Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  But the vast majority of the French recruits did fall in behind the recruiting sergeant. Onward they came, these unfortunate men and boys, only to find themselves scorned by their own French people as they were marched from village to village, to the high roads, as if they themselves were the enemy, pariahs. And each night en route they found themselves quartered in the local prison, or a barn, if they were fortunate enough, or else simply herded to the nearest field, even having to pay for their daily food ration. The rate of desertion rose the closer they got to the Rhine and then the Saale.

  More reinforcements of “allies” were formed. Three more battalions of Westphalians had just been conscripted by force (they would later desert in mid-battle), not to mention one Badenese squadron, to whom were added the Poles, Bavarians, Lithuanians, Saxons, and so on. War Minister Clarke promised another 27,000 men by mid-February, Poles and Germans from the Warta, the Oder, Posen, Warsaw, Zamosc, and Czestochowa, some from places even Napoleon had never heard of. Another 24,488 reinforcements would also be marching toward the Elbe by February, including Franco-Italian troops, eight battalions of sailors, and a few hundred more Badenese. Altogether Clarke promised a theoretical force of 200,000 men. These angry men of all age groups openly cursed Napoleon as they passed the burned rubble of villages and once-proud towns, destroyed during previous campaigns.

  Napoleon was mystified by the guns he heard south of Lützen on May 1. He did not even know who was fighting, apart from the fact that Ney’s III Corps had been “resting” there while en route. In fact a few hours earlier Ney’s troops had been assigned to occupy the sleepy, picturesque villages of Kaja, Rahna, Gross, and Klein Görschen to the south of Lützen and the main road, to cover Lauriston’s and Macdonald’s march on Leipzig, while waiting for Marmont’s lagging and dispirited VI Corps to catch up with them.

  Incomplete intelligence reports finally reached GHQ. It was the Russians. It appeared that Wittgenstein had been advancing from the southeast with some 73,000 men, when, much to their surprise, they had come upon a mere 2,000 of Ney’s troops out in the open cooking breakfast. An angry Ney, who had argued against this new campaign, had not even posted pickets. It was practically a picnic and apparently easy pickings for the Russians. But great was the surprise of Blücher (who was serving under the Russians here) at 11:45 that May morning as his cavalry swept down on Ney’s unsuspecting conscripts, to find his Prussian cavalry before not just 2,000 men but an entire French army corps. Blücher immediately stopped his charge and returned to his lines as his artillery was brought up against the French, supported by four full army corps. General Souham held them off as best he could as Napoleon ordered Marmont’s corps, the Old Guard, and Macdonald’s XI Corps to come to their aid, while Bertrand’s IV Corps was advancing from the southwest.

  Napoleon did not reach the battlefield with reinforcements until 2:30 that afternoon, where he found Ney’s corps single-handedly still holding off the entire Russo-Prussian army. With the smell of gunpowder and apparent near disaster close at hand, the Napoleon of yore suddenly came to life, true to legend, personally leading up fresh, hesitant regiments of green recruits. The old Bonaparte magic worked again as morale suddenly soared, jubilant cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” clashing with the roar of cannon. As Marmont later reported, Napoleon as usual soon was in the center of the most deadly fighting. It was Borodino all over again. The casualties were great on both sides, Blücher himself wounded and out of action, replaced by Yorck. Napoleon’s aim was to outflank Wittgenstein, and at 6:00 P.M., with a newly massed seventy-gun battery, he unleashed his main attack, which continued right until nightfall, forcing the Allied line to fall back in confusion. It would be a French victory, but not a complete one, as the crack reorganized Prussian cavalry launched an unexpected and most impressive counterattack at 9:00 P.M., immediately stopping all French preparations for pursuit, thereby permitting the Allies to withdraw in good order.

  The price for the unplanned Battle of Lützen was high, Ney losing most of his corps, the French suffering a minimum of twenty thousand casualties, and Wittgenstein’s Allies an equal number. As all parties evacuated the latest field of battle, they left behind at least four burning, destroyed villages, the innocent civilians as usual the real losers.

