Napoleon

by Adam Zamoyski

  Napoleon’s appearance there exerted the old magic on the troops. ‘The joy of the army was extraordinary and each of us, forgetting the sufferings we had experienced, was already looking forward to victory and, after that, to the longed-for peace,’ recalled a lieutenant of the Lancers of the Vistula. ‘The army is superb,’ General Bertrand wrote to his wife Fanny. Colonel Pelleport found his men ‘confident, looking forward to meeting the enemy’.30

  Napoleon advanced swiftly, making for Leipzig. The allied army attacked his right flank at Lützen on 2 May, where Ney held it off while Napoleon doubled back to take charge and lead the young conscripts into the attack. They showed remarkable enthusiasm and advanced on the enemy guns fearlessly, throwing the allies back in disorder. The victory was not decisive, as shortage of cavalry prevented Napoleon from pursuing the enemy and turning it into a rout. Although he trumpeted the news of a great victory for propaganda purposes, he was not satisfied. To Eugène he admitted that in view of the insignificant number of prisoners taken it was no victory at all.31

  Alexander, who had been present along with Frederick William, made light of the defeat, but it cast a pall over the allied army. The Prussians had suffered painful losses, and mutual recriminations followed, as they blamed the Russians for not holding firm and vice-versa. Although the retreat was orderly, Alexander and Frederick William had to abandon Dresden and take refuge in Silesia. The King of Saxony hurried back to his capital to greet Napoleon. ‘I am once more the master of Europe,’ Napoleon declared to Duroc.32

  Metternich assumed that their defeat would have sobered the allies and made them realise they needed the support of Austria, while its limited nature would not have given Napoleon enough confidence to make him intransigent. This raised the Austrian chancellor’s hopes, but he believed the only way he could persuade Napoleon to agree to negotiate was by suggesting he would only have to make minor concessions to obtain peace. Narbonne correctly surmised that Metternich was hoping to get Napoleon to agree to negotiations in principle, and then start upping the terms, thereby forcing him to either accept these or break off the negotiations, which would allow Austria to declare their alliance null. Sensing that he was getting nowhere with Narbonne, Metternich resolved to address Napoleon through Bubna.33

  Napoleon fortified Dresden, which he intended to use as the base from which he would strike at the allied armies converging on the Elbe. Wishing to dispense with etiquette, he put up not in the royal palace but in the Marcolini Palace, set in extensive gardens on the outskirts of the city. Here he could behave as though he were on campaign, working and resting to a rhythm set by the demands of war and diplomacy. A daily estafette from Paris brought news of everything that was going on not merely in the capital but throughout his realm. Agents all over Germany reported on events and morale.

  Bubna arrived on 16 May with Metternich’s suggested bases for negotiation: Napoleon should give up the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, cede German territory east of the Rhine, and return Illyria to Austria. The interview quickly turned into a harangue as Napoleon accused Austria of duplicity, of arming and negotiating with France’s enemies while pretending to remain her ally. He pointed out that Schwarzenberg’s withdrawal from Poland had been a betrayal of their alliance; at their last meeting in Paris, Schwarzenberg had sworn that the 30,000-strong Austrian auxiliary corps was still at his disposal, only to withdraw it when the Russians appeared.

  As for the suggested bases for negotiation, Napoleon declared that they were both insulting to him and obviously too minimal to satisfy his enemies. Narbonne had warned him that there was ‘an underground connection’ between Vienna and the Russian headquarters, and he realised a trap was being set for him. He told Bubna that he regretted having married Francis’s daughter, and declared that he would not give up a single village.34

  At one point during the five-and-a-half-hour meeting, Napoleon launched into a diatribe about the importance of maintaining his honour, arguing that if the people of France were to conclude he had failed them, or worse, betrayed them as Louis XVI had done under the influence of his Austrian consort, he and Marie-Louise might end up just as they did; hinting at the possibility of her and her son being murdered by the Paris mob. While this may have been a crude attempt at blackmailing Francis, he does appear to have worked himself into a genuine frenzy on the subject. Less than two months later, when berating the Leipzig authorities over their poor handling of some anti-French disturbances in the city, he mentioned the September massacres of 1792 in language which suggests that he still feared the mob.35

