400,000 men,’ he boasted to one of his officials. ‘That will suffice to re-establish my affairs in the North.’ But later in the conversation he complained that he was short of cavalry and needed more men, particularly seasoned troops. His forces were in fact greatly inferior to those of the allies. His garrisons at Danzig, Stettin (Szczecin), Thorn (Toruń), Cüstrin (Kostrzyn), Glogau (Głogów), Modlin and Zamość accounted for almost a quarter of his nominal army of 400,000, and they were effectively left out of the action. They included a large number of seasoned troops and some experienced generals, while the bulk of the 300,000 or so men at his immediate disposal were conscripts with only rudimentary training. Much the same was true of the army of Italy which Prince Eugène had been forming up to threaten Austria’s southern flank. By mid-July it had reached a paper strength of over 50,000 men, but there were nothing like as many actually under arms, while their quality and training left a great deal to be desired.21
Morale was remarkably good among the troops under Napoleon’s immediate command as they marched out of Dresden on 16 August, and they were cheered by the arrival of Joachim Murat, King of Naples, who was to take command of the cavalry. Napoleon’s plan was to push back Blücher and then, leaving Marshal Macdonald to cover him, veer south and outflank the main allied army under Schwarzenberg, which was moving on Dresden. The first part of the operation went according to plan, but at Löwenberg (Lwówek śląski) on 23 August, as Napoleon snatched a hurried lunch standing up, a courier arrived with news from Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr at Dresden warning him that the main allied army was already threatening the city, which would not be able to hold out much longer. Napoleon smashed the glass of red wine he was holding against the table as he read the despatch.
He hesitated. A potentially decisive victory was within his grasp. But the fall of Dresden might have grave political repercussions given the current mood in Germany. He changed his plan, ordering General Vandamme with a corps of not much more than 10,000 men to continue with the original aim of attacking the allied rear, while he himself hastened back to Dresden with the main forces.
He arrived outside the city on 26 August, and in the course of the next three days defeated all the allies’ attempts to break through, putting them to flight on the third. He was taken violently ill with fits of vomiting at the moment of triumph, and had to go back to Dresden. He was much better by 30 August, but on that day he received three disastrous pieces of news: in the north, Marshal Oudinot had been defeated by the Prussians at Grossbeeren; Macdonald had been pushed back with heavy losses by Blücher on the river Katzbach; and finally Vandamme, who had dutifully cut the main allied army’s line of retreat, had himself been surrounded and forced to capitulate with his entire force at Kulm (Chlumec). Although he had triumphed at Dresden, all Napoleon could show for the five days’ fighting was a loss of some 100,000 men and a considerable quantity of artillery. If he had persevered in his original intention, he would, in Nesselrode’s opinion, have routed the allied army and captured all three allied sovereigns and their ministers. ‘That’s war,’ Napoleon said to Maret that night. ‘Up there in the morning, down there in the evening.’22
He did not allow himself to be disheartened by this setback. Two days later he moved to push Blücher back once more, and then advanced into Bohemia, harassing the main allied army. But on 6 September Ney, whom Napoleon had sent out to reinforce Oudinot, was himself beaten by the Prussians and Swedes under Bernadotte at Dennewitz.
Napoleon displayed extraordinary energy over the next weeks, taking command of one or other of his corps in order to push back the advancing allies. What saved them was the tactic they had agreed on at the conference held at Trachenberg in July of refusing battle and falling back whenever Napoleon himself took command of the armies facing them, and going over to the attack as soon as he had gone, leaving his troops under the command of one of the marshals.
In any other circumstances Napoleon could have pulled back all his remaining forces and struck at one point with all his might, as he always had in the past. But if he retreated now he would be abandoning his German allies, who would then be forced into alliance with his enemies. He therefore carried on thrusting and parrying, keeping greatly superior allied forces in check. Soon after hostilities began, the weather turned wet and cold. The roads turned into muddy morasses, adding to the difficulty of this highly mobile campaign and reducing the effectives of every unit with each march. He could no longer hold on to his exposed position at Dresden, and on 15 October, having abandoned that, he fell back on the second city of Saxony, Leipzig.
However grim the situation looked from Napoleon’s headquarters, the view from the other side of the lines was not correspondingly rosy. The three monarchs, their ministers, their military staffs and the diplomats accredited to their courts were crammed into the little spa town of Toeplitz (Teplice) in Bohemia. This normally delightful place was choked with people, quartered on top of each other in hostelries meant for more gracious conditions. The wounded of Dresden and Kulm lay packed into all the larger spaces available. Among them was Stewart, who despite his ambassadorial role could not resist the lure of the battlefield and had taken a wound at Kulm. The streets were knee-deep in mud, continually churned up by the boots and hooves of couriers on duty and units on the march. ‘Toeplitz is now a sad place,’ Metternich wrote to his daughter Marie. ‘Everywhere is full of wounded; in the redoute hall at the entrance to the gardens they have been amputating arms & legs …’ She was so moved that, like other patriotic ladies, she tore old linen sheets and garments into strips and sent them to the army for dressing wounds.23
The allies’ morale was not good. Losses in the fighting at Dresden, Kulm, on the Katzbach and Dennewitz had been heavy. It was proving difficult to raise troops, and desertion was rife, even among officers. The anticipated surge of volunteers inspired by the idea of liberating Germany from the French yoke had not materialised. According to Hardenberg people ‘murmured more than they acted’. And the cause was beginning to look less glorious – General von Walmoden’s volunteers went about raping and pillaging with abandon those they were supposed to be liberating. The war had taken a further lurch into barbarism, and some of the Russian commanders regularly massacred French prisoners.24
The ‘harmony, confidence and mutual satisfaction’ that Cathcart had reported from Trachenberg, where the commanders of the various armies had agreed their plan of action and mutual support, had been dissipated by mistrust, jealousy and recrimination. A struggle for control of the army was under way.25
Alexander had wanted to command the allied army. He had invited General Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, who had been in American exile since 1804 when he had been implicated in a royalist plot to overthrow Napoleon, to return to Europe and accept a post on his staff. He assumed that with him and the renegade Swiss General Jomini at his side as advisers, he would be able to realise his dream of proving himself as a commander in the field. The other allies were having none of it, and after acrimonious discussions, which involved Metternich threatening to withdraw Austria from the coalition, Alexander gave way and Schwarzenberg was placed in overall command.
But he was, as Stewart pointed out, in the unprecedented position of having ‘two Emperors and a King superintending and controlling not only movements in agitation, but also operations decided on’. Alexander had interfered during the battle of Dresden, riding about the battlefield issuing orders to individual units without reference to their commanders or the overall plan, and unity of action was further impaired by pronounced hostility and jealousy between the allied commanders. They were mostly mediocre generals, while their troops, a majority of whom were conscripts, reflected all the national and regional prejudices and enmities of their places of origin.
The coalition itself was under constant strain. ‘The general desire, whatever may be said to the contrary, is for peace,’ noted Jackson, adding that Hardenberg’s spirits ‘rise and fall, like the weatherglass under atmospheric changes’. Stewart suspected the Austrians of wanting to make a separate peace, while Metternich remarked that he ‘had to keep an eye on the allies no less than on the enemy’. There were moments