THE FIRST CAMPAIGN IN SAXONY[48]
[Footnote 48: References: Fain: Manuscrit de l'an 1813.
Mueffling: Aus meinem Leben. Bade: Napoleon im Jahre 1813.
Schimpf: 1813; Napoleon in Sachsen. Foucart: Bautzen une
bataille de deux jours. Metternich's Memoirs, Memoirs of
Hardenberg.]
Napoleon Over-hasty -- Weakness of his Army -- The Low Condition
of the Allies -- Napoleon's Plan Thwarted -- The First Meeting a
Surprise -- The Battle of Luetzen -- An Ordinary Victory -- The
Mediation of Austria -- Napoleon's Effort to Approach Russia --
The Battle of Bautzen -- Death of Duroc -- Napoleon's Greatest
Blunder.
The grim determination of Napoleon to rule or ruin can be read in his
conduct at this time. This might almost be called foolhardy, inasmuch
as when he arrived at Mainz, on April seventeenth, he knew little or
nothing of the enemy's position, force, or plans. Desirous of
anticipating his foe in opening the campaign, he spent a week of
fruitless endeavor at that place, and then started for Erfurt to
obtain a nearer view. The general aspect of his soldiers was not
reassuring, for the young recruits were still raw and the immaturity
of his preparations was evident in a lack of trained horses and
riders. He had stolen three weeks from the enemy, but he had robbed
himself of all that his indefatigable energy might have accomplished
in that time. His recklessness in diplomacy, his refusal of all
concessions, and his exaggerated cleverness in anticipating his
opponents were to prove his undoing from the military point of view.
The other elements of his failure were the political factor already
mentioned.
At the first appearance of Tettenborn's Cossacks, Hamburg rose and
drove out the French, remaining in possession of the allies until the
end of May; but the trusty French garrisons in Dantzic, Stettin,
Kuestrin, Glogau, Modlin, and Zamosc, having been reinforced by Eugene,
held their respective strongholds, and were left to do so. The absence
of these much-needed veterans was the first element of weakness in
Napoleon's army. A second was the insufficiency of real cavalry, brave
as had been the parade of horses in France. It was the great captain's
firm conviction, repeatedly and emphatically expressed, that without
active cavalry, armed with long-range guns, offensive warfare was not
possible. This defect he had hoped to remedy in the last three weeks
before opening the campaign. The third element in a fatal triad was
the temper of his generals, which was restless and insubordinate
almost from the outset. They were his mightiest men: Berthier as chief
of staff; Mortier commanding the guard; Davout, Ney, Bertrand,
Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier, Macdonald, and Oudinot, each in readiness
with a corps; Victor coming up with another; Augereau preparing to
lead the Bavarians, Rapp at Dantzic, Poniatowski in Galicia--twelve
corps in all.
The French soldiers formed a great army: two hundred and thirty-five
thousand men on paper, actually two hundred thousand, of whom a
hundred and thirty-five thousand were mobile and in readiness when the
Emperor took command. Eugene had forty-seven thousand more.
Consequently when Napoleon, troubled by the exaggerated reports of his
enemy being stronger and more forward in preparation than he had
believed possible, set out for Saxony three weeks earlier than the day
originally fixed by him for the beginning of hostilities, he was
already a victim of his own nervous apprehensions. In colder phlegm
he would have foreseen the truth. Russia had become apathetic as soon
as the seat of war was transferred beyond her borders; strenuous as
were the efforts of Prussia, Scharnhorst's means were slender, and he
could not work miracles. All told, the allies had at the moment only
seventy thousand men ready for the field. Wittgenstein was for the
moment commander-in-chief. The monarchs, utterly uncongenial, were
struggling to act in harmony, but double weakness is not strength.
They had only a single advantage--excellent horses in abundance for
both cavalry and artillery. "The worse the troops, the greater the
need of artillery"; "great battles are won with artillery"; these were
two of Napoleon's aphorisms. The great strategist had lost his
reconnoitering arm in Russia and Poland, the artillery specialist must
have scorned the antiquated guns which now replaced the splendid
field-pieces that rested on the bottom of ponds and rivers whither he
had flung them on his disastrous retreat. With his high officers
sullen, his ranks untried, his cavalry feeble, his artillery hastily
collected from arsenal stores, his staff incomplete, and his prestige
waning, the Emperor might well abdicate temporarily and exclaim, as he
did, "I shall conduct this war as General Bonaparte." This resolution
was sacredly kept.
