Cathcart recalled that some 5,000 French cavalry were involved in the attack. As they formed up for the assault on the shoulder of the ridge by Liebertwollkwitz they were visible from allied headquarters on the hill behind Gossa. Apart from Eugen’s infantry, the only visible allied force in their path was the Russian Guards Dragoon and Guards Lancer regiments. To their great credit, most of Eugen’s shrunken infantry battalions formed so-called ‘masses’ against the cavalry and, with the soldiers standing back to back, retreated in good order, his right wing falling back into the village of Gossa itself. The Russian Guards light cavalry was caught before it had deployed, possibly because its commander, General Shevich, was killed by a cannon ball just as the action was about to start. In any case, two regiments could never have held back the equivalent of an entire cavalry corps. The lancers were pushed aside to the south-west, the dragoons directly southwards. The French cavalry overran part of the allied artillery, advanced past Gossa and came within a very few hundred metres of the hill on which the allied monarchs were watching events.
At this point the horsemen were brought to a halt by what Cathcart describes as
a small brook or drain [which] ran from Gossa towards the Pleisse…Its banks happened to be swampy and could only be passed with difficulty, and by a leap across a wide drain, unless by causeways made in two or three places by the farmers, for agricultural purposes. This obstacle was only partial, and a few hundred yards to the right, nearer Gossa, it ceased to be an impediment…But the enemy…were unexpectedly checked by this unforeseen obstacle; their crowding and confusion increased; and at that moment the Russian regiment of hussars of the guard, which Wittgenstein had sent…appeared in their rear. This caused a panic. The unwieldy mass became noisy, and attempted to retire; the Russian light cavalry instantly followed them. The Emperor Alexander, who stood on the hill above, seized the opportunity to send off his own escort of Cossacks of the guard, amounting to several squadrons, under Count Orlov Denisov, who passed the stream at a favourable spot near Gossa, and took the retiring mass in flank. This completed the panic, which then became a flight, and the fugitives did not draw their bridles till they had regained the protection of their infantry.31
Cathcart does not mention the intervention of two Prussian cavalry regiments to which most German-language sources assign a role in the defeat of the French attack. Though he praises the Russian Guards cavalry, the main point of his narrative is the incompetence with which the attack was mounted. The French cavalry seemed to advance closely bunched together in columns and ‘certainly in one body only, that is, with no sort of second line or reserve’. Inadequate discipline and leadership allowed them to be thrown into confusion ‘by an insignificant obstacle’ and then to be ‘seized by a panic’ and ‘fly before a force of light cavalry, which altogether could not have amounted to 2000 men’. The fact that most of the French horsemen were heavy cavalry made their defeat by Cossacks, lancers and hussars all the more remarkable. Above all, Cathcart put down the rout to ‘want of a second line on which to rally, and from which to take a fresh departure – a precaution without which no cavalry attack ought ever to be made’.32
A true ‘cavalry patriot’, in one respect Cathcart is clearly a little biased in his account of what he calls ‘this remarkable cavalry affair’. He forgets the contribution of the Russian artillery. As the French cavalry approached his hill, Alexander turned to the commander of his artillery, Major-General Ivan Sukhozanet, and said: ‘Look: whichever side gets its forces here first will win. Is your reserve artillery far away?’ Only 25, Sukhozanet was another good example of how promotion on merit during the wars of 1805–13 had brought a number of excellent young officers into key positions. The son of a Polish officer, and himself without wealth or connections, Sukhozanet had done well in 1806–7 and thereby secured the notice of his superiors and transfer to the Guards artillery. For his performance under Wittgenstein in 1812 and then at Bautzen in 1813, he had won the St George’s Cross and two promotions. Wittgenstein’s elevation to commander-in-chief benefited officers close to him. In Sukhozanet’s case it resulted in appointment as deputy to Prince Iashvili, the army’s new commander of artillery. When Iashvili fell ill during the autumn campaign, Sukhozanet replaced him and Leipzig gave him the opportunity to distinguish himself under the emperor’s eyes.33