  Despite his late arrival Napoleon had had the real advantage at Lützen in finally greatly outnumbering his opponents. After some days of rest, but once again with insufficient intelligence data, he decided on a two-pronged follow-up attack. He would threaten Berlin, Wittenberg, and Torgau with the remnants of Ney’s corps supported by Victor, Reynier, and Sébastiani’s cavalry. His aim was to divide the Allies, forcing the Prussians to abandon the Russians in order to protect their capital. Meanwhile Napoleon, leading the principal part of his army, would drive toward Dresden to destroy Wittgenstein and the Russians. Alas for the French, apart from Blücher’s corps of 30,000 men, the Allied army remained together, including the other Prussian corps, all in and around Dresden. In fact, Wittgenstein had already passed Dresden, reaching the banks of the Spree River, where he found a good defensive position and dug in well prepared for the French onslaught he expected. Napoleon advanced with Bertrand commanding his left wing, Marmont and Macdonald the center, and Oudinot directing the right flank. Much to their surprise they entered an undefended Dresden on the evening of May 8. Napoleon moved into the palace that Czar Alexander and King Friedrich Wilhelm had hastily evacuated. As for the amiable but weak-willed king of Saxony, he assured the French emperor that he would not abandon him again. For the moment both sides were better matched, Wittgenstein with 96,000 men, Napoleon with some 115,000, despite an infusion of reinforcements for both of them.

  Napoleon decided to wait until he had more substantial reinforcements, however, including Ney’s additional four corps, some 84,000. He would soon outnumber Wittgenstein two to one, the sort of odds Napoleon liked. French troops continued to pour into the region around Bautzen, a two-day march to the northeast of Dresden.

  Finally satisfied, Bonaparte gave the signal for the opening heavy bombardment at noon on May 20, followed three hours later by the first major attack, with Ney’s army group approaching the Spree at Klux, along Napoleon’s western flank, Soult and Bertrand commanding the left center, and Marmont’s VI Corps along the right center; while to Marmont’s right were Macdonald’s XI Corps before the town of Bautzen itself, and to the extreme French right, Oudinot’s XII Corps. Facing them were the veteran Allied commanders Barclay, Blücher, Kleist, Yorck, Berg, Gorchakov, and Miloradovich.

  Intensive fighting lasted all day, with nothing concluded by nightfall. It was only after resuming the fighting the next morning that Ney finally joined them after a long hard march, adding his 84,000 men to the French side. It proved a tough, head-on battle, Napoleon ordering Ney’s group to swing around Wittgenstein’s right flank cutting him off along the Gorlitz Road. Soult would follow up with his 20,000 men near the left center.

  As so often happened, orders were fouled up in the heat of battle, Ney not understanding his instructions and consequently launching a series of very heavy assaults against the Allied line instead of outflanking them and cutting off the enemy’s escape. Despite outrageously unequal numbers, the Russians and Prussians held grimly fast until five o’clock on the afternoon of the twenty-first, when seeing himself hopelessly outnumbered, Czar Alexander, who had interfered with Wittgenstein’s command all day, now initiated the beginning of another orderly tactical retreat. Soult, who was hardly a wonder even at the best of times, simply kept battering at the Allied center, which staunchly withstood his superior numbers. Napoleon was finally forced to call up the Imperial Guard against Blücher’s flank but was unable to prevent a successful Allied withdrawal in the direction of Görlitz to the southeast, the route that Ney had failed to sever. Both Ney and Lauriston were in Napoleon’s bad books that evening, as they watched an army half the size of theirs escape. Soult as usual had not done much better. Thus the Allied army withdrew, though s
uffering casualties of some 25 percent of their force. Again the French had suffered an equal number of casualties.

