The War of Wars (73 page)

The dim Prussian Kaiser, Frederick William III, had despatched his beautiful, strong-willed young wife Queen Louise and the young and dashing Prince Louis to reach a secret agreement with Tsar Alexander. But the Russian army was still a long way away and Prussia, which in the last conflict would have joined two formidable allies, Austria and Russia, was now alone.

Undeterred, on 12 September the Kaiser ordered his troops into Saxony to seek new recruits. Although the Prussian army’s natural strength was 245,000, it had a field strength of only around 140,000. The army was largely unchanged in tactics and weaponry from Frederick the Great’s day. Even its leadership was obsolescent; its chief commander, Field Marshal Von Mollondorff, was eighty-two; three other generals were over the age of eighty, thirteen over the age of seventy and sixty over the age of sixty, as were a quarter of regimental and battalion commanders lower down the hierarchy. The seventy-one-year-old Duke of Brunswick, the defeated commander at Valmy, was still the principal commander in the field.

The army leadership was also entirely aristocratic and the soldier conscripts accustomed to blind brutalized obedience and immaculate parade ground routine. The army was wedded to three-line formations and to volleys; the cavalry was still trained for the mass charge designed to panic and rout the enemy. The field artillery was too heavy for quick manoeuvres, and the army clung to muskets dating from the 1754 model. The sole innovation had been the introduction of a few independent light battalions. It was small wonder that Napoleon regarded the Prussians as easy prey.

The bulk of his army was in southern Germany along the Rhine, so Napoleon’s plan was simple: to outflank the Prussians, who were drawn up in a crescent in Saxony, and cut them off from Berlin before the Russians could reinforce them. Napoleon’s army of 130,000 marched in three huge columns of two corps each along parallel roads over the Pass of Thuringia.

The Prussians divided their forces in two, one of around 60,000 under the Duke of Brunswick and the Kaiser, and another of 80,000 under Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen – a cardinal mistake, as Napoleon’s superior army could pick each off at leisure. Napoleon learnt that the main Prussian army was at Erfurt, to the west.

On 10 October the French advance guard under Lannes intercepted the Prussian advance guard under Hohenlohe and routed it, taking 1,200 prisoners. Napoleon went after the main Prussian force, which was believed to be at Jena, and despatched Davout with some 26,000 men and forty-four guns northwards to cut off the Prussian retreat to the Elbe. The Prussians had already been ordered to retreat.

Napoleon ordered up his main corps, under Soult, Augereau and Ney to reinforce Lannes. In the early morning of 14 October they joined battle, with Lannes and Ney valiantly leading their men. They were unprepared for the ferocity of the Prussian resistance and Ney was soon cut off: Napoleon had to organize a major artillery attack to rescue his beleaguered lieutenant.

The Prussians held off an army twice their size for six hours, and then staged an orderly retreat, until Murat’s cavalry finally broke Hohenlohe’s army, which was also under fierce artillery fire. Losing some 5,000 men themselves, the French inflicted losses of 10,000 on the Prussians and took 15,000 prisoners and 200 guns.

Napoleon was then astounded to discover he had been fighting the Prussian rearguard: the main army was some ten miles to the north at Auerstadt, facing the force that had been despatched under Davout and Bernadotte. However the latter had inexplicably disobeyed orders and marched to Camburg, between the two Prussian forces, missing both fights. Davout was on his own with just 26,000 men and forty-four guns facing Brunswick’s 64,000 and 230 guns. At first it seemed the battle was going the Prussian way: Davout organized his men into
squares to resist the cavalry attacks and was pounded by heavy fire from the Prussian artillery, but by lunchtime the French centre was weakening.

At that moment Brunswick was mortally wounded and the fastidious Frederick William was no substitute as a commander. Davout skilfully organized a flanking movement – or ‘envelopment’ – to take advantage of the Prussians’ plodding linear tactics. After four hours of hard fighting, with Frederick William barely leading at all, the Prussians began to give way. The Kaiser ordered a general retreat in the direction of Jena, while Davout ordered an immediate further attack. The retreat turned to chaos as the two Prussian armies, both retreating in opposite directions, ran into each other. Davout had inflicted some 12,000 casualties and taken 3,000 prisoners, but had suffered losses of some 8,000 himself.