Sukhozanet took this opportunity and justified Alexander’s trust. To the emperor’s question about the whereabouts of the artillery reserve, he replied, ‘It will be here within two minutes.’ Sukhozanet was better than his word. Two horse artillery batteries arrived immediately: one directly supported the attack of the Cossack Life Guards towards the east of the brook behind Gossa: Sukhozanet reported that ‘it took the enemy columns by surprise and, opening up a punishing fire, brought them to a halt’. Meanwhile the other battery moved forward west of the brook and took up a flank position, from which it struck the packed ranks of the French cavalry to great effect. But for Sukhozanet and the Russian artillery the big test was still to come. As the French cavalry flooded back towards Liebertwollkwitz, their infantry moved on Gossa, supported by Drouot’s massed artillery. Unlike at Borodino, however, on this occasion the Russian reserve artillery was well managed. Sukhozanet brought forward 80 guns from the reserve and, adding them to the batteries already in place, formed a line of more than 100 guns behind Gossa. This massive concentration of firepower took on Drouot’s batteries and finally forced the French artillery to retreat. General Miloradovich had been at Borodino but he subsequently recalled that the artillery battle near Gossa on 16 October was the loudest he had ever heard in his life.34
Meanwhile the terrain had played a trick in the Russians’ favour. From where Napoleon stood on the heights west of Liebertwollkwitz it was impossible to see what was happening behind the hill on which the allied monarchs were standing. In fact, as the French infantry were approaching Gossa the Russian and Prussian Guards infantry were arriving behind the allied centre. Their commander, Aleksei Ermolov, had ridden out with his aide-de-camp, Matvei Muromtsev, to scout the ground around Gossa and was almost caught by the French cavalry’s attack. Fortunately, the Russians’ horses were speedier than those of the French cavalrymen who pursued them but it had been a close shave. Some time before, Muromtsev had lost a bet to Ermolov. His forfeit was that at any moment when Ermolov began to whistle the first bars of an aria, Muromtsev was obliged to burst into song and complete the piece. Having regained the Russian lines, Ermolov began to whistle and Muromtsev launched into Leporello’s famous aria from Don Giovanni. He recalls that Ermolov, ‘at this moment, having just saved himself from death or captivity…completely preserved his composure, but I remember very well that my response was not expressed with anything like the same calmness’.35
Ermolov was a charismatic and inspiring figure at all times. In action he was larger than life, and his battlefield exploits and quips went the rounds of the Russian army. So too, in a quite different sense, did the behaviour of Aleksei Arakcheev. As the Semenovskys drew up behind the hill on which Alexander stood, Arakcheev rode down to talk to an old acquaintance, Colonel Pavel Pushchin. At this moment French batteries began to range in on the Semenovskys and a shell burst only 50 metres from where Pushchin and Arakcheev were talking. The count was an administrator, not a battlefield commander; Pushchin commented that this was the closest Arakcheev had come to French artillery during the Napoleonic Wars. Thoroughly alarmed by the explosion and learning from Pushchin that it was a shell, Arakcheev’s face ‘changed colour, he turned his horse round and departed at the gallop from the place of danger’. Russian officers saw cowardice as the greatest of vices. Most Guards officers loathed Arakcheev anyway, but his lack of physical courage was the final and unforgivable blot on his reputation.36
The French infantry which attempted to storm Gossa included Maison’s division of Lauriston’s Fifth Corps. Both Russian sources and General Griois, who commanded some of Drouot’s batteries just behind Gossa, say that Oudinot’
s two Young Guard divisions also took part in the battle in the village. The initial allied ‘garrison’ of Gossa was made up of some of Eugen’s battalions and three battalions of Pirch’s Prussian brigade: both had been hotly engaged for hours and were very under strength. The St Petersburg and Tauride Grenadier regiments joined the defence of the village, as did the Guards Jaegers. Attack and counterattack followed each other in a struggle for Gossa, which lasted for three hours. According to the Russians, each time the French were driven out, a fresh wave of enemy infantry forced their way back into the village. In the end the issue was decided by the Russian 2nd Guards Infantry Division, who stormed into the village from the south-west in battalion columns without firing a shot. Fighting literally under the eyes of the emperor, the Guards displayed exceptional courage. More than half the officers of the Finland Guards Regiment were killed or wounded. The commander of the regiment, Major-General Maksim Kryzhanovsky, was wounded four times before he allowed himself to be carried off the battlefield.37
For once, however, it was not an officer but a private soldier who earned most fame in the battle for Gossa. Leontii Korennoi was a grenadier in the Third Battalion of the Finland Guards. Like most grenadiers of the Guards, he was tall and broad-shouldered. He was a veteran, who had been in the Finland Regiment since its formation, having previously served in the Kronstadt Garrison Regiment. A married man, he became known as ‘uncle’ in the Finland Guards. At Borodino he had won a military medal for his courage in the skirmishing line. Now he surpassed himself. Gossa was a village of stone houses, stout garden walls and many lanes. Amidst the ebb and flow of the action, the commander of the Third Battalion of the Finland Guards, Colonel Gervais, and some of his officers were cut off by a sudden French counter-attack. At first with a handful of comrades and then alone, Korennoi held off the French while the officers escaped over the walls back to the rest of the battalion.
