The Ballet of Europe: Pas de deux for a nice-legged Gascon sergeant and a little Corsican corporal

Prologue​

Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow was watching the battle unfolding under his eyes with what came close to utter satisfaction. In the privacy of his own mind and only there, he admitted that, although a dedicated army reformer, he had been deathly afraid of moving away from the glorious legacy of König Friedrich der Große, had even doubted whether Prussian troops could fight as well as the French and best them at their own tactics. But then, he reflected, while mercilessly pushing under the traitorous thoughts, he had seen first-hand the consequences of what backwards thinking in the army had produced even under such luminaries as Generalfeldmarschall Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Fürst von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and General Der Infanterie Friedrich Ludwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. At least the former had received some small mercy from a mortal wound to prevent him seeing the kingdom being shaken to the core. The latter had not been so lucky: from what the Freiherr had heard, he was still in retirement, mourning for his fatherland. No, Friedrich von Bülow decided, the nightmare that had begun at Jena and Auerstaedt, prolonged by the headlong flight north to Berlin, the abject surrenders and the humiliating retreat into Poland which he had joined in the futile hope of deliverance coming from the Russians, that nightmare was coming to a close on that day. How fitting it should be that it would happen within Berlin’s sight and that a former marshal of the Ogre, that Corsican parvenu, was in command against his own countrymen!


At that, von Bülow could not repress a sneer, which his chief of staff General Hermann von Boyen must have noticed but was tactful enough not to remark on. So much for this blather of the irresistible ideal of the nation en armes! A lawyer’s son had deserted his jumped-up master at the first sign of the Swedes dangling a crown in front of him. Another parvenu, for whom war was not the moral obligation to which every honorable Junker submitted but just another opportunity of slaking his bloodthirstiness. The Prussian officer had heard rumors that Bernadotte, or Karl Johan as he was calling himself these days, wanted to be compensated for his participation in the coalition by Norway, to be prised away from Denmark. As well he might, the general considered: what that pestiferous Riksdag had done it could undo and Bernadotte’s claim to the Swedish throne was perhaps even more threadbare than the monster Buonaparte’s to his gilded seat in the Tuileries. If Bernadotte could not make good the loss of Finland, what was the point of keeping him as heir? The estates’ mobs would turn on him as quickly as they had on their legitimate sovereign, Gustav IV, and a proper successor would be designated for Karl XIII. Maybe the true monarch would even be restored. He could not suppress entirely a snarl towards his nominal commander. The French turncoat had yet to commit his Swedish troops. Estafette after estafette had been dispatched and returned with the same maddening answer: the dawn assault from the French beasts had taken the Swedes unaware and they were still busy reforming their lines and moving in proper formation.


With a slight movemement of his shoulders, Generalleutnant Friedrich von Bülow forced himself to focus back on the battle. He should not have let his mind wander away from it. Political considerations were well and good but, for that day, all hinged on the heroic resistance his soldiers were putting up. A good general had to remain aware of any opportunity that might present itself. Anytime now, a gap might open between the French regiments in the center and he, Friedrich von Bülow, would not fail to drive a wedge through it. He could sense it coming as sure as he could feel what the coda of a concerto or a fugue would sound like from the first notes of the exposition, whether it was by his beloved Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach whose recitals in Berlin he had attended when he was young, long before he was a soldier, or by Prinzessin Amalie von Preußen, whom he had heard play the flute while he was teaching war to her young nephew Prinz Friedrich Ludwig Christian von Preußen. He sighed deeply. The death of his young impetuous pupil in a futile charge against the French back in the dreadful year was a burden he would have to bear for the rest of his life. At least here he was doing his very best to avenge the dashing young man he had grown to love in an almost fatherly way. So soon after the death of his two sons! Too soon for him and much too soon for Prussia.


Then, what Freiherr von Bülow had been hoping for all morning finally happened. The French were giving way. He quickly scanned the battle lines with his spyglass. The retreat was occuring over the whole of the battlefield. From left to right, Oudinot himself, Reynier and Bertrand were pulling back their corps. Oudinot must have had enough for the day, the Prussian general decided, and was ordering a withdrawal to save his army for a latter fight. Here and there, stubborn squads of French offered a spirited resistance, but it availed them little: even the greenest and lowest of the Landwehr regiments could beat Buonaparte’s most hardened veterans if the former took the latter in the flank.


This looked to be a victory in the making. Not the greatest he could have hoped for, if Oudinot escaped with the bulk of his troops still in fighting shape and used Arrighi’s cavalry to screen his retreat, but one to give heart to Prussia’s soldiers and convince them once and for all that they had become a match for the dreaded French. It would make them see that the victories at Möckern or at Luckau against the very same Oudinot, nearly three months ago had not been flukes. He confered briefly with General Herman von Boyen and ordered a careful pause across the line. His troops had been brave and had stood the test of valour, but they must have been tired after more than four hours of combat. There would be no mad dash forward, no glorious cavalry charge which would break itself on squares of infantry. No, Friedrich von Bülow had forever abandoned whatever delusions about war he might have held after the debacle of 1806. He would go at the French marshal carefully while never letting him outside of his sight, never letting him escape to safety. Unfortunately, his freshest troops were the Landwehr from the detached corps which he had mostly kept in reserve to secure his line of retreat because he was not sure they could hold their own in a straight line firefight. Now though, they might achieve something. It was obvious the French were not routing but their morale had had to have been hit badly. The Generalleutnant issued some more orders for his light cavalry to prepare to harrass the stragglers who could not keep pace with the fast-timed withdrawal of the French corps.