  Although he blustered at Bubna, he was far from confident, and realised that if he refused to go along with the proposed negotiations he would be isolating himself, so at a final interview he told Bubna he was prepared to make peace, on terms to be discussed. As soon as Bubna had left Dresden, Napoleon despatched Caulaincourt to the Russian front lines with the request for an immediate ceasefire and for one-to-one talks between France and Russia. If he were going to be forced to give up the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, he might as well use it to bribe Russia into ditching Prussia and Austria. His instructions to Caulaincourt were to offer to ‘destroy Poland forever’; his Polish aide Chłapowski, who escorted Caulaincourt and stole a glance at them, was so appalled he resolved to leave Napoleon’s service as soon as the fighting was over.36

  The offer was rejected, so on 20 May Napoleon struck again. He outflanked the new allied defensive positions behind the river Spree around Bautzen, forcing them to abandon the field and beat a retreat. Had Ney not wasted an hour getting into position in the allied rear, their army would have been all but annihilated. Once again Napoleon had demonstrated that he was still the greatest general in Europe. The sureness of his touch impressed everyone, as did his decision to take a two-hour nap in the middle of the battle. ‘Lulled by the sound of artillery and musketry the Emperor lay down on a cloak laid on the ground and gave orders that he was not to be woken before two hours, and in the calmest way went to sleep before us,’ noted one of his aides. He did not even wake when a shell landed and burst close by. Although his shortage of cavalry once again prevented him from exploiting his victory, morale on the allied side plummeted as the Russians and Prussians trudged back into Silesia.37

  The Russian army, some of whose units were down to a quarter of their nominal strength, was in poor condition. The rank and file, mostly drafted in 1812 to resist the foreign invader, had been promised they could go home once the fatherland had been liberated. Only junior officers avid for glory and promotion wanted to take the war into Germany. As far as the rest were concerned the conquest of Poland was enough of a prize. Tensions were mounting between them and their Prussian allies, and there were instances of individual commanders refusing to carry out orders given by allied superiors.

  If Napoleon continued his advance, the Russians would be forced to fall back into Poland while the Prussian forces would have to retreat northwards, as Oudinot operating on Napoleon’s left flank threatened Berlin. This would split the allied army in two, making it easy to defeat separately. Although the French lines of communication would be stretched by such an advance, that would be made up for by the troops Napoleon would release from fortresses in Poland. Morale in the Russian army might well be tipped over the edge. The retreat would also dampen the enthusiasm of the German nationalists. As it was, the number of volunteers coming forward to fight for the liberation of Germany was disappointing; it was proving difficult to raise troops, and desertion was on the rise, even among officers.38

  But Napoleon was worried by the state of his own forces. French losses had been heavy. Shortage of cavalry restricted reconnaissance as well as pursuit. Paucity of draught animals meant there was a shortage of food and supplies. To add to the misery, the spring of 1813 was unusually cold and wet. Rates of desertion rose, particularly in the contingents contributed by Napoleon’s German allies. Most of his marshals had had enough. ‘What a war!’ Augereau complained. ‘It will do for us all!’39


  At a more personal level, Napoleon had been deeply saddened by the death, during the opening shots of the battle of Lützen, of Marshal Bessières, one of his most loyal and capable commanders. He had been profoundly shaken three weeks later when his old friend Duroc was killed at Bautzen. Napoleon sat at his bedside for hours that night until Duroc breathed his last. Those two deaths revived muttering in the army that Napoleon had forfeited his ‘star’ when he divorced Josephine. ‘When will it all end? Where will the Emperor stop? We must have peace at any cost!’ was a common refrain.40

