Chapter 31

It was while the Emperor and the divisions which had come out of Leipzig were halted at this spot, that we heard the dreadful news of the destruction of the bridge at Lindenau, which deprived the army of almost all its artillery and half of its men, who were taken prisoner; and which delivered some thousands of our wounded comrades to the assaults and knives of the brutish enemy, full of liquor and encouraged to massacre by their unscrupulous officers! There was widespread grief! Each regretted the loss of a relative, a friend, some comrade in arms! The Emperor seemed appalled!… However, he ordered Sebastiani's cavalry to retrace their steps to the bridge, in order to gather and protect any stragglers who had been able to cross the river at some point, after the explosion.

In order to speed this help, my regiment and the 24th, who were the best mounted in the corps, were told to go ahead of the column and leave at a rapid trot. As General Wathiez was indisposed, and I was the next in seniority, I had to take command of the brigade.

When we had reached half way to Leipzig, we heard much gunfire, and as we approached the avenues we could hear the despairing cries of the unfortunate French, who having no means of retreat and no cartridges for their firearms, were unable to defend themselves and were hunted from street to street, and house to house, and, overwhelmed by numbers, were disgracefully butchered by the enemy, mainly the Prussians, the Badeners, and the Saxon guards.

It would be impossible for me to express the fury felt then by the two regiments which I commanded. All longed for vengeance and regretted that this was denied them, since the Elster, with its broken bridge, separated us from the assassins and their victims. Our anger was increased when we came across about 2000 Frenchmen, most of them without clothes and nearly all wounded, who had escaped death only by jumping into the river and swimming across in the face of the shots being fired at them from the opposite bank. Marshal Macdonald was among them; he owed his life to his physical strength and his ability as a swimmer. The Marshal was completely naked and his horse had been drowned, so I quickly found some clothes for him and lent him the spare horse which always came with me, which allowed him to go immediately to rejoin the Emperor at Markranstadt, and to give him an account of the disaster of which he had been a witness, and in which one of the principal episodes had been the death of Prince Poniatowski, who had perished in the waters of the Elster.

The remainder of the French who had managed to cross the river had been obliged to discard their arms in order to swim, and had no means of defence. They ran across the fields to avoid falling into the hands of four or five hundred Prussians, Saxons, and Badeners, who, not satisfied with the blood-bath of the massacres in the town, had made a footbridge of beams and planks across the remaining arches of the bridge, and had come to kill any of our unfortunate soldiers whom they could find on the road to Markranstadt.

As soon as I caught sight of this group of assassins, I instructed Colonel Schneit of the 24th to combine with my regiment to form a vast semi-circle round them, and then sounded the charge!… The result was horrifying! The bandits, taken by surprise, put up very little resistance and there ensued a massacre, for no quarter was given!…

I was so enraged at these wretches, that before the charge started I had promised myself that I would run my sabre through any of them I could catch; however, when I found myself in their midst and saw that they were drunk and leaderless except for two Saxon officers who were fear-stricken at our vengeful approach, I realised that this was not a fight but an execution, and that it would not be a good thing for me to take part in it. I feared that I might find pleasure in killing some of these scoundrels, so I put my sabre back in its scabbard and left to our soldiers the business of exterminating these assassins, two-thirds of whom were laid dead.

The remainder, including two officers and several Saxon guards, fled towards the debris of the bridge, hoping to recross the footbridge; but as they could cross only one by one and our Chasseurs were hard on their heels, they entered a large nearby inn and began to shoot at my men, helped by some Prussians and Badeners on the opposite bank.

As it seemed likely that the noise of firing would attract larger forces to the bank from where, without crossing the river, they could destroy my regiment by small-arms and cannon fire, I decided to bring matters to a conclusion, and ordered the majority of the Chasseurs to dismount and taking their carbines and plenty of ammunition to attack the rear of the inn and set on fire the stables and the hay loft. The assassins, shut in the inn, seeing that they were about to be caught in the flames, tried to make a sortie; but as soon as they appeared in the doorway our Chasseurs shot them with their carbines.

It was in vain that they sent one of the Saxon officers to me to intercede; I was pitiless, and refused to treat as soldiers surrendering after an honourable defence, these monsters who had murdered our comrades who were prisoners of war. So the four to five hundred Prussians, Badeners, and Saxons who had crossed the footbridge were all killed! I sent this information to General Sebastiani, who halted, midway, the other brigades of the Light Cavalry.

The fire which we had lit in the forage store of the inn soon spread to the neighbouring houses. A major part of the village of Lindenau, which lines both sides of the road, was burned, which would delay the repair of the bridge and the passage of enemy troops, bent on pursuing and harrying the retreating French army.

