Russia Against Napoleon (50 page)

The allied plan was devised by Diebitsch. He aimed to catch part of the enemy army while it was strung out on the march and to destroy it before the rest of Napoleon’s corps could come to its aid. The consensus is that the plan was good but its execution very flawed. This is not surprising. Wittgenstein brought with him his own staff. Almost all top positions at headquarters changed on the eve of the battle. To take but one example: Ermolov was replaced as chief of artillery by Prince Iashvili, who had previously headed the artillery of Wittgenstein’s corps. Ermolov was already in some disfavour because of his failure to bring up the artillery parks with ammunition supplies at sufficient speed, but the sudden transfer of responsibility to Iashvili resulted in the new artillery chief not knowing the whereabouts even of all the ammunition that was to hand. Further confusion occurred because this was the first time that large Russian and Prussian forces had fought side-by-side.

Diebitsch’s plan included columns moving at night to take up positions for attack by 6 a.m. on 2 May. Predictably, confusion occurred, columns bumped into each other and even the first allied line was not deployed until five hours later. Matters were not helped by the fact that the plans often arrived very late and were detailed but not always precise. To some extent the delay may even have worked in the allies’ favour, however. During the five hours that elapsed, Napoleon and the bulk of his army was marching away from the battlefield and towards Leipzig, convinced that no battle would occur that day. In addition, had the battle of Lutzen commenced at dawn, Napoleon would have had a full summer’s day to concentrate all his forces on the battlefield, with possibly dire results for the outnumbered allies.

The allies’ initial target was Ney’s isolated corps deployed near the villages of Grossgörschen and Starsiedel. It helped Wittgenstein that Ney had dispersed the five divisions of his corps and failed to take proper precautions. The initial attack by Blücher’s Prussians took the enemy by surprise. The allied high command found itself equally surprised, however, by the fact that Marmont’s corps was positioned in support of Ney and by the nature of the ground over which the battle was fought. This suggests that, despite their superiority in cavalry, allied reconnaissance was less than perfect. George Cathcart, the son of the British ambassador to Russia, was with Wittgenstein’s headquarters. He commented that because of the undulating, cultivated terrain it was impossible to see from allied headquarters what lay beyond the first high ground where the enemy was positioned. The initial Prussian attack on Grossgörschen succeeded ‘but Grossgörschen is only one of a cluster of nearly contiguous villages, interspersed with tanks, mill ponds, gardens etc., which furnished strong holding ground’. The villages on the battlefield were of ‘stone houses with narrow, cobbled lanes and stone-walled gardens’.
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For the first time the allied troops encountered a fundamental difference between Saxon and Russian battlefields. On the latter, wooden villages offered no help to defenders. Solid Saxon stone walls and buildings were a very different matter and could sometimes be turned into small fortresses. Ney’s troops were inexperienced but they were courageous and, in the nature of such soldiers, they drew strength from being able in part to fight behind fixed, stone defences. The Prussian infantry also showed extraordinary courage, urged on by officers desperate to wipe away the shame of Jena. The result was a ferocious battle that swung from side to side as villages were lost and then regained by fresh, well-ordered reserves whose swift counter-attacks caught the enemy before it had regained its breath and organized itself to defend its recent gains. The brunt of the fighting was borne by the Prussian infantry, with the Russians only entering the battle in their support well into the afternoon. From this moment Eugen of Württemberg’s corps in particular was heavily engaged and suffered many casualties first in recapturing the villages and subsequently in holding off the growing threat to the allies’ right flank.

The key to the battle was, however, that Ney’s and Marmont’s men were just able to hold the allied attacks long enough for first Napoleon himself and then other corps to arrive on the battlefield. It did not help the allied cause that faulty planning and reconnaissance meant that Miloradovich’s corps remained inactive only a few kilometres from the battle. Even had Miloradovich’s men been present, however, it would not have altered the outcome. Given the greatly superior French numbers of infantry and Napoleon’s skill in using them, once the whole French army was concentrated on the battlefield victory was certain. By the late afternoon, with MacDonald threatening to turn the allies’ right and Bertrand their left, Wittgenstein was being forced to commit his reserves at a time when Napoleon would soon have many fresh troops to hand.