  Instead of pursuing the allies, Napoleon decided to call a halt and wait for reinforcements, so he sent an envoy to allied headquarters with the offer of an armistice of seven weeks. The offer was eagerly accepted and the armistice concluded at Plesswitz on 4 June. The armistice ‘saved us and condemned him’, as one Russian general put it. Hardenberg agreed. Not only did Napoleon save the allies from almost certain defeat, he threw away the initiative, which he would never regain.41

  40

  Last Chance

  News of the armistice was greeted with joy throughout the empire; from every department prefects reported that people were desperate for peace. The pursuit of glory no longer held any appeal outside some sections of the army, and most of Napoleon’s marshals and senior officers were begging him to conclude peace at almost any price. ‘You are no longer loved, Sire,’ General Belliard told him frankly, ‘and if you want the whole truth, I would say that you may be cursed.’ He assured Napoleon that if he were to make peace he would be blessed. Napoleon listened but said nothing.1

  Even Poniatowski, who had been obliged to evacuate Poland and had joined Napoleon at Dresden with his Polish corps, told him he should make peace now on the best terms available in order to be able to make war from a better position in the future. ‘You may be right,’ Napoleon replied, ‘but I will make war first in order to make a better peace.’ In similar vein, Berthier suggested that Napoleon take advantage of the armistice to pull out his far-flung garrisons and concentrate all his forces on the Rhine. But Napoleon saw the presence of his troops in places such as Hamburg, Stettin and Danzig, and his own in Dresden, as an indication of his determination to stand by his German allies, and any retreat as a sign of weakness that would give heart to his enemies. In letter after letter Cambacérès urged him to make peace, saying that everyone was desperate for an end to the war, and that his reputation would not suffer if he were to make concessions. But Napoleon clung to his conviction that the people of France would not respect him if he failed to come up with something which could be dressed up as a victory, and what he called his ‘magie’ would be dispelled, as he explained to Fouché.2

  It was a measure of his insecurity that he had drawn Fouché out of retirement and was sending him to take up the post of governor of Illyria – in Paris he might be tempted to engineer a coup against him; in Trieste he was safely out of the way. The post had become vacant as its previous holder, Junot, had begun displaying dramatic symptoms of neurosyphilis dementia and had to be retired.

  Metternich arrived in Dresden on 25 June. When he went to the Marcolini Palace the following day, he was struck by the look of despondency on the faces of the senior officers in the emperor’s anterooms. He found Napoleon standing in a long gallery, his sword at his side and his hat under his arm. The emperor opened the conversation with cordial enquiries about Francis’s health, but his countenance soon grew sombre. ‘So it is war you want: very well, you shall have it,’ he challenged Metternich. ‘I annihilated the Prussian army at Lützen; I beat the Russians at Bautzen; and now you want to have your turn. I shall meet you at Vienna. Men are incorrigible; the lessons of experience are lost on them.’ He accused Austria of treachery, and said he had made a mistake in marrying Francis’s daughter. When Metternich tried to make him see that this was his last chance to make peace on favourable terms, Napoleon declared that he could not give up an inch of territory without dishonouring himself. ‘Your sovereigns, born on the throne, can afford to let themselves be beaten twenty times and still return to their capitals; I cannot, because I am a parvenu soldier,’ he said. ‘My authority will not survive the day when I will have ceased to be strong, and therefore, to be feared.’

  He did not trust Metternich, and saw the bases for negotiation suggested by him as a trick, since they would not be acceptable to Russia, let alone Britain, so that in agreeing to them he would be entering an open-ended negotiation. He was right, as although Metternich was sincere in trying to salvage what he could for Napoleon, his prime concern was to disengage Austria from alliance with him and give himself freedom of action. Napoleon tried to browbeat him, accusing him of treachery and of being in the pay of Britain, ridiculing Austria’s military potential and threatening to crush her. He lost his temper more than once, threw his hat into a corner of the room in a rage, only to resume the conversation on polite, even friendly terms. The meeting lasted more than nine hours, and it was dark outside when Metternich left.3

