Napoleon and his court

by C. S. Forester

At Bautzen they stood once more to fight. Napoleon drew up the most gigantic battle plan ever conceived up to that time; with half his force he assailed the Allied centre, while Ney with sixty thousand men marched against the right. The struggle lasted for twelve bitter hours. Somehow Napoleon held his own command together and kept the Allies pinned to their position, while Ney was slowly wheeling his immense force round for the decisive movement. But the stars in their courses fought against the Emperor. Ney failed lamentably. He lost sight of the main object of his march, and he showed his hand and then wasted his strength in a fierce attack on Blücher at Preistitz. Blücher struggled gamely; more and more of Ney’s forces were drawn into the fight; the turning movement was delayed, and the Allies, warned in time, writhed out of the trap. Fifty thousand prisoners and two hundred guns might have been captured; as it was, Napoleon was left to deplore a massacre—for nothing! Alluding to Soult’s capture of Badajoz in 1811, Napoleon had said, “Soult gained me a town and lost me a kingdom.” He might well have said of Ney’s attack on Preistitz that Ney gained him a village and lost him an Empire. It is inconceivable that the war could have been prolonged if Ney had obeyed orders at Bautzen; the allied army comprised all the troops that Russia and Prussia could at that time put into the field; its destruction would have meant the reconquest of Prussia and of Poland, the intimidation of Austria, and the regaining of Napoleon’s European ascendancy.

After Bautzen Napoleon concluded an armistice with his enemies. He still hoped for an advantageous peace, and even if he failed to obtain this he expected that the delay would enable him to rest the weary boys who filled the ranks, to drill his wretched cavalry into some semblance of order, and to clear his rear of the bandits and partisans who were swarming everywhere. Moreover, for the last eighteen months he had been working at a pace which would have killed most men, and he himself was undoubtedly feeling the strain. The armistice would give him a little rest. But it meant disaster, nevertheless. From all over Russia new recruits were plodding across the unending plains to fill the gaps in the ranks of the field army; Prussia was calling out her whole male population, and Bernadotte’s Swedes were gradually moving up into line. Worse than all, Austria turned against him. The delay enabled Francis to bring his army up to war strength on the receipt of lavish English subsidies, and, even while he still hesitated to attack his son-in-law, the news arrived that Wellington had routed Joseph Bonaparte at Vittoria, had cleared Spain of the French, and was about to attack the sacred soil of France herself. The news was decisive, and the demands of the Allies promptly increased inordinately. When, in August, the armistice came to an end, Napoleon found himself assailed by forces of twice his strength.

Yet he did not despair; he thrust fiercely into Silesia, and then, finding the Austrians moving against Dresden, he wheeled about, marched a hundred and twenty miles in four days, and gained at Dresden the most surprising of all his victories. With a hundred thousand men he flung back a hundred and sixty thousand Russians and Austrians in utter disorder; Vandamme had cut off their retreat, and once again it seemed as if Ulm and Austerlitz were to be repeated. And then once more occurred a startling change of fortune. Napoleon might have taken a hundred thousand prisoners; the Emperors of Austria and of Russia might have fallen into his power; Austria would have been ruined, and Napoleon could have dictated peace on his own terms. But Napoleon handed over the pursuit to Murat and St. Cyr, and returned to Dresden. In consequence, the retreating Austrians were not pressed, Vandamme was overwhelmed, and the action at Kulm gave the Allies twenty thousand prisoners instead of placing the whole Allied army in the hands of the French.

No one knows why Napoleon returned to Dresden when victory was in his grasp. The advocates of the illness theory certainly have a strong case here; but perhaps it was news of the disasters in Silesia which recalled him; perhaps he was merely too tired to continue; perhaps he only had a bad cold as the result of sitting his horse all day in the pelting rain which fell all day during the battle of Dresden. However it was, Napoleon’s mastership of Europe was lost irreparably when he came to his decision to leave his army.

