Chapter 25

After the 21st, 22nd and 23rd of August, days on which we had defeated Field-marshal Blucher's corps, and forced him to retire behind the Katzbach, the Emperor gave orders for the follow-up on the next day. However, on hearing that the combined army of the allies, some 200,000 strong, commanded by Prince Schwartzenberg, had just emerged, on the 22nd, from the mountains of Bohemia and was heading for Saxony, Napoleon, taking his Guard, as well as the cavalry of Latour-Maubourg and several divisions of infantry, hastened by forced marches to Dresden, where Marshal Saint-Cyr had shut himself in with the troops he had hurriedly withdrawn from the camp at Pirna On leaving Silesia, the Emperor told Marshal Ney to follow him, and left Marshal Macdonald in charge of the large force which he left on the Bobr, that is to say the 3rd, 5th and 11th Infantry Corps and the 2nd Cavalry, with a powerful element of artillery, making a total of 75,000 men. The control of such a great body of combatants was too much for Marshal Macdonald, as subsequent events will show.

You must have noticed that the larger the number of troops involved, the less detail I give of their movements: firstly because this could require an enormous work, which I might not be able to complete, and secondly because it could make the reading of these memoirs too wearisome. I shall therefore be even more concise in my description of events in the War of 1813, in which 600,000 to 700,000 men took part, than I have been in describing previous campaigns.

On the 25th of August, the allies having surrounded the town of Dresden, whose fortifications were not proof against a major attack, the position of Saint-Cyr became critical for he had no more than 17,000 French troops to resist the immense numbers of the enemy. The latter, badly served by their spies, were unaware of the approaching arrival of Napoleon, and full of confidence in their superior numbers, they delayed the attack until the following day. This confidence was increased when they were strengthened by two Westphalian regiments who had deserted from King Jerome to join the Austrians.

The worried Marshal Saint-Cyr expected to be attacked on the morning of the 26th; but he was reassured as to the outcome of the struggle by the presence of the Emperor, who had arrived that very day at an early hour, at the head of the Guard and a numerous body of all arms. Soon after his arrival, the enemy, who still thought that they faced only Saint-Cyr's Corps, assaulted the town in force and captured several redoubts. The Russians and the Prussians, who now controlled the suburbs of Pirna, were attempting to break down the Freyberg gate when, on the Emperor's orders, it swung open to allow the emergence of a column of infantry of the Imperial Guard, the leading brigade of which was commanded by General Cambronne!… It was as if the head of Medusa had appeared!… The enemy recoiled horrified, their guns were captured at the double and the gunners killed on their mountings! Simultaneous sorties were made from all the gates of Dresden with the same results, and the allies, abandoning the redoubts they had taken, fled into the surrounding country where they were pursued by the cavalry to the foot of the hills. On this first day the enemy had 5000 men put out of action, and we took 3000 prisoners. The French had 2500 killed or wounded, amongst the latter there being five generals.

The next day it was the French army which took the initiative, although they had 87,000 fewer men than their adversaries. The action was at first fierce and sanguinary; but the rain which fell in torrents on the heavy soil soon covered the battle-field with pools of muddy water through which our troops moved with much difficulty on their advance towards the enemy. Nevertheless, advance they did, and the Young Guard had already driven back the enemy left, when Napoleon, having observed that Prince Schwartzenberg, the allies' commander-in-chief, had not given sufficient support to his left wing, overwhelmed it with an attack by Marshal Victor's infantry and Latour-Maubourg's cavalry.

King Murat, who was in command of this part of the line, was highly successful. He forced his way through the pass of Cotta and outflanking Klenau's corps, he separated it from the Austrian army and attacked it, sabre in hand, at the head of his carabiniers and Cuirassiers. Klenau was unable to withstand this fearsome charge, almost all his battalions were compelled to surrender, and two other divisions of infantry suffered the same fate.

While Murat was defeating the enemy left, their right wing was routed by the Young Guard, so that after some three hours, victory was assured and the allies beat a retreat towards Bohemia.

As a result of this second day of heavy fighting, the enemy left on the field of battle 18 flags, 26 cannons and 40,000 men, of whom 20,000 were prisoners. The main losses were suffered by the Austrian infantry, who had two generals killed, three wounded and two taken prisoner.

It may be remarked that at this epoch percussion caps were virtually unknown, and the infantry of all nations still used flint-lock muskets, which it was almost impossible to fire once the priming powder became wet. Now, as it had rained without ceasing for the whole day, this contributed largely to the defeat of the enemy infantry by our cavalry, and gave rise to an extraordinary incident.

