and Swedish infantrymen, for whom the Badeners had opened the
Halle gate, had gradually worked their way to the region of the
bridge where, having joined some of the Saxon guard, they had
occupied some houses from which they started to fire on the
French columns. The sapper charged with the responsibility of
detonating the mine was deceived by this fire into thinking that
the enemy had arrived, and that the time had come for him to
carry out his mission, and so he put a light to the fuse. Others
blamed a colonel of the engineers named Montfort, who at the
sight of some enemy infantrymen had taken it on himself to order
the detonation of the explosives. This last version was adopted
by the Emperor, and M. de Monfort was put on a charge and made a
scapegoat for the fatal event, but it later became clear that he
had nothing to do with it. However this may be, the army laid the
blame once more on the Major-general, Prince Berthier, and it was
justly claimed that he should have put the protection of the
bridge in the hands of an entire brigade, whose general should
have been made personally responsible for giving the order to
blow it up, when he thought the moment had come to do so. Prince
Berthier defended himself with his usual response "The Emperor
had not ordered it!..."
After the destruction of the bridge, some of the French whose
retreat was thus cut off, jumped into the Elster in the hope of
swimming across. Several of them succeeded in doing so, Marshal
Macdonald being among them; but the greater number, including
among others Prince Poniatowski, were drowned, because after
crossing the river they were unable to climb the muddy bank,
which was lined by enemy soldiers.
Those of our soldiers who were trapped in the town and its
suburbs aimed only to sell their lives as dearly as possible.
They barricaded themselves behind the houses and fought all day
and part of the night, but when their ammunition was exhausted
they were forced to retire into their improvised defences where
they were nearly all slaughtered! The carnage did not end until
two o'clock in the morning!...
The number of those massacred in the houses is given as 13,000,
while 25,000 were taken prisoner. The enemy collected 250
cannons.
After describing in general the events which followed the battle
of Leipzig, I shall now describe some of those which related
particularly to my regiment and Sebastiani's cavalry corps to
which it belonged. Seeing that we had for three consecutive days
repelled the enemy attacks and maintained our positions on the
field of battle, the men were greatly surprised and disgusted
when, in the evening of the 18th, we learned that because of
shortage of ammunition we were about to retreat. We hoped that at
least(and that appeared to be the Emperor's intention) we would
go no further than across the river Saale to the proximity of the
fortress of Erfurt, where we could renew our stocks of ammunition
and recommence hostilities. So we mounted our horses at eight in
the evening on the 18th of October, and abandoned the battlefield
on which we had fought for three days and where we left the
bodies of so many of our gallant comrades.
We had hardly left our bivouac when we ran into some of the
difficulties arising from the failure of the general staff to
make any arrangements for the withdrawal of such a large body of
troops. At every minute the columns, particularly the artillery
and cavalry, were held up by the need to cross wide ditches,
bogs, and streams over which it would have been easy to put small
bridges! Wheels and horses sank into the mud and, the night being
very dark, there was congestion everywhere; our progress was
therefore extremely slow, even when we were in the open country,
and often completely arrested in the streets of the suburbs and
the town. My regiment which was at the front of the column formed
by Excelmans' division, which led this wearisome march, did not
reach the bridge at Lindenau until four in the morning on the
19th. When we had crossed over, we were far from foreseeing the
appalling catastrophe which would occur in a few hours.
Day broke; the fine, wide road was covered by troops of all arms,
which showed that the army would still be of considerable
strength on arriving at the Saale. The Emperor passed... but as
he galloped along the side of the marching column, he did not
hear the cheers which usually greeted his presence!... The army
was displeased with the little effort which had been made to
secure its retreat since leaving the battlefield. What would the
troops have said if they had known of the inadequate arrangements
made at the Elster, which they had just crossed, but where so
many of their comrades would lose their lives?
It was during a halt at Markranstadt, a little town some three
leagues from Leipzig, that we heard the explosion of the mine
which destroyed the bridge; but instead of being alarmed, we
rejoiced, for we all believed that the fuse would not have been
lit until after the passage of all our columns, and in order,
then, to prevent that of the enemy.