The mission being completed, I led the brigade back to Markranstadt, together with the 2000 Frenc, who had escaped from the calamity at the bridge. Among them were several officers of all ranks; The Emperor questioned them on what they knew about the blowing up of the bridge, and about the massacre of the French prisoners of war. It seems likely that this sorry tale made the Emperor regret that he had not taken the advice given him in the morning, to bar the enemy advance by setting fire to the suburbs, and even, if need be, the town of Leipzig itself, most of whose inhabitants had fled during the three day's battle.

In the course of this return to the bridge of Lindenau, the brigade which I was commanding suffered only three casualties, one of which was a member of my regiment; but it was one of my finest sous-officiers. He had been awarded the Legion of Honour and was named Foucher. A bullet wound, received at the inn, had gone through both thighs, leaving four holes; but in spite of this serious injury the brave Foucher made the retreat on horseback, refused to enter the hospital at Erfurt, which we passed a few days later and remained with the regiment until we reached France. It is true that his friends and all the men in his platoon took great care of him, but he thoroughly deserved it.

As I left Leipzig, I was concerned about the fate of the wounded from my regiment, whom I had left behind, including Major Pozac; but luckily the distant suburb in which I had put them was not visited by the Prussians.

You have seen that during the last day of the great battle, an Austrian Corps tried to cut off our retreat by capturing Lindenau, through which passes the main road leading to Weissenfels and Erfurt, and how, on the Emperor's orders, they had been driven off by General Bertrand, who, after re-opening this route, had made his way to Weissenfels, where we rejoined him.

After the losses occasioned by the destruction of the bridge at Lindenau, it was impossible to think of stopping what remained of the army at the Saale, so Napoleon crossed the river.

A fortnight before the battle, this water-course had offered him an impregnable position, which he had spurned to risk a general engagement in open country, putting behind him three rivers and a large town, which presented obstructions at every step!… The great captain had relied too much on his "star" and on the incapacity of the enemy generals.

In the event, they made such serious mistakes that in spite of an immense superiority in numbers, they were not only unable, during a battle lasting three days, to take from us a single one of the villages we were defending, but I have heard the King of Belgium, who was then serving with the Russian army, say to the Duc d'Orleans that on two occasions the allies were in such confusion that the order for a retreat was given: but then the situation changed and it our army which had to submit to the fortune of war.

After crossing the Saale, Napoleon thanked and dismissed those officers and soldiers of the Confederation of the Rhine, who either from some sense of honour or from lack of opportunity were still in our ranks. He even carried magnanimity so far as to allow them to retain their arms, although he was entitled to treat them as prisoners of war, since their sovereigns had joined the forces of our enemies. The French army continued its retreat to Erfurt, without anything happening but an encounter at Kosen, where a single French division defeated an Austrian army corps, and took prisoner its commanding general the Comte de Giulay.

Led on always by the hope of a fighting return to Germany, and by the help which he would receive in such a case from the fortresses which he was now forced to leave behind him, Napoleon put a numerous garrison into Erfurt. He had left in Dresden 25,000 men, under the command of Saint-Cyr; at Hamburg 30,000 under Davout, and many strongholds on the Oder and the Elbe, manned in accordance with their importance; these garrisons made up a loss in manpower to add to that due to the forts of Danzig and the Vistula.

I shall not repeat what I have already said about the disadvantages of deploying too many of one's troops to man forts which one is forced to leave behind. I shall merely point out that Napoleon left in the forts of Germany 80,000 men, not one of whom returned to France until after the fall of the empire, which they might perhaps have prevented, had they been defending our frontiers.

The arsenal at Erfurt was able to make good the loss of our artillery. The Emperor, who up till now had borne his reverses with stoical resignation, was however upset by the departure of his brother-in-law, the King Murat, who, with the excuse that he was going to defend his kingdom of Naples, abandoned Napoleon, to whom he owed everything!… Murat, at one time so brilliant in war, had done nothing much during this campaign of 1813. It is certain that, although he was in our ranks, he was carrying on a correspondence with M. de Metternich, the prime minister of Austria, who, dangling before his eyes the example of Bernadotte, guaranteed, in the name of the allied sovereigns, the protection of his kingdom if he would join Napoleon's enemies. Murat left the French army at Erfurt and had scarcely arrived in Naples when he began preparations for war against us.

It was also at Erfurt that the Emperor learned of the audacious scheme of the Bavarians, his former allies, who, after deserting his cause, and joining with an Austrian Corps and several groups of Cossacks had set off under the command of General the Comte de Wrede, whose ambition it was not only to stop the French army, but to make it captive, along with its Emperor.

