That Poland was not restored to national rank by Napoleon I. was in some measure owing to the weather of the latter days of 1806. Those of the French officers who marched through the better portions of that country were for its restoration, but others who waded through its terrible mud took different ground in every sense. Hence there was a serious difference of opinion in the French councils on this vitally important subject, which had its influence on Napoleon's mind. The severe winter-weather of 1806-7, by preventing the Emperor from destroying the Russians, which he was on the point of doing, was prejudicial to the interests of Poland; for the ultimate effect was, to compel France to treat with Russia as equal with equal, notwithstanding the crowning victory of Friedland. This done, there was no present hope of Polish restoration, as Alexander frankly told the French Emperor that the world would not be large enough for them both, if he should seek to renew Poland's rank as a nation. So far as the failure of the French in 1812 is chargeable upon the weather, the weather must be considered as having been again the enemy of Poland; for Napoleon would have restored that country, had he succeeded in his Russian campaign. Such restoration would then have been a necessity of his position. But it was not the weather of Russia that caused the French failure of 1812. That failure was all but complete before the invaders of Russia had experienced any very severe weather. The two powers that conquered Napoleon were those which General Von Knesebeck had pointed out to Alexander as sure to be too much for him,—Space and Time. The cold, frosts, and snows of Russia simply completed what those powers had so well begun, and so well done.
In the grand campaign of 1813, the weather had an extraordinary influence on Napoleon's fortunes, the rains of Germany really doing him far more mischief than he had experienced from the snows of Russia; and, oddly enough, a portion of this mischief came to him through the gate of victory. The war between the French and the Allies was renewed the middle of August, and Napoleon purposed crushing the Army of Silesia, under old Blücher, and marched upon it; but he was recalled by the advance of the Grand Army of the Allies upon Dresden; for, if that city had fallen into their hands, his communications with the Rhine would have been lost. Returning to Dresden, he restored affairs there on the 26th of August; and on the 27th, the Battle of Dresden was fought, the last of his great victories. It was a day of mist and rain, the mist being thick, and the rain heavy. Under cover of the mist, Murat surprised a portion of the Austrian infantry, and, as their muskets were rendered unserviceable by the rain, they fell a prey to his horse, who were assisted by infantry and artillery, more than sixteen thousand men being killed, wounded, or captured. The left wing of the Allies was annihilated. So far all was well for the Child of Destiny; but Nemesis was preparing to exact her dues very swiftly. A victory can scarcely be so called, unless it be well followed up; and whether Dresden should be another Austerlitz depended upon what might be done during the next two or three days. Napoleon did not act with his usual energy on that critical occasion, and in seven months he had ceased to reign. Why did he refrain from reaping the fruits of victory? Because the weather, which had been so favorable to his fortunes on the 27th, was quite as unfavorable to his person. On that day he was exposed to the rain for twelve hours, and when he returned to Dresden, at night, he was wet to the skin, and covered with mud, while the water was streaming from his chapeau, which the storm had knocked out of a cocked hat. It was a peculiarity of Napoleon's constitution, that he could not expose himself to damp without bringing on a pain in the stomach; and this pain seized him at noon on the 28th, when he had partaken of a repast at Pirna, whither he had gone in the course of his operations against the beaten enemy. This illness caused him to cease his personal exertions, but not from giving such orders as the work before him required him to issue. Perhaps it would have had no evil effect, had it not been, that, while halting at Pirna, news came to him of two great failures of distant armies, which led him to order the Young Guard to halt at that place,—an order that cost him his empire. One more march in advance, and Napoleon would have become greater than ever he had been; but that march was not made, and so the flying foe was converted into a victorious army. For General Vandamme, who was at the head of the chief force of the pursuing French, pressed the Allies with energy, relying on the support of the Emperor, whose orders he was carrying out in the best manner. This led to the Battle of Kulm, in which Vandamme was defeated, and his army destroyed for the time, because of the overwhelming superiority of the enemy; whereas that action would have been one of the completest French victories, had the Young Guard been ordered to march from Pirna, according to the original intention. The roads were in a most frightful state, in consequence of the wet weather; but, as a victorious army always finds food, so it always finds roads over which to advance to the completion of its task, unless its chief has no head. Vandamme had a head, and thought he was winning the Marshal's staff which Napoleon had said was awaiting him in the midst of the enemy's retiring masses. So confident was he that the Emperor would support him, that he would not retreat while yet it was in his power to do so; and the consequence was that his corps d'armée was torn to pieces, and himself captured. Napoleon had the meanness to charge Vandamme with going too far and seeking to do too much, as he supposed he was slain, and therefore could not prove that he was simply obeying orders, as well as acting in exact accordance with sound military principles. That Vandamme was right is established by the fact that an order came from Napoleon to Marshal Mortier, who commanded at Pirna, to reinforce him with two divisions; but the order did not reach Mortier until after Vandamme had been defeated. Marshal Saint-Cyr, who was bound to aid Vandamme, was grossly negligent, and failed of his duty; but even he would have acted well, had he been acting under the eye of the Emperor, as would have been the case, had not the weather of the 27th broken down the health of Napoleon, and had not other disasters to the French, all caused by the same storm that had raged around Dresden, induced Napoleon to direct his personal attention to points remote from the scene of his last triumph.[B]