  He returned that evening at Napoleon’s invitation to see a play put on by the actors of the Comédie-Française, who had been brought over from Paris. He was astonished to find himself watching the famous Mademoiselle Georges (with whom he had had an affair in Paris) playing Racine’s Phèdre. ‘I thought I was at St Cloud,’ he wrote to his wife before going to bed, ‘all the same faces, the same court, the same people.’ The weather had turned fine, and there was a festive atmosphere in the baroque city. The armistice had cheered all those who longed for peace, and there were balls and parties for the French officers and Napoleon’s entourage.4

  Further meetings having proved fruitless, Metternich was about to leave, on 30 June, when he received a note summoning him for an interview with Napoleon. He ordered his horses to be unharnessed and went to the Marcolini Palace, dressed as he was, expecting to have to listen to the same complaints and threats. To his surprise, Napoleon agreed to a peace congress under Austrian auspices, to be held at Prague in the first days of July. He suggested including Britain, the United States of America and Spain, but Metternich demurred, seeing this as an unnecessary complication.5

  A few days after his departure, Napoleon received unwelcome news from Spain. Wellington had gone over to the offensive at the end of May, and Joseph had been forced to abandon Madrid. The British caught up with him and the retreating French army at Vitoria and routed it on 21 June. It was a humiliating defeat, rendered all the more shameful to French arms by the loss of over a hundred cannon as well as all the army’s and the king’s baggage. Napoleon gave Soult overall command of the Army of Spain, and ordered Joseph to go to Mortefontaine and not show himself in Paris.

  He did not put much faith in Metternich’s mediation, but hoped he might be able to strike a deal with Alexander. ‘Russia has the right to an advantageous peace,’ he told Fain. ‘She will have bought it with the devastation of her lands, with the loss of her capital and with two years of war. Austria, on the contrary, does not deserve anything.’ Yet Alexander was the one monarch least likely to treat with Napoleon on any terms, while Metternich did still favour a peaceful outcome.6

  The armistice was extended to 10 August; if terms were not agreed by midnight on that date hostilities would resume, with Austria in the allied camp. But the congress, which convened at Prague, never got beyond procedural questions. ‘At heart, nobody truly wanted peace,’ wrote Nesselrode, adding that the congress was a ‘joke’ which Alexander and Frederick William had opposed from the start, and the tsar sabotaged the proceedings by sending an envoy who would not be acceptable to Napoleon. Caulaincourt and Narbonne struggled to get negotiations going, but they were hamstrung; Caulaincourt had done everything to avoid being nominated to represent Napoleon, whose intransigence would make it impossible for him to negotiate. When he suggested making concessions, Napoleon burst out, ‘You want me to pull down my trousers to get a whipping,’ and stormed out of the room. Caulaincourt was instructed to take the line that Napoleon had never been beaten in
Russia, and only ‘sustained some losses through the inclement weather’. He was so exasperated that he appears to have told Metternich he wished Napoleon would lose a battle, as only that could bring him to his senses.7

  Napoleon was determined to brazen it out, and in a show of nonchalance set off on 25 July for Mainz, to spend ten days with Marie-Louise. It was not a joyous occasion. He arrived to find her tired out by her journey, and nursing a cold. The weather was bad, with heavy rain. After reviewing the troops in Mainz, he took her with him as he reviewed those camped in the vicinity. He made a show of confidence, putting in hand works for the refurbishment of the imperial residence in the city and declaiming about the apparent success of the negotiations going on in Prague. He also made elaborate plans for her to attend the flooding of the new harbour at Cherbourg, which was to provide a large sheltered basin for the fleet that would threaten Britain. But he was often silent and moody at dinner, and on one occasion even snapped at her.

  He was back in Dresden on 4 August, only to discover that the negotiations in Prague had not begun. He wrote to Metternich asking him to state his terms, and received the answer on 7 August: the Grand Duchy of Warsaw should be divided between the three allies, Austria should recover Illyria, Hamburg and Lübeck should regain their independence, and France should give up her protectorate over the Confederation of the Rhine and her other German conquests.