Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  Altogether some 350 principalities, duchies, and other territories would now be reduced to a mere thirty-nine states. Each member of the confederation was to be represented at a Diet to be convened periodically at Frankfurt and divided into a College of Kings and a College of Princes. The theoretical purpose of the Diet was to settle all disputes between member states, presided over by Napoleon’s new henchman, Prince Primate Dalberg. Napoleon himself was to be given yet another title, “Protector of the Confederation.” Other annexations soon followed, including the two formerly free imperial cities of Nuremberg (annexed by the king of Bavaria) and Frankfurt (which went to Prince Primate Dalberg). Also absorbed into this confederation were “the knightly lands” within their frontiers, that is to say, the property of the Imperial Knights of the Holy Roman Empire, traditionally strongly attached to Austria and the Habsburgs.

  The new Confederation of the Rhine was a strictly controlled satellite complex, the main purposes of which were defense and economic union, not to mention the “annual subsidies” each member state was required to pay Napoleon and France. In addition to paying for the complete maintenance of the French military governors and French troops in these states, every state was required to supply troops of its own when attacked. Altogether the Confederation of the Rhine was obliged to provide Bonaparte with 88,400 men in time of war.[689]

  The Treaty of Pressburg had left many people bitterly unhappy. The ensuing creation of the Confederation of the Rhine not only angered Austria but gravely upset the balance in Prussia, which hitherto opted for neutrality in times of war with the French. The wheels now began to turn, building in momentum, to convert a weakened, dithering Friedrich Wilhelm III into a ruler finally convinced that he no longer had any choice but to prepare for the worst — war against France. Despite the Franco-Prussian Treaty of February 15, 1806, Prussia maintained secret links with the sympathetic Czar Alexander (due at least in part to Alexander’s attraction to Queen Louise of Prussia). The outright seizure of the Rhineland states as French satellites threatened and impinged on the royal Prussian territorial preserves. By giving the Duchies of Cleves and then Berg (ceded by Bavaria) to Joachim and Caroline Murat in March — the two becoming a grand duchy, “the most beautiful gift in the world,” Murat called it — Napoleon aggravated matters considerably. As duke (and then grand duke) of Berg, and a major new Rhineland property owner, Murat immediately began “extending” his territorial boundaries into traditional Prussian possessions. Napoleon’s encouragement of this foreign occupation merely acted as a goad to the already anxious Prussians.[690]

  In a private letter to Talleyrand, Napoleon had declared his intention of neutralizing Prussia: “Prussia is a great Power, and as a general consideration it would be a serious error to permit her to increase in size...The remedy for this would be to create a brand-new State in Germany that would grow to a size equal to Prussia’s,” the capital of which would center round Wesel and Düsseldorf (in Murat’s duchies). By handing over Cleves and Berg, Napoleon secured this check against Prussia.[691]

  A few modifications were made after the initial sixteen princes announced their separation from the Holy Roman Empire in July 1806, including the creation of the three new grand duchies of Baden, Berg, and Hesse-Darmstadt, while Nassau was promoted to a duchy. Several traditional rulers lost all sovereign rights altogether. Naturally Napoleon could not suppress such an important number of pivotal German states and sovereign houses, occupying them with French troops, without arousing lasting, bitter anti-French sentiment. When a patriotic Nuremberg bookseller by the name of Palm published and sold anti-French (that is, anti-Bonaparte) pamphlets, denouncing this latest example of French territorial enterprise, Napoleon had the annoying fellow kidnapped by Berthier’s troops and summarily executed, much as he had had Enghien and others disposed of before. So great was Napoleon’s megalomania, and so vast his actual power, that he no longer cared what other countries might think about any of his actions.

  Then — to worry the Prussians, Austrians, Russians, and English even more — on March 14, 1806, Napoleon announced his intention of naming his brother Louis king of Holland (to avoid overtly annexing that country, which might have caused a bit of an uproar). Before the month was out, Napoleon named brother Joseph to the throne of Naples, territory covering roughly one-third of the country and including (at least in theory) Sicily. Napoleon’s Kingdom of Italy included the northern part of the country, apart from the Papal States. (In a decree of December 27, 1805, Napoleon had unilaterally announced: “The Dynasty of Naples has ceased to reign.” Queen Maria Carolina for one did not agree, and the French had to fight their way to Naples and then “pacify” the region.) Joseph finally acquiesced to this crown only when Napoleon assured him that he would not be renouncing any of his rights to the French imperial crown.[692]

  The seizure of the Neapolitan kingdom was to permit Napoleon to complete his conquest of the whole of Italy. This led to another confrontation with Rome, when Pius VII refused to close his borders and ports to the English. Bonaparte tightened his control over the Italian peninsula by naming Talleyrand prince of Benevento, and Bcrnadotte prince of Ponte Corvo (lands, incidentally, disputed by Rome and Naples) and then declared these two new princes to be French imperial grand dignitaries. If they were attacked, so was Paris.