A division of Cuirassiers, commanded by General Bordesoulle, found itself facing a strong Austrian infantry division formed into a square. Bordesoulle called on the enemy general to surrender, which he refused to do. Bordesoulle then pointed out to the Austrian that not one of his men's guns was capable of being fired, to which he replied that his men could defend themselves successfully with their bayonets, as the cavalry, whose horses were in mud up to their hocks, would be unable to charge them down. "Then I will blast your square with my artillery!" "But you don't have any guns, they are stuck in the mud." "If I show you my cannons, which are behind my first regiment, will you then surrender?" "I would have no alternative, for I would have no means of defence."

The French general then advanced, to within thirty paces of the enemy, a battery of six guns, the gunners with their slow-matches in their hands, prepared to fire on the square. At this sight the Austrian general and his division laid down their arms.

The rain having prevented the infantry of both armies from using their muskets and greatly slowed the movements of the cavalry, it was the artillery which, in spite of the difficulty of manoeuvering on the rain sodden ground, played a decisive role: in particular the French artillery, whose teams of horses Napoleon had doubled up, using animals from the headquarters wagons, which remained safely in Dresden; so that our guns did great damage, and it was one of their cannon-balls which struck Moreau.

It had been rumoured for some time that the former illustrious French general had returned to Europe and had joined the ranks of his country's enemies. Few people believed this, but it was confirmed in the evening following the battle of Dresden in a bizarre manner. Our advance-guard was in pursuit of the routed enemy when one of our Hussars saw, on entering the village of Notnitz, a magnificent Great Dane, which seemed to be searching in distress for its owner.

He took hold of the dog, and read on its collar the words "I belong to General Moreau." He was then told by the cure of the village that that General Moreau had undergone a double amputation in his house. A French cannon-ball had landed in the middle of the Russian general staff, it had struck one of the General's legs, and going through his horse had then struck the other. This had happened at the moment when the Austrian army had been defeated, and to prevent Moreau falling into French hands, the Emperor Alexander had arranged for him to be carried by some Grenadiers until, the pursuit having slackened, it was possible to dress his wounds and amputate both legs. The Saxon cure who had witnessed this cruel operation, said that Moreau, who was well aware that his life was in danger, had repeatedly cursed the fate that had left him mortally wounded by a French missile, amongst the enemies of his country. He died on the 1st of September, and the Russians took away his body.

No one in the French army regretted the death of Moreau, when it was known that he had taken arms against his country. A Russian envoy came to claim the dog on behalf of Colonel Rapatel, Moreau's aide-de-camp, who had stayed with him; it was returned but without the collar, which was given to the King of Saxony and is now on display in Dresden.

As Prince Schwartzenberg, the commander of the enemy troops defeated at Dresden, had given Teplice as the rallying point for the remains of his defeated armies, the Austrians retreated through the valley of Dippoldiswalde, the Russians and the Prussians on the Telnitz road, and the remnants of Klenau's corps via Freiberg. Napoleon accompanied the French columns which were pursuing the vanquished as far as Pirna, but just before he arrived in that town, he was taken by a sudden indisposition, due perhaps to the fact that he had spent five days constantly on horseback, exposed to incessant rain.

It is one of the misfortunes of princes that there are always to be found in their entourage people who, to demonstrate their attachment, claim to be alarmed at the slightest indisposition and exaggerate the precautions which should be taken, which is what happened on this occasion. The master-of-horse, Caulaincourt, advised the Emperor to return to Dresden, and the other great officers dared not give the much more sensible advice to continue to Pirna, which was no more than a league distant. The young Guard was already there and the Emperor would have been able to have the rest which he required while remaining in a position to guide the movements of the troops in pursuit of the enemy, which he could not do from Dresden which was much further from the center of operations.

Napoleon then left to Marshals Mortier and Saint-Cyr the task of supporting General Vandamme, commander of 1st Corps, who, detached from the Grande Armee for three days, had defeated a Russian corps and now threatened the enemy rear, had cut the road from Dresden to Prague and occupied Peterswalde, from where he dominated the Kulm basin and the town of Teplice, a most important point through which the allies had to make their retreat. However the return of the Emperor to Dresden nullified these successes and led to a disastrous reverse which contributed greatly to the fall of the Empire.

General Vandamme was fine and courageous officer who, already well-known from the earliest wars of the revolution, had been almost continually in command of various Corps during those of the empire; so that it was surprising that he had not yet been awarded the baton of a marshal; withheld, perhaps, because of his brusque and abrupt manner. His detractors said after his defeat that his desire to obtain this coveted honour had driven him, with no more than 20,000 men, to stand rashly in the path of 200,000 of the enemy, with the aim of barring their passage; but the truth is that having been informed by the Emperor's chief of staff that he would be supported by the armies of Marshals Saint-Cyr and Mortier, and been given a direct order to capture Teplice and so seal off the enemy's line of retreat, General Vandamme had perforce to obey.

