Russia Against Napoleon (58 page)

The emperor treated Schwarzenberg with more respect than he had Wittgenstein. At the beginning of the autumn campaign, for example, one even finds him telling Wittgenstein to obey Schwarzenberg’s orders when they conflicted with Alexander’s own commands. Quite soon, however, confidence in the supreme commander began to fade and old habits to some extent returned. Schwarzenberg quickly learned that the only way to guarantee that Russian commanders would actually execute his orders was to consult in advance the emperor’s representative at allied headquarters, Karl von Toll, and on any major matters to get Alexander’s own approval. Inevitably this delayed and blurred decision-making to a degree which could have proved fatal.
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Consulting Alexander and Frederick William entailed listening to the opinions of their military advisers. In Alexander’s case this meant above all Barclay de Tolly, Diebitsch and Toll. Always inclined to trust foreign ‘military professors’, Alexander now found a partial substitute for Pfühl in Major-General Antoine de Jomini, one of the most respected military writers of the time, who had deserted from Napoleon’s army during the armistice. Alexander put even more trust in Napoleon’s old rival General Moreau, who had defeated the Austrians at Hohenlinden in 1800 and whom he had invited into his entourage from American exile. For Schwarzenberg and his Austrian staff officers it was bad enough having to listen to the allied monarchs and their Russian and Prussian generals. Having to defer to Moreau and Jomini was the final straw. The commander-in-chief wrote to his wife about the frustrations of being ‘surrounded by weaklings, fops of every sort, creators of eccentric schemes, intriguers, idiots, chatterers and fault-finders’. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky commented in his diary that allied decision-making was sometimes akin to the deliberations of a popular assembly, quite unlike the clear-cut system of command which had existed – in his rather idealized memory – at Kutuzov’s headquarters in 1812.
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If Schwarzenberg’s power over the main army – the so-called Army of Bohemia – was conditional, it was almost non-existent as regards the two other allied armies. The Army of the North was commanded by Bernadotte and was deployed around Berlin. As the de facto sovereign of a large, independent country Bernadotte had to be given command of one of the armies and would be very difficult for any commander-in-chief to control. In so far as anyone at the main army headquarters could influence Bernadotte’s actions, it was Alexander to whom the Swedish crown prince to some extent deferred. In any case, the whole area between Schwarzenberg’s and Bernadotte’s armies was held by Napoleon, so messengers between the two headquarters generally made a huge detour to the east and took many days to shuttle back and forth. Even Schwarzenberg’s attempts to control General Blücher, the commander of the Army of Silesia, bore little fruit. By delay and by appealing to Alexander and Frederick William the Prussian general successfully resisted all the commander-in-chief’s many efforts to draw the Army of Silesia into Bohemia in order to cover the main army’s right flank. At least in the Army of Bohemia Schwarzenberg could give direct orders to the 120,000 men who formed its Austrian contingent. In the Army of Silesia and the Army of the North, however, there were no Austrian troops.

In principle, allied movements were supposed to follow the plan agreed at Trachenberg between 10 and 12 July by the Russians, Prussians and Swedes. The plan stated grandly that ‘all the allied armies are to act offensively: the enemy camp will be the point at which they will join’. If Napoleon advanced against any one of the allied armies, the other two were to attack his rear. Only the Army of Silesia was explicitly ordered to avoid battle with Napoleon, above all because in early July the allied planners believed that it would only be 50,000 strong. The chief architect of the Trachenberg plan was Toll: although still-neutral Austria could not participate in the Trachenberg war-planning conference, he had travelled to Austrian headquarters for lengthy discussions with Schwarzenberg and Radetsky, who agreed with the Trachenberg plan’s principles. Austrian caution did subsequently modify the plan in one respect: all allied armies were now enjoined to avoid battle against Napoleon himself unless the other allied armies were able to join in.
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In many ways the Trachenberg plan made good sense. Napoleon was in Germany and the only way to remove him was by a coordinated offensive of all the allied armies. Avoiding a battle between any one allied army and Napoleon’s main forces under his personal command was also sensible. Whether it was achievable was another matter. An army which invaded Saxony and then retreated in the face of Napoleon’s counter-movements would be doing a great deal of exhausting marching. Avoiding battle with Napoleon on your tail was anyway easier said than done. The Russian army would probably have the skill in rearguard actions and the endurance to sustain this strategy. Whether the Austrian army or the Prussian Landwehr could do so was a moot point. In the absence of radio or telephones it was in any case impossible to coordinate the concentric movements of three armies in anything but the barest outlines. Some armies were bound to move more quickly than others. As the allies closed in, Napoleon’s chances of using his central position to strike one and hold off the others for a few crucial days would improve. The personalities of the three allied commanders added to this likelihood. Blücher was bold, aggressive and much inclined to take risks. He had no fear of Napoleon. Schwarzenberg and Bernadotte were the exact opposite in all respects.