General de Wrede marching parallel to us but at two days distance had already reached Wartzbourg with 60,000 men. He detached 10,000 to Frankfort and with the remaining 50,000 he went to the little fort of Hanau in order to bar the passage of the French. General de Wrede, who had fought on our side in Russia, thought that he would find the French army in the deplorable state to which cold and hunger had reduced those retreating from Moscow by the time they reached the Beresina, but we soon showed him that in spite of our misfortunes, we still had soldiers in good heart, and quite capable of defeating Austro-Bavarians.

General de Wrede, who did not know that the troops which we had fought at Leipzig, though following, were a long way behind us, had become very bold and believed he could trap us between two fires. It was not possible for him to do so; though, as several enemy corps were trying to mount an attack on our right by going through the mountains of Franconia, while the Bavarians stood in front of us, the situation could have become serious.

Napoleon rose to the challenge and marched briskly towards Hanau, whose approaches are protected by thick forests and notably by the well-known pass of Gelnhausen, through which runs the river Kinzig. This river, whose banks are very steep, runs between two mountains which are separated by a narrow gap which allows the passage of the river, beside which has been made a fine main road, cut into the rock, and running from Fulde to Frankfort-on-main via Hanau.

Sebastiani's cavalry corps which had been the advance-guard from Weissenfels to Fulde, where one enters the mountains, should have been replaced by infantry at this point. I have never understood for what reason this well known principle of warfare was not followed in these grave circumstances; but to our astonishment, Exelmans' cavalry division continued to march in front of the army, led by my regiment and the 24th Chasseurs. I was in command of the brigade. We learned from the peasants that the Austro-Bavarian army already occupied Hanau, and that a strong division was facing the French, to dispute the passage of the defile.

My position, as commander of the advance-guard, was now very difficult; for how could I, without a single infantryman and with cavalry packed between two high mountains and an uncrossable torrent, fight troops on foot whose scouts, climbing up the rocks, would shoot us at close range? I sent at once to warn the divisional general, but Exelmans could not be found. However I had been ordered to advance and I could not stop the divisions which were following me, so I continued my march until at a bend in the valley my scouts told me that they were in sight of a detachment of enemy Hussars.

The Austro-Bavarians had made the same mistake as our leaders; for if the latter had sent cavalry to attack a long and narrow pass where no more the ten or twelve horsemen could ride abreast, our enemies had sent cavalry to defend a position where a hundred sharpshooters could hold up ten regiments of cavalry! I was highly delighted to see that the enemy had no infantry, and as I knew from experience that when two opposing columns meet at a narrow spot, victory always goes to the one which, hurling itself at the head of the enemy, drives it back into the troops behind it, I launched at the gallop my elite company, of which only the leading platoon could engage the enemy; but they did so with such elan that the head of the Austrian column was overwhelmed and the rest thrown into such complete confusion that my troopers had only to take aim. We continued the pursuit for more than an hour. The enemy regiment in front of us was that of General Ott. I had never seen such well turned out Hussars. they had come from Vienna, where they had been fitted with completely new uniforms, Their outfit, although a little theatrical, looked very handsome: the pelisse and dolman in white and the trousers and the shako in lilac; all clean bright and shining. One might have thought they were going to a ball, or to play in a comedy! This brilliant appearance contrasted somewhat with the more modest toilette of our Chasseurs, many of whom were still dressed in the worn clothing in which they had bivouacked for eighteen months, in Russia, Poland, and Germany, and whose distinguishing colours had been dimmed by the smoke of cannon and the dust of battlefields. However, under those threadbare garments were brave hearts and sturdy limbs. So the white pelisses of Ott's Hussars became horribly bloodstained, and this pretty regiment lost in killed and wounded more than 200 men, without one of our Chasseurs having the smallest sabre cut, the enemy having always fled without ever turning to fight. Our Chasseurs took a large number of excellent horses and gold-braided pelisses.

Up until then everything had gone well, but as I galloped after the victors who pursued the vanquished, I was a bit worried about the end of this strange encounter, for the diminishing height of the mountains which bordered the Kinzig indicated that we were nearing the end of the valley, and it was likely that we would find ourselves in a small plain, full of infantry whose volleys and cannon fire would make us pay dearly for our success: but happily there was no such thing, and as we emerged from the pass we saw not a single infantryman, but only some cavalry, part of which comprised the main body of that section of Ott's regiment of Hussars, which we had so roughly manhandled and who in their panic continued their headlong flight, taking with them some fifteen squadrons, who retired to Hanau.

General Sebastiani then deployed his three divisions of cavalry which were soon supported by the infantry of Marshals Macdonald and Victor, and several batteries. Then the Emperor with part of his guard, appeared and the rest of the French army followed.

It was now the evening of the 29th of October; we established our bivouacs in a nearby wood; we were only a league from Hanau and the Austro-Bavarian army.