The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  In a state of considerable frustration, Napoleon reassessed the situation. Another of his maneuvers had ended in failure, and every day the danger of a general enemy concentration was looming large on the horizon. If he pressed on northward over the Elbe toward Berlin he might induce the Crown Prince and Blücher to fall back, but by so doing he would inevitably uncover Leipzig (disquieting reports were already arriving from both Murat and St. Cyr concerning enemy activity on their respective sectors); alternatively, if he rushed south to confront Schwarzenberg, that commander would almost certainly fall back and deny Napoleon another chance of battle, while Leipzig would be vulnerable from the north. Nevertheless, the advantages offered by a central position were still open to him; for the time being, therefore, the French troops which had reached Duben would continue to advance, part on Dessau (where Bernadotte was reported to be), part on Wittenberg (where they could cross the Elbe and thereafter threaten a drive on Rosslau). Between them these moves should force Bernadotte and Blücher back behind the Elbe. However, the moment news came from the south that Schwarzenberg was hotly engaged (and thus pinned) against Murat, the northern operations would be abruptly dropped and every man rushed south to try conclusions with the Army of Bohemia.

  From the 10th to the 14th the Emperor and his headquarters lingered near Eilenburg, waiting upon events. Apart from news of Bavaria’s definite defection from the French cause, the tidings remained on the whole encouraging. By the 12th it was clear that Blücher was near Halle on the Saale, while Ney’s leading division had severely handled part of Bernadotte’s army at Dessau as it attempted to cross the River Mulde. Murat, meantime, was conducting a prodigiously successful withdrawal in the face of both Schwarzenberg and Bennigsen. Although this group of the Allied armies now totaled almost 240,000 men, Schwarzenberg had taken two and a half weeks to advance a distance of 70 miles, and in the process had received a bloody rebuff at Borna (10th), besides being compelled to detach 20,000 troops to blockade St. Cyr and Lübau in isolated Dresden.

  Nevertheless, Blöcher’s continued presence near Halle made it increasingly clear that Napoleon’s well-tried manoeuvre sur les derrières was failing to have its desired effect. Bernadotte, cautious to a fault, would undoubtedly have liked to fall back west of the Saale, if not back over the Elbe itself (and thus conform with Napoleon’s strategy—the isolation of Schwarzenberg); but Blücher, with his stubborn character, his distaste for retreat, his hatred for Napoleon and distaste for the Crown Prince, refused to comply. He insisted that they should ignore Napoleon’s presence athwart part of their communications and march southward toward Leipzig to effect a junction with the Army of Bohemia. Bernadotte continued to hesitate, and in the end Blücher marched for Leipzig alone—followed in due course by an apprehensive and disgruntled Crown Prince. This delay on Bernadotte’s part probably saved Napoleon at Leipzig: it ultimately meant that the French westward line of retreat toward the Rhine remained open.

  Napoleon soon realized that his bluff had been called. Far from driving the enemy apart and defeating him in detail, it now behoved the French Emperor to move every available man to Leipzig with all speed in order to forestall the arrival of two large enemy army groups from opposite directions. From this moment Napoleon was without any doubt compelled to adopt a complete strategic defensive and to curtail even his tactical offensives. As early as the 12th he had sent Marmont with VIth Corps toward Taucha near Leipzig in readiness to sustain Murat, who was still fighting south of the city; the Guard would be hard on his heels. “All my army will be putting itself in motion; all of it will have arrived [near Leipzig] by the morning of the 14th, and I shall be able to fight the enemy with 200,000 men.”35

  At three in the morning of the 14th, Berthier received his master’s definitive orders for a general concentration on Leipzig. Four hours later, Napoleon was writing to Macdonald: “My Cousin, I hope that you will arrive here [Duben] in good time today. It is necessary to cross the river at once. There can be no doubt that during tomorrow—the 15th—we shall be attacked by the Army of Bohemia and the Army of Silesia. March with all haste, therefore, and if you hear a cannonade make for the sound of the guns. The Army of Silesia is debouching by way of Halle and Zorbig.”36 This letter reveals that Napoleon had abandoned almost all hope of keeping his two major adversaries apart. However, the indications were that Bernadotte was still dragging his heels well to the rear of Blücher—although regrettably the Crown Prince had not, after all, fallen back over the Elbe—and the Emperor still hoped that his concentrated army would prove strong enough to defeat Schwarzenberg before Blücher could make his counterbalancing presence fully felt.