To their great honour, the French not only took Korennoi prisoner but presented him to Napoleon himself, who praised his courage and ensured that he was well looked after. Since the French army was itself not short of heroes, Korennoi’s exploit must indeed have been remarkable to win such treatment. He got back to his regiment by the end of the battle, where his comrades regarded him as a figure virtually risen from the dead. Korennoi’s bust was to occupy pride of place in the barracks of the Finland Guards until 1917 and the song of the regiment (‘We remember Uncle Korennoi’) was composed in his honour.38
While Leontii Korennoi was winning fame, Pamfil Nazarov was fighting his first real battle with the Finland Guards. He recalls that the Grand Duke Constantine rode down the ranks of the regiment before they advanced against Gossa, telling the Guardsmen to load their muskets and ordering them to advance. Like many of his comrades, Pamfil was wounded in the attack before he even reached the village, in his case in the right leg above the knee. He remembers too that his overcoat was shredded by bullets. Pamfil collapsed and lost much blood. He recalls how hot his blood seemed to him. Somehow he dragged himself back the 2 kilometres to the medical point, collapsing once more on the way and constantly threatened by the cannon balls that continued to whistle by. When he got to the casualty point he found the regimental ammunition, flags, musicians and doctor. After being bandaged, he tottered to a fire by which to spend this cold and rainy night. A comrade from the regiment gave him two salted cucumbers, a big boon.
After much bleeding in the night, Pamfil re-bandaged himself and set off to the rear, carrying his haversack and using his musket as a crutch. His leg swelled up from days of walking and in the end he had to find a cart to get him to a hospital. Finally he got to a field hospital in Plauen on 28 October, where there were so many wounded that he had to be placed in a chapel. On the other hand there were also many German doctors and medical assistants present. It was now twelve days since Pamfil’s wound had been bandaged and it was infected. There followed days of agony as bandages were changed and ointment was injected directly into the wound twice daily on lint attached to a huge needle. He did not get back to his regiment until the beginning of 1814.39
Nevertheless the sacrifices of Pamfil and his comrades did achieve their goal. Gossa was held and Napoleon’s great counter-attack stopped. That evening the young officers of Ermolov’s staff put on an impromptu performance of Racine’s Phèdre in the ruins of Gossa. In tactical terms the first day of Leipzig was a draw. Apart from Blücher’s capture of villages north of Leipzig, the two armies occupied almost the exact positions where they had started the day. In reality, however, a draw signified an allied victory. If Napoleon was to hold Germany, he had to defeat the allies decisively on the battle’s first day. Otherwise, with more than 100,000 fresh troops close at hand, allied strength would become overwhelming. This should have been clear to Napoleon by nightfall on 16 October, though as always clarity is far easier in retrospect than on the evening of a battle. The wisest policy would have been to organize an immediate orderly retreat, getting his baggage away as quickly as possible and building additional crossings over the river Elster to avoid the very dangerous dependence on a single bridge. In fact it was not until the evening of 17 October that he made any arrangements for a retreat and even then nothing was done to ease the army’s passage out of Leipzig and over the Elster. Instead he wasted time talking to the captured General Meerveldt, whom he then sent back to Francis II, seemingly in the naive hope that the allies might negotiate and allow him to escape.