  On January 15 Eugène de Beauharnais had married Princess Augusta of Bavaria, returning with his bride to Italy, where he was assured by Napoleon that he and Augusta would one day succeed to that country’s royal title (a promise shortly to be denied by Napoleon in public). Napoleon further secured the marches of his new empire by marrying off Josephine’s niece, Stephanie de Beauharnais, to the heir of the grand duke of Baden, while forcing a most resentful Berthier to give up his long-standing love and mistress, Madame de Visconti, for a minor Bavarian princess. A year later Jérôme was to add the final link by “marrying” (bigamously — he was still legally married to Elizabeth) into the House of Württemberg. The new Charlemagne had risen, and the allies and Church were duly notified. “Your Holiness is sovereign of Rome,” Napoleon proclaimed to Pius VII, “but I am its Emperor.”[693]

  Throughout this period Napoleon, while moving with decision on Prussia, maintained expansive negotiations with both Russia and England. Initial peace talks between Talleyrand and a recently released British prisoner, the earl of Yarmouth, were followed up by Lord Lauderdale, who arrived in Paris on August 5, 1806. Much to the astonishment of Talleyrand and embarrassment of Napoleon, the British made extraordinary concessions, under the orders of the dying foreign secretary, Charles James Fox. Fox was willing to recognize Joseph as king of the Two Sicilies, Louis as king of Holland, the new kings of Etruria (in central Italy), Bavaria, and Wiirttem-berg (in the future), and the grand duke of Baden. England would return the Dutch colonies to Holland (except the Cape of Good Hope) and would even withdraw from Sicily, despite public denials to the contrary. In exchange for these sweeping concessions, Talleyrand promised that England could retain Malta, and that Ferdinand IV (the de jure king of Naples) would be compensated by the Balearic Islands (without the knowledge of Spain), while Hannover was to be returned to its rightful sovereign, the king of England. Napoleon, who had encouraged these talks, now without explanation rejected the draft peace treaty already signed by Talleyrand and Lauderdale that same August, thereby ending the last and most unexpected opportunity he had of making peace with England.[694] Fox died the following month a disappointed, broken man, having failed to secure the peace he had assured Parliament he could obtain. There would be no other such occasion. Thanks to the French ruler, there would be war to the end.

  Simultaneously, negotiations between St. Petersburg and Paris resumed in July, when M. Oubril, the Russian minister plenipotentiary, arrived at the French capital to negotiate a Franco-Russian peace agreement with Talleyrand. The two men signed a draft treaty on July 20, but this time it was a scornful Alexander I who, still furious about the shameful Russian defeat at Austerl
itz, refused to ratify it. On receiving the czar’s rejection on September 3, Napoleon told Talleyrand, “I cannot have a real alliance with any of the great powers of Europe,” and ordered the War Office to call up another fifty thousand army conscripts, while hastening the fortifications of the newly acquired city of Wesel.[695] By September 26 Napoleon was on the move with his army to Germany, making his temporary headquarters on October 2 at Würzburg, where he instructed his eight commanding marshals to hold each of their corps “in readiness, so as to be able to set out within an hour after receiving orders to take the field.”[696]

  As for Prussia’s dilatory King Friedrich Wilhelm III, everything Napoleon did seemed intended to further offend him and the honor of the entire Junker class. Napoleon’s seizure of Ansbach, Berg, Wesel, and Hamburg had certainly not helped matters, along with the news that he had been promising Foreign Minister Fox the restoration of Hannover to England (though it was privately promised to Prussia). But naturally it was the French announcement on July 12, 1806, of the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine and its immediate expansion to include Würzburg and Saxony that — even before the ink was dry — shook Frederick the Great’s ghost in the Sans Souci Palace at Potsdam. The Prussian monarchy, traditionally fearful and jealous of Saxony (just south of Berlin and including the cities of Leipzig and Dresden), was now doubly incensed by that state’s inclusion in Napoleon’s new Germanic empire. Napoleon knowingly, deliberately goaded and goaded.