[Footnote B: There was a story current that Napoleon's indisposition on the 28th of August was caused by his eating heartily of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with garlic, not the wholesomest food in the world; and the digestive powers having been reduced by long exposure to damp, this dish may have been too much for them. Thiers says that the Imperial illness at Pirna was "a malady invented by flatterers," and yet only a few pages before he says that "Napoleon proceeded to Pirna, where he arrived about noon, and where, after having partaken of a slight repast, he was seized with a pain in the stomach, to which he was subject after exposure to damp." Napoleon suffered from stomach complaints from an early period of his career, and one of their effects is greatly to lessen the powers of the sufferer's mind. His want of energy at Borodino was attributed to a disordered stomach, and the Russians were simply beaten, not destroyed, on that field. When he beard of Vandamme's defeat, Napoleon said, "One should make a bridge of gold for a flying enemy, where it is impossible, as in Vandamme's case, to oppose to him a bulwark of steel." He forgot that his own plan was to have opposed to the enemy a bulwark of steel, and that the non-existence of that bulwark on the 30th of August was owing to his own negligence. Still, the reverse at Kulm might not have proved so terribly fatal, had it not been preceded by the reverses on the Katzbach, which also were owing to the heavy rains, and news of which was the cause of the halting of so large a portion of his pursuing force at Pirna, and the march of many of his best men back to Dresden, his intention being to attempt the restoration of affairs in that quarter, where they had been so sadly compromised under Macdonald's direction. He was as much overworked by the necessity of attending to so many theatres of action as his armies were overmatched in the field by the superior numbers of the Allies. He is said to have repeated the following lines, after musing for a while on the news from Kulm:—
"J'ai servi, commandé, vaincu quarante années;
Du monde entre mes mains j'ai tu les destinées,
Et j'ai toujours connu qu'en chaque événement
Le destin des états dépendait d'un moment."
But he had hours, we might say days, to settle his destiny, and was not tied down to a moment. Afterward he had the fairness to admit that he had lost a great opportunity to regain the ascendency in not supporting Vandamme with the whole of the Young Guard.]
When Napoleon was called from the pursuit of Blücher by Schwarzenberg's advance upon Dresden, he confided the command of the army that was to act against that of Silesia to Marshal Macdonald, a brave and honest man, but a very inferior soldier, yet who might have managed to hold his own against so unscientific a leader as the fighting old hussar, had it not been for the terrible rainstorm that began on the night of the 25th of August. The swelling of the rivers, some of them deep and rapid, led to the isolation of the French divisions, while the rain was so severe as to prevent them from using their muskets. Animated by the most ardent hatred, the new Prussian levies, few of whom had been in service half as long as our volunteers, and many of whom were but mere boys, rushed upon their enemies, butchering them with butt and bayonet, and forcing them into the boiling torrent of the Katzbach. Puthod's division was prevented from rejoining its comrades by the height of the waters, and was destroyed, though one of the best bodies in the French army. The state of the country drove the French divisions together on the same lines of retreat, creating immense confusion, and leading to the most serious losses of men and matériel. Macdonald's blunder was in advancing after the storm began, and had lasted for a whole night. His officers pointed out the danger of his course, but he was one of those men who think, that, because they are not knaves, they can accomplish everything; but the laws of Nature no more yield to honest stupidity than to clever roguery. The Baron Von Müffling, who was present in Blücher's army, says, that, when the French attempted to protect their retreat at the Katzbach with artillery, the guns stuck in the mud; and he adds,—"The field of battle was so saturated by the incessant rain, that a great portion of our infantry left their shoes sticking in the mud, and followed the enemy barefoot." Even a brook, called the Deichsel, was so swollen by the rain that the French could cross it at only one place, and there they lost wagons and guns. Old Blücher issued a thundering proclamation for the encouragement of his troops. "In the battle on the Katzbach," he said to them, "the enemy came to meet you with defiance. Courageously, and with the rapidity of lightning, you issued from behind your heights. You scorned to attack them with musketry-fire: you advanced without a halt; your bayonets drove them down the steep ridge of the valley of the raging Neisse and Katzbach. Afterwards you waded through rivers and brooks swollen with rain. You passed nights in mud. You suffered for want of provisions, as the impassable roads and want of conveyance hindered the baggage from following. You struggled with cold, wet, privations, and want of clothing; nevertheless you did not murmur,—with great exertions you pursued your routed foe. Receive my thanks for such laudable conduct. The man alone who unites such qualities is a true soldier. One hundred and three cannons, two hundred and fifty ammunition-wagons, the enemy's field-hospitals, their field-forges, their flour-wagons, one general of division, two generals of brigade, a great number of colonels, staff and other officers, eighteen thousand prisoners, two eagles, and other trophies, are in your hands. The terror of your arms has so seized upon the rest of your opponents, that they will no longer bear the sight of your bayonets. You have seen the roads and fields between the Katzbach and the Bober: they bear the signs of the terror and confusion of your enemy." The bluff old General, who at seventy had more "dash" than all the rest of the leaders of the Allies combined, and who did most of the real fighting business of "those who wished and worked" Napoleon's fall, knew how to talk to soldiers, which is a quality not always possessed by even eminent commanders. Soldiers love a leader who can take them to victory, and then talk to them about it. Such a man is "one of them."