The French gave chase to the retreating Prussians, and Murat’s cavalry relentlessly harassed the rearguard as they crossed some 600 kilometres in twenty-three days. The valiant Queen Louise, who had watched the battle, escaped from a squad of hussars who arrived just three hours after she had left her post. Napoleon rode to Weimar and took up residence in the magnificent Sans Souci Palace of Frederick the Great, where he rhapsodized about the enemy Queen, dubbing her ‘an Amazon’ and ‘the lovely Queen, a being as fatal to the Prussians as Helen to the Trojans’.

The Prussians who had earlier fought bravely and well, although hampered by outdated tactics and equipment, now collapsed, with fortresses surrendering and the population panicking before the French advance. Bernadotte, smarting from a furious official reprimand for disobeying orders and missing the battle, led the rapid French advance along with Murat and Lannes.

Only General Blücher’s forces salvaged Prussia’s honour, putting up a spirited stand at Lübeck on the Baltic, where his 20,000 men hoped to be evacuated by a British fleet which never came. He was hopelessly outnumbered by Bernadotte’s forces. ‘The slaughter is awful,’ wrote Napoleon himself. On 6 November Blücher surrendered. There were now only some 20,000 Prussian soldiers left in east Prussia.

From Berlin Napoleon dictated a victor’s peace: all territory between
the Rhine and the Elbe was to be ceded and a colossal 160 million francs levied in reparations. Saxony was to be incorporated in the puppet Confederation of the Rhine. The state of Prussia had in effect ceased to exist, with three-quarters of it under French domination. ‘Sir, the war is over owing to the lack of combatants,’ declared Murat delightedly.

Jena-Auerstadt was very different to Austerlitz. Napoleon won through superior numbers at Jena but was saved by Davout’s brilliant stand at Auerstadt. He had been overconfident, his tactics had been unimaginative, and he had shown dismally inadequate knowledge of the enemy’s movements. It was a victory, but not an impressive one. By contrast the Prussians had fought well, if unimaginatively – an achievement marred by their subsequent rout and the collapse of resistance.

Talleyrand caught up with his master in Berlin. Count Haugwitz, seeking to preserve a vestige of Prussian self-respect, wrote to his representative in Paris: ‘Provided that Monsieur de Talleyrand arrives, I do not despair of your being able to arouse some sounder political ideas than this terrible principle of the destruction of Prussia as a guarantee for the future peace of France. That enlightened minister will easily understand that when Prussia is rendered powerless to restrain Russia or to threaten Austria . . . those two powers will be in a stronger position to disturb the peace of France.’ He was to prove prophetic. But Napoleon was implacable in his revenge and determination to dismember Prussia: only a rump of some 5 million people remained. Queen Louise announced that she would fight on at the head of what remained of Prussia’s patriots.

Napoleon chose that moment to inform Talleyrand of his determination to bring the Bourbons of Spain to heel. The minister was horrified, realizing for the first time that there were no limits to his master’s ambition: ‘I then swore to myself that I would cease to be his minister as soon as we returned to France.’

Napoleon also issued his fateful decree of 21 November at Berlin prohibiting all trade, commerce and correspondence with Britain. This was the formal recognition of the blockade already in place and is regarded as the day of the imposition of what was called ‘The
Continental System’. It was to have fateful consequences: it was a declaration of economic war on Britain, and from then on the balance of opinion in London tilted in favour of all-out war. All real hope of peace – which had burned quite brightly in Britain during the previous decade – was extinguished.

The economic war also ravaged Europe, causing, in the end, more suffering to the French and their subject peoples than to the British, and sparking arguably all the successive wars, from that with Denmark to those with Portugal and Spain and ultimately Russia. The names of the great battles of the Napoleonic wars still resonate today; but the Berlin decree of 1806 and the economic war are perhaps more significant still.

The Emperor’s immediate gaze was still fixed on the east: he had successfully isolated and defeated the Prussians: now he sought to lure the troublesome Russians into battle and inflict a defeat which would discourage them from ever dabbling in European politics again. The strategy made sense. He informed the chiefs of the Polish independence movement that he was sympathetic to their cause and demanded that they put 40,000 men into the field to fight the Russians. Kosciusko, their leader, a hero of the American War of Independence, declared angrily, ‘He will not reconstruct Poland; he thinks only of himself and he is a despot.’

