Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Metternich offers Austria's mediation.]

Immediately after the conclusion of the armistice of June 4th, Metternich
invited Napoleon to accept Austria's mediation for a general peace. The
settlement which Metternich contemplated was a very different one from that
on which Stein and the Prussian patriots had set their hopes. Austria was
willing to leave to Napoleon the whole of Italy and Holland, the frontier
of the Rhine, and the Protectorate of Western Germany: all that was
required by Metternich, as arbiter of Europe, was the restoration of the
provinces taken from Austria after the war of 1809, the reinstatement of
Prussia in Western Poland, and the abandonment by France of the
North-German district annexed in 1810. But to Napoleon the greater or less
extent of the concessions asked by Austria was a matter of no moment. He
was determined to make no concessions at all, and he entered into
negotiations only for the purpose of disguising from Austria the real
object with which he had granted the armistice. While Napoleon affected to
be weighing the proposals of Austria, he was in fact calculating the number
of marches which would place the Italian army on the Austrian frontier;
this once effected, he expected to hear nothing more of Metternich's
demands.

[Napoleon deceived as to the forces of Austria.]

It was a game of deceit; but there was no one who was so thoroughly
deceived as Napoleon himself. By some extraordinary miscalculation on the
part of his secret agents, he was led to believe that the the forces of
whole force of Austria, both in the north and the south, amounted to only
100,000 men, [183] and it was on this estimate that he had formed his plans
of intimidation. In reality Austria had double that number of men ready to
take the field. By degrees Napoleon saw reason to suspect himself in error.
On the 11th of July he wrote to his Foreign Minister, Maret, bitterly
reproaching him with the failure of the secret service to gain any
trustworthy information. It was not too late to accept Metternich's terms.
Yet even now, when the design of intimidating Austria had proved an utter
delusion, and Napoleon was convinced that Austria would fight, and fight
with very powerful forces, his pride and his invincible belief in his own
superiority prevented him from drawing back. He made an attempt to enter
upon a separate negotiation with Russia, and, when this failed, he resolved
to face the conflict with the whole of Europe.

[Treaty of Reichenbach, June 27.]

There was no longer any uncertainty among Napoleon's enemies. On the 27th
of June, Austria had signed a treaty at Reichenbach, pledging itself to
join the allied Powers in the event of Napoleon rejecting the conditions to
be proposed by Austria as mediator; and the conditions so to be proposed
were fixed by the same treaty. They were the following:--The suppression of
the Duchy of Warsaw; the restoration to Austria of the Illyrian Provinces;
and the surrender by Napoleon of the North-German district annexed to his
Empire in 1810. Terms more hostile to France than these Austria declined to
embody in its mediation. The Elbe might still sever Prussia from its German
provinces lost in 1807; Napoleon might still retain, as chief of the
Rhenish Confederacy, his sovereignty over the greater part of the German
race.

[Austria enters the war, Aug. 10.]

[Congress of Prague, July 15-Aug. 10.]

From the moment when these conditions were fixed, there was nothing which
the Prussian generals so much dreaded as that Napoleon might accept them,
and so rob the Allies of the chance of crushing him by means of Austria's
support. But their fears were groundless. The counsels of Napoleon were
exactly those which his worst enemies would have desired him to adopt. War,
and nothing but war, was his fixed resolve. He affected to entertain
Austria's propositions, and sent his envoy Caulaincourt to a Congress which
Austria summoned at Prague; but it was only for the purpose of gaining a
few more weeks of preparation. The Congress met; the armistice was
prolonged to the 10th of August. Caulaincourt, however, was given no power
to close with Austria's demands. He was ignorant that he had only been sent
to Prague in order to gain time. He saw the storm gathering: unable to
believe that Napoleon intended to fight all Europe rather than make the
concessions demanded of him, he imagined that his master still felt some
doubt whether Austria and the other Powers meant to adhere to their word.
As the day drew nigh which closed the armistice and the period given for a
reply to Austria's ultimatum, Caulaincourt implored Napoleon not to deceive
himself with hopes that Austria would draw back. Napoleon had no such hope;
he knew well that Austria would declare war, and he accepted the issue.
Caulaincourt heard nothing more. At midnight on the 10th of August the
Congress declared itself dissolved. Before the dawn of the next morning the
army in Silesia saw the blaze of the beacon-fires which told that
negotiation was at an end, and that Austria was entering the war on the
side of the Allies. [184]

[Armies of Napoleon and the Allies.]