  Friedrich Wilhelm’s pent-up feelings of outrage could no longer be contained, and on September 26 he sent a voluminous letter — indeed an ultimatum — to Napoleon listing Prussian grievances against France. The language was for once bitter and direct, denouncing the creation of the confederation and Murat’s seizure of Wesel. Europe could no longer put up with “this continued fever of fear and suspense.” He gave the French until October 8 to reply, little realizing that Napoleon was already on the march at the head of his armies. On receipt of this document at Bamberg on October 7, the French emperor immediately published the news, describing it as “a pathetic pamphlet against France.”[697]

  “Hasten to mobilize your troops. Assemble all available forces...and protect your frontiers, while I leap into the center of Prussia and march directly on Berlin,” Napoleon had written his brother, King Louis of Holland, in a top-secret note that September. Marshal Mortier’s VIII Corps was forming at Mainz, where he, along with Louis’s army, was expected to secure the Rhine. Before the Prussian king had even made his final decision on war against France, Napoleon had begun moving his army forward. “If the enemy opposes you with a force not exceeding 30,000 men, you should advance in concert with Marshal Ney and attack it,” Napoleon instructed Marshal Soult on October 5.[698]

  The French army was marching forward with a nominal force totaling little more than 200,000 men, but this included Marmont’s 13,500-man corps in Dalmatia, Masséna’s 40,000-strong Army of Italy still in Tuscany, and Eugène’s 40,000 men to the north, as well as Louis’s army of 18,000 in Holland. The Grande Armée actually marching “for Berlin” under Napoleon’s immediate orders in fact comprised six corps: Soult’s IV and Ney’s VI along their southern flank; Davout’s very tough III Corps and Augereau’s VII Corps to the west; and Lefebvre’s V Corps (soon to be commanded by Lannes), and Bernadotte’s I Corps, along with Murat’s cavalry. In addition, the new Confederation of the Rhine was assembling an initial force of 27,000 men to secure its new frontiers. Thus Napoleon could count on just under 100,000 men, as opposed to 146,300 Prussian troops — that is, if 25,000 men then in eastern Pomerania did not join them, or the two new Russian armies of 60,000 men each, at Brest-Litovsk.[699]

  The three principal Prussian armies facing Napoleon included Prince Hohenlohe’s 42,000 men, the duke of Brunswick’s 75,300 troops, and General Rüchel’s 29,000. These were maximum figures, of course, for units would be on detached duty, in garrisons, hospitals, on leave, and so on. When it came to the actual battles about to be fought, the Prussians had only 114,500 men available to fight Napoleon’s 96,000-man force — much more reasonable odds.

  Finding the Prussians was Napoleon’s immediate concern as his wedge-shaped force advanced to the northeast, in the general direction of Jena, Naumburg, and Leipzig. The first clashes with the opposing cavalry and infantry units took place at Schleiz on October 9, one day after the expiration of Friedrich Wilhelm’s ultimatum. Brushing aside this initial Prussian force, Murat and Bernadotte continued their march. On the tenth Lannes’s V Corps attacked Prince Ludwig’s force of 8,300 men at Saalfeld, in the course of which the prince himself was killed, his troops breaking and fleeing northward to rejoin Brunswick’s army before Weimar or to seek shelter among Hohenlohe’s force at Jena. The very momentum of the French force was frightening Prussian commanders.

  The French continued to advance, Napoleon expecting a major battle at Gera. Finding the place empty, Murat’s cavalry probed ahead, with Davout marching toward Naumburg, preceded by Lannes and Augereau. Davout and Bernadotte were instructed to head off the Prussians should they make a break for the Elbe and Magdeburg. Meanwhile Friedrich Wilhelm and Brunswick were still marching to Weimar when they learned that the French had already seized Naumburg, which lay before them, and Leipzig.

  At a war council on the morning of October 13, it was decided not to fight the French at nearby Jena, but to withdraw, via Auerstädt and Freiburg. The Prussians, so defiant in August, were now retreating as quickly as possible, while Napoleon, still ignorant of their whereabouts, was not expecting to give battle before the sixteenth. In this campaign as in the last, Napoleon’s single greatest weakness was the complete lack of reliable army intelligence as to movements and plans of the opposing force. In this case it is especially surprising, given his numerous new German-speaking allies with their many direct links with Berlin and the Prussian army hierarchy.