Bernadotte had at least been useful for something, Friedrich von Bülow ruefully acknowledged. The plan he had expounded at Trachenberg to avoid Buonaparte and go at his vulnerable marshals while they were tramping all over the sacred German soil was beginning to show real benefits. Oudinot in particular was a dreadful army commander. Six days ago, he had barely managed to prevent Reynier to go headlong at the Prussians without waiting for reinforcements on his flanks. The Prussian Junker had almost despaired, for he was sure he could have crushed that isolated corps like a grape. Since then, Oudinot had only dithered hither and yon, sending some scouting parties on the Army of the North’s flanks and refusing to engage the Prussians and Russians every day they demonstrated in force. There had been a few desultory exchanges of fire from cannons while Oudinot camped in front of Ahrensdorf, the Genshagen wood and Blankenfelde, even as the Prussians fortified Gütergotz, Ruhlsdorf, Großbeeren and Mahlow. Bernadotte had had the barest of courtesies to inform him his Swedes had gotten into a few cavalry scraps with the French. Still, that had prevented the Prussians from doing much scouting and very few peasants had left the area to inform them of what was going on. And now, Oudinot had given him something even better than destroying a single corps: from now on, the Prussians would drive the demoralized enemy from their soil, confident in their strength, knowing that they had had no need of their so-called Swedish allies.


Half an hour later, an orderly advance was beginning for the Third Corps, imitated by the Fourth Corps on the left, led by his counterpart Generalleutnant Bogislav Graf Tauentzien, and the smaller Russian Corps under Feldmarschall-Leutnant Ferdinand Freiher von Witzingerode. The wounded who couldn’t walk had been carried to the rear, to rest in the half-smashed houses of Großbeeren before medical carts could transport them back to better billets in the capital city. The somewhat ragged and tired regular regiments had had the time to drink their fill of water or alcohol and eat part of their rations. They had gone at it with a will, the early morning attack having prevented them from breaking their fast. Friedrich von Bülow would not begrudge them this indulgence. They had shown their mettle and he needed rested soldiers to manage the pursuit. The Landwehr were filling the gaps left by the dead and dying or taking positions in a third or fourth line, spreading out like Jägers. The French still had not gone very far. If anything, they must have been more exhausted than his men: they had surely woken long before dawn, their last meal was a distant memory, and there was no time for them to recuperate from the exertion of the fight.


The Generalleutnant was distracted from his observations by his chief of staff who was pointing at something in the rear. And wasn’t that just gilding the lily! Bernadotte’s Swedes, who should have been racing to the front from their position on the right, were standing well in the rearguard of the Prussian corps where they would be absolutely useless. Bernadotte had only been accepted with reluctance as nominal commander of the Army of the North because he had not taken part in either Jena or Auerstaedt but, to Friedrich von Bülow, that spoke more of the man’s incompetence than of any feeling of friendship for the Prussians. What had ever possessed the never-sufficiently-damned Corsican to make that man a marshal? Apart from a few orders that morning, all of them sluggish and meaningless, nothing had come forward from his headquarters! From what the Freiherr on his right and the Graf on his left were sending him, Friedriech von Bülow had the distinct feeling that all three Corps had fought separate battles with no coordination whatsoever.


Fuming, the general led on with his staff, joining some of his men, doling out compliments to some captains or lieutenants who had distinguished themselves. Since his commander didn’t want to inveigle himself in this battle, he intended to make sure the pursuit was well and properly led. Short and sharp barks from sergeants and obersts alike echoed all through the battlefield as the lines made their ponderous advance forward.


Before long, nearly five hundred French soldiers had been rounded up and taken to the rear to waste away in a camp until their usurping master would be felled. The lines were beginning to shift into column formation for as quick a march as could be managed. The cavalry was leaving trails of dust half a league forward, probably taking some units in the rear and scattering them.


Then Friedrich von Bülow reined in his horse so hard the animal whinied in pain. The French – The French weren’t leaving! They were redeploying in lines in a slight crescent from well north of Löwenbruck to the heights above Jühnsdorf! What could they be thinking? Soldiers who had been beaten wouldn’t fight again for the day except in holding actions, all officers knew so. Oudinot could not be so stupid, could he? And this was no mere rearguard skirmish! The whole army had turned and seemed ready to engage once again. Well, if the fools wanted to die, he would gladly oblige them. He turned to his ordinances and began calling out for them to issue his orders to resume the march and take the fight to the French. The enemy had no real artillery anymore: a lot of guns had been left behind in their retreat. So had the Prussian guns which were long to move to the front and seemed stuck in the center of the moving columns but that didn’t matter much. The infantry with the most fight left in them would thrash the other. And that infantry was his, the Generalleutnant knew without a doubt.


A quarter of an hour later, with noon fast approaching, the Prussians had redressed their ranks and were closing in. Freiherr von Bülow was following them closely. He didn’t want to have to wait. In his estimation, the French would snap like a twig in under an hour and he would have a full late August afternoon to chase after them. He beamed at his staff: ‘Well, gentlemen, it is said that, at Friedland, the usurper Buonaparte declared that you could not catch the enemy twice making so big a mistake and we all know what happened. Should we teach those French ragamuffins the same lesson here and now?’ A cheer went up among the officers, picked up by the regiments closest to him which soon morphed into that new and powerful song, ‘Der Vaterlandlied’. The voices rose as they intoned the first stanza: ‘The god who made iron grow/Did not want slaves;/ Therefore he gave saber, and spear/ To man in his right hand’. Let the godless French swine shake in their boots at that. Such glorious victories should always go with music.


An ensign from the cavalry was trying to make his way to him, Friedrich von Bülow noticed. The hapless horseman was impeded by the cheering and singing throngs of infantrymen. He made another few attempts at getting through before he resorted to shouting his message over the noise at the top of his lungs.