During the few hours of rest which we had at Markranstadt,
without being aware of the catastrophe which had occurred at the
river, I was able to review our squadrons in detail and find out
what losses we had suffered during the three days of conflict. I
was dismayed! For they came to 149 men, of whom 60 were killed,
among whom were two captains, three lieutenant and eleven
N.C.O.s. A very large fraction of the 700 men with which the
regiment had arrived on the battlefield on the morning of October
the 16th. Nearly all the wounded had been hit by cannon-balls or
grape-shot which, sadly, gave them little hope of recovery. My
losses might have been doubled if I had not, during the battle,
taken precautions to shield my regiment from cannon fire, as much
as possible. This requires some explanation.
There are circumstances where the most humane of generals finds
himself in the painful position of having to expose his troops
openly to enemy fire; but it often happens that certain
commanders deploy their men uselessly in front of enemy
batteries, and take no steps to avoid casualties, although
sometimes this is very easy, particularly for cavalry, who
because of the rapidity of their movements can go swiftly to the
point where they are required and take up the desired formation.
It is when large masses of cavalry are involved on extensive
battlefields that these measures of preservation are most
required, and where, however, they are least employed.
At Leipzig, on the 16th of October, Sebastiani, commanding the
2nd Cavalry Corps, having placed his three divisions between the
villages of Wachau and Liebert-Wolkwitz, and indicated to each
divisional general roughly the position he should occupy, Exelman
found himself placed on undulating ground intersected, as a
result, by small ridges and hollows. The Corps formed a line of
considerable length. The enemy cavalry, being a long way from
us, could not take us by surprise. I took advantage of the
hollows in the ground where our brigade was positioned to conceal
my regiment which, though formed up and ready for action, saw the
greater part of the day pass without losing a single man, for the
cannon-balls went over their heads while neighbouring corps
suffered considerable casualties.
I was congratulating myself on having done this when General
Exelmans, on the pretext that everyone should be equally exposed
to danger, ordered me, in spite of the representations of my
brigade commander, to take the regiment a hundred paces forward.
I obeyed, but in a short time I had a captain, M. Bertin, killed
and some twenty men put out of action. I then had recourse to a
different tactic: this was to send some troopers, well spaced
out, to subject the enemy gunners to carbine fire. The enemy then
advanced some infantrymen to counter this, and the two groups
being involved in a fire-fight between the lines, the artillery
could not use their guns for fear of hitting their own men. It is
true that our gunners were in the same boat, but the cessation of
gunfire in a minor corner of the battlefield was to our benefit,
since the enemy had many more guns than we did. In addition to
this, our infantry and that of the enemy being in action at the
village of Liebert-Wolkwitz, the cavalry of both sides had to
await the outcome of this savage fighting; it served no useful
purpose for them to demolish one another by cannon fire, rather
than leave the fighting to the infantrymen, who were for the most
part only frightening the birds. My example was followed by all
the regimental commanders of the other brigades, and the cannons
opposite them too ceased fire, sparing the lives of many men. A
greater number would have been spared if General Exelmans had not
come and ordered the withdrawal of the men on foot, which was the
signal for a hail of cannon-balls hurled at our squadrons.
Fortunately the day was almost over.
It was now the evening of the 16th. All the colonels of cavalry
belonging to 2nd Corps had found this method of sparing their men
so effective that by common accord we all used it in the battle
of the 18th. When the enemy started firing their cannons, we sent
out our foot-soldiers, and as they would have captured the guns
if they were not defended, the enemy had to send infantrymen to
defend them, and so the guns were silenced on both sides. The
commanders of the enemy cavalry which faced us, having probably
realised what we were up to, started doing the same, so that on
the third day the guns attached to the cavalry of both parties
were much less used. This did not prevent vigourous cavalry
engagements, but at least they were directed to the taking or
holding of positions, in which we did not spare ourselves, but
the cannonades aimed at stationary targets, which too often
replace cavalry to cavalry actions, do nothing but kill good men
for no useful purpose. This was something which Exelmans did not
grasp, but as he was on the move all the time from one wing to
the other, as soon as he had left a regiment the colonel sent out
his foot-soldiers and the guns were silent.
