks, by which time the situation had radically altered to Napoleon’s disadvantage.49

  Wellington later said that if Napoleon had withdrawn from Leipzig earlier, the Allies couldn’t have ventured to approach the Rhine.50 But to retreat from Leipzig without an armistice would effectively mean abandoning tens of thousands of men in the eastern fortress garrisons. Napoleon feared that the Saxons and Württembergers would then fall away from him as the Bavarians already had done. So instead of retreating towards Erfurt he organized his munitions supply – the French artillery was to fire 220,000 cannonballs during the battle, three times more even than at Wagram – and concentrated his whole army in a semicircle on the north-east and southern sides of the city, while sending Bertrand and Mortier to secure the exit routes should an escape become necessary.51 He succumbed to a heavy bout of influenza on the night of the 17th, but he had decided to fight it out. However, the arrival of Bernadotte’s and Bennigsen’s divisions meant that while Napoleon had been reinforced by the addition of 14,000 men of Reynier’s corps since the start of the battle, Schwarzenberg had been reinforced by over 100,000 men.52

  After riding out towards Lindenau at about 8 a.m. on October 18, Napoleon spent most of the day at the tobacco mill at Thonberg, where the Old Guard and Guard cavalry were held in reserve.* By that time, the sun was shining and the armies were ready to engage. For the renewal of the battle Schwarzenberg had organized six great converging attacks, comprising 295,000 men and 1,360 guns. He hoped to take Connewitz, Mark-Kleeberg, Probstheida, Zuckelhausen, Holzhausen, Lindenau and Taucha before crushing the French army in Leipzig itself.

  When Bennigsen arrived later in the morning he captured Holzhausen and its neighbouring villages from Macdonald. To Macdonald’s left were Reynier’s reinforcements, who included 5,400 Saxons and 700 Württembergers, but at 9 a.m. these fresh arrivals suddenly deserted to the Allies with thirty-eight guns, leaving a yawning gap in Napoleon’s line that General Jean Defrance’s heavy cavalry division attempted to fill.53 The Saxon battery actually turned around, unlimbered and began firing on the French lines. They had fought for Napoleon for seven years since deserting the Prussians after Jena, and such cool treachery was bad for French morale.

  Von Bülow soon captured the village of Paunsdorf. Napoleon threw in units from the Old and Young Guard to recapture it, but the sheer weight of Prussian numbers forced even these elite units out. Probstheida, defended by Victor and Lauriston, became a veritable fortress that could not be seized at all that day despite the Tsar taking a close personal interest in its capture. Two Prussian brigades tried three times without success, and the 3rd Russian Infantry Division had to fall back sullenly behind its screen of light infantry. Napoleon was so concerned by the weight of these attacks that he pushed Curial’s Old Guard Division up in support, but was thankful they weren’t needed.

  North of Leipzig a battle raged for Schönefeld between Marmont and Langeron, a French émigré general fighting in the Russian army. By bringing up all the guns of Souham’s corps to add to his, Marmont managed to oppose Langeron’s 180 cannon with 137 of his own. The ground between these two enormous batteries was swept clear: six French generals were killed or wounded in cannonading that carried on until nightfall, when Marmont evacuated back to his entrenchments outside Leipzig. While Langeron engaged Marmont, Blücher pushed for the suburbs of Leipzig. Ney launched two divisions in a counter-attack, contesting the village of Sellerhausen. It was in this engagement that the British fired their noisy and highly lethal Congreve rockets with powerful effect, not least on French morale. Although rockets had been known about for sixteen years, and their efficacy had been attested at Copenhagen in 1807, Napoleon hadn’t developed a rocket capacity of his own.

  Napoleon personally led some Old Guard and Guard cavalry over to counter-attack at Zwei-Naundorf at about 4.30 p.m., standing aside only at the last minute as they went into action. But the Allies fought them to a standstill and a tide of Russians and Prussians drove the French steadily backwards. ‘Here, I saw the Emperor under a hail of enemy canister,’ recalled Johann Röhrig, a company sergeant-major of French voltigeurs. ‘His face was pale and as cold as marble. Only occasionally did an express
ion of rage cross his face. He saw that all was lost. We were only fighting for our withdrawal.’54 After having to pay 2 crowns (that is, six francs, or three days’ wages) for eight potatoes from some Old Guard grenadiers, Röhrig wrote of that day:

  I cannot understand that such a clever commander as the Emperor could let us starve. It would have been a very different life in that army if sufficient food had been available. And yet, no one who has not experienced it can have any idea of the enthusiasm which burst forth among the half-starved, exhausted soldiers when the Emperor was there in person. If all were demoralized and he appeared, his presence was like an electric shock. All shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and everyone charged blindly into the fire.55

  Each side lost around 25,000 men in the bitter cannonades and hand-to-hand fighting that day.

  • • •

  On the morning of October 19, Napoleon finally decided that the army should retreat. He told Poniatowski, to whom he had awarded a marshal’s baton three days earlier, ‘Prince, you will defend the southern suburbs.’ ‘Sire, I have so few men,’ replied the Pole. ‘Well, you will defend yourself with what you have!’ said Napoleon. ‘Ah! Sire,’ answered the newly minted marshal, ‘we will hold on! We are all ready to die for your Majesty.’56 Later that day, he was as good as his word. Napoleon left the city at about 10 a.m. after visiting the King of Saxony, whose battlefield commander had not defected to the Allies as so many of his men had. ‘Napoleon had the appearance of composure on his countenance when he quitted Leipzig,’ recalled Colonel von Odeleben, ‘riding slowly through St Peter’s Gate, but he was bathed in sweat, a circumstance which might proceed from bodily exertion and mental disturbance combined.’57 The retreat was chaotic, with ‘Ammunition wagons, gendarmes, artillery, cows and sheep, women, grenadiers, post-chaises, the sound, the wounded, and the dying, all crowded together, and pressed on in such confusion that it was hardly possible to hope that the French could continue their march, much less be capable of defending themselves.’58 The confusion worsened considerably once the Allied assault on the city began at 10.30 a.m.