The premature opening of the campaign was certain to make Austria
pivotal in European politics once again. Her preparations were not
well advanced, but her strength was growing daily, while that of her
rivals was sure to diminish until in the end the coalition would be
powerless without her. This Napoleon saw, and he arranged his strategy
to checkmate what he now felt to be a hostile neutrality. Believing
that the enemy would meet him half way, his first plan showed all the
marks of greatness which characterized the similar one he had so
successfully executed at Jena. Its central idea was a mass formation
with Eugene to break through the enemy's line, then by a wheel toward
the south to annihilate their left, and finally to present himself
victorious before Austria. If successful he might dictate his own
terms. But the enemy did not advance; it was perhaps well for the
Emperor of the French that they did not. An eye-witness declared that
on what was supposed to be the very eve of battle there was little
real discipline outside the sphere of the commander's personal
observation, that the officers had no confidence in their men and the
men but little in their officers, that the superiors were absorbed in
securing some measure of physical comfort, that the inferiors were
listless and disobedient. The forward movement was successful, and the
union with Eugene was effected on April twenty-eighth. Two whole days
elapsed, however, before the enemy was found, and it was May first
when the French van drove in the Russian outposts from Luetzen, ever
famous as the scene of Wallenstein's overthrow by Gustavus Adolphus a
hundred and eighty-one years earlier. The Russian center was
concentrated between the Elster and the Pleisse; Napoleon's line was
more extended, overlapping his enemy's, both right and left. In a
preliminary skirmish at the pass of Rippach, Bessieres, rashly
exposing himself at the head of the cavalry of the guard, was killed.
His loss in such a crisis was like the ruin of a great cohort on the
eve of a close battle. Marmont, forgiven for his failure in Spain, was
near; but close to Napoleon as he was, even he could not replace the
gallant, trusted cavalry leader who for nearly seventeen years had
scarcely quitted his Emperor's side.
Owing probably to the inadequate scouting force of Napoleon, the
battle of Luetzen was in the nature of a surprise. Wittgenstein had
detached five thousand men as if to cover Leipsic, toward which the
French line was advancing; then, concentrating the mass of his center
and left, he crossed the Elster early on May second in order to attack
Ney's corps on the Emperor's right. About nine Lauriston's corps, with
which Napoleon was, came upon the enemy, and was fiercely engaged--so
hotly, indeed, that it seemed as if it must be the Russian right wing
which barred the way. A messenger was immediately despatched to bring
in Ney, who arrived about eleven. The marshal and his emperor at once
advanced to reconnoiter, and were just remarking that there was only a
small force between them and the city, which through their
field-glasses they could dimly discern in the background, its roofs
crowded with curious onlookers, when behind, on the right, was heard
the sound of heavy cannonading. General Bonaparte was himself at once.
No movement is considered more difficult than that by which an army
marching in columns wheels when attacked on its flank, so as in turn
to outflank the assailants. In a flash, and apparently without a
thought, the Emperor issued minute orders for this intricate
manoeuver, and his generals accomplished it with a masterly dexterity.
Napoleon then galloped forward toward Luetzen to carry the guard behind
the center as a reserve, and Ney dashed into the thickest of the fight
to take command of his boy conscripts, who were beginning to yield.
The conflict raged all day, with varying results, along the line from
Great and Little Goerschen to Starsiedel, the latter hamlet being the
scene of terrific fighting. At five the Prussians withdrew from Kaja,
and began to yield along the whole line as far as the Goerschens, which
they had so far held. Napoleon had from the outset been reckless,
cheering his boys by presence and example until they fought like
veterans. As the Prussians gave signs of weakness, he brought in his
artillery, poor as it was, with the old grand style, and ordered the
young guard into the gap he felt sure of making. A Russian reserve
arrived, however, at the crucial instant, and stayed his onset until
seven. At that hour Macdonald bore down his opponents at Eisdorf, and
attacked the Russo-Prussian line on the flank; the second column was
then hurled against its center, and the battle was ended. The Russian
reserve was strong enough to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout,
but since Lauriston had occupied Leipsic as early as two in the
afternoon there was but one course open for the allies: to withdraw
behind the Elbe. Napoleon gathered his army into three columns and
followed; but slowly and circumspectly, because without cavalry he
could not harass them. When, on May eighth, the French reached
Dresden, they found that their enemy had blown up the bridges, and
were entrenched in the Neustadt on the right, or north, shore. Thus
the victory of Luetzen was, after all, indecisive.
And yet the utmost skill and bravery had been shown by the combatants
on both sides. The field was strewn with the corpses, not of such rude
and stalwart peasants as had hitherto filled the ranks of opposing
armies, but of gentle youth from French lyceums and Prussian
universities. There were forty thousand in all, an equal number from
each army, who remained dead or wounded on the hard-contested field.