Seven days' notice was necessary before the commencement of actual
hostilities. Napoleon, himself stationed at Dresden, held all the lower
course of the Elbe; and his generals had long had orders to be ready to
march on the morning of the 18th. Forces had come up from all parts of the
Empire, raising the French army at the front to 300,000 men; but, for the
first time in Napoleon's career, his enemies had won from a pause in war
results even surpassing his own. The strength of the Prussian and Russian
armies was now enormously different from what it had been at Luetzen and
Bautzen. The Prussian Landwehr, then a weaponless and ill-clad militia
drilling in the villages, was now fully armed, and in great part at the
front. New Russian divisions had reached Silesia. Austria took the field
with a force as numerous as that which had checked Napoleon in 1809. At the
close of the armistice, 350,000 men actually faced the French positions
upon the Elbe; 300,000 more were on the march, or watching the German
fortresses and the frontier of Italy. The allied troops operating against
Napoleon were divided into three armies. In the north, between Wittenberg
and Berlin, Bernadotte commanded 60,000 Russians and Prussians, in addition
to his own Swedish contingent. Bluecher was placed at the head of 100,000
Russians and Prussians in Silesia. The Austrians remained undivided, and
formed, together with some Russian and Prussian divisions, the great army
of Bohemia, 200,000 strong, under the command of Schwarzenberg. The plan of
the campaign had been agreed upon by the Allies soon after the Treaty of
Reichenbach had been made with Austria. It was a sound, though not a daring
one.

[Plan of the Allies.]

The three armies, now forming an arc from Wittenberg to the north of
Bohemia, were to converge upon the line of Napoleon's communications behind
Dresden; if separately attacked, their generals were to avoid all hazardous
engagements, and to manoeuvre so as to weary the enemy and preserve their
own general relations, as far as possible, unchanged. Bluecher, as the most
exposed, was expected to content himself the longest with the defensive;
the great army of Bohemia, after securing the mountain-passes between
Bohemia and Saxony, might safely turn Napoleon's position at Dresden, and
so draw the two weaker armies towards it for one vast and combined
engagement in the plain of Leipzig.

[Napoleon's plan of attack.]

In outline, the plan of the Allies was that which Napoleon expected them to
adopt. His own design was to anticipate it by an offensive of extraordinary
suddenness and effect. Hostilities could not begin before the morning of
the 18th of August; by the 21st or the 22nd, Napoleon calculated that he
should have captured Berlin. Oudinot, who was at Wittenberg with 80,000
men, had received orders to advance upon the Prussian capital at the moment
that the armistice expired, and to force it, if necessary by bombardment,
into immediate surrender. The effect of this blow, as Napoleon supposed,
would be to disperse the entire reserve-force of the Prussian monarchy, and
paralyse the action of its army in the field. While Oudinot marched on
Berlin, Bluecher was to be attacked in Silesia, and prevented from rendering
any assistance either on the north or on the south. The mass of Napoleon's
forces, centred at Dresden, and keeping watch upon the movements of the
army of Bohemia, would either fight a great battle, or, if the Allies made
a false movement, march straight upon Prague, the centre of Austria's
supplies, and reach it before the enemy. All the daring imagination of
Napoleon's earlier campaigns displayed itself in such a project, which, if
successful, would have terminated the war within ten days; but this
imagination was no longer, as in those earlier campaigns, identical with
insight into real possibilities. The success of Napoleon's plan involved
the surprise or total defeat of Bernadotte before Berlin, the disablement
of Bluecher, and a victory, or a strategical success equivalent to a
victory, over the vast army of the south. It demanded of a soldiery,
inferior to the enemy in numerical strength, the personal superiority which
had belonged to the men of Jena and Austerlitz, when in fact the French
regiments of conscripts had ceased to be a match for equal numbers of the
enemy. But no experience could alter Napoleon's fixed belief in the fatuity
of all warfare except his own. After the havoc of Borodino, after the even
struggles of Luetzen and Bautzen, he still reasoned as if he had before him
the armies of Brunswick and Mack. His plan assumed the certainty of success
in each of its parts; for the failure of a single operation hazarded all
the rest, by requiring the transfer of reinforcements from armies already
too weak for the tasks assigned to them. Nevertheless, the utmost that
Napoleon would acknowledge was that the execution of his design needed
energy. He still underrated the force which Austria had brought into the
field against him. Though ignorant of the real position and strength of the
army in Bohemia, and compelled to wait for the enemy's movements before
striking on this side, he already in imagination saw the war decided by the
fall of the Prussian capital.