For two months disaster now followed disaster. Macdonald had already been routed on the Katzbach; Oudinot was beaten at Gross Beeren, Ney was beaten at Dennewitz, St. Cyr surrendered at Dresden, and Napoleon himself tasted the bitter cup of defeat at Leipzig. The astonishing feature of the autumn campaign of 1813 was not that Napoleon was defeated, but that he ever escaped from Germany at all. But he did, blotting out on his path the Bavarian army which opposed him at Hanau.

Once again the Allies advanced too slowly, and once again Napoleon was able to organize a fresh army to defend France. Soult had grappled with Wellington in the south, and was stubbornly contesting every inch of French soil in his desperate campaign of Toulouse. Napoleon prepared to make one more effort for success in the north. Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, the Confederation of the Rhine, Holland and even Belgium had sent every man available against him. Four hundred thousand men were about to pass the Rhine while Napoleon had not a quarter of this force with which to oppose them. However, the prospect was not as hopeless as it would appear. The Allies were bitterly jealous of each other, and Napoleon had good grounds for hoping to divide them even now. Besides, they were all of them intent upon gaining possession of whatever territory they wished to claim at the conclusion of peace, and an army guided solely by political motives is at the mercy of another which is directed only in accordance with the dictates of military strategy.

This early became obvious. Austria had bought the alliance of the smaller German states only by means of extensive guarantees of their possessions; in consequence she determined to find compensation for her losses by acquisitions in Italy. But Italy was stoutly defended by the Viceroy Eugène; she could make no progress there, and in consequence she did not yet desire Napoleon’s fall. Schwartzenberg, the Austrian general, was therefore held back by Metternich’s secret orders until Venetia and Lombardy should be in Austrian hands. Metternich was quite capable of leaving the Russians and Prussians in the lurch while he played his own tortuous game; however, the situation was saved by Murat’s betrayal of Napoleon. With Murat on his side, and the Neapolitan army moving forward against Eugène, Metternich was sure of Italy, and Schwartzenberg was allowed to proceed into France. Once more the weakness and treachery of a subordinate had prevented Napoleon from gaining a decisive success.

The prospect grew gloomier and gloomier for the French. Napoleon was beaten at Brienne and at La Rothière; immediate and utter ruin seemed inevitable. Suddenly everything was changed. Napoleon fell upon the dispersed army of the Allies. At Champ-Aubert, Vauchamp, Château-Thierry and Mormant the Allies were beaten and hurled back. More than this, the Prussians under Blücher, thirty thousand strong, hard pressed by Napoleon, came reeling back towards Soissons and the Marne—and Soissons was held by a French garrison. With an unfordable river before him; the only bridge held by the enemy; a panic-stricken army under his command, and Napoleon and his unbeaten Frenchmen, flushed with victory, at his heels, Blücher seemed doomed to destruction. The officer in command at Soissons bore the ominous name of Moreau; he was intimidated into surrender when one more day’s defence would have had incalculable results. Blücher escaped across the Marne not a minute too soon.

This was Napoleon’s last chance before his abdication. His armies were weakened even by their victories; the Allied forces seemed inexhaustible. All Napoleon’s efforts were unavailing; his final threat at Schwartzenberg’s communications was disregarded, and the Allies reached Paris. Marmont’s surrender here has often been brought forward as one more instance of treachery in high places, but it was not treachery, it was only timidity and fear of responsibility. One cannot imagine Blücher surrendering under similar circumstances. Be that as it may, Paris fell, and Napoleon abdicated.

After the abdication came the descent from Elba; after the descent from Elba came the Hundred Days; and at the end of the Hundred Days came the Waterloo campaign. It was during the Waterloo campaign that there occurred, not one but half a dozen chances for Napoleon to win the decisive victory for which he had been striving ever since 1812, but all these half-dozen chances were spoilt by unexpected happenings and by sheer hard luck.