Russia Against Napoleon

From there he marched south-eastwards, hoping to catch and destroy Blücher’s force before it could link up with Schwarzenberg. Fortunately for Blücher, the Russian cavalry captured a staff officer with Napoleon’s plans. Also lucky was the fact that Peter Pahlen and part of the main army’s cavalry was nearby. Pahlen delayed the advancing French and covered the march of Blücher’s troops towards Brienne, where they arrived after midday on 29 January.

Late on that winter afternoon Napoleon’s infantry attacked Brienne in three columns. Blücher’s headquarters was in the chateau of Brienne, from which he had an excellent view of the advancing enemy. He immediately spotted that the French left-hand column was vulnerable to a cavalry attack and ordered Ilarion Vasilchikov to charge into the enemy flank and rear, which brought the French infantry to a halt. Later that evening, however, on the other allied flank, French infantry burst into Brienne in the darkness past Olsufev’s small corps. Blücher and Sacken only just escaped capture and one of the latter’s key staff officers was killed. Once the initial surprise had passed, the Russian troops rallied and Blücher retreated to link up with the main army on the heights of Trannes just a few kilometres south of Brienne. But Sacken was furious with Olsufev, whom he blamed for the whole episode.⁴⁰

Napoleon followed Blücher and established his headquarters in the village of La Rothière, just north of the heights at Trannes. For two days the armies watched each other without moving. By midday on 1 February Napoleon believed that the allies were aiming to move around his western flank and ordered his reserves away from La Rothière to watch them. Soon afterwards, however, it became clear that Blücher was on the point of attacking the French line. Napoleon had fewer than 50,000 men to cover a front of 9.5 kilometres, which was too few. His right flank rested on the river Aube at the village of Dienville. The village of La Rothière was in the centre of his line, which stretched out to La Giberie on his left. Blücher commanded Sacken’s and Olsufev’s troops from the Army of Silesia, which stood in his centre opposite La Rothière.

On their left were Gyulai’s Austrian Army Corps, which he ordered to attack Dienville. On the right was the Württemberg Army Corps under their crown prince, whose task it was to assault La Giberie. On their own these troops barely outnumbered the French but the allies had more than double their number available within range of the battlefield.

Gyulai’s attack on the strong French position at Dienville failed. The crown prince of Württemberg also had great difficulties deploying enough troops in the narrow defiles and swampy terrain around La Giberie to push back the French defenders. In the end he was rescued by Wrede’s Bavarian corps which came up behind the enemy left flank and forced Marshal Marmont to retreat. Schwarzenberg had not ordered Wrede to join the battle but the Bavarian commander had marched to the sound of the guns on his own initiative.

By far the fiercest fighting occurred in and around La Rothière, however. Three-quarters of all allied casualties occurred here. Sacken’s infantry assaulted La Rothière in two columns: Johann Lieven attacked from the front down the road and Aleksei Shcherbatov moved forward a few hundred metres to the east. This was the first time that the Army of Silesia had fought under Alexander’s eye and Sacken was determined to impress. The Prussian official history writes that ‘Lieven’s column attacked the village with their bands playing and the soldiers singing’. With a snow storm blowing into their backs, the Russian infantry stormed into the village with their bayonets, without pausing to fire. Major-General Nikitin, the commander of Sacken’s artillery, was unable to drag all of his guns forward to support the attack because of the heavy mud. So he left thirty-six guns behind and double-harnessed the rest. Between them Lieven and Shcherbatov cleared La Rothière after bitter fighting, only then to face a ferocious counter-attack in the early evening from Napoleon’s Guards. In this fighting both Marshal Oudinot and Lieven were wounded. In the end, the issue was decided by the Russian reserves, in this case the 2nd Grenadier Division, which came up to support Sacken and drove the enemy out of La Rothière once and for all. The French lost 73 guns and 5,000 men, the allies barely fewer. But the main element in the allied victory was moral. In the first battle of the campaign, Napoleon had been defeated on French soil. His troops’ morale slumped. In the following days many French soldiers deserted and set off for their homes.⁴¹