Napoleon Bonaparte
Page 60
Following the ball a series of impassioned “love letters” was dispatched to the countess’s elegant palace: “I saw only you, I admired only you, I desired only you,” the first began with Napoleon’s usual lack of subtlety, and similar ones followed. He was not put off by her resistance. “I want to force you, yes, force you to love me. Marie, I have revived your country’s name. I shall do much more for you!”[707] Napoleon let it be known that if the lovely countess did not oblige his sexual desires, the country would suffer. And thus the senior members of her society imposed their will on her and her aging husband again, with Talleyrand brought in to conclude the matter. This was one of his most successful diplomatic missions, and Napoleon and Marie soon became not merely amants, but such feverish lovers that Napoleon for once temporarily lost his native lust for war, even promising independence to the Polish aristocracy.
When a Polish delegation had addressed him earlier in Poznan Napoleon had given them a mixed, unexpectedly deflating response. “France,” he claimed, “had never recognized the partition of Poland,” and “the illustrious Polish nation had rendered the greatest services to all Europe.” He went on to explain that “its woes had been the result of internal dissensions.” He could not give them permission to reestablish their independence, because they were not ready for it. They had lost their independence by military force, he said, “and that which has been overthrown by force can be reestablished only by force.” But when Poland was united in spirit again and the people eventually reconquered their freedom, “they may always count upon his [Napoleon’s] all-powerful protection.”[708] It was hardly what they had come there to hear. An angry General Kosciuszko snapped, “He thinks of nothing but himself. He detests every great nation, and even more the spirit of independence. He is a tyrant.”
Napoleon said one thing one day, another the next, all the while somehow leading the Poles to believe that he would indeed grant them independence, while more than one ambitious French soldier already had his covetous eye on the new Polish crown for himself, including Murat. In any event, on January 14, 1807, Napoleon created a temporary “directorate” of five distinguished Poles to administer French-occupied Poland, ostensibly under the presidency of Malachowski but in fact carefully masked under the deft supervision of Secretary of State Maret and Talleyrand.
As Napoleon’s love affair continued, so did Josephine’s imploring letters, insisting that Napoleon send for her. He dismissed them playfully, one after another:
Mon amie, I am touched by all that you tell me, but the season is cold and the roads are very bad and hardly safe. Therefore I cannot allow you to undertake so many trials and dangers. Return [from Mainz] to Paris and pass the winter there...That is my wish. Believe me, it is more painful for me, than for you, to have to postpone by several weeks my happiness in seeing you.[709]
Then he returned to the arms of his Walewska. A few days earlier, he had received a letter from sister Caroline that Eleonore Denuelle, whom the Murats had been keeping secluded for Napoleon in their house outside Paris, had just given birth to his first son.[710]
But the business of conquest was never far off. After seizing Warsaw, the French were involved in several clashes with the Russians, some of them serious enough to leave hundreds of casualties. As already noted, Napoleon had 172,000 infantry and 36,000 cavalry available, scattered over several countries, and of course the first batch of 1806 conscripts were already entering Germany to fill depleted ranks. On January 5, 1807, Napoleon created two new army corps, the IX at Breslau to be commanded by Adm. Jérôme Bonaparte, and the X at Stettin (now Szczecin) under the command of Major General Victor.[711] The Russians had perhaps 115,000 men in this theater, including General Bennigsen’s 53,000 infantry and artillery, and 7,000 cavalry, while Marshal Buxhöwden had another 40,000 troops and cavalry (excluding the powerful Russian Imperial Guard under the command of Grand Duke Constantine and Lestocq’s Prussian Corps of 15,000). In addition the Russians had some 460 guns, compared to Napoleon’s 200, a significant difference that could easily decide a battle. But what the Russians, like the Prussians before them, truly lacked were enough good commanders. Even their best — Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and Platov were hardly in the same league as Augereau, Lannes, Ney, Davout, and Murat. The earlier clashes between the two forces at Pultusk and Golmymin in December had proved inconclusive. The real battles lay before them, but in the spring, when the snow thawed, and on January 7, 1807, Napoleon finally ordered his troops into winter quarters.