‘Herr General! The French have hidden batteries behind the villages and the woods! They’re coming up and have badly hammered the Queen’s dragoons and the Pomeranian regiment! There are at least ten thousand Frenchmen in reserve moving fast from the Nudow road, ready to take us in the right flank ! Those who are facing you are dug in. We don’t know how they managed, but they have trenches and those looked deep! Sir! General von Oppen asks what you want him to do, sir! He says at least one hussar brigade have passed by the Russians and dispersed all eight of his Landwehr squadrons!’


The shouts of elation were silenced as fast as they had risen up. Even soldiers without a formal military education would know what those few words meant. What had seemed the last push towards glory but a moment before now turned to the grisly prospect of hand-to-hand fighting against an enemy with adequate defenses. Who knew for how long Oudinot had had those trenches prepared? And what was the meaning of this maneuver? Had the French marshal deliberately thrown his men into the fray to tire Prussian soldiers before launching an expertly hidden reserve? What if all this had been a trap?


For a few seconds, the general’s mind whirled around without managing to find a course of action. But Friedriech Freiherr von Bülow had always been a decisive man. To fight the French was dangerous, no doubt about it. But to retreat without a contest would break the morale of his men, a morale it had taken years to husband and rebuild carefully and that the early hours of the day had greatly improved. So close to Berlin, this could turn a careful retreat into a rout just like after Jena and Auerstaedt. It was a risk he could not take. That left only the way forward.


‘At them, soldiers of Prussia!’ he shouted, drawing his sword and waving it about. At them sons of Germany! Do those piddly and cowardly French believe a few trenches will stop you heroes? Let’s show them how wrong they are!’


The cheering was more ragged than it had been, but it was a cheer nonetheless. The Generalleutnant risked a look to the north-west in his rear and saw metal gleaming from marching ranks. The Swedes were coming at last! And, by the look of it, they were bringing forth a mighty battery of artillery that he would sorely need before the day was over. Too bad they didn’t have many howitzers to lob shells into the French defensive works, but that would have to do.


He spurred his horse onwards. His Corps would need all the help it could get and that meant he would have to be seen to lead from the front. He ordered his chief of staff to handle the tactics until he came back and not to give up an inch of ground. All of a sudden, he felt like a second lieutenant again in one of Friedrich der Große’s campaigns. The drummers and fifers picked up the pace as orders were sent all up and down the line.


‘I know not one fearful man among you!’ he bellowed. ‘Let all brave Prussians follow me!’


There was but a short distance to go before closing with the French. He gave his steed a bit more of his spurs, urging it to a fast trot. Behind him, the regiments were marching at the prescribed one hundred and eight paces a minute. Good men. Stalwart men. Far more men than there would remain when the sun would set. One more sin to put on the shoulders of the Corsican.


The first volley of the French tore into the line, but Friedrich von Bülow knew without looking back that every man that fell was immediately replaced. He had already decided he would give just one volley with the brigade that was following him before rushing in with bayonets. If at least part of the trenches could be seized before the French reserves arrived, that would greatly alleviate the pain his men would have to endure.


The second volley came close to the first one, less than fifteen seconds distant. One bullet grazed the Generalleutnant’s sleeve but a lot of them shredded his horse’s chest. He had been ready for it and jumped nimbly off of his dead steed like a much younger man. An aide came up to him with another horse at the ready and he jumped into the saddle. He had not even lost his grip on his sword and waved it encouragingly to the troops.


‘The French bullet that will kill me has not yet been cast!’ he screamed. ‘Fifty paces more, lads, and we’ll show them what a real volley looks like!’


That meant probably another two volleys from the enemy, maybe three to press the charge home. No matter. Steel would win the day, not lead. A familiar sound came from the back, a deep and throaty roar. Guns were at last coming to his help. If he had to guess, he would have said it was those of the Swedes. They had all fired in unison, and the Prussians guns were much too jumbled up in the rear to be able to act as a grand battery, with even his able Oberstleutnant Karl von Holtzendorff having trouble getting them in position.


To his slight surprise, he saw only a single cannonball careen in front of him and ricochet into the trench, slaying a French soldier. What were those Swedes good for, really? Couldn’t they even aim the blasted things properly?


Another fifteen seconds and another volley. This one passed him by without so much as giving him a scratch. Such was the fortune of war, but it could prove fickle. The trenches were now less than thirty paces away, almost completely obscured by white and grey smoke. Time to order the men to shoot at last. He tried to, but the next volley covered his voice. He raised his sword to give a signal and the roar of cannons made itself heard once more. All of a sudden, the Generalleutnant felt himself falling. His horse had obviously been shot. But where had the bullet come from? The French were still busy reloading… The utter surprise made him miss his dismount and he felt his right leg crushed by one thousand pounds of a dead warhorse.


‘Save the General!’ he heard from behind.


‘No, damn you! Onwards, onwards, men, storm those trenches!’


It was no use. The closest squad rushed to him and lifted the horse from him. They picked him up by his armpits and bodily dragged him back to the very relative safety of the line. That was when Friedriech Freiher von Bülow, Generalleutnant of the Royal Prussian Army saw.


His horse, the poor creature which had carried him for less than a minute, had not been killed by a bullet. Its hindquarters had just been smashed into a pulp by a cannonball. A cannonball that could only have been fired from behind. Another roar confirmed the chilling realization that was dawning upon him. No single shell landed in front of him. That first cannonball had been an overshot.


‘The Swedes!’ he tried to cry to his soldiers. ‘The Swedes are shooting at us! Treason!’


