Russia Against Napoleon

Though a big disappointment to German patriots, the Hamburg operation actually remained a great success from the point of view of allied headquarters. At the cost of a relative handful of Cossacks and cavalry, Napoleon’s best marshal, Davout, and roughly 40,000 French troops were occupied in what was a strategic backwater at a time when their presence on the Saxon battlefields could have made a decisive difference. In addition, the chaos encouraged in north-western Germany by Tettenborn, Chernyshev and other ‘partisan’ leaders totally disrupted the horse-fairs which traditionally occurred in the region at this time. For the French this was a serious matter. The biggest headache faced by Napoleon as he strove to re-create the Grande Armée was the shortage of cavalry; 175,000 horses had been lost in Russia and this proved to be a more serious matter than the lost manpower. In 1813 ‘France was so poor in horses’ (according to a nineteenth-century French expert) that even requisitioning private horses for the cavalry and other emergency measures ‘could only provide 29,000 horses and even they were not in a state to enter military service immediately’. The Polish and north-east German studs were lost to Napoleon, and efforts to buy from the Austrians were rejected. The wrecking of the horse-fairs in north-western Germany was an additional blow, which further delayed the mounting and training of the French cavalry. Many thousands of French cavalrymen remained without horses in the spring 1813 campaign, and lack of cavalry very seriously undermined Napoleon’s operations.⁴⁰

Apart from the cavalry, however, Napoleon’s efforts rapidly to rebuild his armies in the winter of 1812–13 were a triumphant success. The nature of this new Grande Armée is sometimes misunderstood. Contrary to legend, it was in reality by no means just a mélange of the 25,000 men who had crawled back across the Neman in December 1812 and a horde of ‘Marie Louises’, in other words young conscripts from the classes of 1813 and 1814. Even as early as January 1813 some fresh troops were available to reinforce Eugène’s remnant of the old Grande Armée: above all, these were the 27,000 men of Grenier and Lagrange’s divisions, which had never been committed to the Russian campaign. In addition, we have already encountered the French garrisons in Prussia which frightened Frederick William III in the winter of 1812–13.

Armies on campaign usually leave behind some sort of cadre in depots or along the lines of communication, from which their regiments can if necessary be reconstituted. For example, Napoleon’s Guards in theory numbered 56,000 men on the eve of the 1812 campaign. The Guards units which entered Russia nominally comprised 38,000 men and had 27,000 actually present in the ranks when they crossed the Neman. The Young Guard regiments which invaded Russia were almost wiped out but two Young Guard battalions had remained in Paris in 1812, and two more in Germany. Around them and the four full Young Guard regiments in Spain a formidable new force could be created.⁴¹

Within France there were the reserve battalions of the regiments serving in Spain and in the farther-flung areas of the empire. In his study of the Grande Armée in 1813, Camille Rousset mentions them but gives no figure for the men they sent to it. The Prussian general staff history of the campaign reckons perhaps 10,000. French and Prussian sources also differ as to how many men were withdrawn from Spain. The smallest figure is 20,000 but all sources agree that the men from Spain were the elite of the troops deployed there. On top of this there were 12,000 good soldiers of the naval artillery stationed in France’s ports and now incorporated into the new Grande Armée. Even the first wave of recruits, the 75,000 so-called cohorts, had already been under arms for nine months by the beginning of 1813. It was around this relatively large cadre that the true ‘Marie Louises’ were formed. These young men usually lacked neither courage nor loyalty: their great problem was endurance when faced by the gruelling demands of Napoleonic campaigning. Nevertheless, as it concentrated near the river Main Napoleon’s new army was an impressive force. Initially, its more than 200,000 men faced barely 110,000 allied soldiers. If the Russians and Prussians had considerably more veterans, the French had Napoleon to even this balance.⁴²