All the cavalry generals, including Sebastiani, were so much
persuaded of the advantages of this method, that eventually
Exelmans was ordered not to irritate the enemy gunners by firing
our guns at them, when the cavalry was only standing-to, and had
neither an attack nor a defence to undertake. Two years later I
used the same tactics at Waterloo against the English guns, and I
lost far fewer men than I would have done otherwise: but now let
us return to Markranstadt.
Chap. 31.
It was while the Emperor and the divisions which had come out of
Leipzig were halted at this spot, that we heard the dreadful news
of the destruction of the bridge at Lindenau, which deprived the
army of almost all its artillery and half of its men, who were
taken prisoner; and which delivered some thousands of our wounded
comrades to the assaults and knives of the brutish enemy, full of
liquor and encouraged to massacre by their unscrupulous officers!
There was widespread grief! Each regretted the loss of a
relative, a friend, some comrade in arms! The Emperor seemed
appalled!... However, he ordered Sebastiani's cavalry to retrace
their steps to the bridge, in order to gather and protect any
stragglers who had been able to cross the river at some point,
after the explosion.
In order to speed this help, my regiment and the 24th, who were
the best mounted in the corps, were told to go ahead of the
column and leave at a rapid trot. As General Wathiez was
indisposed, and I was the next in seniority, I had to take
command of the brigade.
When we had reached half way to Leipzig, we heard much gunfire,
and as we approached the avenues we could hear the despairing
cries of the unfortunate French, who having no means of retreat
and no cartridges for their firearms, were unable to defend
themselves and were hunted from street to street, and house to
house, and, overwhelmed by numbers, were disgracefully butchered
by the enemy, mainly the Prussians, the Badeners, and the Saxon
guards.
It would be impossible for me to express the fury felt then by
the two regiments which I commanded. All longed for vengeance and
regretted that this was denied them, since the Elster, with its
broken bridge, separated us from the assassins and their victims.
Our anger was increased when we came across about 2000 Frenchmen,
most of them without clothes and nearly all wounded, who had
escaped death only by jumping into the river and swimming across
in the face of the shots being fired at them from the opposite
bank. Marshal Macdonald was among them; he owed his life to his
physical strength and his ability as a swimmer. The Marshal was
completely naked and his horse had been drowned, so I quickly
found some clothes for him and lent him the spare horse which
always came with me, which allowed him to go immediately to
rejoin the Emperor at Markranstadt, and to give him an account of
the disaster of which he had been a witness, and in which one of
the principal episodes had been the death of Prince Poniatowski,
who had perished in the waters of the Elster.
The remainder of the French who had managed to cross the river
had been obliged to discard their arms in order to swim, and had
no means of defence. They ran across the fields to avoid falling
into the hands of four or five hundred Prussians, Saxons, and
Badeners, who, not satisfied with the blood-bath of the massacres
in the town, had made a footbridge of beams and planks across the
remaining arches of the bridge, and had come to kill any of our
unfortunate soldiers whom they could find on the road to
Markranstadt.
As soon as I caught sight of this group of assassins, I
instructed Colonel Schneit of the 24th to combine with my
regiment to form a vast semi-circle round them, and then sounded
the charge!... The result was horrifying! The bandits, taken by
surprise, put up very little resistance and there ensued a
massacre, for no quarter was given!...
I was so enraged at these wretches, that before the charge
started I had promised myself that I would run my sabre through
any of them I could catch; however, when I found myself in their
midst and saw that they were drunk and leaderless except for two
Saxon officers who were fear-stricken at our vengeful approach, I
realised that this was not a fight but an execution, and that it
would not be a good thing for me to take part in it. I feared
that I might find pleasure in killing some of these scoundrels,
so I put my sabre back in its scabbard and left to our soldiers
the business of exterminating these assassins, two-thirds of whom
were laid dead.