They ogled him as if he had suddenly started speaking in tongues. The weight of his words could not make its way to their minds. But despite the agony below his right knee, the Junker now saw what had happened this day. The French had baited him into a trap and the Swedes had pretended to mill aimlessly about, never intending to join him in the fight. Instead, that two-faced Bernadotte had positioned them behind his army, waiting for it to be engaged to turn on him and his men were caught in an implacable vise. Fresh troops coming up from front and rear with artillery set up in batteries. His cavalry beaten back and unable to make a way out for his main forces to run the gauntlet either to the west or the east. Jena, Auerstaedt, all of this was going to pale in comparison of the slaughter that would happen this day.


‘Back, back! Don’t bother with the French! Go at the Swedes, we need to protect Berlin! At the Swedes, I say!’


But Friedrich von Bülow knew all too well that so far in front he could at best control a brigade. Herman von Boyen may not yet be aware of the disaster upon them and he had given him overall command and the strict order to push forward. Marching back risked opening a hole in the Prussian line, a hole the French would pour through to rip his corps apart even more, taking his corps in enfilade from both sides.


All those thoughts were for nought. From the second and third line where most of them had been kept, the Landswehr men were stampeding forward. But there was no cohesion or order to their frantic movement. Indeed, most of them were throwing their flintlock muskets down as they ran. The fresh and well-trained Swedes must have thrown themselves headlong into those soldiers who ranked barely above a militia, triggering a mass panic. Even the regulars were beginning to waver, pressed by the rushing mob in one direction or another.


Canister and grapeshot began to fly from the heights above the French trenches, opening bloody alleys among the ranks, tearing at the soldiers’ flesh. ‘Enough’, he wanted to say, ‘enough.’ But not even a whisper came out of his throat. The proud Prussian had wished never to utter those words again and he couldn’t bring himself to break his vow, even standing amidst the unfolding disaster. Thankfully, the pain soon made him pass out.


He woke up with two faces bent over him. One was familiar – the archtraitor Bernadotte. The other was not, but the man wore a marshal baton in his right hand. His left arm was in a sling. That must have been Oudinot, who was downright infamous for getting wounded at nearly every engagement he took part in.


‘You’re awake’, the French marshal drawled in passable German. We need you to sign an instrument of surrender for your army and the city.’


‘Remove that damn beast from my presence!’ the Generalleutnant growled while weakly pointing at Bernadotte. ‘I’ll do nothing while he’s here!’


The wretched and damnable man shrugged as if he did not care a whit for what Friedrich von Bülow had to say and left without a word.


‘Now would you sign, Herr General?’ Oudinot repeated. ‘Our armies are rounding up the last of your regiments. The way to Berlin is open to us. Once more, I could point out, if I was not feeling charitable. We don’t wish to have to smash our way in. You are the highest officer in command not dead or drugged inconscious with laudanum. Your chief of staff was unfortunately killed when he tried to rally your line. As for General Tauentzien, he is still on the surgeon’s table, I’m afraid, and I can’t say for certain whether he will survive the amputation of his arm. The bullet that smashed his elbow did much damage, and he had already taken a saber wound across the chest. You’re the senior German in charge.’


‘I want my men to be paroled. Sent back to their homes unharmed.’


‘Alas, that shan’t be possible. Your king went over to the Russians and is still at large in Austria in defiance of the treaty he signed with the Emperor. Your troops will be disarmed and sent to Schleswig or Denmark for internment. I assure you on my honour as an officer that they won’t be mistreated. I have had my medical staff tend to their wounds as well as those we incurred.’


‘There is one thing I must know’, the defeated man mumbled. ‘How long has that beast been playing us for fools? How long has he been in your pay to entrap us so?’


‘If you’re referring to Marshal Bernadotte, not as long as you might think. He seems quite dedicated to his new kingdom. But the Emperor prevailed upon him in the end. He only sent us his approval for our plan an hour after midnight. Reynier had been champing at the bit for a week, it was all I could do to keep him from hurling himself at you. Only my personal orders from the Emperor could keep him back until today. I myself did not know I could have an ally in the Marshal until a week ago.’


Generalleutnant Friedrich Freiherr von Bülow had never felt so exhausted in his life. Could the Ogre really peer so far into the souls of men and fashion them into whatever he pleased? Was it why he had kept all of Europe under his despotic thumb for nearly a decade? Oudinot was extending a quill dripping ink and a piece of paper towards him, having let go of his baton. Friedrich closed his eyes and thought of Sanssouci, of Berlin’s salons, of the ballrooms and of the churches where exquisite hymns were sung going up into flames if the French decided to sack the city. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that he had picked up the quill and scribbled his name at the bottom of the page. The agony that went through him no longer had anything to do with his wound. His entire soul felt like it was screaming, screaming and screaming in a wordless wail that would never end.
 
Let's put it this way: Bernadotte has pulled a fast one on the Coalition. The Kingdom of Sweden may not be aware of it yet.
 
Marvellous, absolutely marvellous! I knew you were a good writer before, but this is beyond my expectations! I don't think I've ever read something about military strategy and minutae that I've actually felt was inspired! Bravo, monsieur, bravo! I much look forward to more, not least because my foolish fumbling, chilly little septentrional kingdom is at the center of the action! :D
 
Marvellous, absolutely marvellous! I knew you were a good writer before, but this is beyond my expectations! I don't think I've ever read something about military strategy and minutae that I've actually felt was inspired! Bravo, monsieur, bravo! I much look forward to more, not least because my foolish fumbling, chilly little septentrional kingdom is at the center of the action! :D

You know when I told you I was launching today? I realized this morning that I had several facts wrong in geography and command of troops. So I had to go through the whole text again, rooting out the inaccuracies.

