THE END OF THE GRAND ARMY[3]
[Footnote 3: References: Wuttke: Die Voelkerschlacht bei
Leipzig. Aster: Die Schlachten bei Leipzig. Also see works of
Hofmann, Naumann, and Doerr.]
Plans for Conducting the Retreat -- Napoleon's Health --
Bluecher's Brilliant Idea -- Napoleon under Compulsion -- His
Skilful Concentration -- The Battle-field around Leipsic -- The
Attack -- Results of the First Day's Fighting -- Attempt to
Negotiate -- Napoleon's Apathy -- The Positions of the Third Day
-- The Grand Army Defeated -- The Disaster at the Elster Bridge
-- Dissolution of the Grand Army.
But how should the retreat be conducted? Napoleon's habit of reducing
his thoughts to writing for the sake of clearness remained strong upon
him to the last, and in the painstaking notes which he made with
regard to this important move he outlined two alternatives: to
garrison Dresden with two corps, send three to reconnoiter about
Chemnitz, and then march, with five and the guard, to attack
Schwarzenberg; or else to strengthen Murat, place him between
Schwarzenberg and Leipsic, and then advance to drive Bernadotte and
Bluecher behind the Elbe. But in winter the frozen Elbe with its flat
shores would be no rampart. Both plans were abandoned, and on the
seventh orders were issued for a retreat behind the Saale, the
precipitous banks of which were a natural fortification. Behind this
line of defense he could rest in safety during the winter, with his
right at Erfurt and his left at Magdeburg. Dresden must, he
concluded, be evacuated. This would deprive the allies of the easy
refuge behind the Saxon and Bohemian mountains which they had sought
at every onset, but it might leave them complete masters of Saxony. To
avoid this he must take one of three courses: either halt behind the
Mulde for one blow at the armies of the North and of Silesia, or join
Murat for a decisive battle with the Austrian general, or else
concentrate at Leipsic, and meet the onset of the united allies, now
much stronger than he was.
The night of the seventh was spent in indecision as to any one or all
of these ideas, but in active preparation for the actual movements of
the retreat, however it should be conducted; any contingency might be
met or a resolve taken when the necessity arose. During that night the
Emperor took two warm baths. The habit of drinking strong coffee to
prevent drowsiness had induced attacks of nervousness, and these were
not diminished by his load of care. To allay these and other ailments,
he had had recourse for some time to frequent tepid baths. Much has
been written about a mysterious malady which had been steadily
increasing, but the burden of testimony from the Emperor's closest
associates at this time indicates that in the main he had enjoyed
excellent health throughout the second Saxon campaign. He was, on the
whole, calm and self-reliant, exhibiting signs of profound emotion
only in connection with important decisions. He was certainly capable
of clear insight and of severe application in a crisis; he could still
endure exhausting physical exertion, and rode without discomfort,
sitting his horse in the same stiff, awkward manner as of old. There
were certainly intervals of self-indulgence and of lassitude, of
excessive emotion and depressing self-examination, which seemed to
require the offset of a physical stimulus; but on the whole there do
not appear to have been such sharp attacks of illness, or even of
morbid depression, as amount to providential interference; natural
causes, complex but not inexplicable, sufficiently account for the
subsequent disasters.
For instance, considerations of personal friendship having in earlier
days often led him to unwise decisions, a like cause may be said to
have brought on his coming disaster. It was the affection of the Saxon
king for his beautiful capital which at the very last instant, on
October eighth, induced Napoleon to cast all his well-weighed scheme
to the winds, and--fatal decision!--leave Saint-Cyr and Lobau, with
three corps, in Dresden. A decisive battle was imminent; the commander
was untrue to his maxim that every division should be under the
colors. But with or without his full force, the master-strategist was
outwitted: the expected meeting did not take place as he finally
reckoned. On the tenth his headquarters were at Dueben, and his
divisions well forward on the Elbe, ready for Bernadotte and Bluecher;
but there was no foe. Both these generals had been disconcerted by the
unexpected swiftness of the French movements; the former actually
contemplated recrossing the river to avoid a pitched battle with those
whom he hoped before long to secure as his subjects. But the
enthusiastic old Prussian shamed his ally into action, persuading him
at least to march south from Acken, effect a junction with the army of
Silesia, and cross the Saale to threaten Napoleon from the rear. This
was a brilliant and daring plan, for if successful both armies might
possibly unite with Schwarzenberg's; but even if unsuccessful in that,
they would at least reproduce the situation in Silesia, and reduce the
French to the "hither-and-thither" system, which, rendering a decisive
battle impossible, had thwarted the Napoleonic strategy.
