a plausible and informed guess.23
Though a march on Paris was bold, the alternatives were also risky. Only ten days before, Schwarzenberg had been bemoaning the difficulties of squeezing food out of ‘impoverished Champagne, which has been supporting us for three months’. Moving the combined allied armies through this region in pursuit of Napoleon would be very difficult. Actually a threat to Paris was probably the likeliest way to draw Napoleon away from the allied rear. The area around Paris was rich and untouched by war. Once they arrived there the allies would have far less trouble feeding themselves than if they pursued Napoleon or remained static. The main army currently held more than enough food in its carts to keep it going until it reached this area. On 25 March one Russian corps reported that it had eight days of supplies still in its regimental carts. Four days later Kankrin told Barclay that the 200 carts of Lisanevich’s mobile magazine currently with the army still carried four days’ biscuit rations. As Kankrin and Francis II both noted, with the main army heading north there was also now a good chance of opening up a new line of supply through the wealthy and largely untouched Low Countries.24
Barclay de Tolly was not inclined to easy compliments, but he wrote to Kankrin at this time saying that ‘I have complete confidence in your zeal and your sensible arrangements for the good of the service’. The praise was merited because the allied intendancy responded well to the challenge of simultaneously protecting its rear bases and feeding its own advancing army. But if the army’s supply officers made an advance possible, political and military reasons made it seem desirable in Schwarzenberg’s eyes. With the congress of Chatillon closed and negotiations with Napoleon suspended, it was clear that military victories were the only way to secure peace. Taking Paris was the best means either to force Napoleon to accept allied peace terms or to encourage French elites to get rid of him. The recent fireworks at headquarters must have made Schwarzenberg realize that Russian, Prussian and even British patience with his cautious strategy was wearing very thin. Even some of his senior Austrian officers were complaining about the inglorious role played by their army thus far in the campaign. Probably all these thoughts were in the commander-in-chief’s mind when he ordered his army to march on Paris. In addition, it is a happy commander who starts an operation knowing the position, weakness and worries of his enemies.25
Ferdinand Winzengerode was ordered off in pursuit of Napoleon with 8,000 cavalry. He was told to try to hoodwink the emperor into believing that the whole allied army was pursuing him and to keep allied headquarters well informed as to enemy movements. Meanwhile the two allied armies began their march towards Paris early in the morning of 25 March. The bulk of the main army marched down the road which led from Vitry through Fere- Champenoise to Sezanne, with the cavalry of Peter Pahlen and Prince Adam of Wurttemberg as its advance guard.
A few kilometres to the south Barclay and the army’s reserve units marched in parallel along side roads and across country. To the north of the main army, Langeron’s and Sacken’s troops advanced down the road from Chalons to Bergeres. Ahead of them rode the cavalry divisions of Baron Korff and Ilarion Vasilchikov. The scent of victory had led to the semi-recovery of Blucher. He travelled with his troops in a carriage, visible to all, wearing a lady’s green silk hat with a very broad brim to shade his eyes. The weather had turned fine and the allied troops at last felt that they were moving forward under confident and united leadership. Morale soared.
Shortly after eight in the morning of 25 March Pahlen and Prince Adam bumped into Marshal Marmont’s corps drawn up across the road to Fere-Champenoise, near the village of Soude Sainte-Croix. Nearby was Marshal Mortier’s corps. Together the two marshals commanded 12,300 infantry, 4,350 cavalry and 68 guns. Even counting Cossacks, this well outnumbered the 5,700 horsemen and 36 guns of Pahlen and Prince Adam, but the French marshals could see large enemy forces in the distance and began to retreat. Even after the arrival of 2,500 Austrian cuirassiers the French infantry squares were still safe enough, though their cavalry was driven off and two light infantry regiments were cut off in Soude Sainte-Croix and forced to surrender.
