There was little chance of resuming active operations for some time to come. The troops were exhausted and mutinous; very significantly, as Napoleon moved among his men on February 9, cries of “Vive la paix!” and “Du pain et la paix!” were more frequently heard than the conventional “Vive l’Empereur” These slogans were more reminiscent of the early months of 1796 than of the high days of the Empire. To this low state of morale, reflected as always by an increase in marauding and atrocities committed against the hapless Polish peasantry, was soon added the complication of a sudden thaw, which turned streams into rivers, rivers into torrents, lakes into inland seas, and everywhere else produced a carpet of almost impassable mud. However, for the sake of appearances, a great show of French activity had to be fabricated. Marshal Lefebvre was forthwith ordered to proceed with the full investment of Danzig, and Davout pushed on to the town of Friedland where his repulse of 2,600 Russian cavalry was accorded the full status of a victory. So was the defeat of Essen at the hands of Savary’s Vth Corps at Östrolenka on the 15th. In fact, however, by February 23 the bulk of the Grande Armée had returned into winter quarters, located in situations where they could cover the forthcoming siege of Danzig. The 1st Corps again took post on the left, the IVth held the center and the IIIrd the right, each formation occupying a rectangular area measuring eight to ten leagues a side. At Güttstadt, in advance of the main line of cantonments, was placed the VIth Corps, which had suffered least at Eylau; Imperial Headquarters, the Guard and the reserve cavalry took up quarters in and around Osteröde, the center of the fan. The defense of Warsaw was again entrusted to the Vth Corps.
In these positions, the French army proceeded to lick its wounds and wait for the spring, the lines of communication running through Thorn, the depots stocked with 40 days’ rations. As a result of these consolidating moves, the Russians were permitted to retake possession of Eylau and its grim heaps of frozen corpses.
Renamed “Napoleon’s Ridge” after the battle.
In fact, of course, Ney had still received no orders at this time.
In fact a considerable proportion of Ney’s VIth Corps reached the field only after the end of the battle.
Not to be confused with Marshal Kamenskoi, who figured earlier in the campaign.
50
CONCLUSIONS: THE FIRST CHECK
How to summarize the lessons of the Eylau campaign? They are both vast and crucial, containing within them several of the seeds of Napoleon’s eventual downfall. As much of Europe saw it, the bully had been checked for the first time, his plans and dispositions proving incomplete, inadequate and inconsistent. By brilliant stratagems, opportunism and considerable tactical skill, the armies of Austria and Prussia had been brought low by the French forces, but one of the powers defeated at Austerlitz had now proved to the world that Napoleon was not invincible, that there were chinks in “the Ogre’s” armor which could be exploited by a determined adversary who refused to lose his head even when the feared strategic net was closing around him, but remained aggressively-minded yet realistic onto the very field of battle.
The following are the main points for which Napoleon can be criticized as a commander during this campaign and battle.
The original advance to Warsaw and Thorn was a reasonably successful maneuver on the part of the Grande Armée; however, several of the succeeding operations were not particularly well conceived or executed, although Napoleon’s plan in late January was probably one of his best. The indecisive combats of Pultusk and Golymin, and the even more disappointing battle at Ionkovo and Bergfreid are indicative of at least a temporary decline in the efficiency and inspiration of the tactical planning. It must be admitted that the difficult weather conditions, alternating mud and hard frosts, and the absence of any good roads in Poland account for a great many of the disappointments suffered; and, of course, the Russian capture of a full set of Napoleon’s orders in late January was an unforeseeable complication. Yet there is also clear evidence of a general “running-down” in the executive effectiveness of the French war machine. The marshals frequently disobeyed orders and argued among themselves ever more bitterly; the discipline of the rank and file, never notably high under Napoleon, deteriorated to an alarming degree; the French people at home became increasingly critical and uncooperative in their support of Napoleon’s schemes of conquest; the bureaucrats paid only lip service to the articles of the Berlin Decrees, and went on to make huge clandestine profits by encouraging wholesale evasions of the Continental System. These are signs of a general decline in the French war effort which the Emperor’s undimmed genius for strategical planning proved unable to counteract.
