Russia Against Napoleon

As the allied armies approached the Dutch border, revolt broke out in the Netherlands. Events followed a pattern very similar to the insurrection in Hamburg and northern Germany in the spring of 1813. Like the citizens of Hamburg, the Dutch had been ruined by Napoleon’s economic policies and longed for liberation. The advance guard of Winzengerode’s Army Corps under Alexander Benckendorff raced across the Netherlands to support the revolt and secure Amsterdam. His infantry – the 2nd Jaegers and the Tula Regiment – covered 60 kilometres in less than thirty-six hours. Benckendorff’s detachment also included a regiment of Bashkirs, exotic and improbable liberators of bourgeois Holland. Benckendorff’s tiny force of fewer than 2,000 men then led the defence of Breda against a French counter-offensive. The earliest French history of the campaign paid tribute to Alexander Benckendorff, saying that he showed courage and initiative even in attempting the defence, let alone in pulling it off.²⁴

Unlike in the previous year at Hamburg, the allies now had large masses of regular troops with which to back up their Cossacks and sustain the revolt. Bülow’s Prussian corps moved into the Netherlands and within weeks had cleared most of the Low Countries. Quite apart from its political impact, the conquest of the Low Countries had important military consequences for the invasion of France. It opened up a possible supply line through rich and untouched country to the coast which allied armies operating in the Paris region could use. It also convinced Napoleon that the allied offensive in the winter of 1813–14 would come in the Low Countries. As a result he moved the best of his meagre reserves northwards.²⁵

Meanwhile the allied leaders were planning an invasion over the Rhine but well to the south. Blücher and Gneisenau argued for an immediate attack while Napoleon’s army was still small and disorganized. Prussian historians subsequently supported this strategy. But the allied armies were also exhausted, hungry and diminished by the autumn campaign. They too needed time to rest and reorganize themselves, and to establish military roads, magazines and hospitals in their rear. During the seven weeks they rested on the Rhine, the allies in fact drew in more and better reinforcements than Napoleon. When they moved forward at the end of the year, eastern France fell to them easily and they still far outnumbered Napoleon’s forces. If the campaign later became more difficult, that had little to do with numbers: it was due to poor leadership and to the way in which political considerations were allowed to sabotage military operations.²⁶

On 9 November Barclay de Tolly submitted his report to the emperor on the state of the Russian army at the close of the autumn campaign. He reckoned that ‘for all our great victories, the present campaign has cost us…half our army’. In some units a much higher proportion of men were no longer in the ranks. ‘Count Wittgenstein’s cavalry does not have even one-quarter of the strength with which it left Silesia’ in late August. Of the five front-line Army Corps only two were still fully viable and ‘look like regular soldiers’. These two were the Grand Duke Constantine’s Guards and Grenadiers of the Reserve Army Corps and Winzengerode’s Army Corps in the Army of the North, ‘which have seen less combat and have suffered less than the others’. In many units of the other three Army Corps (Wittgenstein, Langeron and Sacken) ‘total disorganization’ threatened unless action was taken quickly. ‘The soldiers are suffering from a great shortage of ammunition, and an even greater lack of boots, shirts and tunics.’ In some regiments not more than one hundred men were still in the ranks. Casualties among officers in the autumn campaign had been high and ‘the shortage of officers is the reason why even these small remnants cannot be restored to proper order’. Many other sources, including regimental accounts and Blücher’s reports to Alexander, confirm the picture drawn by Barclay and stress the army’s urgent need for a pause to fill up its ranks, rest its troops, and restock with ammunition, food and equipment.²⁷