The remainder, including two officers and several Saxon guards,
fled towards the debris of the bridge, hoping to recross the
footbridge; but as they could cross only one by one and our
Chasseurs were hard on their heels, they entered a large nearby
inn and began to shoot at my men, helped by some Prussians and
Badeners on the opposite bank.
As it seemed likely that the noise of firing would attract larger
forces to the bank from where, without crossing the river, they
could destroy my regiment by small-arms and cannon fire, I
decided to bring matters to a conclusion, and ordered the
majority of the Chasseurs to dismount and taking their carbines
and plenty of ammunition to attack the rear of the inn and set on
fire the stables and the hay loft. The assassins, shut in the
inn, seeing that they were about to be caught in the flames,
tried to make a sortie; but as soon as they appeared in the
doorway our Chasseurs shot them with their carbines.
It was in vain that they sent one of the Saxon officers to me to
intercede; I was pitiless, and refused to treat as soldiers
surrendering after an honourable defence, these monsters who had
murdered our comrades who were prisoners of war. So the four to
five hundred Prussians, Badeners, and Saxons who had crossed the
footbridge were all killed! I sent this information to General
Sebastiani, who halted, midway, the other brigades of the Light
Cavalry.
The fire which we had lit in the forage store of the inn soon
spread to the neighbouring houses. A major part of the village of
Lindenau, which lines both sides of the road, was burned, which
would delay the repair of the bridge and the passage of enemy
troops, bent on pursuing and harrying the retreating French army.
The mission being completed, I led the brigade back to
Markranstadt, together with the 2000 Frenc, who had escaped from
the calamity at the bridge. Among them were several officers of
all ranks; The Emperor questioned them on what they knew about
the blowing up of the bridge, and about the massacre of the
French prisoners of war. It seems likely that this sorry tale
made the Emperor regret that he had not taken the advice given
him in the morning, to bar the enemy advance by setting fire to
the suburbs, and even, if need be, the town of Leipzig itself,
most of whose inhabitants had fled during the three day's battle.
In the course of this return to the bridge of Lindenau, the
brigade which I was commanding suffered only three casualties,
one of which was a member of my regiment; but it was one of my
finest sous-officiers. He had been awarded the Legion of Honour
and was named Foucher. A bullet wound, received at the inn, had
gone through both thighs, leaving four holes; but in spite of
this serious injury the brave Foucher made the retreat on
horseback, refused to enter the hospital at Erfurt, which we
passed a few days later and remained with the regiment until we
reached France. It is true that his friends and all the men in
his platoon took great care of him, but he thoroughly deserved
it.
As I left Leipzig, I was concerned about the fate of the wounded
from my regiment, whom I had left behind, including Major Pozac;
but luckily the distant suburb in which I had put them was not
visited by the Prussians.
You have seen that during the last day of the great battle, an
Austrian Corps tried to cut off our retreat by capturing
Lindenau, through which passes the main road leading to
Weissenfels and Erfurt, and how, on the Emperor's orders, they
had been driven off by General Bertrand, who, after re-opening
this route, had made his way to Weissenfels, where we rejoined
him.
After the losses occasioned by the destruction of the bridge at
Lindenau, it was impossible to think of stopping what remained of
the army at the Saale, so Napoleon crossed the river.
A fortnight before the battle, this water-course had offered him
an impregnable position, which he had spurned to risk a general
engagement in open country, putting behind him three rivers and a
large town, which presented obstructions at every step!... The
great captain had relied too much on his "star" and on the
incapacity of the enemy generals.
In the event, they made such serious mistakes that in spite of an
immense superiority in numbers, they were not only unable, during
a battle lasting three days, to take from us a single one of the
villages we were defending, but I have heard the King of Belgium,
who was then serving with the Russian army, say to the Duc
d'Orleans that on two occasions the allies were in such confusion
that the order for a retreat was given: but then the situation
changed and it our army which had to submit to the fortune of
war.
