‘I desire peace; the world needs it,’ Napoleon declared at the opening session of the Legislative Assembly on 14 February 1813. He desired it probably as ardently as anyone. But he could only make it on terms that were, in his own words, ‘honourable and in keeping with the interests and the greatness of my Empire’. He could not contemplate the idea of negotiating from a position of weakness, and his instinctive reaction to his predicament was to win a war first.1
His policy of delivering a shattering blow and then dictating the terms of peace had worked well enough in the past, but each of his victories inevitably appeared less dramatic than the last, while repeated drubbings merely tempered the resistance of his enemies. His modus operandi was subject to the inexorable law of diminishing returns, but he appears to have been oblivious to this.
Following his failure to rally the remnants of the Grande Armée at Vilna and then at Königsberg in East Prussia, Murat had left his post and gone back to his kingdom of Naples. The man who took command in his stead was Napoleon’s stepson Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy. He had managed to stabilise a front along the Vistula in January, and from his headquarters at Posen (Poznań) worked hard at replenishing the ranks of shattered units. On 27 January Napoleon wrote him a long letter reviewing the possibilities for a spring campaign that would take French forces back across the Niemen into Russia in August, and by the beginning of February he was making arrangements to despatch his household there.
The one lesson he had learnt from the Russian campaign was that too many attendants and accoutrements only got in the way. ‘I want to have much fewer people, not so many cooks, less plate, no great nécessaire,’ he wrote. ‘On campaign and on the march, tables, even mine, will be served with soup, a boiled dish, a roast and vegetables, with no dessert.’ He announced that he would be taking no pages, as ‘they are of no use to me’, apart from some of his more hardy hunting pages.2
By then the French front had been forced back to the line of the Oder, but Napoleon was not unduly worried. On 11 March he wrote again to Prince Eugène, now holding a front along the Elbe, sketching a grandiose plan of attack involving a sweep through Berlin and Danzig into Poland. From Kraków, Poniatowski, supported by the Austrians, was to strike northward and cut the Russian army’s lines of communication.3
These plans were disrupted, but his confidence was not particularly shaken, when on 27 March the Prussian ambassador in Paris handed in Prussia’s declaration of war on France. Napoleon’s reaction was to instruct Narbonne in Vienna to offer Austria the Prussian province of Silesia (which the Prussians had captured from Austria in 1745) as a prize if she supported France in the forthcoming war. Metternich did not want Silesia, and he certainly did not want to go to war again at the side of France. In a last-ditch attempt to bring Napoleon to the negotiating table, he sent Prince Schwarzenberg to Paris.4
Schwarzenberg’s instructions, dated 28 March 1813, stressed that the moment was ‘one of the highest importance for the future fate of Europe, of Austria, and of France in particular’, adding that it was ‘an urgent necessity’ that the two courts reach an understanding. He was to make it clear to Napoleon that while Austria would support France sincerely in pursuit of a fair peace, she did not feel herself bound to do so unconditionally. Metternich was particularly anxious to drive home the fact that Napoleon’s marriage to Marie-Louise counted for nothing in the present circumstances. ‘Policy made the marriage, and policy can unmake it,’ Schwarzenberg told Maret. But Napoleon was deaf to these hints.5
He spent his days reviewing newly-formed regiments on the Champ de Mars before they left for Germany. In the last week of March and the first two of April he made his final preparations. They included setting up a Regency Council which was to administer France while he was on campaign, and to assume control if anything were to happen to him. Schwarzenberg, who had a long interview with him at Saint-Cloud on 13 April, found him less belligerent than in the past, and genuinely eager to avoid war. ‘His language was less peremptory and, like his whole demeanour, less self-assured; he gave the impression of a man who fears losing the prestige which surrounded him, and his eyes seemed to be asking me whether I still saw in him the same man as before.’ Thirty-six hours later Napoleon left Saint-Cloud for the army, which he joined at Erfurt on 25 April.6
Alexander and Frederick William had already taken the offensive. With the Prussian army under General Gebhard Blücher in the van, they invaded Saxony, denouncing its King as a tool of Napoleon and a traitor to the cause. The King, Frederick Augustus, found himself in much the same position as Frederick William a couple of months earlier, but had even less time to make a decision as to which way to jump. The allies had their reasons for forcing the issue in this way, and they were not creditable ones.
In the secret articles of the Treaty of Kalisch, Russia had promised to restore Prussia to a position of power equal to that she had held before she lost her Polish lands to Napoleon, and to find ‘equivalents’ for her if necessary. Russia was in possession of those formerly Prussian Polish lands, but made no mention of giving them back, while the use of the word ‘equivalents’ suggested that Prussia would be rebuilt with German territory. The most desirable block of territory was Saxony. Both Alexander and Frederick William therefore hoped that Frederick Augustus would not declare for the allies and thereby place Saxony in the allied camp.
Frederick Augustus was genuinely attached to Napoleon, to whom he owed his royal crown, and, being endowed with a sense of honour, would have done anything to stand by his ally. But his small army had been annihilated in Russia, and he was now in the front line. He was being urged by Metternich to realign himself, but was both unwilling to do so and afraid of breaking his alliance with Napoleon. He attempted to sidestep the issue by taking refuge in Austria, and on 20 April concluding a treaty with her which guaranteed his continued possession of Saxony. Not long after he left it, his capital Dresden was occupied by Alexander and Frederick William, who marched in at the head of their troops, cheered by the population. But their triumph was to be short-lived.7
The allied army, consisting of some 100,000 Russians and Prussians commanded by the Russian General Ferdinand von Winzingerode and the Prussian Gebhard Blücher, marched out to face the French. But Napoleon advanced swiftly and defeated them at Lützen on 2 May. The Russians and Prussians had, according to a British officer attached to allied headquarters, shown bravery and dash, but ‘in crowds, without any method’. There had been a general want of direction in the command, and Alexander and Frederick William had only further muddled things by their presence on the battlefield. The retreat was chaotic and bad-tempered, and insults flew between the two allied armies.8
The victory demonstrated once again the superiority of French arms, but it was not decisive. Napoleon’s shortage of cavalry, a consequence of the previous year’s Russian campaign, prevented him from pursuing the enemy and turning their defeat into a rout. Although he trumpeted the news of a great victory for propaganda purposes, he was not satisfied. To Prince Eugène he wrote admitting that in view of the insignificant number of prisoners he had taken it was no victory at all.9