Although in early January 1813 Frederick William III offered to have General Yorck court-martialled for concluding the non-aggression pact with the Russians at Tauroggen, he was merely biding time. Prussia had undergone a modernizing revolution since Tilsit, which meant that Napoleon now faced a very different enemy from the one he had crushed at Jena nearly seven years before. The country had reformed, with defeat as the spur and the Napoleonic administrative–military model as its template. Barons vom Stein and von Hardenberg and generals von Gneisenau and von Scharnhorst demanded a ‘revolution in the good sense’ which, by destroying ‘obsolete prejudices’, would revive Prussia’s ‘dormant strengths’. There had been major financial and administrative reforms, including the abolition of many internal tariffs, restrictive monopolies and practices, the hereditary bondage of the peasantry and restrictions on occupation, movement and land ownership. A free market in labour was created, taxation was harmonized, ministers were made directly responsible and the property, marriage and travel restrictions on Jews were lifted.34
In the military sphere Prussia purged the high command (out of the 183 generals en poste in 1806, only eight still remained by 1812), opened the officer corps to non-nobles, introduced competitive examination in the cadet schools, abolished flogging, and mobilized her adult male population in the Landwehr (militia) and Landsturm (reserve). By 1813 she had put more than 10 per cent of her total population into uniform, more than any other Power, and over the next two years of almost constant fighting she lost the fewest through desertion.35 With a hugely improved general staff, Prussia was able to boast fine commanders in the coming campaigns, such as generals von Bülow, von Blücher, von Tauentzien and von Boyen.36 Napoleon was forced to admit that the Prussians had come on a great deal since the early campaigns; as he rather crudely put it: ‘These animals have learnt something.’37 It was hardly a consolation that they had learned much of it from him, just as Archduke Charles’s military reforms since Austerlitz had copied many Napoleonic practices and several of Barclay de Tolly’s reforms in Russia since Friedland had also echoed them. The wholesale adoption by all European armies of the corps system by 1812, making the Allies’ armies far more flexible in manoeuvre, was a tribute to the French, but also a threat to them.
On February 28, 1813 Frederick William signed the Treaty of Kalisch with Alexander, whereby the Tsar promised to restore Prussia to her pre-Tilsit borders and provide 150,000 troops if Prussia would send 80,000 to fight Napoleon. No sooner had the treaty been signed than the British began shipping arms, equipment and uniforms into the Baltic ports for use by both armies. Eugène was forced to abandon Berlin while leaving behind garrisons in Magdeburg, Torgau and Wittenberg. Because it was already besieging the French in Stettin, Küstrin, Spandau, Glogau, Thorn and Danzig, the Russian field army was down to 46,000 infantry and 10,000 Cossacks, although they were about to be joined by 61,000 Prussians. The Allied plan was to move on Dresden in order to detach Saxony from Napoleon, while sending Cossack units pouring across the north German plain to try to stir up rebellion in the Hanseatic Towns and the Rhine Confederation.