After crossing the Saale, Napoleon thanked and dismissed those
officers and soldiers of the Confederation of the Rhine, who
either from some sense of honour or from lack of opportunity were
still in our ranks. He even carried magnanimity so far as to
allow them to retain their arms, although he was entitled to
treat them as prisoners of war, since their sovereigns had joined
the forces of our enemies. The French army continued its retreat
to Erfurt, without anything happening but an encounter at Kosen,
where a single French division defeated an Austrian army corps,
and took prisoner its commanding general the Comte de Giulay.
Led on always by the hope of a fighting return to Germany, and by
the help which he would receive in such a case from the
fortresses which he was now forced to leave behind him, Napoleon
put a numerous garrison into Erfurt. He had left in Dresden
25,000 men, under the command of Saint-Cyr; at Hamburg 30,000
under Davout, and many strongholds on the Oder and the Elbe,
manned in accordance with their importance; these garrisons made
up a loss in manpower to add to that due to the forts of Danzig
and the Vistula.
I shall not repeat what I have already said about the
disadvantages of deploying too many of one's troops to man forts
which one is forced to leave behind. I shall merely point out
that Napoleon left in the forts of Germany 80,000 men, not one of
whom returned to France until after the fall of the empire, which
they might perhaps have prevented, had they been defending our
frontiers.
The arsenal at Erfurt was able to make good the loss of our
artillery. The Emperor, who up till now had borne his reverses
with stoical resignation, was however upset by the departure of
his brother-in-law, the King Murat, who, with the excuse that he
was going to defend his kingdom of Naples, abandoned Napoleon, to
whom he owed everything!... Murat, at one time so brilliant in
war, had done nothing much during this campaign of 1813. It is
certain that, although he was in our ranks, he was carrying on a
correspondence with M. de Metternich, the prime minister of
Austria, who, dangling before his eyes the example of Bernadotte,
guaranteed, in the name of the allied sovereigns, the protection
of his kingdom if he would join Napoleon's enemies. Murat left
the French army at Erfurt and had scarcely arrived in Naples when
he began preparations for war against us.
It was also at Erfurt that the Emperor learned of the audacious
scheme of the Bavarians, his former allies, who, after deserting
his cause, and joining with an Austrian Corps and several groups
of Cossacks had set off under the command of General the Comte de
Wrede, whose ambition it was not only to stop the French army,
but to make it captive, along with its Emperor.
General de Wrede marching parallel to us but at two days distance
had already reached Wartzbourg with 60,000 men. He detached
10,000 to Frankfort and with the remaining 50,000 he went to the
little fort of Hanau in order to bar the passage of the French.
General de Wrede, who had fought on our side in Russia, thought
that he would find the French army in the deplorable state to
which cold and hunger had reduced those retreating from Moscow by
the time they reached the Beresina, but we soon showed him that
in spite of our misfortunes, we still had soldiers in good heart,
and quite capable of defeating Austro-Bavarians.
General de Wrede, who did not know that the troops which we had
fought at Leipzig, though following, were a long way behind us,
had become very bold and believed he could trap us between two
fires. It was not possible for him to do so; though, as several
enemy corps were trying to mount an attack on our right by going
through the mountains of Franconia, while the Bavarians stood in
front of us, the situation could have become serious.
Napoleon rose to the challenge and marched briskly towards Hanau,
whose approaches are protected by thick forests and notably by
the well-known pass of Gelnhausen, through which runs the river
Kinzig. This river, whose banks are very steep, runs between two
mountains which are separated by a narrow gap which allows the
passage of the river, beside which has been made a fine main
road, cut into the rock, and running from Fulde to
Frankfort-on-main via Hanau.
Sebastiani's cavalry corps which had been the advance-guard from
Weissenfels to Fulde, where one enters the mountains, should have
been replaced by infantry at this point. I have never understood
for what reason this well known principle of warfare was not
followed in these grave circumstances; but to our astonishment,
Exelmans' cavalry division continued to march in front of the
army, led by my regiment and the 24th Chasseurs. I was in command
of the brigade. We learned from the peasants that the
Austro-Bavarian army already occupied Hanau, and that a strong
division was facing the French, to dispute the passage of the
defile.