At the beginning of the campaign Alexander seems to have had high hopes that Bernadotte would mount a vigorous offensive. Perhaps he was seduced by his respect for foreign, and above all Napoleonic, generals. In a letter to Bernadotte of 21 August, for example, he held out the prospect that with Napoleon seemingly moving eastwards the Swedish crown prince could storm into his rear, taking Dresden and Leipzig, occupying the defiles into Bohemia, and even dispatching light forces westwards to encourage the confederation of the Rhine princes to abandon their alliance with Napoleon. In fact, however, there was nothing in Bernadotte’s past to suggest that he might be willing or able to carry out such grandiose offensive operations. Over the years he had shown himself to be an excellent administrator and a skilful politician but nothing more than a competent, if cautious, general.
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Bernadotte was also operating under serious constraints, some of them political. The Swedish elites who had offered him their crown had done so in the expectation that this would improve relations with Napoleon and maybe help their planned revenge against Russia. Instead Bernadotte had led Sweden into alliance with Alexander, abandoning what seemed a golden opportunity to regain Finland in the process. To justify this policy, Bernadotte had to deliver on his promise to take Norway from the Danish king in compensation. In one sense this bound him to the allies, because Napoleon would never agree to robbing his Danish ally. Allied victory was a necessary but far from sufficient condition as regards grabbing Norway for Sweden, however. Apart from anything else, this was a minor issue for the allied great powers. They would be very slow to commit their own troops against Denmark. Bernadotte would also be well advised to have Norway firmly in his grasp before the horse-trading began at a post-war peace conference. All this helps to explain why the crown prince was so determined to keep his Swedish corps intact during the autumn campaign. There was also a simpler reason. Of all the allied troops the Swedes were probably the worst. If their infantry got into serious combat with the French there was every chance they would be badly mauled. The likely result would be that Bernadotte would return to Sweden with no Norway and half an army. In that case his chances of gaining the throne on the king’s death would probably be slim.
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The Army of the North also faced a strategic dilemma. If Napoleon advanced against Blücher or Schwarzenberg at the beginning of the campaign both had room to retreat. Schwarzenberg, for example, could move back on to his supply bases, fortresses and good defensive positions in central and southern Bohemia. With the two other allied armies and a horde of light cavalry moving into his rear there were strict limits to how long Napoleon could pursue either Blücher or Schwarzenberg.