  The Battle of Leipzig, October 16-19, 1813

  The French formations were thus hurrying toward a desperate battlefield. The whole of Germany’s—and of Europe’s—future lay in the balance. The Allies were aware of the grandeur of the occasion, but many of their leaders were still not a little apprehensive and overawed at the prospect of taking on “the Ogre” in person once more. Neither Schwarzenberg nor Bernadotte were looking forward to such an event with relish, and but for the zeal and single-minded determination of fire-eater Blücher the opportunity to fight Napoleon at a decided disadvantage might have been let slip. Blücher, however, was aware of the possibilities of the situation. “The three armies are now so close together,” he had written on the 13th, “that a simultaneous attack, against the point where the enemy has concentrated his forces, might be undertaken.”37 On receipt of this suggestion, the Tsar insisted on the dispatch of General Wittgenstein and a strong force of cavalry to reconnoiter the French position south of Leipzig in detail.

  As Napoleon entered the city from the north at noon on the 14th, he heard the roar of cannon away to the south. Murat’s command was engaged in a sharp fight with Wittgenstein and Klenau at Liebertwolkwitz. In scale it proved the largest cavalry engagement of 1813 but the result was inconclusive, and the French infantry eventually drove off the questing Allied cavalry. But at least it confirmed the general correctness of Napoleon’s appreciation of the situation: a full-scale Allied assault on the city of Leipzig was clearly imminent. Although Murat had successfully retained control of the best battle position in the area, the mass of the French army had not arrived a moment too soon. By nightfall over 177,000 French troops were already in the vicinity of, or fast closing upon, Leipzig. A further 18,000 would arrive from the north within the next forty-eight hours. Facing them to the south there were massing 203,000 soldiers of Schwarzenberg’s Army of Bohemia; a few miles to the northwest Blücher was driving forward the 54,000 men of the Army of Silesia; a good many miles to his rear were the 85,000 troops of the Army of the North—still near Halle.

  Napoleon, however, was certainly ignorant of the exact location of these last two Allied armies. He stated with conviction, after observing the mass of campfires to the south of Leipzig, that the Prussians and Swedes had somehow managed to circumvent the French flank and make common cause with Schwarzenberg. In this calculation he was sadly mistaken. Had he appreciated their true location, his activities on the 16th might have been very different.

  The battlefield of Leipzig covers a wide sweep of ground, divided by the Rivers Elster, Pleisse, Luppe and Parthe. The city stands at the confluence of the first two named, and in 1813 the terrain separating them was extremely marshy and wooded. The old city and its suburbs lay to the east and north of this difficult area, and the single road running westward from the Rannstadt Gate to the village of Lindenau was carried along an extensive embankment cut by several wooden and stone bridges. Near Lindenau, another stream—the River Luppe—leaves its parent the Elster and runs away to the northwest roughly parallel to the main river enclosing between them another swampy region. Immediately to the north of the suburb of Pffandorf, the Parthe tributary leaves the Elster in a northeasterly direction, before describing a broad southerly sweep towards its source near the Kolm Berg.

  These four rivers, radiating out from Leipzig, divide
the surrounding circle of country into four main sectors. Approximately to the south of the city lie the marshy areas already referred to. To the west, between the Elster and the Luppe, lie two roads, running from Lindenau to Merseburg and Weissenfels respectively. Here the ground is at first very flat and open, but five miles down the Weissenfels road near Markranstadt the terrain on each side of the highway becomes increasingly hilly. The northern sector lies between the Elster and the Parthe. Here again the country lay open and fairly level, with a number of roads radiating out toward Halle, Duben and Eilenburg. The fourth and most significant area, destined to see much of the battle, lies between the Parthe and the Upper Pleisse. It is marked by a series of low ridges running outward from Leipzig toward two pieces of relatively high ground—the Galgenberg (lying between the villages of Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz) and the Kolm Berg, some two miles to the east. Although the undulating nature of the terrain and the large number of villages and hamlets made it a naturally strong defensive position, much of the countryside was very open and well suited to large-scale cavalry action. Several important roads cross the area, running outward toward Wurzen, Dresden, Grimma and Borna. Linking these were a large number of earthen lateral farm tracks of dubious military value.