They had fallen to little purpose. The victor captured neither
prisoners nor guns in important numbers, and to him it was slight
compensation for the loss of Bessieres that Scharnhorst was killed.
The allies, though beaten, were undismayed; long experience had
sharpened their wits and toughened their purpose; there was already
much strategical ability at their headquarters, and there was about
to be more, since Moreau, summoned from America, was soon to take
service with his splendid powers against his country. Great as the
battle was, it must therefore be reckoned as an ordinary victory; it
served to prolong existing conditions, but it did not decide an issue.
It was, however, something that it gave the French a self-confidence
bordering on enthusiasm, and it was more that after Napoleon had
commenced to rebuild the Dresden bridges, Frederick Augustus, the King
of Saxony, declared himself favorable to the French. Abandoning
Austria, he summoned his forces from Torgau, and the allies retreated
eastward behind the Spree. The lower Elbe was also recovered. The King
of Denmark had despatched an auxiliary force to Hamburg. Their
commander, believing Napoleon's fortunes submerged already, at first
assisted the Russians: but after Luetzen he turned his arms to
Vandamme's assistance. The city was retaken, three thousand of
Bernadotte's force marched out, and on May thirtieth Davout, with
fifteen thousand of his own men and three thousand Danes, marched in.
Napoleon's chief purpose, however, was unfulfilled, for Austria was
neither panic-stricken nor dismayed. On the contrary, she still stood
forth as a mediator, and now with armaments to enforce her demands.
Immediately after Luetzen, Stadion, sometime Austrian minister of war,
was sent to the camp of the allies. He stated that the minimum terms
of peace would be the dismemberment of Warsaw, the restoration of
Prussia, the surrender by France of Holland, Oldenburg, and the
Hanseatic lands, the abandonment of the protectorate over the
Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, and the surrender to Austria
of Illyria and Dalmatia, with a rectification of her western frontier.
Almost simultaneously Bubna appeared at Napoleon's headquarters with
suggestions for a general armistice, during which peace negotiations
should be carried on as rapidly as possible by a congress of the
powers. Dwelling on the necessity of territorial concessions by France
for the sake of a general pacification of the Continent, the envoy
declared that if this were accomplished, Great Britain, finding
herself isolated, must yield, and grant to Napoleon a substantial
indemnification from her vast colonial system. The propositions of
Austria were received by the allies with open eagerness, by the
Emperor of the French with apparent hesitancy. Next to the
establishment of his continental empire, the humiliation of Great
Britain was Napoleon's highest ambition. Compromise with her meant
defeat. With a mixture of proud determination and anxiety, he
therefore replied to Francis that he desired a pacification as
ardently as any one; that he was ready for such a congress as was
suggested; that he would even go further, and admit to it delegates
from the insurgent Spaniards; that he would still further consent to a
truce during its sessions: but that he would rather die at the head of
his high-spirited Frenchmen than make himself ridiculous before
England. Never was the writer's statecraft unfolded to greater daring.
Long consultations were held with the King of Saxony, a man of
gentleness and refinement, who was completely won by Napoleon's almost
filial attentions, and Bubna was often kept at the council-table until
after midnight. Eugene, however, was instantly despatched to raise a
new army in Italy, with orders not to conceal his movements from
Austria.
But Napoleon's chief efforts were put forth in the direction of
Russia. The adroit Caulaincourt was chosen as a fitting envoy, and
instructed not merely to reknit his personal relations with the Czar,
but also to surrender every point which had been contested in the
previous negotiations. He was to offer, first, the surrender of the
Continental System as far as Russia was concerned; and, second, such a
reconstruction of the map of eastern Europe as would put an end to the
grand duchy of Warsaw forever. This mushroom state, with the domain of
Dantzic, was to be divided between the Duke of Oldenburg, Alexander's
near kinsman, and the King of Prussia; Prussia itself was to be a
border state under Russian influence, with a capital at either
Koenigsberg, Dantzic, or Warsaw. Brandenburg, with Berlin, would fall
to Jerome, and Saxony would doubtless get the territory around
Krossen. No surrender could have been more complete. "Your chief
concern," ran the final instruction, written on May seventeenth, "will
be to secure a conversation with the Emperor Alexander. My intention
is to build a golden bridge to save him from the intrigues of
Metternich." Alas for such vain hopes! A new diplomatic star had risen
at the Russian court in the person of the young Count Nesselrode, and
the personal interview so earnestly desired by Caulaincourt was
steadily refused; Napoleon's proposals, the envoy was informed, must
be made through the Austrian cabinet, or not at all.