Napoleon never recovered from the effects of the losses he experienced at Kulm and on the Katzbach,—losses due entirely to the wetness of the weather. He went downward from that time with terrible velocity, and was in Elba the next spring, seven months after having been on the Elbe. The winter campaign of 1814, of which so much is said, ought to furnish some matter for a paper on weather in war; but the truth is, that that campaign was conducted politically by the Allies. There was never a time, after the first of February, when, if they had conducted the war solely on military principles, they could not have been in Paris in a fortnight.
Napoleon's last campaign owed its lamentable decision to the peculiar character of the weather on its last two days, though one would not look for such a thing as severe weather in June, in Flanders. But so it was, and Waterloo would have been a French victory, and Wellington where Henry was when he ran against Eclipse,—nowhere,—if the rain that fell so heavily on the 17th of June had been postponed only twenty-four hours. Up to the afternoon of the 17th, the weather, though very warm, was dry, and the French were engaged in following their enemies. The Anglo-Dutch infantry had retreated from Quatre-Bras, and the cavalry was following, and was itself followed by the French cavalry, who pressed it with great audacity. "The weather," says Captain Siborne, "during the morning, had become oppressively hot; it was now a dead calm; not a leaf was stirring; and the atmosphere was close to an intolerable degree; while a dark, heavy, dense cloud impended over the combatants. The 18th [English] Hussars were fully prepared, and awaited but the command to charge, when the brigade guns on the right commenced firing, for the purpose of previously disturbing and breaking the order of the enemy's advance. The concussion seemed instantly to rebound through the still atmosphere, and communicate, as an electric spark, with the heavily charged mass above. A most awfully loud thunder-clap burst forth, immediately succeeded by a rain which has never, probably, been exceeded in violence even within the tropics. In a very few minutes the ground became perfectly saturated,—so much so, that it was quite impracticable for any rapid movement of the cavalry." This storm prevented the French from pressing with due force upon their retiring foes; but that would have been but a small evil, if the storm had not settled into a steady and heavy rain, which converted the fat Flemish soil into a mud that would have done discredit even to the "sacred soil" of Virginia, and the latter has the discredit of being the nastiest earth in America. All through the night the windows of heaven were open, as if weeping over the spectacle of two hundred thousand men preparing to butcher each other. Occasionally the rain fell in torrents, greatly distressing the soldiers, who had no tents. On the morning of the 18th the rain ceased, but the day continued cloudy, and the sun did not show himself until the moment before setting, when for an instant he blazed forth in full glory upon the forward movement of the Allies. One may wonder if Napoleon then thought of that morning "Sun of Austerlitz," which he had so often apostrophized in the days of his meridian triumphs. The evening sun of Waterloo was the practical antithesis to the rising sun of Austerlitz.