Napoleon spent a weary day of waiting in Dueben, yawning and
scribbling, but keeping his geographer and secretary in readiness. It
was said at the time, and has since been repeated, that throughout
this portion of the campaign Napoleon was not recognizable as himself:
that he ruminated long when he should have been active; that he
consulted when he should have given orders; that he was no longer
ubiquitous as of old, but sluggish, and rooted to one spot. But it is
hard to see what he left undone, his judgment being mistaken as it
was. When rumors of Bernadotte's movements began to arrive, he
dismissed the idea suggested by them as preposterous; when finally, on
the twelfth, he heard that Bluecher was actually advancing to Halle,
and no possible doubt remained, he gave instant orders for a march on
Leipsic. Critics have suggested that again delay had been his ruin;
but this is not true. An advance over the Elbe toward Berlin in search
of the enemy would merely have enabled Bluecher and Bernadotte to join
forces sooner, and have rendered their union with Schwarzenberg
easier. No stricture is just but one: that Napoleon, knowing how
impossible it was to obtain such exact information as he seemed
determined to have, should have divined the enemy's plan, and acted
sooner. The accurate information necessary for such foresight was not
obtainable; in fact, it seldom is, and some allowance may be made if
the general lingered before rushing into the "tube of a funnel," as
Marmont expressed it. On the morning of the thirteenth, while the
final arrangements for marching to Leipsic were making, came the news
of Bavaria's defection. It spread throughout the army like wildfire,
but its effect was less than might be imagined, and it served for the
priming of a bulletin, issued on the fifteenth, announcing the
approaching battle.
On the fifteenth, Murat, who had been steadily withdrawing before the
allied army of the South, was overtaken at Wachau by Schwarzenberg's
van. He fought all day with magnificent courage, and successfully,
hurling the hostile cavalry skirmishers back on the main column.
Within sound of his guns, Napoleon was reconnoitering his chosen
battle-field in and about Leipsic; and when, after nightfall, the
brothers-in-law met, the necessary arrangements were virtually
complete. Those who were present at the council thought the Emperor
inexplicably calm and composed--they said indifferent or stolid. But
he had reasons to be confident rather than desperate, for by a touch
of his old energy he had concentrated more swiftly than his foe,
having a hundred and seventy thousand men in array. Reynier, with
fourteen thousand more, was near; if Saint-Cyr and Lobau, with their
thirty thousand, had been present instead of sitting idly in Dresden,
the French would actually have outnumbered any army the coalition
could have assembled for battle. The allies could hope at best to
produce two hundred thousand men; Bernadotte was still near Merseburg;
Bluecher, though coming in from Halle, was not within striking
distance. In spite of his vacillation and final failure to evacuate
Dresden, Napoleon had an excellent fighting chance.
The city of Leipsic, engirdled by numerous villages, lies in a low
plain watered by the Parthe, Pleisse, and Elster, the last of which to
the westward has several arms, with swampy banks. Across these runs
the highway to Frankfort, elevated on a dike, and spanning the deep,
central stream of the Elster by a single bridge. Eastward by Connewitz
the land is higher, there being considerable swells, and even hills,
to the south and southeast. This rolling country was that chosen by
Napoleon for the main battle against Schwarzenberg; Marmont was
stationed north of the city, near Moeckern, to observe Bluecher;
Bernadotte, the cautious, was still at Oppin with his Swedes. On the
evening of the fifteenth, his dispositions being complete, Napoleon
made the tour of all his posts. At dusk three white rockets were seen
to rise in the southern sky; they were promptly answered by four red
ones in the north. These were probably signals between Schwarzenberg
and Bluecher. Napoleon's watch-fire was kindled behind the old guard,
between Reudnitz and Crottendorf.
