Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  It was Davout who ran into the bulk of the Prussian forces east of the town of Auerstädt in what has been described as one of the most extraordinary feats of the Napoleonic wars.86 Approximately 27,000 French troops and 44 cannon faced 63,000 Prussians supported by 230 guns.87 Things went very badly very quickly for the Prussians. Their commander, the Duke of Brunswick, was shot in the eye early in the battle and later died, Marshal von Möllendorf, a senior military adviser, was captured, Prince Henry mortally wounded, and Prince William seriously wounded. When informed that Brunswick had been wounded, Frederick William took over as commander, but he was soon out of his depth. By noon, his troops were caught in a murderous crossfire from the French who occupied high ground on both flanks. Later than afternoon, the king broke off the battle – even before news had come in of what was taking place to the south, at Jena – though he still possessed strong reserves. The retreat towards Weimar that evening took place in good order until they came across the fleeing army of Hohenlohe. Only then did chaos take over the main army, made worse by the large number of camp followers who blocked the roads and inhibited an orderly retreat.88 A better-integrated, better-led French army defeated a poorly integrated, poorly led Prussian army. It would be years before the Prussians fully learnt the lessons of defeat.

  Davout should have been supported by Bernadotte, who commanded a corps of 20,000 men; he was near by and heard the sound of the guns. Bernadotte had, moreover, received orders from Berthier that morning to join Davout. He simply chose to ignore them, as well as Davout’s repeated pleas for assistance.89 Instead, he followed to the letter Napoleon’s earlier orders to join him at Apolda, although he was so slow in getting there that it took him all day to cover the twelve kilometres that separated them. He did not reach Jena until after the battle was over.90 Why Bernadotte was not severely punished, as the army expected, is difficult to say.91 Napoleon later admitted that he had signed an order for Bernadotte’s court martial but that he later tore it up.92 Was he thinking of his first love, Désirée, now the marshal’s wife, or did he believe that Bernadotte would try to atone for his conduct by recognizing that he had performed disgracefully?93 If so, he appears to have judged the man well; Bernadotte ruthlessly pursued the retreating Prussians over the coming weeks.

  Napoleon did not find out what had happened until later in the evening when he got back to Jena. Waiting in front of an inn where he planned to spend the night was an officer from Davout’s staff who explained that Davout had fought and defeated the main body of the Prussian army forty kilometres away at Auerstädt. Napoleon at first refused to believe it but soon had to face the reality of the situation, paying tribute to Davout in the next day’s bulletin.94 But that was all the praise Davout was to receive. As had happened in the past – think of Moreau and Hohenlinden – Davout’s victory was completely sidelined. In contemporary reports, the two separate battles were reduced to one – Jena – with Auerstädt becoming the right wing of a larger battle. Indeed, from his very first bulletin, Napoleon only ever spoke of Jena.95 Even at the height of his power, he was jealous of others’ successes and, despite getting on well with Davout, was not about to let one of his lieutenants outshine him. This is not to say that he did not richly reward Davout for his services – he was later made Duc d’Auerstaedt – but his praise remained private.96 Auerstädt was never to play a large role in the regime’s propaganda and was more or less forgotten (there is no Pont d’Auerstädt in Paris, there is no monument of any kind, and no paintings were commissioned). As we shall see, the defeat of Prussia was to be represented in different ways.

  A few days later, on 18 October, on his way to Berlin, Napoleon stopped to visit the nearby battlefield of Rossbach. Rossbach was a defeat inflicted on the French by Prussia in November 1757 during the Seven Years’ War, and it had profoundly marked French popular memory to the point that there were constant calls throughout the second half of the eighteenth century to have the blight washed away. That Napoleon was finally able to do this was a considerable achievement; he ordered that the memorial to the Prussian victory be dismantled and transported back to Paris.97 This too was a deliberate attempt on his part to draw a comparison between himself and Frederick the Great, and was to become a prominent theme in Napoleonic propaganda over the coming years.98

  Pierre Antoine Vafflard, L’Armée française renverse la colonne commémorative de Rossbach, le 18 octobre 1806 (The French army topples the commemorative column of Rossbach, 18 October 1806), Salon of 1810.