  As for Leipzig itself, the old town was surrounded by an ill-repaired wall, but the main gates were in a fair state of repair and the French had taken steps to fortify the outlying suburbs. A considerable number of defense works had also been constructed around Lindenau, guarding the important causeway traversing the marshes.

  All in all, the position provided Napoleon with the opportunity of fighting on interior lines with Leipzig at his back; the Allies on the other hand had to approach to contact on a much broader front, and their moves were further hampered by the large number of bridges destroyed by the French engineers. One major weakness of the French position, however, lay to the west of the river confluence; no steps had been taken to build additional bridges between Leipzig and Lindenau for the very good reason that Napoleon still considered that his operational base and possible line of retreat lay to the north toward Torgau, Wittenberg and Magdeburg rather than westward toward the Rhine. This is proved by the fact that he left the main parks and engineering trains at Eilenburg to the northeast of the city. Circumstances, however, would in due course make the westbound road running through Lindenau the French line of retreat.

  The Emperor had no intention of fighting a defensive battle; he planned a mighty drive in the Pleisse-Parthe sector against Schwarzenberg’s main army. French troops numbering 37,000 (VIIIth, IInd and Vth Corps supported by a formation of cavalry) were to pin the Austro-Russians frontally, while XIth Corps and Sébastiani’s cavalry (23,000 strong) reinforced by a further major formation, enveloped their right wing. At the critical moment, the Guard, Augereau’s IXth Corps, two formations of cavalry—between them totaling 62,000 more troops—supported by a further corps (Bertrand or Marmont) drawn from the northern sector, would be sent in to deliver the coup de grâce. In the meantime the ring would be held by IIIrd, IVth, VIth and VIIth Corps on the northern sector under the overall command of Marshal Ney, while the garrison of Leipzig itself (7,000 strong—mostly made up of drafts and new conscripts) held the Lindenau position secure. In all, the Emperor disposed of some 177,500 men and almost 700 guns on the actual battlefield, with Reynier’s VIIth Corps (14,000) and a division of IIIrd Corps (4,700) still to join. Over 120,000 of the available troops were to be massed for the main attack. The whole of the 15th was taken up deploying the troops in their allotted positions.

  The Allies, too, spent much of the 15th devising their plan of operations. Schwarzenberg was well to the fore in the planning, but his initial suggestions were so inept (he originally wanted to send no less than 52,000 Allied troops into the marshy areas between the Elster and Pleisse) that the Tsar intervened and ordered new proposals. In the end it was decided that Blücher, advancing from the direction of Halle, should attack Leipzig from the northwest, while Gyulai’s corps of 19,000 men attacked Lindenau from Markranstadt. These two operations, however, were only to be subsidiary to the main offensive, which was to be launched on the southern sector. While General Meerveldt made the best way he could through the Elster marshes at the head of 28,000 men, Barclay de Tolly would launch Generals Kleist, Eugen, Gortschakoff and Klenau, supported by Pahlen’s cavalry and the Russian reserve, against the line of villages (Markkleeberg, Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz) that formed the southern part of the French line. The Russian and Prussian Guards (24,000) were to stay in reserve at Rotha. Barclay entrusted the overall conduct of this attack by 77,500 Allies to General Wittgenstein. That officer however, desirous of rolling back and outflanking the French left, ordered his men to take up an extended six-mile position prior to the attack. This involved a marked degree of dispersal, and visual contact between the various parts of the attacking force was immediately sacrificed. It is interesting to compare the proportion of Allied troops made available at the critical point (about a third if Blücher’s 54,000 are included) with Napoleon’s concentration (almost two thirds of all available French manpower) in the same sector.