  The French pursuit continued the following day, May 22. It had started off well enough, Napoleon desperately urging on his men after the Russian rear guard, when he was stopped by a volley of cannonballs striking around him. He complained to Duroc, “That lot are not leaving anything behind, not even a single prisoner for us. Ah, luck is not on our side today!” He was particularly upset at taking no prisoners, large numbers indicating a real defeat and a demoralized foe. Just then an aide-de-camp rode up to inform him of the death of General Bruyères, who had been with Napoleon since his Italian campaign. Several minutes later, with Caulaincourt, Mortier, General of Engineers Kirgener, and Duroc, Napoleon left the road to get a better view from a nearby hilltop. Just as he was passing an isolated tree, it was cut in half by a Russian cannonball, Napoleon continuing on to the crest of the hill. Turning round, he could not see Duroc, who was invariably at his side. The cannonball that had just split the tree, narrowly missing Napoleon, had ricocheted, cutting General Kirgener in two, and almost completely disemboweling Duroc. Still alive but suffering horribly, Duroc was taken down the hill to a nearby house, accompanied by Napoleon, Berthier, Caulaincourt, and Dr. Yvan. Christophe Duroc was clearly close to death. “It was a terrible sight,” recalled Constant. “The Emperor, in a state of despair, leaned over and embraced his faithful friend several times, trying to utter a few words of hope, but the Duke [Duroc], who knew perfectly well how serious the situation was, did not answer...and then finally only to ask for opium. At these words, no longer able to bear it, Napoleon left. The Duke of Friuli died the next morning.”

  Napoleon returned to his camp. “He sat down on a stool outside his tent, his head hung low, his hands tightly gripped together, and there he remained for about an hour, without saying a word...Sobs were heard from his tent all night long.” Afterward he ordered Duroc’s body to be taken back to Paris for burial in the Invalides. He also bought the house in which his friend had died, ordering a plaque to be placed in it: “Here General Duroc, duc de Frioul, grand marshal of the palace of the Emperor Napoleon, was hit by a cannonball and died in the arms of the emperor, his friend.” He also arranged to have prayers read regularly there.

  Duroc was indeed his only close friend, the only person in the entire army who still used the informal tu with him. Napoleon was silent and remote for days thereafter, just as he had been following the death of Lannes at Wagram. The effect of the loss of Duroc is difficult to calculate, but it was certainly great and permanent, leaving Napoleon a different man, more distant than ever before. He was now all alone in the world, a vast chasm separating him from the rest of the living.

  On May 22, because of Duroc, Napoleon suddenly broke off the pursuit of the Russians despite his favorable position. It all seemed so irrelevant now. The last fall from his horse at the Trianon had indeed been an omen. Duroc had advised Napoleon against both the Russian campaign and the present one, and now he was reaping the whirlwind. He had killed his best friend.

  As for the Allies, they were at loggerheads, a furious Wittgenstein resigning from the Russian army as a result of Alexander’s having effectively superseded him and his orders throughout the battle at Bautzen. Barclay de Tolly took over command once again as both the Prussians and Russians withdrew strategically to Schweidnitz, in Silesia. Napoleon, at last getting a grip on himself, ordered his main force in the direction of Katzbach, which he took on June 1, along with the important city of Breslau, even as good news arrived from the north: Davout had retaken Hamburg, lost earlier by St-Cyr.

  But by now both sides were overextended and licking their wounds after having suffered enormous casualties, complicated by poor supply lines and unsatisfactory field commanders for the most part.

  On June 2 both Alexander and Napoleon agreed to a temporary ceasefire, followed on the fourth by a conference at Pleiswitz, where they signed a truce until July 20, during which time they would negotiate a peace settlement. As Napoleon informed War Minister Clarke, he had agreed to this interruption “in the course of my victories” because of the desperate shortage of cavalry — which could not stand up to the superior Cossacks and Prussians — and because of his anxiety over what he referred to as “Austria’s hostile attitude.”

  Yet Napoleon, now offered the ideal occasion for making peace after two bloody but victorious engagements, had no intention of losing face by making a compromising peace, involving the return of land he had taken. For him it was all or nothing. No longer living in the world of reality, he was intent on destroying both the Prussian and Russian armies that had somehow escaped him, and to march to Königsberg. Napoleon thought Metternich was quite mad, coming as a mediator to Dresden on May 27 and counseling Napoleon to be both generous and reasonable in this hour of victory. He asked for the dissolution of the Duchy of Warsaw, Napoleon’s renunciation of the territory recently “annexed” at gunpoint in the north of Germany, including Hannover and Hamburg, and the return of Illyria to Austria. Napoleon dismissed him with a contemptuous wave of the hand. “I have not asked for your mediation...I will sacrifice a million men yet if necessary...You wish to tear Italy and Germany from me. You wish to dishonor me, monsieur. Honor before all!” he all but screamed at him.