  A Triumphant Napoleon . . .

  About ten days after the collapse of the Prussian army, on 24 October 1806, the French made their entry into Berlin.99 Napoleon arrived three days later – he gave Davout the honour of leading his corps through the city first – on a glorious autumn day, church bells ringing, guns resounding, receiving the keys of the city from Prince Hatzfeld (arrested shortly afterwards for spying). Unlike his treatment of Vienna after the victory of Austerlitz, Napoleon made a point of making a triumphal entry into Berlin, underlining Prussia’s defeat with a humiliating military parade through the Brandenburg Gate (on top of which was the Quadriga – a set of bronze statues of four horses representing peace – but not for much longer), and riding down Unter den Linden.100 It was about three in the afternoon; a large crowd – ‘the whole population of Berlin’, according to one witness101 – drawn by a mixture of sorrow, admiration and curiosity, had turned out to see the successor of Frederick the Great, looking a little heavier than he had just a few years before.102 The humiliation was made worse by the fact that only a week previously a rumour had reached Berlin that Napoleon had been destroyed at Jena. The city was rudely brought back to reality.

  Charles Meynier, Entrée de Napoléon Ier entouré de son Etat major dans Berlin, 27 octobre 1806, il passe par la porte de Brandebourg (Entry of Napoleon I into Berlin surrounded by his chiefs of staff, 27 October 1806, he passes by the Brandenburg Gate), 1810. The citizens of Berlin are portrayed greeting Napoleon with an enthusiasm that is belied by contemporary reports that depict a mournful crowd.103

  Berlin was considered one of the most beautiful European cities of its day, with the old quarter, Friedrichstadt, made up of large streets lined with beautiful houses and imposing buildings, including the royal palace.104 The town was also renowned for the Tiergarten where even during the week the inhabitants gathered, especially in the cafés that surrounded the park. One could find women drinking coffee and working on their needlepoint, and men drinking beer and smoking pipes. The population of Berlin had tripled over the past hundred years, with more than 150,000 inhabitants when it was occupied by the French. At the time, Berlin was a mixture of old and new, the new being the private residences one could find along the Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden, most of which were built under Frederick the Great, while the old quarters were overcrowded and dirty. A constant complaint of visitors was the smell emanating from the stagnant waters of the streams and fouling the new quarters.105 When the French arrived, however, the streets were deserted, at least according to some accounts.106 Thousands had fled the enemy’s arrival at the signal given by the court, which decamped to Memel, then no more than a small seaport on the Baltic near the Russian border on the outer limits of the kingdom.

  At Potsdam, where Napoleon spent several days, he went to visit the tomb of Frederick the Great, in the Garnison Kirche.107 According to witnesses, Napoleon stood before it, silent, alone with a select few from his entourage, in contemplation for about ten minutes.108 The imperial propaganda machine made much of this scene. Images of Napoleon deep in thought before the tomb were produced in the months and years that followed. It was both a mark of respect for Frederick as general and sovereign and a means of enhancing Napoleon’s own reputation by obliging people to compare him to Frederick, one of the greatest generals of the eighteenth century. This is how Napoleon preferred to portray his defeat of Prussia, by capturing the moment he stood before Frederick’s tomb. It is a moment that says two things: that Pr
ussia’s former greatness was dependent on one man, just as France’s present glory was dependent on Napoleon; and that Napoleon was the more brilliant of the two.109

  Marie Nicolas Ponce-Camus, Napoléon Ier méditant devant le cercueil de Frédéric II de Prusse dans la crypte de la Garnisonskirche de Potsdam, 25 octobre 1806 (Napoleon I meditating before the tomb of Frederick II of Prussia in the crypt of the Garnison Kirche in Potsdam, 25 October 1806), 1808. The painting was meant to portray Napoleon in marked contrast with the portraits of the kings of Europe, simple in his dress, which made him the son of the Revolution.