The only success Napoleon had in December and January — apart from the conquest of the countess — was seeing the labors of his negotiations with Constantinople come to fruition, the Sublime Porte declaring war on Russia in December and on England late in January. Russia therefore definitely had to commit larger numbers of troops to its southern frontiers, while England saw yet more ports closed to its navy and commerce. If Napoleon could convince the shah of Persia to do the same, he could strike a blow at British India as well. And thus with his men safely in their barracks, Bonaparte expected an interlude of relative calm before spring operations. But he was roused out of his premature reverie at the end of January by the news of unexpected large-scale attacks by Bennigsen against Ney and Bernadotte.
Unknown to Napoleon, back on January 2 at an important war council attended by the czar, the Russians had decided to push the French out of Poland, past the Vistula and then the Oder as well. Napoleon, the master of improvisation, quickly drew up a counterplan on January 28 to entrap and envelop the combined forces of Bennigsen’s perhaps 77,000 and Lestocq’s 13,000 men. All French corps commanders were ordered to be prepared to launch a big operation on February 1, despite the severe cold and heavy snowfall.
Alas, the copy of operational orders destined for Bernadotte went astray, reaching Bennigsen instead, who had actually been falling into this trap. He quickly extricated himself, and by February 3 Napoleon realized that the Russians knew something and canceled previous instructions. He ordered Ney, Augereau, Soult, and Davout north as quickly as possible after Bennigsen, who continued to withdraw in the direction of friendly Königsberg. This time Bernadotte received his set of orders two days late, which was to have serious consequences for the French. Meanwhile General Lefebvre (who had replaced Victor, captured by the Prussians) held the X Corps at Thorn, and another acting corps commander, Savary, kept the V corps on the Narew River at Ostolenka. Having failed to get at Bennigsen at Ionkovo on February 3-4, the French army was soon in pursuit. A brief clash at Hoff did not prevent the Russians from continuing their march, however, bringing them to Eylau, less than thirty miles from Königsberg.
Soult’s and Murat’s units reached the vicinity of the Russian army at Eylau in the early afternoon of February 7. They were soon joined by the Imperial Guard and Augereau’s corps, for a total of 45,000 men. Ney’s 15,000 men, still well to the north trying to intercept Lestocq’s Prussians, were ordered back to Eylau by Napoleon. The only other corps within call was Davout’s, down to 15,000 men but still well to the south when also summoned north. Facing the French were Bennigsen’s 67,000 men already well deployed along the ridge and small hills to the northeast of Eylau, leaving a no-man’s land of two-thirds of a mile in low-lying marshy land and small ponds, frozen solid and buried beneath deep snow.
Seizing the hilly ground immediately before and to either side of the town of Preussisch Eylau, Napoleon deployed Soult immediately before and to the left of Eylau, Augereau holding the center just to the right of Eylau and stretching as far to the right as possible, bolstered by one of Soult’s divisions and including Murat’s four cavalry divisions, with the Imperial Guard and Murat’s reserve behind them. There was a very heavy concentration of French artillery before Soult’s front line and therefore well before Eylau itself, with seven more batteries on high ground before Augereau’s corps, at the center and to the far right.
Bennigsen had not only twenty thousand more men than Napoleon, but also a formidable array of canno
n. To Napoleon’s 200 artillery pieces, the Prussians had no fewer than 260, and Russian gunners were as renowned as the French. Bennigsen’s troops were also well deployed.
The odds were clearly one-sided, even to an optimist like Napoleon, who no doubt prayed that Lestocq’s 15,000 men would not arrive in time to bolster the Russian line. On the other hand, he was counting heavily on Davout’s 15,000 men, though admittedly the march in subzero weather and unremitting snowfall would greatly delay him. If anyone in the French army could overcome almost any obstacle, it was the stern, hard-driving Davout, who never offered or accepted excuses.