The events immediately leading up to Eylau follow much the same pattern as those of the last months of 1806. The French pursuit of Bennigsen after Ionkovo was singularly badly directed, the corps scattering themselves over a wide arc of country, several of them breaking the cardinal Napoleonic rule of marching within one, or at the most, two day’s supporting distance of their neighbors. The German expert strategist, Von Schlieffen, was particularly critical of the movements of the French after passing Ionkovo; he suggested that the main body should have followed Davout’s route, and concentrated on cutting off Bennigsen from Königsberg, placing less attention on the need for the customary “direct pressure” force following directly behind the Russians. Such a move might have enabled Napoleon, with all his corps at his disposal, to fight a veritable Cannae at Eylau, with Soult and Ney converging on the Russian right and Davout on their left, the Guard and Augereau tackling the center while Murat fell on the rear. “Napoleon, however, planned differently.”
Strategically, then, the schemes of both sides miscarried owing to a combination of miscalculation, bad weather and ill fortune. Bennigsen’s design of cutting off and eliminating Bernadotte misfired when he unexpectedly ran into Ney, a fortuitous event which probably saved both French marshals. Napoleon’s brilliant scheme for piercing the Russian center and driving the two shattered wings up the Niemen and into the Vistula respectively was also ruined by the message incident of January 31 which obligingly gave the Russian command forty-eight hours invaluable notice of what was afoot, undoubtedly scared Lestocq, and subsequently deprived Napoleon of Bernadotte’s service at Eylau. This warning, however, did not prevent Bennigsen from concentrating at Ionkovo, where he was still in danger of being cut off from Königsberg, instead of directing his march toward the safe town of Liebstadt where he would still have been able to cause Napoleon grave anxiety. The Russians were fortunate to survive the resulting battle at Ionkovo.
From the French point of view, Eylau itself was badly bungled. The first day’s action, we have seen, developed without Napoleon’s volition, and here criticism must be leveled at his loose control of his subordinates. It was, in fact, Soult and Murat who “called the tune” and indulged in a long-drawn and disjointed attack against the town. This could have placed the whole army in a very dangerous position had the Russians reacted even more strongly on the evening of the 7th, for there was no chance of the outlying French corps concentrating on the scene before the next midday at the earliest. If, on this occasion, Napoleon was more “sinned against than sinning,” there is little or no excuse for his oversight in not summoning Ney to march up overnight from Landsberg; had the requisite order been issued on the night of the 7th instead of at 8:00
A.M. on the 8th, Ney could easily have outmarched Lestocq to Eylau. Notwithstanding Ney’s distance from the field, Napoleon still did not hesitate to engage in battle next morning even before Davout was in position.
As events turned out, therefore, on the morning of the 8th Napoleon undertook a full-scale battle no less than 25,000 men below his intended combat strength, whereas his opponent was only 9,000 short. In consequence, Napoleon was critically short of soldiers throughout the morning and on at least one occasion this almost brought disaster. The launching of Soult’s two divisions against Tutchkov in the first phase was probably the immediate cause of the rapid
growth of the crisis, for it stung his relatively passive opponent into massive retaliation. The Emperor was thereafter compelled to resort to ever more extreme measures to ward off catastrophe and extricate one corps after another from impossible situations. First he launched Augereau and St. Hilaire prematurely, hoping thereby to ease pressure on his extreme left and right; when this move ended in the total ruin of the VIIth Corps, Napoleon played what proved to be a trump card when he decided to call up Murat’s reserve cavalry in an attempt to fill the gap in the French center, but this was a desperate expedient which might well have ended in red ruin but for the superb fighting qualities displayed by Murat and his troopers on this occasion. This success does not disguise the fact that Napoleon’s center was in deadly peril for no less than four hours, as his near-capture by the Russians at about 11:00
A.M. amply demonstrated, and it was only when Davout arrived in strength that the prospect of imminent defeat receded. Then it was the moment for the massive counterattack, but French resources were already too exhausted to make it effective. St. Hilaire went forward with Davout’s three divisions, it is true, but where was Augereau’s corps? Where was the reserve cavalry? The answer is they were patching the line (those that were left), and were certainly in no position to resume the offensive. The only formation as yet relatively undamaged was, of course, the infantry of the Guard, but Napoleon stubbornly refused to commit them to the fracas on the ground that some troops had to be retained to face Lestocq, and so a chance of victory passed him by.