[Triple movement, Aug. 18-26.]

[Battle of Dresden, Aug. 26, 27.]

[Battles of Grossbeeren, Aug. 23, and the Katzbach, Aug. 26.]

On the 18th of August the forward movement began. Oudinot advanced from
Wittenberg towards Berlin; Napoleon himself hurried into Silesia, intending
to deal Bluecher one heavy blow, and instantly to return and place himself
before Schwarzenberg. On the 21st, and following days, the Prussian general
was attacked and driven eastwards. Napoleon committed the pursuit to
Macdonald, and hastened back to Dresden, already threatened by the advance
of the Austnans from Bohemia. Schwarzenberg and the allied sovereigns, as
soon as they heard that Napoleon had gone to seek Bluecher in Silesia, had
in fact abandoned their cautious plans, and determined to make an assault
upon Dresden with the Bohemian army alone. But it was in vain that they
tried to surprise Napoleon. He was back at Dresden on the 25th, and ready
for the attack. Never were Napoleon's hopes higher than on this day. His
success in Silesia had filled him with confidence. He imagined Oudinot to
be already in Berlin; and the advance of Schwarzenberg against Dresden gave
him the very opportunity which he desired for crushing the Bohemian army in
one great battle, before it could draw support either from Bluecher or from
Bernadotte. Another Austerlitz seemed to be at hand. Napoleon wrote to
Paris that he should be in Prague before the enemy; and, while he completed
his defences in front of Dresden, he ordered Vandamme, with 40,000 men, to
cross the Elbe at Koenigstein, and force his way south-westwards on to the
roads into Bohemia, in the rear of the Great Army, in order to destroy its
magazines and menace its line of retreat on Prague. On August 26th
Schwarzenberg's host assailed the positions of Napoleon on the slopes and
gardens outside Dresden. Austrians, Russians, and Prussians all took part
in the attack. Moreau, the victor of Hohenlinden, stood by the side of the
Emperor Alexander, whom he had come to help against his own countrymen. He
lived only to witness one of the last and greatest victories of France. The
attack was everywhere repelled: the Austrian divisions were not only
beaten, but disgraced and overthrown. At the end of two days' fighting the
Allies were in full retreat, leaving 20,000 prisoners in the hands of
Napoleon. It was a moment when the hearts of the bravest sank, and when
hope itself might well vanish, as the rumour passed through the Prussian
regiments that Metternich was again in friendly communication with
Napoleon. But in the midst of Napoleon's triumph intelligence arrived which
robbed it of all its worth. Oudinot, instead of conquering Berlin, had been
defeated by the Prussians of Bernadotte's army at Grossbeeren (Aug. 23),
and driven back upon the Elbe. Bluecher had turned upon Macdonald in
Silesia, and completely overthrown his army on the river Katzbach, at the
very moment when the Allies were making their assault upon Dresden. It was
vain to think of a march upon Prague, or of the annihilation of the
Austrians, when on the north and the east Napoleon's troops were meeting
with nothing but disaster. The divisions which had been intended to support
Vandamme's movement from Koenigstein upon the rear of the Great Army were
retained in the neighbourhood of Dresden, in order to be within reach of
the points where their aid might be needed. Vandamme, ignorant of his
isolation, was left with scarcely 40,000 men to encounter the Great Army in
its retreat.

[Battle of Kulm, Aug. 29, 30.]

He threw himself upon a Russian corps at Kulm, in the Bohemian mountains,
on the morning of the 29th. The Russians, at first few in number, held
their ground during the day; in the night, and after the battle had
recommenced on the morrow, vast masses of the allied troops poured in. The
French fought desperately, but were overwhelmed. Vandamme himself was made
prisoner, with 10,000 of his men. The whole of the stores and most of the
cannon of his army remained in the enemy's hands.

[Effect of the twelve days, Aug. 18-30.]

[Battle of Dennewitz, Sept. 6.]

