Russia Against Napoleon

On 13 September Alexander wrote to Blücher to tell him that General von dem Knesebeck was coming to him with instructions which would give Blücher wide leeway to plan his forthcoming operations. On the same day he wrote to Bennigsen ordering him to march to Bohemia. The emperor simply told Bennigsen, ‘I think that it would be difficult to turn him [Blücher] from the direction he has taken’, and gave the commander of the Army of Poland the march-routes he was to follow into Bohemia. He stressed the urgency of the movement and that Bennigsen was to report daily. Bennigsen received Alexander’s orders at Hainau on 17 September. He immediately stirred up his corps commanders, allowing Count Tolstoy’s militia just one day’s rest at Liegnitz and telling their general to leave behind any units incapable of combat in the field. It would take Bennigsen’s men at least two weeks, however, to reach Bohemia along bad roads, in areas already eaten out by passing troops and in dreadful weather. Bennigsen subsequently reported daily to Alexander on all these problems but he did add that the Austrian commissariat on this occasion had done a good job in keeping his army fed.⁵

While Bennigsen’s men were on the march most of the allied troops were resting. Military operations were largely confined to the light troops which by now were swarming in Napoleon’s rear and doing great damage to his supplies. Both east and west of Leipzig, Russian, Prussian and Austrian light cavalry and Cossacks forced Napoleon to divert ever larger escorts to supply trains. Even this did not guarantee safety. On 11 September a supply convoy west of Leipzig with an escort of 4,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry was overwhelmed by an allied force. Alexander ordered Blücher to release six Cossack regiments which he wanted to redeploy behind enemy lines in western Saxony. Through Petr Volkonsky he requested Platov to lead them, writing him a letter of an exquisite politeness, worthy of the days when the ataman of the Don Cossacks was truly an independent potentate. Platov took the job and justified Alexander’s trust. Near Pennig on 28 September, together with other allied light cavalry units, he routed General Lefebvre-Desnouettes’s 2nd Guards Cavalry Division, which Napoleon had sent back to the rear to deal with the allied partisans.⁶

Even more spectacular were the operations of the Army of the North’s Russian light forces commanded by Aleksandr Chernyshev. Chernyshev writes that he prevailed on Bernadotte to allow him ten days in which he could operate behind enemy lines west of the Elbe according to his own plans and initiative. His force consisted of five Cossack regiments, six weak squadrons of regular cavalry and four guns. Crossing the Elbe on the night of 14 September, Chernyshev decided to head westwards for Kassel, the capital of Jérôme Bonaparte’s tottering puppet kingdom of Westphalia. His journal states that in part he preferred this goal to Leipzig because the French forces were so numerous and so well organized around the latter. Chernyshev argued that a successful attack on Kassel could spark off revolt throughout the region.

He moved quickly and secretly, covering 85 kilometres in one day alone, and attacked Kassel early in the morning of 29 September. A combination of surprise, courage, bluff and French awareness of their deep unpopularity among the local population led to the flight of King Jérôme, the surrender of his capital, and the capture of extensive stores and a war chest of 79,000 talers. Chernyshev was no pirate: he distributed 15,000 of the talers to his men and sent the rest back to Winzengerode, before evacuating the city. His journal states that if he had found sufficient weapons in the city he would have armed civilian volunteers and tried to hold on to Kassel until relieved. His raid had been a spectacular affair and his boldness and leadership were once again in evidence. On the other hand, unlike on previous occasions when his raids sometimes had major strategic value, it is not obvious what the temporary capture of Kassel contributed to the allied cause in autumn 1813. What really counted in terms of undermining Napoleon’s position in western Germany was the secret negotiations Metternich was conducting with the Confederation of the Rhine states, which were now on the verge of bringing Bavaria into the allied camp. Above all what mattered was the massive battle about to take place at Leipzig, which would decide the fate of Germany and perhaps Europe. Unlike Platov and the other partisan commanders in Saxony, Chernyshev did not weaken Napoleon’s main army by diverting its troops or stopping its supplies. On this occasion he was the star of a brilliant but largely irrelevant sideshow.⁷