  The bitter fighting of the 16th took place on three of the four sectors comprising the Leipzig position. There were heavy engagements on the northern and western sides of the city as well as on the main battleground to the south, and as will be seen these subsidiary actions gravely compromised the success of Napoleon’s plan for destroying the main body of the Army of Bohemia. Indeed, the Emperor had no expectation of heavy fighting on the northern outskirts, for as we have seen he estimated that Blücher had already reached the vicinity of Markranstadt and expected Bernadotte to be somewhere near Merseburg. Acting under this illusion, at seven o’clock in the morning Napoleon decided to recall Marmont’s powerful corps from its position between Lindenthal and Radefeld (where it had been warily watching the roads to Halle) and ordered its commander to transfer his men to a position halfway between Leipzig and Liebertwolkwitz on the southern sector. From this location, VIth Corps would be able to march through Leipzig to Lindenau should that outpost come under serious attack—although Napoleon considered such an event extremely unlikely—or alternatively move up in support of Macdonald’s and Sébastiani’s planned enveloping attack around the Allied right wing on the Wachau battlefield.

  Although Marmont doubted the wisdom of his master’s orders (for he could actually see Blucher’s campfires burning beyond Schkeuditz a couple of miles to his front), VIth Corps evacuated its prepared positions near Lindenthal at ten o’clock and began to march southward. At that very moment, however, Blücher’s advance guard moved forward into contact with the French outposts, and Marmont (probably acting on Ney’s order) halted his columns, turned them about and hastily began to occupy a new position near Möckern, ready to oppose Blücher’s advance.

  Aware that Napoleon was relying on at least one corps from the northern sector to ensure the success of his enveloping move on the southern battlefield, Marshal Ney ordered Bertrand to leave his position at Eutritsch and march IVth Corps thither in Marmont’s place. No sooner had Bertrand set out to comply, however, than General Gyulai launched a heavy attack on the defenders of Lindenau and Plagwitz at the western end of the causeway. The Allies achieved considerable success in their initial attack on the former village, and the French commander, Arrighi, sent an urgent message to Ney requesting reinforcements. Although the impetus of the Allied attack had already died away by the time this request reached the Prince of the Moskowa, he extravagantly decided on the spur of the moment to send the whole of Bertrand’s command over the causeway, thus again diverting the reinforcements intended for Marshal Macdonald. This left Ney with only the incomplete IIIrd Corps (now commanded by General Souham) at his disposal. Deciding that Delmas’ division of this formation was still too far distant (it was currently approaching the northern battle area along the Duben road, escorting a large convoy of vehicles), Ney decided that only the remaining two divisions of Sou
ham’s command could set out to join Macdonald, and issued orders accordingly. As will be seen, however, even this reinforcement was destined to be diverted before it could reach its destination and as a result Napoleon’s plans for the decisive moves on the southern sector were to go badly astray.

  By eleven o’clock, the battle around Wachau had been in progress for almost two and a half hours. Napoleon had ridden out to the battlefield shortly after nine. Even at that hour the bombardment had been proceeding for some time and the first Austrian attacks delivered, but the final deployment of their troops had been greatly delayed by the weather, which was cold, misty and wet during the early hours. However, the rising mists revealed four dense enemy columns moving up to the attack; clearly the Allies were determined to gain the initiative from the outset.

  Close by the Pleisse River was advancing the corps of General Kleist, preparing to storm the village of Markkleeberg (defended by Poniatowski’s VIIIth Corps); on Kleist’s right was Prince Eugen of Württemberg, heading for Victor’s IInd Corps positions in the vicinity of Wachau; some way to the east marched the Russian Gortchakoff, moving on Liebertwolkwitz (defended by Lauriston’s Vth Corps). At the same time, on the extreme left of the Allied attack, General Meerveldt’s formations splashed their way through the marshes separating the Elster and the Pleisse, striving to reach the French flank positions at Dolitz and Connewitz. Of Klenau’s outflanking force on the extreme right there was as yet no sign.