  It was under this prevailingly negative mood that the Armistice of Pleiswitz began on June 4 and extended ultimately until August 10. It was another great lack of judgment on Napoleon’s part, for not only were more Prussian and Russian troops advancing westward to meet him, but England was in the process of joining the coalition along with Austria.

  When Napoleon finally learned about the secret Treaty of Trachtenberg, signed on July 9, 1813, in which England agreed to subsidize Austrian and Swedish participation against France, is not clear, although the final agreement formally bringing Austria into the new Allied Coalition, with Prussia and Russia, was not signed until September 19.[771] Suddenly in mid-July Napoleon summoned Marie-Louise and most of his ministers to an urgent meeting at Mainz.

  Arriving on the twenty-fifth he was warmly greeted by his wife and members of his cabinet. Long hours were spent behind closed doors as Napoleon reviewed the situation in Paris — he wanted no more General Malets attempting to overthrow his government again during his absence — and had to make further preparations for the war effort. No doubt one of the main reasons for this unscheduled last-minute meeting was to address the princes and heads of the principal states of the Confederation of the Rhine, and many appeared as commanded, but many other of his devoted “allies” were absent. Metternich’s demands for the dismemberment of his great empire had clearly frightened Bonaparte, and he had no doubt already received Prince von Schwarzenberg’s hardly subtle double-entendre threat that “Politics have made this marriage, and politics can just as easily unmake it.”

  Napoleon had been corresponding constantly with his regent-empress, his letters always awkwardly addressed to “Madame, chère amie,” every one of them businesslike, lacking warmth, love, and any indication that they were even vaguely related (in contrast to his letters to Josephine, which often had been affectionate and loving). Perhaps Napoleon felt that she had already betrayed him and was working behind his back to overthrow his regime. And although as a sign of love she had brought the portrait artist Isabey in tow, to prepare some quick miniatures of him, Napoleon was wary of her, never trusting anyone — except of course Duroc, and Duroc was no more. He also managed to spend a surprising number of hours alone, as the now crippled Méneval, serving as Marie-Louise’s new secretary, reported. And then on August 1 Napoleon was gone as suddenly as he had appeared, and by the 4th back at his GHQ in Dresden.

  Meanwhile at the Congress of Prague, convened to resolve this conflict, the negotiators met almost too casually, too lacking in their resolve to arrive at a mutually acceptable European peace, Narbonne and Caulaincourt representing France. Although the armistice had been extended until August 10, they convened i
n the Bohemian capital for the last time on August 7, when Metternich confidently raised the ante, as additional troops continued to swell the forces of the Coalition. Not only did the Austrian chancellor now insist on the dissolution of the French Grand Duchy of Warsaw (already in Russian hands) and the reestablishment of Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, and Hannover, but also on the dismemberment of the Confederation of the Rhine, the return of an independent Holland, the restitution of the old Prussia, the Illyrian provinces to Vienna, and the evacuation of Iberia. In brief France was to withdraw to its former frontiers.

  Napoleon remained defiant. “Do you wish to rob me?...I will not give up one inch of ground.” How dare they demand the return of their rightful property?! And at midnight on August 10, 1813, the Congress of Prague silently dissolved into history. The war was to continue, for Napoleon demanded it.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven – Leipzig

  ‘The Grand Empire no longer exists. It is France itself we must now defend.’

  To the French Senate, November 14, 1813

  As the armistice — and with it the fruitless negotiations at Prague — drew to an end in the second week of August 1813, Napoleon knew despite his poor intelligence service that the immediate post-Bautzen situation had deteriorated so far as the French and their dwindling allies were concerned. At Bautzen on May 21 he had outnumbered the Russo-Prussian army. By the end of August, although still in control of all the strong points along the Elbe, including Magdeburg, Wittenberg, Orgau, and Dresden, and isolated Leipzig, Napoleon’s main force was concentrated along the Saxon-Bohemian frontier up to Dresden, reaching eastward as far as Zittau in the Isser Mountains, with perhaps a total force of 220,000 men. Thus, despite his recent victories at Lützen and Bautzen, he controlled only the Elbe and the main cities of Dresden and Leipzig.