The distrust was mutual. Napoleon wrote: ‘The Poles who show so much prudence, who ask for so many conditions before declaring themselves, are egotists who cannot be kindled to enthusiasm for love of their country. I am old in my knowledge of men. My greatness does not depend on the help of a few thousand Poles. It is for them to take advantage of the present circumstances with enthusiasm; it is not for me to take the first step.’ Napoleon had, however, a loyal supporter in the gallant Prince Poniatowski, one of the leaders of Polish irregular forces. Napoleon also tried to stir up trouble for the Russians by inveigling the Ottoman empire to attack in the south. The Russians were forced to divert some 20,000 men there. Napoleon ordered his armies into Poland, and himself arrived in Warsaw on 19 December.

The winter enveloped his troops, while the port of Danzig – which received supplies from the sea – was still held by the Prussians, who also
controlled the east. Large Russian armies were circling. The Russians had reorganized their armies into mixed divisions, roughly similar to the French corps, having learnt the lessons of Austerlitz. Each of these had six front-line infantry regiments, twenty horse squadrons and eighty-two guns. The Russians had two armies on the northern front led by Buxhovden and by Count Bennigsen, a Hanoverian cavalry commander who loathed Napoleon and was passionately pro-British. Between them these armies were 90,000 strong and had some 450 guns.

In November, as the French approached, Bennigsen was in central Poland but he prudently withdrew across the Vistula to the town of Pultuski from which he threatened the over-extended French lines. Napoleon responded by trying to cut the Russian lines of communication. He despatched a force to Pultuski where bitter fighting took place along the Narew river over Christmas. The French captured the town, but the Russians withdrew intact to Rozan.

The French did not give chase: they were exhausted, demoralized and winter had closed in. The roads were a sea of mud and snow. Nearly half of the
Grande Armée
had simply disintegrated. Napoleon desperately called for reinforcements of 35,000 men from Switzerland and Holland and for a conscription drive in France. He ordered more than 700 million francs to be raised for his campaign, including 160 million from beaten Prussia.

Napoleon now indulged in magnificent parties in Warsaw in his most extravagant
nouveau riche
mode to shut out the miseries of winter. When Josephine wrote to him from Paris of a dream in which she saw him dancing with a beautiful woman, he wrote: ‘You say that your dream does not make you jealous . . . I think therefore that you
are
jealous and I am delighted. In any case you are wrong. In these frozen Polish wastes one is not likely to think of beautiful women . . . There is only one woman for me. Do you know her? I could paint her portrait for you but it would make you conceited . . . The winter nights are long, all alone.’

On 31 December he wrote again: ‘I laughed heartily at your last letter. You exaggerate the attractions of the beauties of Poland.’ Undoubtedly she had heard rumours. On that very day Duroc had
introduced Napoleon to a shy, stunning blonde, Countess Marie Walewska, the eighteen-year-old wife of a seventy-seven-year-old count. The Emperor was immediately smitten, and rained letters upon her. On 2 January he wrote:

I saw only you, I admired only you, I desire only you. A quick answer will calm the impatient ardour of N. . . . Was I mistaken? You have deprived me of sleep! Oh, grant a little joy, a little happiness, to a poor heart that is ready to adore you. Is it so difficult to obtain an answer? You owe me two. N. . . . Oh come! come! All your wishes shall be complied with. Your country will become more dear to me if you take compassion on my poor heart. N. . . . Marie, my sweet Marie, my first thought is for you; my first wish is to see you again. You will come again, will you not? You have promised that you would. If not, the eagle would wing its way to you!

To Josephine, who wanted to join him, he wrote: ‘It is out of the question that I should allow women to undertake such a journey: bad roads, unsafe, and quagmires. Go back to Paris; be gay and happy; perhaps I shall soon be back myself. I laughed over your saying that you had taken a husband to live with; in my ignorance I supposed that the wife was made for the husband, the husband for his country, his family, and fame.’ At a ball he chided Marie for her severe appearance, and secured the support of Polish activists, eager to enlist the French on their side, in his seduction of her, in a typically cynical act of power rape. Even her aged husband connived.

Surprisingly, this simple, strong-willed girl gradually began to fall for her middle-aged suitor, who showered her with charm and affection. Napoleon had had a string of lovers by that time, not least on the road to Poland. But this time it was different: Napoleon had not been so besotted since he first fell for Josephine; and Marie was soon madly in love with him.