The Battle of Waterloo was not begun until about twelve o'clock, because of the state of the ground, which did not admit of the action of cavalry and artillery until several hours had been allowed for its hardening. That inevitable delay was the occasion of the victory of the Allies; for, if the battle had been opened at seven o'clock, the French would have defeated Wellington's army before a Prussian regiment could have arrived on the field. It has been said that the rain was as baneful to the Allies as to the French, as it prevented the early arrival of the Prussians; but the remark comes only from persons who are not familiar with the details of the most momentous of modern pitched battles. Bülow's Prussian corps, which was the first to reach the field, marched through Wavre in the forenoon of the 18th; but no sooner had its advanced guard—an infantry brigade, a cavalry regiment, and one battery—cleared that town, than a fire broke out there, which greatly delayed the march of the remainder of the corps. There were many ammunition-wagons in the streets, and, fearful of losing them, and of being deprived of the means of fighting, the Prussians halted, and turned firemen for the occasion. This not only prevented most of the corps from arriving early on the right flank of the French, but it prevented the advanced guard from acting, Bülow being too good a soldier to risk so small a force as that immediately at his command in an attack on the French army. It was not until about half-past one that the Prussians were first seen by the Emperor, and then at so great a distance that even with glasses it was difficult to say whether the objects looked at were men or trees. But for the bad weather, it is possible that Bülow's whole corps, supposing there had been no fire at Wavre, might have arrived within striking distance of the French army by two o'clock, P.M.; but by that hour the battle between Napoleon and Wellington would have been decided, and the Prussians would have come up only to "augment the slaughter," had the ground been hard enough for operations at an early hour of the day. As the battle was necessarily fought in the afternoon, because of the softness of the soil consequent on the heavy rains of the preceding day and night, there was time gained for the arrival of Bülow's corps by four o'clock of the afternoon of the 18th. Against that corps Napoleon had to send almost twenty thousand of his men, and sixty-six pieces of cannon, all of which might have been employed against Wellington's army, had the battle been fought in the forenoon. As it was, that large force never fired a shot at the English. The other Prussian corps that reached the field toward the close of the day, Zieten's and Pirch's, did not leave Wavre until about noon. The coming up of the advanced guard of Zieten, but a short time before the close of the battle, enabled Wellington to employ the fresh cavalry of Vivian and Vandeleur at another part of his line, where they did eminent service for him at a time which is known as "the crisis" of the day. Taking all these facts into consideration, it must be admitted that there never was a more important rain-storm than that which happened on the 17th of June, 1815. Had it occurred twenty-four hours later, the destinies of the world might, and most probably would, have been completely changed; for Waterloo was one of those decisive battles which dominate the ages through their results, belonging to the same class of combats as do Marathon, Pharsalia, Lepanto, Blenheim, Yorktown, and Trafalgar. It was decided by water, and not by fire, though the latter was hot enough on that fatal field to satisfy the most determined lover of courage and glory.
If space permitted, we could bring forward many other facts to show the influence of weather on the operations of war. We could show that it was owing to changes of wind that the Spaniards failed to take Leyden, the fall of which into their hands would probably have proved fatal to the Dutch cause; that a sudden thaw prevented the French from seizing the Hague in 1672, and compelling the Dutch to acknowledge themselves subjects of Louis XIV.; that a change of wind enabled William of Orange to land in England, in 1688, without fighting a battle, when even victory might have been fatal to his purpose; that Continental expeditions fitted out for the purpose of restoring the Stuarts to the British throne were more than once ruined by the occurrence of tempests; that the defeat of our army at Germantown was in part due to the existence of a fog; that a severe storm prevented General Howe from assailing the American position on Dorchester Heights, and so enabled Washington to make that position too strong to be attacked with hope of success, whereby Boston was freed from the enemy's presence; that a heavy fall of rain, by rendering the River Catawba unfordable, put a stop, for a few days, to those movements by which Lord Cornwallis intended to destroy the army of General Morgan, and obtain compensation for Tarleton's defeat at the Cowpens; that an autumnal tempest compelled the same British commander to abandon a project of retreat from Yorktown, which good military critics have thought well conceived, and promising success; that the severity of the winter of 1813 interfered effectively with the measures which Napoleon had formed with the view of restoring his affairs, so sadly compromised by his failure in Russia; that the "misty, chilly, and insalubrious" weather of Louisiana, and its mud, had a marked effect on Sir Edward Pakenham's army, and helped us to victory over one of the finest forces ever sent by Europe to the West; that in 1828 the Russians lost myriads of men and horses, in the Danubian country and its vicinity, through heavy rains and hard frosts; that the November hurricane of 1854 all but paralyzed the allied forces in the Crimea;—and many similar things that establish the helplessness of men in arms when the weather is adverse to them. But enough has been said to convince even the most skeptical that our Potomac Army did not stand alone in being forced to stand still before the dictation of the elements. Our armies, indeed, have suffered less from the weather than it might reasonably have been expected they would suffer, having simply been delayed at some points by the occurrence of winds and thaws; and over all such obstacles they are destined ultimately to triumph, as the Union itself will bid defiance to what Bacon calls "the waves and weathers of time."