I'll try to post a tactical map of this battle of Großbeeren but the ones that are not under copyright are sometimes barely legible.

In the meantime, courtesy of West Point, here is what the strategic situation looked liked OTL and ITTL a few days before the prologue.

Nap55.gif
 
Ah, Bernadotte, the scrappy little weasel. I don't think he gets enough attention on this site- he had a surprising amount of influence at various moments in his life.

More generally, it's good to see what looks like the start of a fine Napoleonic timeline. I'll watch with interest.
 
Ah, Bernadotte, the scrappy little weasel. I don't think he gets enough attention on this site- he had a surprising amount of influence at various moments in his life.

More generally, it's good to see what looks like the start of a fine Napoleonic timeline. I'll watch with interest.

He's not a weasel, he's a nice-legged Gascon sergeant! But your point stands. Bernadotte is arguably THE winner of the French revolution. That doesn't mean he was the one with the most scraps after 1815 but when you consider from where he started in 1788, you have to give the man plaudits for the sheer pragmatism that brought him as high as he could get.

I'll try not to disappoint on the timeline. Thank you for the compliment.
 
I dobn't see why Bernadotte would betray the coalition at Grossbeeren or anywhere else. By this time he hated Napoleon so what is his motive?
 
I dobn't see why Bernadotte would betray the coalition at Grossbeeren or anywhere else. By this time he hated Napoleon so what is his motive?

That's for me to know and you to puzzle out. :evilsmile:

There is a motive, of course, which will be revealed in two chapters. Interestingly enough, the POD itself is vanishingly small and just a bit of an amplification of something that actually happened. The ripples and butterfly flaps are of course dramatically different. But feel free to have a go at guessing what could have make such a reversal take place. Part of the fun, and the reason why I started things in medias res rather than revealing it outright.

Has anyone a thought on my characterization of von Bülow, by any chance?
 
Chapter 1: Marching through Bohemia


A strategic overview of the 1813 Campaign from mid-August to mid-September.

Article published in Napoleonic Histories, volume 122, Oxford University, n°3 1963

Major Brenton D. Howard has been a lecturer on Military Studies at New College, Oxford, since his retirement from the British Armed Forces in 1956.



Even though a lot of the correspondence between the main actors of the 1813 Summer and Fall Campaign remain inaccessible to us, protected by various evasions such as raison d’Etat, sûreté nationale and their equivalent terms in Swedish, we do not have much need for them to understand what happened in military terms. The French, German, Russian, Polish and Swedish generals left plenty of memoirs and accounts of the events, even if the neck-breaking speed at which they occured sometimes make for gaps of several days between staff reports. The famous romantic writer and statesman Victor Hugo dedicated an entire volume of his Napoléon le Grand to the minutiae of the half-improvised, half-planned battles and pursuits that he hailed as the hallmark of his hero. Thus doing, he provided several ambitious students with the impetus to found the branch of applied psychology to history – or psychohistory [1] as the term is usually known – around the turn of the 19th century and gave us insight into the mind of the various commanders for the French forces and their allies as well as their enemies, although their conclusions have been wildly debated and are still subject to reasonable criticisms.


This paper does not deal with psychology, however, but with the strategic developments of the campaign and what its results can teach us for the future. I must thank the Military Academy Woolwich staff [2], and especially Professor Carlson, for their kind help and the access they gave me to maps, diaries and so much more while I was drafting this study. Any mistake that remains in the text is mine, and mine alone.


The armistice at Plästwitz had left both sides of the war reeling and panting for breath. For the members of the Sixth Coalition, it had been a stark reminder of why it had taken until 1809 to seriously defeat Napoléon in the field at the battle of Aspern-Essling and until 1812 to wipe out his famed Grande Armée. The twin blows that he delivered at Lützen and Bautzen sent the Prussians and the Russians back several dozens of kilometres [3], leaving Saxony altogether. For Napoléon, although it had been proof that his genius for war had not been one of the many casualties of his invasion attempt in Russia, it was a sharp reminder that he was fighting with what was essentially a new army, one which lacked in cavalry and theoretically made a repeat of Austerlitz or Jena-Auerstaedt all but impossible. The ceasefire was thus seen as a way to make good the losses of the Spring campaign, give additional training to green troops and maybe negotiate for peace. Napoléon’s conditions were prohibitive for the Prussians but less so for the Russians, even if they remained quite unacceptable, which he hoped to appease with part of Poland and for whom he seemed to have grown some respect, even admiration. The Coalition members likewise issued demands that Napoléon deemed intolerable. He might have been right, for his rule over the French empire had grown very shaky late in 1812 where a coup had almost succeeded in his absence. Only his swift return from the east, natural charisma and promptly renewed victories on the battlefield reassured the French people that he would always steady the ship of state. To concede territory without having been defeated would have undone his work at a stroke.


While Napoléon was playing for time to raise more men, the Coalition members were playing for time to induce Austria to come into the fray and throw its whole army against the French who could not have added more than two corps in the meantime. That gamble almost paid off. Austrian Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich seemed to have played Napoléon like a fiddle at their encounter in Dresden and presented himself as a disinterested mediator between both parties. He was anything but: in reality, he was negotiating very closely with Prussian, Russian and even British delegations. But somehow, at Trachenberg Castle, Metternich offended the Swedish Crown Prince Karl Johan (formerly Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte and one of Napoléon’s most skilled marshals) and the Prussian King Friedriech Wilhelm III only worsened the situation. This was to have immense repercussions on the coming campaign [4].