‘At the least insult from a Prussian town or village burn it down,’ Napoleon commanded Eugène on March 3, ‘even Berlin.’38 Fortunately burning the Prussian capital was no longer possible, since the Russians entered it that same day. ‘Nothing is less military than the course you have pursued,’ Napoleon raged to Eugène on hearing the news. ‘An experienced general would have established a camp in front of Küstrin.’39 He further complained that as he wasn’t getting daily reports from Eugène’s chief-of-staff, ‘I only learn what’s happening from the English press.’ He was even angrier with Jérôme, who complained about the high taxes that Westphalians had to pay to provision fortresses like Magdeburg. ‘These means are authorized by a state of war; they have constantly been employed since the world was the world,’ Napoleon raged in a characteristically blistering response. ‘You will see how much the 300,000 men cost that I have in Spain, all the troops which I have raised this year, and the 100,000 cavalry I am equipping … You always argue … All your arguments are nonsense … Of what use is your intelligence since you take such a wrong view? Why gratify your vanity by vexing those who defend you?’40 Before sending off a force to defend Magdeburg on March 4, Napoleon went through a familiar checklist with its commander: ‘Make absolutely certain that each man has a pair of shoes on his feet and two pairs in his knapsack; that his pay is up to date, and, if it isn’t, have the arrears paid. Make sure that each soldier has forty cartridges in his ammunition pouch.’41
Writing to Montalivet, Napoleon said he was about to go to Bremen, Münster, Osnabrück and Hamburg, but in his new spirit of thrift his lodgings and guards of honour in those cities ‘must cost the country nothing’.42 It was a ruse, however, to deceive the enemy about his movement. It was just as well he didn’t go to Hamburg, however, as on March 18 Cossacks arrived and sparked a Hanseatic revolt just as the Allies hoped. Mecklenburg was the first state to defect from the Confederation of the Rhine. By late March the situation was so bad that Napoleon told Lauriston, now the commander of the Observation Corps of the Elbe, that he no longer dared to write to Eugène about his plans for the defence of Magdeburg and Spandau as he didn’t have a cipher code and ‘the Cossacks might intercept my letter.’43 To make things even worse, Sweden then agreed to contribute 30,000 men to the Sixth Coalition if Britain would subsidize her with £1 million, and in early April General Pierre Durutte’s small garrison was forced to evacuate Dresden.
It was at this time that Napoleon spoke to Molé about the prospect of France returning to her ‘old’, pre-war borders of 1791. ‘I owe everything to my glory,’ he said.
If I sacrifice it I cease to be. It is from my glory that I hold all my rights … If I brought this nation, which is so anxious for peace and tired of war, a peace on terms which would make me blush personally, it would lose all confidence in me; you would see my prestige destroyed and my ascendancy lost.44
He compared the Russian disaster to a storm which shakes a tree to its roots but ‘leaves it still more firmly fixed in the soil from which it has failed to tear it’. Dubious arboreal analogies aside, he wanted to discuss the French nation: ‘It fears me more than it likes me and would at first regard the news of my death as a relief. But, believe me, that is much better than if it had liked me without fearing me.’45 (The contrast between being loved and feared of course echoes Machiavelli’s The Prince, a book with which he was very familiar.) Napoleon went on to say that he would beat the Russians as ‘they have no infantry’ and that the borders of the Empire would be fixed on the Oder as ‘The defection of Prussia will enable me to seek compensation.’ He also thought Austria would not declare war, because ‘The best act of my political career was my marriage.’46 In those last three points at least he was clearly trying to boost Molé’s morale without any real consideration of the facts of the situation.
It was a measure of Napoleon’s resilience and resourcefulness – and of the confidence that he still commanded – that having returned from Russia with only 10,000 effectives from his central invading force, he was able within four months to field an army of 151,000 men for the Elbe campaign, with many more to come.47 He left Saint-Cloud at 4 a.m. on April 15 to take the field, with the kings of Denmark, Württemberg, Bavaria and Saxony and the grand dukes of Baden and Würzburg as allies, albeit some of them reluctant ones. ‘Write to Papa François once a week,’ he told Marie Louise three days later, ‘send him military particulars and tell him of my affection for his person.’48 With Wellington on the offensive in Spain, Murat negotiating with Austria over Naples, Bernadotte about to land with a Swedish army, fears of rebellion in western Germany and an Austria that was rearming quickly and at best only offering ‘mediation’, Napoleon knew he needed an early and decisive victory in the field. ‘I will travel to Mainz,’ he had told Jérôme in March, ‘and if the Russians advance, I will make plans accordingly; but we very much need
to win before May.’49 The Allies grouping around Leipzig – commanded by Wittgenstein after Kutuzov’s death from illness in April – had massed 100,000 men; 30,000 of them were well-horsed cavalry, and they were being heavily reinforced. As a result of the equinocide in Russia the previous year, the rapidly reconstituted Grande Armée, by contrast, had only 8,540 cavalry.
