Russia Against Napoleon

Schwarzenberg’s advance guard began to move northwards on 27 September. On this occasion the Army of Bohemia would be using just one of the two highways through the Erzgebirge, in other words the road from Kommotau through Chemnitz to Leipzig. Inevitably this slowed down its movements. Both Schwarzenberg and Barclay were acutely conscious of the army’s vulnerability to a sudden attack by Napoleon as it emerged from the mountains. With so much of the light cavalry away in raiding parties around Leipzig, reconnaissance was a problem. Wittgenstein and Kleinau commanded the leading allied corps: the former had no Cossacks and the latter only 1,200 light cavalry. Despite Barclay’s worries about supplies, the area between Chemnitz and Altenburg had never been fought over and food and fodder turned out to be relatively abundant. Schwarzenberg advanced out of the Erzgebirge with 160,000 men. Facing him were only 40,000 men under Joachim Murat. But the allied movements were so slow and uncoordinated that Murat was easily able to delay them and even score a number of minor victories in skirmishes. The pressure on his force was so weak that Murat believed that he was facing only part of the Army of Bohemia, with Schwarzenberg and the main body probably still poised to move on Dresden. Murat’s reports to this effect misled Napoleon but the key result of Schwarzenberg’s caution was that Napoleon was free to turn on Blücher and Bernadotte with the great majority of his army.¹⁰ Blücher’s army began its march northwards to link up with Bernadotte on 29 September. On 3 October his Russian pontoon companies got Blücher’s Prussians across the Elbe at Wartenburg. Though outnumbered, the French forces at Wartenburg held very strong positions, which Yorck’s infantry stormed with great courage. Meanwhile Bernadotte kept his promise to cross the Elbe to join the Army of Silesia: all three of his corps crossed the river on 4 October at Rosslau and Aken. Winzengerode had orders from Bernadotte to attack Ney’s rear if the French advanced against Blücher. The Army of Silesia headed south-eastwards towards Düben with Yorck in the lead, followed by Langeron, with Sacken’s corps bringing up the rear. Having abandoned their bases east of the Elbe Langeron’s men were already having to scrounge food from the local countryside and some of them were beginning to go hungry. Captain Radozhitsky complained that marching in the wake of the Prussians was always unpleasant because they stripped the country bare, treating the Saxon population much worse than the Russians’ behaviour towards the Poles when marching through the Duchy of Warsaw earlier in the year.¹¹

For their own safety and if the campaign was to succeed the armies of Silesia and of the North had to act in unison. In practice neither Bernadotte nor Blücher could give orders to the other army commander: they had to agree on strategy. Given Blücher’s boldness and Bernadotte’s caution this was bound to be difficult. Blücher’s aim was to link up with Schwarzenberg near Leipzig, pulling Bernadotte along with him, and thereby uniting the three allied armies for a decisive battle against Napoleon. In principle Bernadotte did not object to this strategy. If Napoleon advanced on Leipzig to do battle with Schwarzenberg then Bernadotte was fully willing to move forward into his rear, as the Trachenberg plan demanded. Quite reasonably, however, Bernadotte feared that if he and Blücher marched on Leipzig before the Army of Bohemia arrived in the neighbourhood they would expose themselves to being attacked by the whole of Napoleon’s forces. At the very least they needed to be clear about Schwarzenberg’s whereabouts and Napoleon’s movements before undertaking so risky a move. In addition, Bernadotte believed that Napoleon might well rely on Schwarzenberg’s slowness and himself march northwards to destroy the other two allied armies before the Army of Bohemia could intervene. In this prediction Bernadotte was entirely correct and his caution was fully justified.

When the Leipzig campaign began Napoleon was in Dresden. Initially he found it hard to get a grasp of the allied movements, partly because of his lack of good cavalry but also because he could not easily believe that Blücher would be bold enough to cross the Elbe with his entire army, advancing into Napoleon’s lair and abandoning his bases and supplies in Silesia. The emperor only marched out of Dresden on 7 September, heading for Meissen and Wurzen, which he reached on the following day. This was the logical route either if he was going to move towards Leipzig against Schwarzenberg or if he wanted to strike northwards against Blücher. Only once he reached Wurzen would he have to show his hand by either continuing westwards to Leipzig or marching north-eastwards down the east bank of the river Mulde towards Düben.