On August 4, Napoléon rejoined his army, convinced that there would be no peace. He also knew Austria would join the war against him, presumably from letters exchanged with Karl Johan although this must remain conjecture until those letters are allowed to emerge from their top-secret archives. The armistice expired on August 16 and campaigning immediately resumed, showing how little both parties were willing to negotiate in good faith unless one of them was thoroughly beaten. Napoléon was facing four different armies: the Army of the North under Crown Prince Karl Johan, made of two corps of Prussians, one of Russians and one of Swedes concentrated around Berlin against his Marshal Oudinot plus one mixed-nationality (ranging from the English to the Swedes by way of the Prussians and the Russians) corps besieging Davout in Hamburg; the very multinational Army of Bohemia under Feldmarschall Schwarzenberg directly to the south of Saxony and whose core was Austrian; the Army of Silesia under Feldmarschall Blücher in Eastern Germany, facing his Marshal Macdonald; and the reserve of the Russians, the Army of Poland under Count Benningsen, still gathering its forces in White Russia and the occupied duchy of Warsaw. To these, we must add a number of isolated troops besieging various Polish and German cities garrisoned by French troops, such as at Danzig where Jean Rapp’s X Corps was trapped, Stettin or Kustrin.


There followed a series of minor clashes, but the Austrian army, joined by some Russian and Prussian troops, made for Saxony under the leadership of Schwarzenberg and with the three greatest monarchs of the Coalition in tow. Napoléon decided to fall back to Dresden but crucially did not recall the three infantry corps (IV, VII and XII, plus the III Cavalry Corps) under Oudinot that were threatening Berlin or the three other ones under Macdonald in Silesia despite being critically outnumbered.


Napoléon’s confidence in himself paid off. Although one of his corps in the east was thrashed by Blücher at the Katzbach on August 26 after he had left it in the less capable hands of his marshals, Napoléon’s remarkable use of concentration of cavalry and exploitation of the isolated Austrian left wing won the day at Dresden with only 120,000 Frenchmen to oppose 200,000 Austrians, Russians and Prussians on August 26 and 27. Much has been said about Schwarzenberg’s generalship, particularly since the discipline of psychohistory took off. He has been accused of pusillanimity, cowardice, simple incompetence or even, in some extreme cases, of an ‘unconscious desire [5] to be bested by the legend of his time’. The truth is probably far more prosaic: his troops were very spread out, his huge numbers made his army unwieldy in the extreme and he had to take into account the wills of three different sovereigns, all of whom had different war aims and bickering staffs. The accusations of cowardice in particular do not square very well with the behaviour of the feldmarschall up until that year and whom Napoléon had even praised when he was operating under him in the 1812 Russian campaign.


In almost every military historian account of the 1813 Summer and Fall campaign, the four days between August 27 and August 30 are the turning point on which the whole matter revolves, on which it is won or lost. Only the day before armies from all over Europe looked triumphant. But on August 27, Schwarzenberg was in full retreat from Dresden, hoping the Erz Mountains would shield him from Napoléon’s pursuit. In other circumstances, they might have done so, in addition to his blocking of the Elbe valley gap between the Erz and Riespen ranges. But Napoléon was confident his plan in the north would work and threw himself heavily into the pursuit.


A bit earlier, on August 18, Marshal Davout, another scourge of the Germans, had extricated himself and his XIII Corps from the siege in Hamburg and surprised his counterpart General von Wallmoden when he stormed his camp at Lauenburg during the night, inflicted heavy casualties on him. By the time the battle at Großbeeren was happening, he had been pushing his opponent back in a methodical manner and had taken control of Schwerin. He then drove him mercilessly east then south towards Berlin, preventing him from crossing the Havel on September 1 by reaching it four hours before him in one of the famed French marche forcée. Von Wallmoden sought the refuge of the Prussian capital where the rest of the Army of the North was supposed to be located. He remained wholly unaware that the city had fallen on August 30 after the crushing defeat of Generals von Bülow and Tauentzien’s III and IV Corps as well as von Witzingerode’s undersized Russian corps at Großbeeren, inflicted by Oudinot’s three corps and the sudden charge in the back by Karl Johan’s intact Swedes. Taken between those pincers, von Wallmoden fought a few desultory actions on September 4 at Fehrbellin and Kremmen and surrendered the next day. His corps joined the three Prussian and Russian ones in internment in Denmark, apart from the division-sized units of Swedes that were present in its ranks and who promptly switched sides at their Crown Prince’s command.


As for the Danes themselves, freed from worrying about being invaded by the Swedes, they quickly occupied the duchies of Mecklemburg-Schwerin and Mecklemburg-Strelitz whose rulers had defected from the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine (or Rheinbund) over to the Coalition. The occupation duties were looked over by the Danish commander on the scene, Prince Frederik af Hesse-Kassel who had acted as a loyal subordinate to Davout and used his nearly ten thousand men for the task. For all intent and purposes, the once mighty Army of the North had ceased to exist, for a net gain in French numbers, thanks to the sudden influx in Swedish troops. Relying only on his marshals’ tactical and strategic acumen as well as his own diplomatic skills, Napoléon had wiped out the threat to his back, humiliated Prussia once again and avoided the risk of encirclement. Such precise coordination from three different corps or armies, separated from each other and their supreme commander by hundreds of kilometres or enemy lines, and without which those nearly miraculous victories would have been impossible, gave new meaning to Napoléon’s nickname “the god of war” [6].