Bernadotte’s army on the other hand was deployed right in front of Berlin. He himself might wish to retreat towards his own Swedish bases on the Baltic coastline but if he abandoned Berlin without a struggle he would face revolt from his Prussian generals, whose troops constituted the biggest contingent in his army. Bernadotte knew this and therefore planned to beat off any French attack on Berlin. His nervousness was increased by his conviction that seizing the Prussian capital would be Napoleon’s first priority. He was actually not far wrong: Napoleon was obsessed by Berlin and directed two offensives against it, led by marshals Oudinot and Ney, in the first month of the war. Had the initial battles with the armies of Bohemia and Silesia gone successfully, Napoleon’s next move would have been to move northwards against Bernadotte with his Guards and the bulk of his other reserves.
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The armies of Silesia and Bohemia were in a safer position than Bernadotte so long as they stood on the defensive. If Napoleon was to be driven out of Germany they could not do this for long, however. Once they invaded Napoleon’s base in central Saxony they also would be vulnerable. In Schwarzenberg’s case his troops would have to cross the Erzgebirge, in other words the mountain range that ran along the whole length of the Saxon–Bohemian frontier. The only two decent roads from Bohemia across the Erzgebirge were the highways to Dresden and Leipzig. As they crossed the range these were 100 kilometres apart. If Schwarzenberg spread his advancing columns across both highways and the mountain paths between them, there was a chance that Napoleon would pounce on one of his flanks before the rest of the army could come to his aid. Rapid lateral movement across the steep valleys and along the winding mountain paths of the Erzgebirge was difficult even for messengers, let alone large bodies of troops. On the other hand, if Schwarzenberg tried to concentrate most of his army on just one highway, logistical problems would mount and his columns would move very slowly. That would increase the possibility of Napoleon pouncing on the leading divisions of the allied army while the rest of Schwarzenberg’s army was crawling forward in a long crocodile across the mountains.
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If Blücher’s army was to invade central Saxony it had to cross the Elbe. All the fortified crossings were in Napoleon’s hands, which meant that only he could move his troops across the river rapidly and in full security. The only way for Blücher to cross was by building pontoon bridges. For this he depended on his Russian pontoon companies, who did an outstanding job in getting the Army of Silesia across first the Elbe and later the Rhine. Their bridges were distinctly ramshackle affairs. A senior Russian staff officer in Blücher’s army recalled that ‘these bridges, which only lay a couple of feet above the surface of the water, had to be crossed with great care. They moved up and down all the time, horses had to be led, and any damage to the tarpaulin of one of the barges could immediately sink it.’ Once the army had crossed the river, either it dismantled the bridge and abandoned its communications or it had to construct field fortifications to protect the bridgeheads. The latter could never be as strong as permanent fortresses and therefore required much bigger garrisons. An army crossed such bridges much more slowly than over a permanent structure. It therefore had a higher chance of being caught by the enemy while moving across a river. The nightmare for any commander was to be forced to cross such a bridge in a hurry with Napoleon on his tail. True disaster loomed if the weather then turned against them, damaged the pontoons or made the bridge impossible to cross.
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Inevitably, to see things just from the allied perspective is to forget that Napoleon too faced serious problems. By standing on the defensive in Saxony with a large army he doomed his men, and above all his horses, to hunger. The marches and counter-marches imposed by the allied Trachenberg strategy exhausted Napoleon’s young conscripts. The hostility of the local population and, above all, his great inferiority in light cavalry made it difficult to gather intelligence. His main base at Dresden, on which his army’s supply of food, ammunition and fodder greatly depended, was inadequately fortified and only one day’s march from the Austrian border. Odeleben, still in Napoleon’s headquarters, relates these and other problems and recalls that Napoleon’s great aim and hope in the autumn campaign was to pounce on allied mistakes. This hope was realistic given the theatre of operations, the problems of coalition warfare, and the failings of the allied commanders.
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Telling the story of the first weeks of the autumn 1813 campaign in Germany is complicated by the fact that fighting occurred on three distinct fronts. The main army under Schwarzenberg in the south, Blücher’s Army of Silesia in the east and Bernadotte’s Army of the North in front of Berlin operated independently and it is necessary to follow each of their campaigns in turn for the sake of clarity. Only after the first half of the autumn campaign was concluded and the three allied armies advanced into Saxony towards Leipzig is it possible to tell the story of the campaign as a single integrated narrative.

Predictably, of the three allied army commanders it was Blücher who was off to the quickest start after the expiry of the armistice. In fact, thundering that ‘it’s time to finish with diplomatic buffoonery’, he went into action even before hostilities were supposed to start.
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Egged on by Barclay, he seized as an excuse minor French infractions of the armistice terms and invaded the neutral zone between the opposing armies in Silesia on 13 August. This move made sense. In a province exhausted by the presence of two big armies in June and July 1813 the neutral zone around Breslau stood out because its harvest had barely yet been tapped. This was a prize worth cornering for oneself and denying to the enemy.