The victory at Kulm secured the Bohemian army from pursuit, and almost
extinguished the effects of its defeat at Dresden. Thanks to the successes
of Bluecher and of Bernadotte's Prussian generals, which prevented Napoleon
from throwing all his forces on to the rear of the Great Army,
Schwarzenberg's rash attack had proved of no worse significance than an
unsuccessful raid. The Austrians were again in the situation assigned to
them in the original plan of the campaign, and capable of resuming their
advance into the interior of Saxony: Bluecher and the northern commanders
had not only escaped separate destruction, but won great victories over the
French: Napoleon, weakened by the loss of 100,000 men, remained exactly
where he had been at the beginning of the campaign. Had the triple movement
by which he meant to overwhelm his adversaries been capable of execution,
it would now have been fully executed. The balance, however, had turned
against Napoleon; and the twelve days from the 18th to the 29th of August,
though marked by no catastrophe like Leipzig or Waterloo, were in fact the
decisive period in the struggle of Europe against Napoleon. The attack by
which he intended to prevent the junction of the three armies had been
made, and had failed. Nothing now remained for him but to repeat the same
movements with a discouraged force against an emboldened enemy, or to quit
the line of the Elbe, and prepare for one vast and decisive encounter with
all three armies combined. Napoleon drove from his mind the thought of
failure; he ordered Ney to take command of Oudinot's army, and to lead it
again, in increased strength, upon Berlin; he himself hastened to
Macdonald's beaten troops in Silesia, and rallied them for a new assault
upon Bluecher. All was in vain. Ney, advancing on Berlin, was met by the
Prussian general Billow at Dennewitz, and totally routed (Sept. 6):
Bluecher, finding that Napoleon himself was before him, skilfully avoided
battle, and forced his adversary to waste in fruitless marches the brief
interval which he had ed from his watch on Schwarzenberg. Each conflict
with the enemy, each vain and exhausting march, told that the superiority
had passed from the French to their foes, and that Napoleon's retreat was
now only a matter of time. "These creatures have learnt something," said
Napoleon in the bitterness of his heart, as he saw the columns of Bluecher
manoeuvring out of his grasp. Ney's report of his own overthrow at
Dennewitz sounded like an omen of the ruin of Waterloo. "I have been
totally defeated," he wrote, "and do not yet know whether my army has
re-assembled. The spirit of the generals and officers is shattered. To
command in such conditions is but half to command. I had rather be a common
grenadier."

[Metternich.]

[German policy of Stein and of Austria.]