The battle began early next morning. Napoleon waited until nine, and
then advanced at the head of his guards to Liebertwolkwitz, near
Wachau, on the right bank of the Pleisse, where the decisive struggle
was sure to occur, since the mass of the enemy, under Barclay, with
Wittgenstein as second in command, had attacked in four columns at
that point. Between the Pleisse and the Elster, near Connewitz, stood
Poniatowski, opposed to Schwarzenberg and Meerveldt; westward of the
Elster, near Lindenau, stood Bertrand, covering the single line of
retreat, the Frankfort highway, and his antagonist was Gyulay. Thus
there were four divisions in the mighty conflict, which began by an
onset of the allies along the entire front. The main engagement was
stubborn and bloody, the allies attacking with little skill, but great
bravery. Until near midday Napoleon more than held his own. Victor at
Wachau, and Lauriston at Liebertwolkwitz, had each successfully
resisted six desperate assaults; between them were massed the
artillery, a hundred and fifty guns, under Drouot, and behind, all the
cavalry except that of Sebastiani. The great artillery captain was
about to give the last splendid exhibition of what his arm can do
under favorable circumstances--that is, when strongly posted in the
right position and powerfully supported by cavalry. He intended, with
an awful shock and swift pursuit, to break through the enemy's center
at Gueldengossa and surround his right. So great was his genius for
combinations that while the allies were that moment using three
hundred and twenty-five thousand effective men all told to his two
hundred and fourteen thousand, yet in the decisive spot he had
actually concentrated a hundred and fifteen thousand to their hundred
and fourteen thousand. This was because Schwarzenberg, having
attempted to outflank the French, was floundering to no avail in the
swampy meadows between the Pleisse and the Elster, and was no longer a
factor in the contest.
When, at midday, all was in readiness and the order was given, the
artillery fire was so rapid that the successive shots were heard, not
separately, but in a long, sullen note. By two, Victor and Oudinot on
the right, with Mortier and Macdonald on the left, were well forward
of Gueldengossa, but the place itself still held out. At three the
cavalry, under Murat, Latour-Maubourg, and Kellermann, were sped
direct upon it. With awful effort they broke through, and the bells of
Leipsic began to ring in triumph--prematurely. The Czar had
peremptorily summoned from Schwarzenberg's command the Austro-Russian
reserve, and at four these, with the Cossack guard, charged the French
cavalry, hurling them back to Markkleeberg. Nightfall found Victor
again at Wachau, and Macdonald holding Liebertwolkwitz. Simultaneously
with the great charge of the allies Meerveldt had dashed out from
Connewitz toward Doelitz, but his force was nearly annihilated, and he
himself was captured. At Moeckern, Marmont, after gallant work with
inferior numbers, had been beaten on his left, and then compelled for
safety to draw in his right. While he still held Gohlis and
Eutritzsch, the mass of his army had been thrown back into Leipsic.
Throughout the day Bertrand made a gallant and successful resistance
to superior numbers, and drove that portion of the allied forces
opposed to him away from Lindenau as far as Plagwitz. At nightfall
three blank shots announced the cessation of hostilities all around.
In the face of superior numbers, the French had not lost a single
important position, and whatever military science had been displayed
was all theirs; Bluecher made the solitary advance move of the allies,
the seizure of Moeckern by York's corps; Schwarzenberg had been
literally mired in his attempt to outflank his enemy, and but for
Alexander's peremptory recall of the reserves destined for the same
task, the day would have been one of irretrievable disaster to the
coalition. Yet Napoleon knew that he was lost unless he could retreat.
Clearly he had expected a triumph, for in the city nothing was ready,
and over the Elster was but one crossing, the solitary bridge on the
Frankfort road. The seventeenth was the first day of the week; both
sides were exhausted, and the Emperor of the French seems to have felt
that at all hazards he must gain time. During the previous night long
consultations had been held, and the French divisions to the south had
been slightly compacted. In the morning Meerveldt, the captured
Austrian general, the same man who after Austerlitz had solicited and
obtained on the part of Francis an interview from Napoleon, was
paroled, and sent into his own lines to ask an armistice, together
with the intervention of Francis on the terms of Prague: renunciation
of Poland and Illyria by Napoleon, the absolute independence of
Holland, of the Hanse towns, of Spain, and of a united Italy. When we
remember that England was paymaster to the coalition, and was fighting
for her influence in Holland, and that Austria's ambition was for
predominance in a disunited Italy, we feel that apparently Napoleon
wanted time rather than hoped for a successful plea to his
father-in-law.