The French main army under Napoléon harried Schwarzenberg mercilessly during his retreat but that was not the more powerful blow it inflicted to it. Bohemia had been relatively spared from the depredations of French soldiers in the 1805 and 1809 campaigns compared to Austria proper. As soon as Napoléon set foot in Bohemia, he issued forth a very public letter denoucing Franz I as having betrayed his subjects for he had brought them war when he should have kept them at peace, had taxed them heavily to sustain his mad delusions and having enlisted many men in his armies to fight in an hopeless war [7]. Left judiciously unwritten was Napoléon’s role in the levying of the taxes to pay for indemnities, or the troops that he had forced his father-in-law to raise for his campaign in Russia. The Bohemians remained diffident at first, but Napoléon sent out a flurry of decrees saying that Franz I had forfeited his right to the crown of Bohemia and that he was coming as a liberator, offering peace and alliance to the Bohemians as well as the right to choose their own ruler. In the meantime, he sent for his brother Louis to administer the occupied territories as leniently as possible and severely punished any acts of maraude keeping an extremely close watch on those of his generals who where most infamous for it, such as Général Vandamme [8]. This started a trickle of desertions from Bohemian troopers and, in some cases, lower-ranking officers from Schwarzenberg’s army. The worst case was probably that of the 8th Bohemian Dragoons. The nominal colonelcy had been awarded to then-Tsesarevich Konstantin Pavlovich. The Grand Duke was notorious for being inept on the battlefield and a martinet out of it. On September 6, half the regiment mutinied and nearly took their commander hostage. His life – or at least his liberty – was only saved by the quick actions of Baron Jomini, a Swiss general who only days before had been a member of Napoléon’s army but whose ill treatment at the hand of marshal Berthier had pushed to change his allegiance. His heroics took a heavy toll nonetheless: while he was protecting the Grand Duke’s flight, several dragoons fired at him from close range. His jaw was shattered by a bullet and, by the time more loyal troops came to his rescue, a bad powder burn had permanently blinded him [9]. The damage to the army morale and discipline was further compounded by the news that an uprising in Königgratz had been prevented only one day before it was supposed to start [10]. A panicked Kaiser Franz forced Schwarzenberg to bolster the garrisons of any town or city deemed unreliable (which was most of them) weakening his army still further.


Napoléon was only made aware of Macdonald’s important setback on September 5 but he ordered him to stop withdrawing at once. At worst, the marshal was to face Blücher’s again (the wording of that letter is known to us and verges on the unkind, making heavy references to blunders). If at all possible, he should press him, for Napoléon had a feeling that Blücher was too much of a Prussian not to try and defend what remained of his land. In this, he was precisely right. Macdonald’s pursuit only started in earnest on September 12, two days behind the Prussians’ retreat but it made sure Napoléon himself would only have Schwarzenberg to face and the French Emperor was utterly convinced of his ability to win an engagement against the Austrian feldmarschall again.


That engagement would take some time to come. Murat’s cavalry (I and II Corps) gave no rest to the bleeding Army of Bohemia. On September 15, it had ensconced itself into Prague. Schwarzenberg pleaded with the three monarchs to move further back, maybe to Vienna. Psychohistorians have shown that, as much as Schwarzenberg was fearing for their safety, he was absolutely fed up with having to assuage their egos, soothe their prickled vanities and that he desperately wished to give his full attention to commanding his troops [11]. Alas, this was not to be. Friedriech Wilhelm made some noises about joining Blücher in defense of his kingdom, but his naturally indecisive nature pushed him to remain in Prague, confident that the Army of Bohemia would prevail in the end and that the Army of the North was soon to take Napoléon in the back. Very few details about the fall of his capital seem to have had reached him. Thus, on September 16 began an unusual sight: Napoléon himself directing a siege. To be sure, the Emperor of the French was an artillery officer by training and had made his celebrated début in the siege of Toulon in 1793 where he had masterfully used his skills to bring about the victory of his side. But his record in besieging a city was not stellar: although he had won the siege of Mantua, it was mostly in defeating relief columns rather than reducing the defences of the city; in his Egyptian and Syrian campaign, he had signally failed to take Acre; and he had generally left the task of besieging strongholds to his generals. That was because Napoléon did not believe that one’s strength was determined from fortifications but by how many men you had in the field: thus he sought to crush his enemy in the open, only leaving token besieging forces behind to prevent his enemies’ armies of linking up again and achieving numerical superiority (such as he did at Terezín, leaving only a division to bottle up close to 10, 000 men).


Thus Napoléon was faced with a conundrum at Prague: he did not wish to let his enemy regroup and he badly wanted to smash Blücher’s Army of Silesia to finish Prussia once and for all, but he could not let the entrapped Army of Bohemia behind, free to wreak havoc on his rear. And annihilating the latter was something he could only do through a siege with all of the corps he had available to him. Even after the merciless pounding it had taken at Dresden and in the ensuing pursuit, the Army of Bohemia had still more men under arms than Napoléon himself. It no longer possessed a 2-to-1 advantage, but it enjoyed at least a 3-to-2 numerical advantage over the Emperor. What was more, it did so while in a defensive position where the attacker conventionally needs much more manpower than the defender to be sure of the result. Of course, Napoléon had built his whole career on achieving unconventional feats.


The Emperor took three important decisions in early to mid-September: he asked his Bavarian allies to drive down the Danube whatever forces the Austrians could oppose and from there to march on Vienna; he ordered his former stepson Eugène de Beauharnais to resume his offensive from the Kingdom of Italy and the Illyrian Provinces, whatever the cost, and to drive his opponents into the great Hungarian plain towards Buda and Pest; finally, he resolved to undertake Prague’s siege. [12]


The siege was made easier for two reasons: first, because Prague sits at the bottom of the Bohemian basin, second, because its fortifications had been more or less abandoned after several drives to better protect it, the latest in 1809. Napoléon was described by some of his marshals as ‘giddy as a schoolboy’, when he reviewed the hills to the west of the city with his artillery commander, newly-promoted Général de Division Antoine Drouot. He massed most of his guns there. The siege of Prague has sometimes been called ‘the second Ulm’ because Napoléon used Murat’s cavalry to form a screen to the east, and marched his infantry corps in arcs to surround Prague from the west. It does not appear that Napoléon was specifically aiming to replicate the battle he ‘had won with marches’. The cavalry screen had to detect attempts at relieving Prague, rather than keep Schwarzenberg unaware of what was happening, and to keep the besieged bottled up without any means of flight.