The battle began hours before Napoleon was ready, and then quite by accident, while the French were still arriving. At about two o’clock on February 7 the attendants bringing up Napoleon’s personal baggage, field kitchen, and equipment arrived in Eylau and began unpacking. The Russians at a nearby outpost immediately attacked them and the partially unpacked wagons. The attendants and imperial belongings were barely saved. The Russians then sent up reinforcements, and heavy fighting quickly ensued in the streets of Eylau, lasting until ten that night, after which several thousand casualties on both sides were carried away. It was not an auspicious beginning.
Daybreak was scarcely noticeable the next morning due to the continuing heavy snowstorms that hindered both vision and movement, either side barely visible to the other most of the time though only twelve hundred yards apart. Soult’s orders were to pin down the Russian divisions opposite him and thereby prevent a major advance on the weaker French positions until Davout could arrive. Rather than just hold his own, however, Napoleon was intent on enveloping the Russians once all his troops had arrived. In any event, full-scale fighting resumed with the little light available at eight o’clock, involving a major artillery duel, but the 130 big Russian guns concentrated between Essen and Sacken easily outdid the French in damage to troops and the stone walls of Eylau, setting fire both to Eylau and the hamlet of Rothenen behind Murat’s cavalry.
The massive advance following the bombardment by the Russian right flank against Soult’s front lines proceeded through the deep snow and over the ice-covered swamps. Caught off balance, Napoleon threw Augereau’s tough VII corps forward beyond French guns, against General Tolstoy’s division. Although burning with fever and wobbly on his feet, Augereau carried on. Parallel to him St.-Hilaire’s division was also advancing, but blindly through the almost impenetrable snow. Augereau, instead of heading straight ahead for the extreme right end of Tolstoy’s division, unwittingly veered to his left, suddenly finding himself within pistol range of Sacken’s line and its seventy cannon, which literally oblitered Augereau’s entire corps within a matter of minutes. Most of the remainder of his men were then cut down in a savage bayonet attack by Doctorov’s reserve infantry driving back the remnants of the French to the edge of Eylau. The result was an enormous hole in Napoleon’s center front line. Of Augereau’s 14,600 men, only 2,000 or so returned to the safety of their own lines.
At about the same time Napoleon himself was almost captured with his staff near the bell tower in Eylau by several thousand advancing Russian infantry, the emperor saved at the last moment only by Guardsmen literally throwing themselves before him as human shields against the onrushing enemy.
By 11:30 A.M. the situation was so critical, with his center still exposed where Augereau’s corps had formerly stood, that Napoleon committed 10,700 of Murat’s reserve cavalry to charge through the central gap directly at the massive Russian infantry columns marching in for the kill. The courageous Marshal Murat as usual was leading his cavalry charge through the blinding snow. Murat in turn was followed by Bessières with the Imperial Guard’s cavalry and they were followed by four more mounted divisions.
Splitting into two groups, one section of the French cavalry charged magnificently through the Russian cavalry, while the other cleared their infantry, forcing the Russians to withdraw from Eylau. The two cavalry wings then hacked their way through Sacken’s formidable center, and, in a marvelously disciplined move, re-formed behind Sacken’s line into a single column and retraced their path through the Russians, overrunning and disabling much of the lethal Russian artillery as they went. As Murat’s force returned, exhausted and depleted by some fifteen hundred men, Napoleon ordered up the Imperial Guard’s cavalry, followed in turn by six squadrons of Mamelukes and chasseurs. Murat’s superb charge had saved Napoleon from being overrun while permitting Davout’s corps, which had finally arrived between the French extreme right and the Russian left, to carry part of the enormous burden. Bennigsen, who had been on the verge of victory, now lost the momentum.
With Davout in place, Napoleon ordered his corps forward along with St.-Hilaire’s division, to encircle Tolstoy’s left flank, while everywhere else on the line, including Soult’s left flank, the French held firmly. For the next two and a half hours Davout’s divisions pushed around Tolstoy’s division, dislodging them from their ridge positions, forcing them back past the town of Kutschitten on the right and the hamlet of Ankappen in their center. Indeed, the French seemed about to break through the Russian line when Lestocq’s Prussian corps, reduced to 7,000 men, appeared. They swung around Bennigsen’s rear and struck the French head on, gradually pushing Davout’s exhausted men back across the stretch of land they had won over the past couple of hours. At 7:00 P.M. the first of Ney’s 14,000 badly needed men reached the French rear lines, resecuring Napoleon’s weakened extreme left, both sides now fighting to a bloody standstill.