As one studies the development of this struggle, the conviction grows that Napoleon and his army were on the whole saved by errors on the part of their opponents rather than through any particular qualities displayed by the French (apart from Murat). Bennigsen possibly missed an opportunity of defeating a very weak Napoleon on the afternoon of the 7th, but he had no means of knowing how rash the French attack on Eylau really was. The next day, the Russian commander threw away a certain triumph by failing to exploit the collapse of the French center at the moment when Augereau was sent reeling back. His hesitation afforded Napoleon just sufficient time to remedy or rather disguise the weakness of his central section, and the moment passed. Then again, Bennigsen called off the assault against Soult when Davout made his appearance but thereafter made little use of the Russian right in the phase of the battle that immediately followed. It would seem that a strong attack against the exhausted French left, even as late as 4:00
P.M., might well have led to a considerable victory before VIth Corps could arrive on the scene.
In the event, however, the decision was left with the late arrivals, Lestocq and Ney. The former arrived too late to perform anything more than a “patching” role on the Russian left; the latter really served only to rally French morale and decide Bennigsen to call off the struggle. Military experts are divided on whether or not the Russians should have stood their ground and offered battle again on the 9th, but on balance it would appear that Bennigsen’s decision to retire was the correct one. On the night of the 8th, Napoleon possessed two relatively unused corps (the Guard and the VIth) and a slight overall numerical superiority. All of Bennigsen’s formations, on the other hand, had been severely battered during the day. On this occasion, enough was enough, and back went the soldiers of the Tsar. The Russians had succeeded in fighting Napoleon to a standstill, at that time a unique achievement, and could therefore withdraw with impunity. As Jomini wryly described it, “Murat followed him [Bennigsen] the next day.” There was no question of a hell-for-leather pursuit of the type that followed Jena; a respectful followup was all that the French could mount.
However, on this one occasion the weather had on balance fought on the side of Napoleon in his struggles with the Russians. On the night of the 7th, the Russians were compelled to spend the bitter night completely exposed on the Eastern Heights, whereas a high proportion of French found rudimentary shelter in Eylau and Rothenen. Moreover the severity of the frosts made it impossible for the Russians to indulge in their habitual practice of digging field fortifications around their main positions. Had the ground been soft enough to permit entrenchment of the Russian center, Murat’s celebrated charge might well have had a very different outcome. On the other hand, the ghastly fate of the French VIIth Corps was also in no small part due to the weather. For a combination of these reasons, therefore, Eylau goes down into the pages of history as an inconclusive battle and Napoleon’s first major check. The price had been excessively high for such an outcome, especially on the French side. As Ney described it in a trenchant phrase when he rode over the field on the 9th: “Quel massacre! Et sans result at.”44
PART TEN
Spring Recovery
THE RENEWED CAMPAIGN AGAINST RUSSIA, CULMINATING IN THE BATTLE OF FRIEDLAND AND THE TREATY OF TILSIT
51
RECONSTRUCTION
W
HILE THE WEARY WARRIORS of the Grande Armée gratefully rested in their quarters, consuming the forty days’ rations stored in their depots, Napoleon continued to be extremely active. Perhaps the terrible losses of Eylau had some effect on his policy, for it appears that he suddenly became gravely concerned for the security of Germany and France, far to his rear. Perhaps the thought struck him that had his army succumbed to Russian pressure in early February, there would have been precious little by way of reserve forces to protect the limits and heart of the French sphere of influence; Austria and the conquered areas of Prussia could certainly bear watching. As a safeguard, therefore, and also as a source of future replacements for the front-line forces, the Emperor busied himself with the creation of an Army of Observation in Germany.