The accession of Austria had turned the scale in favour of the Allies; it
rested only with the allied generals themselves to terminate the warfare
round Dresden, and to lead their armies into the heart of Saxony. For a
while the course of the war flagged, and military interests gave place to
political. It was in the interval between the first great battles and the
final advance on Leipzig that the future of Germany was fixed by the three
allied Powers. In the excitement of the last twelve months little thought
had been given, except by Stein and his friends, to the political form to
be set in the place of the Napoleonic Federation of the Rhine. Stein, in
the midst of the Russian campaign, had hoped for a universal rising of the
German people against Napoleon, and had proposed the dethronement of all
the German princes who supported his cause. His policy had received the
general approval of Alexander, and, on the entrance of the Russian army
into Germany, a manifesto had been issued appealing to the whole German
nation, and warning the vassals of Napoleon that they could only save
themselves by submission. [185] A committee had been appointed by the
allied sovereigns, under the presidency of Stein himself, to administer the
revenues of all Confederate territory that should be occupied by the allied
armies. Whether the reigning Houses should be actually expelled might
remain in uncertainty; but it was the fixed hope of Stein and his friends
that those princes who were permitted to retain their thrones would be
permitted to retain them only as officers in a great German Empire, without
sovereign rights either over their own subjects or in relation to foreign
States. The Kings of Bavaria and Wuertemberg had gained their titles and
much of their despotic power at home from Napoleon; their independence of
the Head of Germany had made them nothing more than the instruments of a
foreign conqueror. Under whatever form the central authority might be
revived, Stein desired that it should be the true and only sovereign Power
in Germany, a Power to which every German might appeal against the
oppression of a minor Government, and in which the whole nation should find
its representative before the rest of Europe. In the face of such a central
authority, whether an elected Parliament or an Imperial Council, the minor
princes could at best retain but a fragment of their powers; and such was
the theory accepted at the allied head-quarters down to the time when
Austria proffered its mediation and support. Then everything changed. The
views of the Austrian Government upon the future system of Germany were in
direct opposition to those of Stein's party. Metternich dreaded the thought
of popular agitation, and looked upon Stein, with his idea of a National
Parliament and his plans for dethroning the Rhenish princes, as little
better than the Jacobins of 1792. The offer of a restored imperial dignity
in Germany was declined by the Emperor of Austria at the instance of his
Minister. With characteristic sense of present difficulties, and blindness
to the great forces which really contained their solution, Metternich
argued that the minor princes would only be driven into the arms of the
foreigner by the establishment of any supreme German Power. They would
probably desert Napoleon if the Allies guaranteed to them everything that
they at present possessed; they would be freed from all future temptation
to attach themselves to France if Austria contented itself with a
diplomatic influence and with the ties of a well-constructed system of
treaties. In spite of the influence of Stein with the Emperor Alexander,
Metternich's views prevailed. Austria had so deliberately kept itself in
balance during the first part of the year 1813, that the Allies were now
willing to concede everything, both in this matter and in others, in return
for its support. Nothing more was heard of the dethronement of the
Confederate princes, or even of the limitation of their powers. It was
agreed by the Treaty of Teplitz, signed by Prussia, Russia, and Austria on
September 9th, that every State of the Rhenish Confederacy should be placed
in a position of absolute independence. Negotiations were opened with the
King of Bavaria, whose army had steadily fought on the side of Napoleon in
every campaign since 1806. Instead of being outlawed as a criminal, he was
welcomed as an ally. The Treaty of Ried, signed on the 3rd of October,
guaranteed to the King of Bavaria, in return for his desertion of Napoleon,
full sovereign rights, and the whole of the territory which he had received
from Napoleon, except the Tyrol and the Austrian district on the Inn. What
had been accorded to the King of Bavaria could not be refused to the rest
of Napoleon's vassals who were willing to make their peace with the Allies
in time. Germany was thus left at the mercy of a score of petty Cabinets.
It was seen by the patriotic party in Prussia at what price the alliance of
Austria had been purchased. Austria had indeed made it possible to conquer
Napoleon, but it had also made an end of all prospect of the union of the
German nation.

[Allies cross the Elbe, Oct. 3.]

Till the last days of September the position of the hostile armies round
Dresden remained little changed, Napoleon unweariedly repeated his attacks,
now on one side, now on another, but without result. The Allies on their
part seemed rooted to the soil. Bernadotte, balanced between the desire to
obtain Norway from the Allies and a foolish hope of being called to the
throne of France, was bent on doing the French as little harm as possible;
Schwarzenberg, himself an indifferent general, was distracted by the
councillors of all the three monarchs; Bluecher alone pressed for decided
and rapid action. At length the Prussian commander gained permission to
march northwards, and unite his army with Bernadotte's in a forward
movement across the Elbe. The long-expected Russian reserves, led by
Bennigsen, reached the Bohemian mountains; and at the beginning of October
the operation began which was to collect the whole of the allied forces in
the plain of Leipzig. Bluecher forced the passage of the Elbe at Wartenburg.
It was not until Napoleon learnt that the army of Silesia had actually
crossed the river that he finally quitted Dresden. Then, hastening
northwards, he threw himself upon the Prussian general; but Bluecher again
avoided battle, as he had done in Silesia; and on the 7th of October his
army united with Bernadotte's, which had crossed the Elbe two days before.

The enemy was closing in upon Napoleon. Obstinately as he had held on to
the line of the Elbe, he could hold on no longer. In the frustration of all
his hopes there flashed across his mind the wild project of a march
eastwards to the Oder, and the gathering of all the besieged garrisons for
a campaign in which the enemy should stand between himself and France; but
the dream lasted only long enough to gain a record. Napoleon ventured no
more than to send a corps back to the Elbe to threaten Berlin, in the hope
of tempting Bluecher and Bernadotte to abandon the advance which they had
now begun in co-operation with the great army of Schwarzenberg. From the
10th to the 14th of October, Napoleon ed at Dueben, between Dresden and
Leipzig, restlessly expecting to hear of Bluecher's or Bernadotte's retreat.
The only definite information that he could gain was that Schwarzenberg was
pressing on towards the west. At length he fell back to Leipzig, believing
that Bluecher, but not Bernadotte, was advancing to meet Schwarzenberg and
take part in a great engagement. As he entered Leipzig on October 14th the
cannon of Schwarzenberg was heard on the south.

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