This would be the inevitable conclusion except for the fact that he
withdrew quietly to his tent and there remained; the resourceful
general was completely apathetic, being either over-confident in his
diplomatic mission or stunned by calamity. The day passed without
incident except a momentary attack on Marmont, and the arrival of
Bernadotte, who had been spurred to movement by a hint from Gneisenau
concerning the terms on which Great Britain was to pay her subsidies.
It was asserted at the time that Napoleon gave orders early in the
morning for building numerous bridges over the western streams. If so,
they were not executed, only a single flimsy structure being built,
and that on the road leading from the town, not on the lines westward
from his positions in the suburbs. His subordinates should have acted
in so serious a matter even without orders; but, like the drivers of
trains which run at lightning speed, they had, after years of
high-pressure service, lost their nerve. Marmont asserts that even
Napoleon was nerveless. "We were occupied," he wrote, "in restoring
order among our troops; we should either have commenced our retreat,
or at least have prepared the means to commence it at nightfall. But a
certain carelessness on the part of Napoleon, which it is impossible
to explain and difficult to describe, filled the cup of our sorrows."
Considering who wrote these words, they must be taken with allowance;
but they indicate a truth, that in his decadence this hitherto
many-sided man could not be both general and emperor. No answer from
Francis was received; the allies agreed on this course, and
determined, according to their agreement with England, not to cease
fighting till the last French soldier was over the Rhine. It was
midnight when Napoleon finally drew in his posts and gave preliminary
orders to dispose his troops in readiness either to fight or to
retreat.
When day dawned on October eighteenth the French army occupied an
entirely new position: the right wing, under Murat, lying between
Connewitz and Doelitz; the center at Probstheida in a salient angle;
the left, under Ney, with front toward the north between Paunsdorf and
Gohlis. Within this arc, and close about the city, stood all the
well-tried corps, infantry, artillery, and cavalry, under their
various leaders of renown--Poniatowski, Augereau, Victor, Drouot,
Kellermann, Oudinot, Latour-Maubourg, Macdonald, Marmont, Reynier, and
Souham; Napoleon was on a hillock at Thonberg, with the old guard in
reserve. His chief concern was the line of retreat, which was still
open when, at seven, the fighting began. Schwarzenberg, with the left,
could get no farther than Connewitz. Bennigsen, with the right,
started to feel Bernadotte and complete the investment. Neither was
entirely successful, but Marmont withdrew from before Bluecher, and Ney
from before Bernadotte and Bennigsen, in order to avoid being
surrounded; so that the two French armies were united before nightfall
on the western outskirts of the town, where Bertrand had routed
Gyulay, and had kept open the all-important line of retreat, over
which, since noon, trains of wagons had been passing. But magnificent
as was the work of all these doughty champions on both sides, it was
far surpassed in the center, where during the entire day, under
Napoleon's eye, advance and resistance had been desperate. Men fell
like grass before the scythe, and surging lines of their comrades
moved on from behind. Such were the numbers and such the carnage that
men have compared the conflict to that of the nations at Armageddon.
At Victor's stand, near Probstheida, the fighting was fiercer than the
fiercest. The allied troops charged with fixed bayonets, rank after
rank, column following on column; cannon roared while grape-shot and
shells sped to meet the assailants; men said the air was full of human
limbs; ten times Russians and Prussians came on, only to be ten times
driven back. The very soil on which the assailants trod was human
flesh. Hour after hour the slaughter continued. Occasionally the
French attempted a rally, but only to be thrown back by musket fire
and cavalry charge. It was the same at Stoetteritz, where no one seemed
to pause for breath. Woe to him who fell in fatigue: he was soon but
another corpse in the piles over which new reinforcements came on to
the assault or countercharge. At last there was scarcely a semblance
of order; in hand-to-hand conflict men shouted, struggled, wrestled,
thrust, advanced, and withdrew, and in neither combatants nor
onlookers was there any sense of reality. By dusk the heated cannon
were almost useless, the muskets entirely so, and, as darkness came
down, the survivors fell asleep where they stood, riders in their
saddles, horses in their tracks. Napoleon learned that thirty-five
thousand Saxons on the left had gone over to the enemy, and some one
of his staff handing him a wooden chair, he dropped into it and sank
into a stupor almost as he touched it. For half an hour he sat in
oblivion, while in the thickening darkness the marshals and generals
gathered about the watch-fires, and stood with sullen mien to abide
his awakening. The moon came slowly up, Napoleon awoke, orders were
given to complete the dispositions for retreat already taken, and,
there being nothing left to do, the Emperor, with inscrutable
emotions, passed inside the walls of Leipsic to take shelter in an inn
on the creaking sign-board of which were depicted the arms of Prussia!