  After receiving a number of reports from Davout, Augereau, and Murat, at 9:00 A.M. on the thirteenth Bonaparte finally realized that the entire Prussian army was falling back in the direction of Magdeburg. He issued a fresh spate of orders to Davout, Lannes, Ney, Soult, and Bernadotte to prepare for a big battle at Jena, or an attack against a retreating Prussian army. On receipt of a final message from Lannes’s courier at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, while himself still en route to Jena, Napoleon made more definite troop dispositions, to enable him to close in on the Prussians still in place between Jena and nearby Weimar.

  In fact Lannes’s V Corps had easily occupied Jena that same morning, following a hasty Prussian withdrawal, and it was just to the north of that city that Napoleon joined him later that afternoon. He thought he had the main body of the Prussian army before him and intended to hold them there with the 25,000 troops he had in place. Instructions were dispatched for Soult and Ney to come to Jena on the double, while thousands of troops, almost every battalion available, were ordered to widen a road to the top of Landgrafenberg, the highest mountain north of Jena, on which Napoleon then brought up forty-two pieces of heavy artillery. Still thinking he had the whole of Brunswick’s army before him, Bonaparte ordered Davout and Bernadotte (with Murat’s cavalry), then just to the west of Naumburg, to rush the long distance from there (near Auerstädt) southward to Apolda, to fall on the rear of the Prussian army. After giving orders for Lannes to attack at 6:00 A.M. on October 14, Napoleon returned to his mountaintop headquarters, surrounded by several thousand guardsmen, and retired for what remained of the night.

  In fact, however, Brunswick’s army of 63,000 men was not before Napoleon at Jena, but just north of Auerstädt facing Davout’s 26,000 men, while Napoleon’s force instead faced Hohenlohe’s 38,000 men and 120 cannon (with Rüchel’s 13,000 men, still a total of only 51,000 troops). By noon on the fourteenth, Napoleon would have approximately 96,000 men; and Lannes’s V Corps and Augereau’s VII Corps, aided by St.-Hilaire’s division, were already causing the Prussians to retreat faster, even before Ney’s VI Corps, the rest of Soult’s IV Corps
, and Bernadotte’s I Corps managed to arrive.

  At six o’clock on the fourteenth Lannes’s guns and troops had duly opened fire on Hohcnlohc’s right against Generals Tauenzien and Gräwert just to the north of the village of Vierzehnheiligen, as ordered by Napoleon, when their attack was suddenly jeopardized at eleven o’clock by the unexpected appearance of Ney leading a small number of troops, dashing between Augereau’s and Lannes’s corps. As usual Ney had acted without orders, and a furious Napoleon managed to save him only by bringing in his last two regiments of reserve cavalry.

  This was as good an opportunity as the cautious Prince Hohenlohe had to break through the French line. Instead he foolishly ordered General Gräwert to halt in unprotected country, abruptly ending his successful advance, to await Rüchel’s corps to reinforce him. The result was that Gräwert’s men were decimated by French fire, suffering very heavy casualties for some two hours during a French counterattack.

  By 12:30 P.M. Napoleon had 54,000 troops in the front line, with a new powerful reserve of 42,000, including the arrival of Murat’s cavalry and the remainder of Soult’s and Ney’s corps from the south and east. Now the French finally launched a major counterattack, this time across the entire enemy line, with Soult at the far right, Ney and Lannes in the center supported by Murat’s cavalry, and Augcreau’s corps across the French extreme left flank.

  Acknowledging the vast superiority of French numbers, Hohenlohe ordered a retreat northward. It was during this flight on the road for Weimar, near Kapellendorf, that Rüchel’s badly needed 15,000 men arrived too late and — despite a brief attempt by him to attack — were forced to withdraw. By 3:00 P.M. the French victory at Jena was assured, and an hour later Murat’s cavalry were in hot pursuit up the Weimar road. At Weimar the Prussian army split up, some units proceeding north, the rest turning sharply westward on the road to Erfurt. Augereau’s reinforced corps followed Murat, while north of Kapellendorf, the remainder of a separated Prussian force, pushed hard by Soult, advanced northward over high country.