After a month of campaigning, all the careful plans of the Coalition were in disarray and Napoléon had reason to believe once again he was the most powerful man in Europe.


[…]




[1] What, and give up such a cool name?

[2] ITTL, it has never merged with Sandhurst. It is also not called ‘Royal’. Make of that what you will.

[3] The metric system has been adopted in every international publication. Again, make of that what you will.

[4] This is the POD. Since the author does not have access to all the data he would like to have, he can’t say for certain what happened. But the next article using primary French and Swedish sources will tell what Metternich did and how it affected Crown Prince Carl Johan and Emperor Napoléon’s decision-making.

[5] OTL, we would call it an ‘acte manqué’, a ‘Freudian slip’, or in the original German ‘Fehlleistungen’.

[6] In actuality, Napoléon got incredibly lucky – but since he valued luck above all in generalship, he did not complain. What the author is not aware of, due to a lack of openness from French military archivists, is that Davout’s breakout happened much as OTL. ITTL, though, he remained on the offensive because couriers from the Emperor found him on the road to Berlin with orders for him to break out of Hamburg, something he had already done. Since Davout was one of Napoléon’s most confident marshals and arguably the one with the best strategic mind, he capitalized on his momentum, hoping to join with Oudinot. The fact that Karl Johan changed sides was just the cherry on top. No one in the French Army (or the Swedish one, for that matter) wants this to be known.

[7] Very much not OTL. For starters, Napoléon’s only foray into Bohemia was under General Vandamme and was cut short at the battle of Kulm where nearly the whole I Corps was destroyed or captured (the survivors had to cut their way out because they had been encircled and were merged into different units afterwards). ITTL Napoléon did not have a health crisis after the battle of Dresden, thus not hindering his command, and is hell-bent on making Austria pay just as much as Prussia, even if that means playing fast and loose in his propaganda.

[8] Hence the avoidance of the tactical blunder at Kulm which, in combination to Großbeeren and the Katzbach, cancelled the positive outcome of Dresden on the operational and strategic levels. ITTL Napoléon has utterly reversed the outcome of the second and merely avoided the disaster of the first. Thus, the third, while a painful defeat in its own right, is not enough to reverse how the campaign is going.

[9] For those keeping score, Clausewitz is now a POW with Wallmoden’s Russian-German Legion and Jomini is badly maimed and in no position to write or dictate. West Point and a not inconsiderable number of military academies the world over will have to find other sources for their classes.

[10] Not OTL. But without the battle of Kulm and few news of the Katzbach, it seems like Austria is up for one more losing round (depending on how you count, it can be anything from the third to the fifth). And for the malcontents in Königgratz (but not in Prague), that’s enough to send them plotting, even if the idea that there is a well-defined plot is actually just an overreaction from a jumpy Austrian military governor to what is yet barely more than a whisper campaign. Austria’s way of handling its Bohemian kingdom had been very ambivalent since Maria-Theresa’s reign, hence some fear of a proto-nationalism emerging.

[11] Considering that Schwarzenberg was especially picked for command because of his good temper and his ability to work with Franz I, Friedrich Wilhelm III and Aleksandr I at the same time, this really gives a lot of insight on how exacting the toll of their watching his every move has to be on him.

[12] What the distinguished historian can’t know, of course, is that OTL Napoléon couldn’t rely on the Saxons and the Bavarians anymore. After the string of defeats that happened just before or after Dresden, he looked more and more like a busted flush to the small states of the Confederation of the Rhine. Some, like the two Mecklemburgs, had already switched to the other side. The Saxon troops defected during the battle of Leipzig and, after having initially negotiated neutrality, Bavaria attacked him – and lost quite handily – at the battle of Hanau during his retreat to France. Here, this snowball effect has no reason to happen: on the contrary, with Napoléon’s fortune seemingly on the rise again, the Bavarians and the Saxons are eager to share in the spoils rather than merely clinging to what they have.
 
This is fantastic, I hope you keep it up.

I hope so myself! I'm sadly afflicted by Oscar Wilde's thief of time.

By the way, to all my readers: feel free to point out typos, inacurracies or points where I stretch suspension of disbelief too much. Much as I like praise, I also try to welcome criticism. I don't always succeed, but I do try.
 
A future perspective piece for me is always a mixed bag, half of it is it keeps you guessing specific stiff, like why this is that way, but the other half is like spoilers, especially if you desired a different end.
 
A future perspective piece for me is always a mixed bag, half of it is it keeps you guessing specific stiff, like why this is that way, but the other half is like spoilers, especially if you desired a different end.

I hope I haven't revealed too many things for your taste. From my perspective, there are several differences that should be immediately apparent in regard to the British Isles. Then, there is a new development in historiography, one I hope is not implausible (yes, @Thande, I'm shamelessly stealing from LTTW!) and of which I will provide an example in the next chapter, which will clarify what the POD is. I should also note that using articles allows me to insert some biases from the different sources. The retired major is, for example, split between his genuine admiration for Napoléon's strategic and tactical skills and the fact that this campaign did not go the way he wished.
 
I try my best, but I have still not managed to rid myself of long-winded sentences which is even more of a sin in English than in French.
 
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