Napoleon reached Erfurt on April 25 and assumed command of the army. He was shocked to find how inexperienced some of his officers were. Taking captains from the 123rd and 134th Line to make them chefs de bataillon in the 37th Légère, he complained to his war minister General Henri Clarke: ‘It’s absurd to have captains who have never fought a war … You take young people just out of college who have not even been to Saint-Cyr [Military Academy], with the result that they know nothing, and you put them in new regiments!’50 Yet this was the material Clarke had to work with after the loss of over half a million men in Russia.
Within three days of his arrival Napoleon had led the Grand Armée of 121,000 men back across the Elbe and into Saxony. His aim was to recover north Germany and relieve Danzig and the other besieged cities, to release 50,000 veterans, and hopefully sweep back to the line of the Vistula. Adopting the bataillon carré formation, he aimed for the enemy army at Leipzig with Lauriston’s corps in the van followed by Macdonald’s and Reynier’s corps on the left flank, Ney’s and General Henri Bertrand’s on the right and Marmont’s as the rearguard. On his left Eugène had a further 58,000 men. Poniatowski rejoined the army in May, but Napoleon sent Davout off to be governor of Hamburg, a dangerous underuse of his best marshal.
On May 1, while out reconnoitring enemy positions, Bessières was killed when a cannonball ricocheted off a wall and hit him full in the chest. ‘The death of this exalted man affected him much,’ Bausset recorded. Bessières had served in every campaign of Napoleon’s career since 1796. ‘My trust in you’, Napoleon had once written to him, ‘is as great as my appreciation of your military talents, your courage and your love of order and discipline.’51 (To calm her, he asked Cambacérès to ‘Make the Empress understand that the Duc d’Istrie [Bessières] was a long way away from me when he was killed.’52) He now wrote to Bessières’ widow saying: ‘The loss for you and your children is no doubt immense, but mine is even more so. The Duc d’Istrie died the most beautiful death and suffered not. He leaves behind a flawless reputation: this is the finest inheritance he could bestow upon his children.’53 She might justifiably have taken issue with him as to whose loss was the greater, but his letter was heartfelt nonetheless, and accompanied by a generous pension.
Napoleon now faced a force totalling 96,000 men.54 On Sunday May 2, when he was watching Lauriston’s advance, he heard that Wittgenstein had launched a surprise attack on Ney near the village of Lützen at ten o’clock that morning. Listening intently to the cannonading, he ordered Ney to hold his position while he twisted the army round, sending Bertrand to attack the enemy’s left and Macdonald its right in a textbook corps manoeuvre, with Lauriston forming the new reserve.55 ‘We have no cavalry,’ Napoleon said; ‘that’s all right. It will be an Egyptian battle; everywhere the French infantry will have to suffice, and I don’t fear abandoning myself to the innate worth of our young conscripts.’56 Many of these conscripts had received their muskets for the first time when they reached Erfurt only days before the battle, and some only the day before the battle itself.57 Yet the ‘Marie Louises’ performed well at Lützen.
At 2.30 p.m. Napoleon appeared on the battlefield at the head of the Guard cavalry, riding to the village of Kaja. He formulated his plan rapidly. Ney would continue to hold the centre while Macdonald came in on the left, Marmont secured Ney’s right, and Bonnet would try to get round the enemy’s rear from the Weissenfels–Lützen road. The Guard infantry of 14,100 would assemble out of view as a reserve and then deploy between Lützen and Kaja. Seeing some of the younger soldiers of Ney’s corps making for the rear, and even a few dropping their muskets, Napoleon formed the Guard cavalry as a stop-line, and harangued and cajoled them until they returned to their ranks. Overall, however, Ney told Napoleon that he thought the young recruits fought better than his veterans, who tended to calculate probabilities and so take fewer risks. The Moniteur subsequently stated: ‘Our young soldiers are not afraid of danger. During this great action, they have revealed the absolute nobility of French blood.’58
The four villages of Gross-Gorschen, Kaja, Rahna and Klein-Gorschen formed the centre of the battle. The Tsar – who along with Frederick William was present, although Wittgenstein as Allied commander-in-chief took all the important military decisions – sent in Russian horse artillery, and Ricard’s division was fought to a standstill as each village changed hands several times. Ney was wounded on the front line and all the senior officers of Souham’s division were either killed or wounded except Souham himself. Wittgenstein was running out of reserves and could see more and more French arriving every hour, but he chose to renew the attack on Kaja. By about 6 p.m. Napoleon decided the moment for the final assault was fast approaching. Drouot brought forward 58 guns of the Guard artillery to join the Grand Battery, so that 198 guns could now pound the enemy centre. Remembering his mistake at Borodino when he had failed to employ the Guard decisively, Napoleon ordered Mortier to lead the Young Guard – 9,800 men in four columns – into the attack, backed by six battalions of the Old Guard in four squares. Two divisions of Guard cavalry, comprising 3,335 men, were in line behind them, and to the roar of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ they swept forward from Rahna to Gross-Gorschen. At the same moment, Bonnet’s division launched itself from Starsiedel, and Morand’s continued to attack from the west.