Clausewitz argued that Lutzen was more a drawn battle than an allied defeat. At the end of the day the allies still stood on the battlefield and had inflicted more casualties than they had suffered. Their retreat was forced, not by defeat, but by the presence of overwhelming enemy numbers. According to Clausewitz, had they not fought at Lutzen this numerical inferiority would have forced the allies to retreat anyway without even slowing down the French advance to the degree achieved by the battle of Lutzen. There is something in this argument but also a touch of special pleading. It is true that Lutzen was not a serious defeat but it could well have become one with just two more hours of daylight.
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After the battle the allies made an orderly retreat across Saxony, recrossing the Elbe and reaching Bautzen in eastern Saxony on 12 May. For most of the way Miloradovich commanded the rearguard and did so with great skill. This allowed the rest of the army to move back in a calm and unhurried manner. At Bautzen the allies enjoyed almost a week’s rest before Napoleon’s troops fully caught up with them. The Russians by now had no equals in Europe when it came to rearguard actions and withdrawals. It would have taken far better cavalry than anything Napoleon possessed in 1813 to shake them. As a result of Lutzen, however, the King of Saxony, who had sat on the fence for two months, swung back into Napoleon’s camp. The Saxon garrison of Torgau, the last fortified crossing of the Elbe not in French hands, was ordered to open its gates to Napoleon. Its commander, Lieutenant-General von Thielemann, delayed as long as possible and then fled with his chief of staff to the allied camp. Uncertainty as to whether Saxony would join the allies had constrained requisitioning in April. By the time King Frederick Augustus’s position became clear it was too late for the retreating allies to milk the kingdom, whose rich resources were to sustain Napoleon’s war effort for the next six months.
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The narrative of military operations in April and May 1813 at most tells only half of the story, however. Intensive diplomatic negotiations were going on simultaneously between the Austrians and the warring sides. This had a big impact on Russian strategy. In a letter to Bernadotte, Alexander claimed that all the battles which had occurred in Saxony in April and May had been fought in order to delay Napoleon and gain time for Austria to intervene, as it had promised repeatedly to do. At precisely the moment that Napoleon started his advance across Saxony the Austrians had launched their own diplomatic offensive. Having declared to both sides Austria’s intention to mediate, Metternich sent Count Bubna to Napoleon and Count Philipp Stadion to allied headquarters to discover the terms which the warring sides were willing to offer. Meanwhile Austria built up its army in Bohemia to add the threat of military intervention as an inducement to compromise.
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By this time Austria was tilting strongly towards the allies. Three months of negotiations with France and Russia had shown beyond doubt that Napoleon remained the enemy of the key Austrian objectives of regaining their lost territories and restoring some kind of balance of power in Europe. On these most fundamental issues the Russians and Prussians quite genuinely supported the Austrian position. If Vienna truly wanted to end France’s dominion in Europe this could only be done in alliance with Petersburg and Berlin, and probably only by war. Just possibly the mere threat of Austrian intervention on the allies’ side would induce Napoleon to make enough concessions to satisfy Vienna. Some Austrians hoped for this and the Russians and Prussians feared it. Around this key issue revolved the diplomatic negotiations between Austria, France and the allies in the late spring and summer of 1813.

On 29 April, three days before the battle of Lutzen, Metternich sent two important letters to Baron Lebzeltern, his representative at allied headquarters. The Austrian foreign minister noted continuing allied distrust of Vienna and set out to explain why the years of financial crisis since 1809 had so retarded military preparations. Metternich wrote that recent Austrian statements to Napoleon should leave him in no doubt about Vienna’s position. When Stadion arrived at allied headquarters he would explain the peace terms Vienna was putting to Napoleon and leave the Russians and Prussians confident as to Austria’s firm intention to act on them once its army was ready. In his first letter the Austrian foreign minister wrote that ‘by the twenty-fourth of May we will have more than 60,000 men in the Bohemian border districts; in total we will have two field armies mobilized of between 125,000 and 130,000 men and a reserve of at least 50,000’. In his second letter, seeking to ease allied fears that their advance into Saxony was too risky, he added that