  . . . Encounters an Obdurate Frederick William

  At the beginning of the campaign against Prussia there were signs that public opinion in France was tiring of the incessant wars.110 Napoleon had, after all, promised peace. If Austerlitz was greeted with muted enthusiasm, news of Jena received an even cooler reception.111 The authorities did not even bother organizing a public celebration for the victory at Jena-Auerstädt. Napoleon had to instruct the prefect of the Seine, Frochot, to ‘facilitate the explosion of enthusiasm’.112 Police reports made it plain that, in some centres at least, the populace was sick of the war, and this before any military defeats or reverses had taken the shine off Napoleon’s aura. Some believed the victory over Prussia would serve only to make the Emperor ever more intractable and that peace would be postponed even further. One officer later argued that after the Prussian campaign educated officers in the army realized that Napoleon’s promises were empty and that they no longer fought for peace but to satisfy his unbounded ambition.113 This individual may have been writing with hindsight, but there is enough to indicate that people were becoming wary of what they saw as Napoleon’s expansionist designs.

  Just how widespread this feeling may have been is impossible to judge, and in any event usually consisted of little more than disgruntled individuals venting their frustrations.114 It is, however, possibly one of the reasons why the Senate sent a delegation to Berlin in November 1806 to petition Napoleon not to continue the war in the east, urging him to make peace.115 Napoleon’s response was to present the delegation with Frederick the Great’s sword, which he reportedly said he would rather have than twenty million francs. Napoleon did not tell anyone that he intended taking the sword, along with a few other decorative objects; he simply took them and had them transferred to the Invalides in Paris.116 If it was his way of allaying any fears the Senate might have had, it was an odd way of doing so.117

  Much was made of the transfer of Frederick’s sword to the chapel of the Hôtel des Invalides in May 1807.118 It was then a retirement home for invalid veterans, about 900 of whom had fought during the Seven Years’ War; Napoleon dedicated the sword to them.119 Present too were the members of the Senate, the Tribunate, the Legislative Corps and the Council of State, as well as a number of military officials. After the coronation, and the marriage with the Emperor Francis’s daughter Marie-Louise some years later, it is considered to have been the biggest ceremony in Napoleonic France.120 Napoleon himself was away fighting in the east, but his empty throne was the centrepiece of the decorations and was there to remind everyone that the ceremony was really about him. In effect, what was meant to be a celebration of the soldiers of the Grande Armée, as well as veterans of the Seven Years’ War, was about Napoleon’s innate genius. Like Frederick the Great, Napoleon had succeeded in creating a powerful country – Frederick out of nothing, Napoleon out of a country in chaos.121

  The celebrations culminated in a selection of paintings taken from the royal collection in Berlin exhibited at the Musée Napoleon (what is now the Louvre).122 As with the French occupation of northern Italy in the late 1790s, so too the French occupation of northern Germany in 1806 and 1807 was accompanied by a systematic plundering of the private collections of the German princes.123 Between 1806 and 1807, the French absconded with a number of important artworks – 50 statues, 80 busts, 193 bronze objects, 32 drawings and 367 paintings, including some by Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian and Van Dyck, not to mention a number of rare manuscripts and books.

  Peace was not going to come right away, although that it did not do so was not entirely Napoleon’s fault. He stayed in Berlin for one month (from 28 October to 24 November), offering Frederick William peace terms that, under the circumstances, were not unreasonable. Prussia was ‘only’ to give up its territories west of the Elbe. Frederick William, unwisely as it turned out, refused. Faced with the option of continuing the struggle or concluding peace, he wanted to continue the struggle, hoping that the Russians would help turn the military situation around. At a council held on 21 November 1806, he decided to fight on. The decision has been described as ‘one of the great turning points in the history of the Prussian monarchy’.124

  Frederick William III suffered from what contemporaries referred to as ‘melancholia’. In other words, he was a depressive, a condition probably made worse by the fact that he was steeped in the Prussian Pietist tradition, an evangelical religious movement, a German form of ascetic Protestantism that incited its members to lead vigorously Christian, pious lives.125 It also meant he was more likely to dwell on his own personal failings. Combined with a hesitant nature, this did not make for a good prince in time of war. Nevertheless, faced with limited options, Frederick William did not capitulate; before the arrival of the French, he fled his capital to the easternmost corner of his kingdom, along with the state treasure, saved in the nick of time.126