Very little action occurred on Sunday, 17 October. Neither Bernadotte nor Bennigsen was yet on the battlefield and, since Napoleon showed no sign of departing, the allied monarchs were content to let their men rest and await the arrival of reinforcements. The only significant fighting to occur that day was a brilliant charge by Ilarion Vasilchikov’s hussar division, which delighted Blücher, himself an old hussar, and resulted in the French not only losing many men and guns but also pulling right back in the north-west to the suburbs in front of the Halle Gate. From here any further retreat was unthinkable: if the Russians burst through the Halle Gate into Leipzig, the line of retreat of Napoleon himself and the entire army would be cut. Once he received news that the Army of Bohemia would not attack that day, however, Blücher was forced to postpone Sacken’s attempt to break into Leipzig from the north until 18 October.40
The last two days of the battle of Leipzig – 18 and 19 October – were in one sense an anticlimax. There were no daring movements or examples of inspired military leadership. It was often the French, fighting with skill and courage in the many stout buildings in and near Leipzig, who had the better of encounters at least in the short run. When thousands of men are losing their lives it is wrong to talk of a battle being ‘boring’, but for the military scholar, when compared to an Austerlitz or Cannae, Leipzig was indeed a ‘boring’ battle. The key point, however, is that ‘boring’ battles were exactly what the allies needed to fight. Given their army’s unmanageable size, its multi-national composition and its chaotic command structure, any attempt to do something clever or complicated was bound to end in disaster. What was required was to pin Napoleon down in a spot where his army could be subjected to the full weight of allied superiority in men and guns. This is what the allies achieved in the last two days of the battle of Leipzig. By the afternoon of 18 October they had concentrated all their troops and 1,360 guns on the battlefield.
The morning of 18 October dawned bright and sunny. That day the allies formed a huge semicircle enclosing Leipzig to the east, north and south. They attacked Napoleon all along this line. Probably the best-known events on 18 October are the defection of some Saxon regiments to the allies, but the desertion of a very few thousand men was actually of little significance in a battle fought by half a million soldiers. More important was the fact that Bernadotte’s almost 60,000-strong Army of the North only arrived on the battlefield in mid-afternoon. This in turn forced Bennigsen to spread his army more thinly and reduced the possibility of his outflanking the village of Probstheida from the e
ast and thereby forcing its abandonment. Probstheida was the key strong-point of Napoleon’s position south of Leipzig and he hung on to it all day, thanks to the strength of its buildings and the heroism of its French defenders, to which allied accounts pay tribute. On the allied side it was the Prussians who bore the brunt of the costly attempts to take the village but even the remnants of Eugen’s corps were made to join in, despite their terrible losses on the previous day. Meanwhile three regiments of the Russian 1st Guards Division and the whole of the Prussian Guard stood by idly less than a kilometre away, despite not having fired a shot on the battle’s first day.
To an extent this was the monarchs once again protecting their Guards, but it was also simply the logic of Napoleonic-era warfare to try to preserve elite units as reserves until the moment of crisis came in a campaign or battle. Sacken had no Guards but in fact he conducted his attempts to storm through the Halle suburb in similar fashion. He committed Neverovsky’s 27th Division and Lieven’s two jaeger regiments but the three veteran infantry regiments of the 10th Division were held in reserve throughout the battle despite the tremendous casualties of the rest of Sacken’s corps as they tried to fight their way through Leipzig’s northern suburbs.
Even without the field fortifications constructed by the French, the suburbs around the Halle Gate were a formidable obstacle. Just in front of them flowed the river Pleisse, while the hamlet of Pfaffendorf with its stout buildings formed a strong advance point to blunt any attempt to break into the town. The approaches to the Halle Gate were narrow and the Russian infantry was vulnerable to flanking fire, not just from Pfaffendorf but also from the walls of the Rosenthal park to their west. The Austrian official history, by no means Russophile in sympathy, commented that ‘the Russian soldiers performed with wonderful bravery and their officers too did everything possible’.41
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