With all the Allied reserves totally committed, the Russian Guard massed behind Gross-Gorschen to encourage retreating Russian and Prussian formations to rally. As night fell – lit by the five burning villages – the French renewed the attack, further unsettling the enemy. After the battle the Allies withdrew in good order, having failed to exploit their huge superiority in cavalry. Napoleon was victorious, though at a heavy cost: 2,700 had been killed and as many as 16,900 wounded. The Russians and Prussians lost a similar number (though they admitted to only 11,000). Napoleon had no cavalry to conduct a pursuit, which was to be a major problem throughout the 1813 campaign. He did, however, begin the recovery of Saxony and the west bank of the Elbe. ‘My eagles are again victorious,’ he told Caulaincourt after the battle, adding ominously, ‘but my star is setting.’59
‘I’m very tired,’ Napoleon wrote to Marie Louise at eleven o’clock that night. ‘I’ve gained a complete victory over the Russian and Prussian armies under Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia. I lost 10,000 men, killed and wounded. My troops covered themselves with glory and proved their love in a way that went to my heart. Kiss my son. I’m in very good health.’60 To her father he wrote that Marie Louise ‘continues to please me in the extreme. She is now my prime minister and acquits herself of this role to my great satisfaction; I did not want Your Majesty to be unaware of this, knowing how much it will please his paternal heart.’61 Napoleon’s appeal to Francis’s paternal pride was a clear effort to prevent him siding with his enemies. Russia and Prussia he could just about manage, but should Austria join them his chances of victory would be severely reduced.
‘Soldiers! I am satisfied with you; you have fulfilled my expectations!’ Napoleon exclaimed in his post-battle proclamation, after which he took a dig at Alexander with a mention of ‘parricidal plots’ and the Russian practice of serfdom: ‘We will drive back these Tartars into their frightful regions, which they ought never to have left. Let them remain in their frozen deserts, the abode of slavery, of barbarism, and of corruption, where man is debased to equality with the brute.’62
As the Allies retreated across the Elbe in two great columns – one mainly Prussian, one mainly Russian – the French could follow only at infantry pace. The Prussians naturally wanted to retire north to protect Berlin, while the Russians wanted to move eastwar
ds to protect their lines of communication through Poland. Wittgenstein, still looking for opportunities to attack the French in the flank and rightly suspecting that Napoleon wanted to recapture Berlin, massed his army close to Bautzen, only 8 miles from the Austrian border, from where he could cover both Berlin and Dresden.
Napoleon entered Dresden on May 8 and stayed there for ten days. He received a Young Guard division and four battalions of the Old Guard, incorporated the Saxon army into a corps of the Grande Armée, sent Eugène back to Italy in case of Austrian encroachment, and secured three separate lines of communication back to France. ‘I have reason to be happy with Austria’s intentions,’ he told Clarke, ‘I do not suspect her provisions; however my intention is to be in a position not to have to depend on her.’63 It was a sensible policy. He was however angry with the Dresden city delegation who welcomed him, telling them that he knew they had aided the Allies during their occupation. ‘Fragments of garlands are still clinging to your houses, and your streets are still littered with the mush of the flowers your maidens strewed before the monarchs’ feet,’ he said. ‘Still, I am willing to overlook all that.’64
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