Later that night Bennigsen decided to call it quits and withdraw. But given the blizzard and the long wintry night, the French knew nothing of this. Indeed, Napoleon had simultaneously given the order to withdraw under cover of darkness from one of the bloodiest battlefields in hundreds of years of European history. It was only an hour or two later that Davout’s rear guard noticed the Russian evacuation and Napoleon immediately ordered his troops back into place.[712] The Russians and French had fought a perfectly balanced draw.
The casualties were horrendous. Napoleon claimed in his “Victory” Bulletin — for he had the nerve to call Eylau a glorious French triumph — that they had lost 7,600 dead and wounded, whereas Augereau’s corps alone had suffered some 12,000 casualties. The real figure was never published but was probably closer to 25,000 French dead and wounded.[713] Russian casualties probably approached 15,000. As for Marshal Bernadotte, just as during the famous twin battles of Auerstädt-Jena, he failed to appear in time to participate in the combat, although this time he had the perfectly valid excuse of having received his orders two days after everyone else.
For once Napoleon could not come back with captured armies, regimental flags, or even enemy cannon, for there had been no French victory at Eylau this day. Nevertheless this did not prevent him from writing to Josephine: “You must have been anxious. But I defeated the enemy during a memorable day, although it cost me the lives of many brave men.” Marshal Ney regarded the bloody battlefield differently. “What a slaughter, and what did we achieve? Nothing!”[714]
Following the battle both General Bennigsen and Napoleon limped away from the corpse-strewn snowfields of Eylau, the French so savagely mauled that they were unable to carry out another campaign now. Back in Warsaw, Napoleon was forced to do something he had never done before in his career, disband an entire army corps, the VII. With the badly wounded Augereau slowly making his way back to France to heal, Bonaparte integrated his remaining two thousand men into other units of the army. He then sent a courier off to the War Office in Paris informing General Dejean to send not only the entire conscript “class” of 1807, but to call up another 80,000 young men designated for 1808, a year and a half in advance. Thus it was that General Lefebvre’s unique new X Corps was formed, comprising almost entirely foreign units, a concept to be enlarged upon significantly over the next few years. It included two Polish divisions, two Italian divisions sent by the viceroy of Italy, and a few smaller units from Savoy and Baden, totaling some 27,000 me
n. Marshal Masséna was next brought from Italy to Poland to help fill the void in commanders.
Napoleon’s first important move, even before the recuperating army was out of winter quarters again, was to dispatch Lefebvre’s new corps to seize Danzig (now Gdansk). The full investment of that citadel, beginning on March 18, was to prove a formidable task, a stubborn General Kalkreuth not surrendering until May 29.
Meanwhile Czar Alexander fielded his strengthened army of 115,000 troops to resume the struggle against the French invaders, his position enhanced by a new Russo-Prussian defense pact signed secretly at Barten-stein on April 26, 1807. At Finkenstein Castle, in Poland, Napoleon for his part was now intent on accomplishing two things, destroying Bennigsen’s elusive army before it reached the Baltic fortress of Königsberg, and then seizing the latter as well. With this in mind he was determined to bring this long, painful campaign to an end as quickly as possible. Thus when Bennigsen’s force was reported at Heilsberg, far to the north of Warsaw and not far from Königsberg, Napoleon marched his army there. The fight with the Russians that began on June 10 lasted until 11:00 P.M. that night, French casualties of 10,000 again outnumbering the enemy’s 8,000. Once again there was bitter backbiting among the French officers, both Lannes and Savary loudly condemning Murat’s “overbearing and insulting conduct” on and off the battlefield. The battle at Heilsburg ended to the Russians’ advantage, they afterward withdrawing strategically up the road to Königsberg, past the battlefield of Eylau, heading for Domnau.