Under the impression that he would be supported he descended boldly, on the 29th of August, towards Kulm from where, pushing enemy troops before him, he sought to reach Teplice; it is a certainty that if Mortier and Saint-Cyr had carried out the orders which they had been given, the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian forces stuck on the appalling roads, cut off from Bohemia and finding themselves attacked in front and in the rear, would have laid down their arms. Vandamme would have then been eulogised by the same people who have since blamed him.

However that may be, Vandamme arrived at Teplice on the morning of the 30th of August to be confronted by the division of Ostermann, one of the best of the Russian generals. Vandamme went confidently into the attack, as he saw, coming down from the heights of Peterwalde, and taking the route which he had taken the day previously, a body of troops which he took to be the armies of Mortier and Saint-Cyr, whose help the Emperor had promised him. But instead of friends, these newcomers were two large Prussian divisions commanded by General Kleist, and which, on the advice of Jomini, had passed between the corps of Mortier and Saint-Cyr without these two marshals taking any notice, such was the reluctance of Saint-Cyr to got to the aid of one of his colleagues. A reluctance which, on this occasion, spread to General Mortier. Neither of them budged and this at a time when their co-operation joined to the gallant efforts of Vandamme would have led to the total defeat of the enemy, whose columns of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and baggage were piled up in disorder in the narrow passes of the high mountains which lie between Silesia and Bohemia.

In place of the help he was expecting, General Vandamme saw appear the two divisions of General Kleist, which instantly attacked him. Vandamme, continuing to fight the Russians of Ostermann in front of Teplice, turned round his rear-guard to face Kleist, whom he attacked furiously, but although the enemy was weakening, the huge reinforcements which they recieved, bringing their strength to around 100,000 men as opposed to Vandamme's remaining 15,000, made him think, in spite of his courage and tenacity, that he should retire towards the corps of Mortier and Saint-Cyr, whom he believed to be close at hand in accordance with what Prince Berthier had written to him on the Emperor's instructions.

On their arrival at the pass of Telnitz, the French found it occupied by General Kleist's divisions, who completely blocked their passage; but nevertheless, our battalions, preceded by the cavalry of General Corbineau who, in spite of the rough, mountainous terrain, had insisted on remaining the advance-guard, fell on the Prussians with such ferocity that they overcame them and broke through the pass after taking all the enemy guns, from which they took away only the horses because of the bad state of the roads.

Any soldier will be aware that such a success could be won only at the cost of many casualties, and after this savage engagement the strength of 1st Corps was greatly reduced. However, Vandamme, completely surrounded by forces ten times more numerous than his own, refused to surrender and placing himself at the head of two battalions of the 85th, the only ones left to him, he hurled himself into the midst of the enemy in a fight to the death. But his horse having been killed, a group of Russians seized him and made him prisoner. It is said that he was brought before the Emperor Alexander and his brother, the Grand Duke Constantin, and was rash enough to exchange insults with them. He was then taken to Wintka, on the frontier of Siberia, and did not see his country again until after the peace of 1814.

The battle of Kulm cost 1st Corps 2000 men killed and 8000 made prisoner, amongst whom was their commanding general. The 10,000 who were left managed to fight their way through the enemy lines to join Saint-Cyr and Mortier. Those two generals had gravely failed in their duty by not pursuing the beaten enemy and instead stopping, Saint-Cyr at Reinhards-Grimme and Mortier at Pirna, from where they could hear the noise of the battle being fought by Vandamme.

It is surprising that, from nearby Dresden, Napoleon did not send one of his aides-de-camp to make certain that Saint-Cyr and Mortier had gone to the aid of Vandamme, as he had ordered. The two marshals, having failed to carry out their orders, should have been court-martialled, but the French army, overwhelmed by the enormous number of enemies which Napoleon had raised against it, had reached such a point of exhaustion that had Napoleon wished to punish all those who failed in their duty, he would have had to dispense with the services of almost all his marshals. He therefore did no more than reprimand Saint-Cyr and Mortier.

He had an increasing need to conceal his disasters, for it was not only at Kulm that his troops had suffered a reverse, but at all points of the immense line which they occupied.

(Subsequent historical research has made it quite clear that as Napoleon was in control of the operations the two marshals were entirely correct in waiting to receive his instructions, as they did not know to where he intended them to go. As for the order to support Vandamme with two divisions, it did not arrive until the 30th, that is to say at a time when the catastrophe had already occurred, and no blame can be attributed to the marshals.)