  Frederick William was prepared to hold out, but this was not the case for his army. Napoleon’s forces were in an extremely strong position; they met little resistance as they advanced east across Prussia, one fortress after another surrendering within the space of a few months, often without a struggle, and often when in a position to hold out, if only the will to do so were present. The Prussian army capitulated, ignominiously for some, realistically for others. One explanation for its total disintegration was the collapse of morale, similar to the defeat of the French army in the face of the German invasion in 1940. In part, this may have been due to the quality of the Prussian officer corps.127 A declaration by the king that any commander who surrendered for no good reason would be ‘shot without mercy’ made little impact.128 In the face of the resounding defeat, and the overwhelming impression that the army was in no condition to launch a counter-attack, there seemed little strategic point in holding out.

  By the middle of autumn, 96 per cent of the Prussian army had been taken prisoner by the French. More than 140,000 troops and over 2,000 cannon were captured. In some places, Stettin for example, a garrison of 5,000 men, with ample supplies, surrendered to 800 French troops. Erfurt with a garrison of 12,000 troops did not make a stand; the city negotiated its surrender the very same day the French arrived before its gates. Küstrin surrendered only days after the Prussian king had left the town on his voyage eastwards.129 When Marshal Ney turned up in front of Magdeburg, the city’s commander, Franz Kasimir von Kleist, had little choice but to surrender in the face of overwhelming pressure from its inhabitants.130 Others held out longer, partly in the expectation that the Russian alliance would inevitably come good, and partly because it took so long for the French to transport siege material. The siege of Neiss in Silesia is a case in point. General Vandamme encircled the town at the end of February 1807; the siege was broken off for a while in March and was then resumed with the arrival of siege guns in the middle of April. However, the governor of Neiss refused to surrender until an armistice was signed at the end of May 1807, allowing him to hand over the fort in the middle of June, if the Russians did not arrive before then.131 Breslau held out almost three months. Kolberg on the Baltic coast, under the command of Major August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, who would become one of the key figures of the Prussian reform movement, surrendered in July 1807. Kolberg was not the only fortress to hold out for any length of time, but it was transformed into a struggle that would later take on mythic proportions, made much of by the Nazis in the last stages of the Second
World War.132 The subjugation of Silesia, it has to be said, took eight months, from October 1806 to July 1807.

  After dealing with the Prussian army, Napoleon still had to contend with two Russian armies lumbering their way westwards. One, under Levin August von Bennigsen, consisted of about 64,000 men, and entered Poland at the beginning of November 1806. The other, under Friedrich von Buxhöwden, was made up of about 46,000 men. Napoleon could muster about 80,000 men, although many more had been called up and were on their way.

  Before setting off, Napoleon attempted to bring the war to Britain by issuing what was referred to as the Berlin Decree (and later, in November 1807, in the Milan Decree). These decrees extended the trade war throughout Europe by prohibiting the import of any British goods into the Continent, and the confiscation of any vessels (neutral or otherwise) that so much as put into a British port. Since Napoleon could not engage with Britain directly, he was attempting to cripple its economy, something he regarded as a ‘mathematical certainty’, by creating an economic cordon around Europe that excluded Britain, what became known as the Continental System.133 Thousands of customs men would be posted all along the coasts and rivers of Europe in an effort to keep out British goods. It was an impossible task – smuggling became rife – but it marked a turning point in Napoleon’s imperial expansion as he extended it across northern and southern Europe in the pursuit of victory against Britain, but ultimately at the expense of his own Empire.134 The British responded by imposing a counter-blockade of Europe (the Orders in Council in 1807) – the ‘Continental Blockade’ – enforced by the Royal Navy. Napoleon’s economic cordon would eventually become the cornerstone of his system, one that, when it crumbled, would help bring the whole edifice crashing down.