During the parleyings of Austria, Napoleon won a second great victory,
which was utterly ineffectual because he had no cavalry force
wherewith to pursue. For some days after the occupation of Dresden,
for the same reason, he had been ignorant of his enemy's whereabouts.
Learning at last that the allies had not been separated, as he had
hoped, but were standing at Bautzen in a strong defensive position
behind the Spree, he left Dresden at noon on the eighteenth of May,
determined to strike a decisive blow. His enemy, having been
reinforced by Barclay with sixteen thousand Russians and by Kleist
with eleven thousand Prussians, was about ninety thousand strong. On
the nineteenth both Barclay and York advanced from Bautzen; the former
was defeated by Bertrand in a sharp struggle, the latter by Lauriston
in a protracted fight; and at nightfall the French were before the
place. In front was the unimportant stream, and beyond it were the
allies in a double line, their front on the bank, their rear on the
heights behind. About midday of the twentieth the French attacked.
Macdonald stormed the bridge, Marmont and Bertrand crossed by
pontoons; at three their footing was won, and the assault of the place
began. For three hours the fighting was terrific, but at six a portion
of the defenders withdrew behind the town to the second line; at eight
the rest did likewise. Next morning at five, Napoleon, after a
sleepless night, issued his orders; at eight the conflict opened all
along the line. Then first, the Mameluke body-servant having spread a
couch of skins, the Emperor sought repose; he slept to the lullaby of
cannon and musketry for several hours, calmly assured of his
combinations working perfectly. By one Ney had rolled up the Russian
right under Barclay, and Napoleon, waking, sent Marmont and Bertrand
around the right of the enemy's center. By four the allied armies were
in full retreat. Then would have been the moment for artillery to
crash and cavalry to pursue; but neither was efficient, and while the
French army did what men could do, at best they could only follow at
equal speed with the foe, and could not throw his ranks into disorder.
"What! no results from such carnage?" said Napoleon. "Not a gun? Not a
prisoner?"
There was worse to come. From time to time the flying columns wheeled
and poured a heavy artillery fire into their pursuers. Near
Reichenbach, Bruyeres was killed by a ball; then Kirchener by
another, which, ricochetting from a tree, mortally wounded Duroc, the
commander's faithful aid, his second self. Such a blow was stupefying
indeed, for it was the loss of his closest confidant, of one who
through every vicissitude had been a near, true friend, almost the
only companion of a man reduced to solitude by his great elevation.
Napoleon was stricken to the heart, and, halting, gave way until
nightfall to his despair. "Poor man!" said the troopers one to
another, "he has lost his children." "Everything to-morrow," was the
sorrowing ruler's one reply to all suggestions. From time to time he
betook himself to the bedside of the dying man; at last Duroc himself
could no longer endure his Emperor's prostration, and besought him to
rejoin the soldiers. The friends parted in a long embrace. Thereupon
the pursuit was continued, but without ardor and without success.
The nature of Napoleon's victory at Bautzen was his undoing. Had it
been a second Friedland, Caulaincourt no doubt would have met
Alexander; but, as it was, the allies had saved their army, and
Austria's accession to the coalition would still insure their success.
Nesselrode was convinced that Metternich would assent, and, dark as
was the hour, persisted in refusing to communicate with France except
by way of Austria. Wittgenstein lost his command, Barclay was fully
reinstated as commander-in-chief, and, to gain time for Austria to try
her vaunted mediation, a short armistice was proposed to Napoleon. Had
the latter known the weakness, the discord, the exhaustion of his foe,
wretched as was the state of his own army and depressed as were his
spirits, he might have refused, and even the monumental error of 1812
might now have been made good. As it was, the year 1813 is the date of
his one irreparable blunder, the initiation of his final disaster.
Other mistakes he had made, but they were all petty compared with the
great one to which he was now tempted. But his faithful officers were
falling like standing grain under a hail-storm; his boy soldiers,
though fighting like veterans, inspired little confidence, for there
was the same uneasiness among the humble privates as among the great
officers; he had neither cavalry nor artillery, and his available
force was reduced to a hundred and twenty thousand, men and boys;
Barclay might, as for a moment he contemplated doing, draw off into
the Russian steppes; the traitors in Paris were already stirring; in
short, the Emperor felt that he must at least consider. This was the
monumental blunder of his life because it put him at Austria's mercy
without her being forced to reveal her policy.