if Napoleon wins a battle it will be useless for most certainly the Austrian armies will not permit him to pursue his success: if he loses his fate is decided…the emperor desires nevertheless that their Russian and Prussian majesties should have no doubt about the intervention of our Bohemian army which, I repeat, will stop any advance that the French armies might attempt against the allies in the case of victory; under no circumstances should this worry them.
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Stadion’s instructions were issued on 7 May. They stated that even the minimal conditions which Austria would offer to Napoleon included the return of most Austrian and Prussian lost territories, the extinction of the Duchy of Warsaw and of all French territory in Germany east of the Rhine, and the abolition or at least modification of the Confederation of the Rhine. Austria bound itself to discover before the end of May whether Napoleon would accept these terms and listen to the voice of compromise. Metternich argued that the Austrian demands had deliberately been kept moderate because she sought a lasting European peace which could only be built on the consent of all the great powers. Stadion must reassure the allied monarchs that Austria’s position would be changed neither by Napoleon’s victories nor by his defeats on the battlefield. He must discover allied terms for peace but also create the basis for military cooperation in the event that Austrian armed mediation failed to sway Napoleon.
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Philipp Stadion reached allied headquarters at nine in the morning on 13 May, eleven days after the battle of Lutzen and one week before the battle of Bautzen. He met Nesselrode twice that day. In a report to Alexander written on 13 May Nesselrode summarized the Austrian position as explained by Stadion. Vienna would insist on the restoration of the territories lost by it in 1805 and 1809. It would support whatever restoration of Prussian territory was stipulated in the Russo-Prussian treaty of alliance. It would demand the extinction of the Duchy of Warsaw, of all French territory east of the Rhine, and of the Confederation of the Rhine itself. If Napoleon did not accept these conditions by 1 June Austria would enter the war, regardless of what had happened on the battlefield between then and now. Stadion would agree with the allies the principles of a plan for joint military operations. Nesselrode commented correctly that ‘without doubt the conditions set out will never be accepted by France’. He added that ‘Count Stadion promises formally in the name of his court that no evasive or dilatory response by Napoleon will hold her back beyond the end of this period from executing the plan of operations which will have been agreed between her and the allied courts’.
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Nesselrode was a very calm and experienced diplomat. It is inconceivable that he misinterpreted Stadion, deliberately or otherwise, on so crucial a matter. Stadion himself was a former Austrian foreign minister. For all his hatred for Napoleon and the French Empire in Germany, he would never deliberately have misled the Russians. To do so would have been hugely risky both in military terms and in its impact on Austro-Russian relations. Perhaps Stadion allowed his enthusiasm too free a rein in interpreting his instructions, though it is impossible to know what was said between him and Metternich before his departure to allied headquarters. Whoever was to blame, however, there is no doubt that what Stadion told Nesselrode did not represent the true state of affairs in Vienna.

In the first place it was by no means certain that Francis II would take the uncompromising line suggested by Stadion in the event of Napoleon rejecting any of the Austrian minimal conditions, seeking delay, or winning victories over the allies on the battlefield. In addition, when Nesselrode three weeks later finally got to meet Field-Marshal Schwarzenberg and General Radetsky, the two key officers of the Army of Bohemia, they assured him that it had never been conceivable for the Austrian army to cross the Bohemian frontier before 20 June. Russian bafflement and suspicion was inevitable. Did Stadion speak for Metternich? What were the slippery foreign minister’s true views and did he speak for Francis II? Did any Austrian statesman understand, let alone control, what the army was doing to prepare for war?
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Categorical Austrian assurances of support were a powerful additional reason for the allies to risk another battle against Napoleon by stopping their retreat at Bautzen. Nevertheless, though there were excellent reasons for trying to gain time and delay Napoleon, the decision was a very risky one. At the battle of Bautzen on 20–21 May the allies could muster only 96,000 men: Napoleon had double that number present by the end of the battle and his superiority was even greater as regards infantry, which would be the decisive arm on the battlefield. On the map the terrain at Bautzen seemed to favour a stout defence. When they arrived on the scene, as was their habit, the Russian troops immediately began to dig entrenchments and fortifications. Although individual strong points were formidable, however, the position was divided up into a number of sectors by streams and ravines. It would be very difficult to coordinate the defence or move reserves from one sector to another. Above all, the allied position was too extended for such a relatively small force. The Russians had four times fewer men per kilometre than had been the case at Borodino.