Throughout the night French troops streamed over the stone bridge
across the Elster; in the early morning the enemy began to advance,
and ever-increasing numbers hurried away to gain the single avenue of
retreat. Until midday Napoleon wandered aimlessly about the inner
town, giving unimportant commands to stem the ever-growing confusion
and disorder. Haggard, and with his clothing in disarray, he was not
recognized by his own men, being sometimes rudely jostled. After an
affecting farewell to the King of Saxony, in which his unhappy ally
was instructed to make the best terms he could for himself, the
Emperor finally fell into the throng and moved with it toward
Lindenau. Halting near the Elster, a French general began to seek
information from the roughly clad onlooker who, without a suite or
even a single attendant, stood apparently indifferent, softly
whistling, "Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre." Of course the officer
started as he recognized the Emperor, but the conquered sovereign took
no notice. Bystanders thought his heart was turned to stone. Still the
rush of retreat went on, successfully also, in spite of some
confusion, until at two some one blundered. By the incredible mistake
of a French subaltern, as is now proven, the permanent Elster bridge
was blown up, and the temporary one had long since fallen. Almost
simultaneously with this irreparable disaster the allies had stormed
the city, and the French rear-guard came thundering on, hoping to find
safety in flight. Plunging into the deep stream, many, like
Poniatowski, were drowned; some, like the wounded Macdonald, swam
safely across. The scene was heartrending as horses, riders, and
footmen rolled senseless in the dark flood, while others scrambled
over their writhing forms in mad despair. Reynier and Lauriston, with
twenty thousand men, were captured, the King of Saxony was sent a
prisoner to Berlin, and Stein prepared to govern his domains by
commission from the allies. By ten in the evening Bertrand was in
possession of Weissenfels; Oudinot wheeled at Lindenau, and held the
unready pursuers in check.
Next morning, the twentieth, Napoleon was alert and active; retreat
began again, but only in tolerable order. Although he could not
control the great attendant rabble of camp-followers and stragglers,
he had nevertheless about a hundred and twenty thousand men under his
standards; as many more, and those his finest veterans, were besieged
and held in the fortresses of the Elbe, Oder, and Vistula by local
militia. These places, he knew, would no longer be tenable; in fact,
they began to surrender almost immediately, and the survivors of
Leipsic were soon in a desperate plight from hunger and fatigue. Yet
the commander gave no sign of sensibility. "'T was thus he left
Russia," said the surly men in the ranks. Hunger-typhus appeared, and
spread with awful rapidity; the country swarmed with partizans; the
columns of the allies were behind and on each flank; fifty-six
thousand Bavarians were approaching from Ansbach, under Wrede; at
Erfurt all the Saxons and Bavarians still remaining under the French
eagles marched away. The only foreign troops who kept true were those
who had no country and no refuge, the unhappy Poles, who, though
disappointed in their hopes, were yet faithful to him whom they
wrongly believed to have been their sincere friend. Though stricken by
all his woes, the Emperor was undaunted; the retreat from Germany was
indeed perilous, but it was marked by splendid courage and unsurpassed
skill. At Koesen and at Eisenach the allies were outwitted, and at
Hanau, on the twenty-ninth, the Bavarians were overwhelmed in a
pitched fight by an exhibition of personal pluck and calmness on
Napoleon's part paralleled only by his similar conduct at Krasnoi in
the previous year. At the head of less than six thousand men, he held
in check nearly fifty thousand until the rest of his columns came up,
when he fell with the old fire upon a hostile line posted with the
river Kinzig in its rear, and not only disorganized it utterly, but
inflicted on it a loss of ten thousand men, more than double the
number which fell in his own ranks. But in spite of this brilliant
success, the ravages of disease continued, and only seventy thousand
men of the imperial army crossed the Rhine to Mainz. Soon the houses
of that city were packed, and the streets were strewn with victims of
the terrible hunger-typhus. They died by hundreds, and corpses lay for
days unburied; before the plague was stayed thousands found an
inglorious grave.