The greatest problem was to find recruits to fill the new formations. French garrisons were ruthlessly depleted of trained men, their tasks being handed over to Allied troops; large drafts were taken from the Army of Italy, and new units of Italians were incorporated to help meet the quotas. Spain was cajoled into providing 15,000 men, and part of the conscript Class of 1808 received orders to report to the French training depots no less than 18 months ahead of schedule. By measures of this genre, a new army of no less than 100,000 men was raised. Brother Jerome was entrusted with the right wing of this armament in Silesia, and Marshal Brune received the most important command over 60,000 men in the center of Germany, with Marshal Mortier on his left in Pomerania.
The greater part of this administrative work was carried through during the months of March and April alongside the efforts to repair the ravages suffered by the main army at Eylau. Some of the gaping holes in the ranks were filled with the newly trained conscript contingents of the Class of 1807, called up the previous year and now reaching the front in reasonable numbers. There was no question, however, of reconstituting Augereau’s shattered VIIth Corps. The few thousand survivors found themselves posted to other units after the formal disbandment of their ill-fated formation. This was regarded as an unhappy portent by many; it was the first dissolution of a major unit since the Grande Armée’s formation in 1805. Augereau himself was granted an overdue period of sick leave. A new corps was brought into the line and the 52-year-old veteran, Lefebvre, given its command. This was a new type of composite unit which also foreshadowed the shape of things to come, and proves the increasing strain involved in keeping up the army’s numbers. Two Polish divisions formed the core, supported by a Saxon formation from Posen, a contingent from Baden and two divisions of Italians. The only French formation included in this force of 27,000 men (including 3,000 cavalry) was Menard’s division, still on the road from the west. The appearance of the Grande Armée was beginning to undergo a transformation; its composition was slowly becoming international rather than purely French. Nevertheless, these measures did at least succeed in producing a total armament of not much under 600,000 men by the end of April. Besides the Grande Armée in Poland and Brune’s Army of Observation in Germany (between them totaling some 300,000 men), the Army of Italy and Marmont’s corps in Dalmatia accounted for a further 72,000
troops, and 52,000 more were in the Army of Naples. The remainder were stationed along the northern coasts of France and Holland to guard against the possibility of an English iavasion, or else performed their duties in the myriad of garrison towns and depots that were springing up all over Europe.
Feeling the need for an experienced subordinate who could be trusted to act intelligently on the Warsaw front, Napoleon summoned Massena to join the army. The veteran hero of Rivoli left the sunny plains of Italy with undisguised regret, considering the frozen mud of Poland no fair exchange for the pleasures of the Po valley. Neither was he particularly pleased with the command entrusted to him on his arrival at Östrolenka; the Emperor indicated that he wished him to take command of the comparatively quiet right wing. “Then sire, it is simply a Corps of Observation that I am to command, on the rear of the Grand Army,”1 the marshal grumbled. Nevertheless, the security of the Warsaw region from renewed attacks by the Russian left or roving Cossack bands was an important consideration, and was responsible enough an assignment for a soldier of Massena’s caliber.
There was no intention in Napoleon’s mind of allowing the months spent in winter quarters to pass in complete operational idleness. He was determined that the enforced pause in his broader strategic plans should be usefully employed in capturing the great fortress and port of Danzig, one of the most important of the Hanse towns. Its continued occupation by the enemies of France placed Napoleon’s links with North Germany in peril, especially as the Baltic was a “Russian Lake” and the possibility of a massive sea-borne reinforcement of the garrison was a distinct possibility now that the Royal Navy had a considerable squadron in the area. Furthermore, the rich Hanseatic warehouses were full of corn, oil, brandy and forage, invaluable resources which the Grande Armée both coveted and needed to maintain its strength. As early as February 18, therefore, Marshal Lefebvre received orders to recommence active preparations for the siege (which had earlier been called off when Bennigsen’s advance necessitated his recall to guard Thorn).
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 69