Things began to look ominous only around two in the afternoon, when the Russian heavy cavalry arrived on the scene. The Chevaliers Gardes and Horse Guards had not seen serious action since Borodino and their commanding general, Nikolai Preradovich, begged Barclay to allow the 1st Cuirassier Division to take part in the battle. Their appearance more or less coincided with the onset of a violent rain and hailstorm, which blew directly in the faces of the French infantry as they were trying to pass through the deep gully near Conantray. With their muskets useless and under accurate fire from the Guards horse artillery two French squares collapsed and were ridden down by the Russian cuirassiers and the Wurttemberg cavalry. Panic ensued among much of the rest of the French infantry, many of whom took to their heels. In the end Marmont and Mortier escaped but they lost one-third of their men and most of their guns to an enemy which they always outnumbered and which did not include any infantry.26
Part of the reason they escaped at all was that towards five in the afternoon heavy gunfire was heard in the rear of the allied cavalry. For a time there was uncertainty on all sides as to which troops were in sight and what the gunfire meant. In fact this was two small French divisions, mostly of National Guardsmen, escorting a vast artillery and supply train, and pursued by Korff’s and Vasilchikov’s cavalry from the Army of Silesia. The French column, commanded by generals Pacthod and Amey, was roughly 5,000 strong. It initially encountered Korff’s cavalry at about eleven in the morning on the road from Chalons. Baron Korff had begun the 1812 campaign on the heavy side. By 1814 he was very large and becoming rather lazy. Disliking bivouacs, he had retired on the previous night to the nearby chateau of Sillery, accompanied by his subordinate generals. Meanwhile his Cossacks had uncovered a store of 60,000 bottles of wine into which all of Korff’s cavalry dived with joy. Not surprisingly, they got off to a rather slow start the next morning.27
By midday, however, the French were in full retreat down the road from Chalons to Bergeres which passes near Fere-Champenoise. By now they were surrounded not only by Korff’s men but also by the much more formidable Ilarion Vasilchikov. In all, the Russians had 4,000 cavalry and three batteries of horse artillery. The French generals abandoned their baggage train in mid-afternoon but even this did not save them. Already having exhausted themselves and suffered heavy casualties against Korff and Vasilchikov, their position became hopeless when their retreat took them straight into the arms of the main army’s cavalry and horse artillery at Fere- Champenoise. In the end the entire column was killed or taken prisoner.
The battle of Fere-Champenoise is often described as a tale of French heroism. At one level this is entirely just. Pacthod and Amey’s National Guardsmen showed a courage, discipline and endurance of which veterans would have been proud. Not all of Marmont and Mortier’s regiments did as well, however. Moreover, the achievement of the allied cavalry was also remarkable. Sixteen thousand horsemen, of whom three-quarters were Russian, had defeated 23,000 French troops, most of them infantry, killing or capturing half of them and taking almost all their guns. The battle of Fere-Champenoise is well compared to Dmitry Neverovsky’s desperate fight against Marshal Murat at Krasnyi in August 1812, though the numerical odds against Neverovsky were much greater. Like the French at Fere-Champenoise, a large proportion of Neverovsky’s men had been new recruits who showed great courage and discipline during their first battle. The Russian generals succeeded at Fere-Champenoise where Murat failed at Krasnyi partly because, unlike him, they got their horse artillery to the battlefield. They also coordinated their attacks and adapted their tactics to the terrain much more skilfully.28
With Marmont and Mortier in flight, the road to Paris was open. The only real chance of defending the capital was if Napoleon and his army could return in time. Even if the emperor arrived on his own he was likely to galvanize and coordinate the defence, and overawe potential traitors in the city. Not until 27 March, however, was Napoleon aware of the fact that he had been tricked and that the enemy armies were advancing on Paris. By now the allies had three days’ march on him. After consulting with Caulaincourt, Bassano and his marshals he decided that he must abandon his assault on the allied rear and race back to save his capital, but it was too late. By the time he approached the city in the late evening of 30 March the battle of Paris had been lost and his capital was on the point of surrender. Worse still, Napoleon’s enemies in Paris were stirring. On the emperor’s orders his wife, son and government left Paris on the eve of the battle so as not to be captured. With all the key figures in the Bonapartist regime gone and the allies on the point of occupying Paris, the moment had arrived for Napoleon’s opponents to seize the initiative. Along with all other top officials, Talleyrand had been ordered to leave Paris but he contrived to evade these orders without seeming openly to flout Napoleon’s authority.29
On the other side of the lines, now only a few kilometres away, was Karl Nesselrode, to whom Talleyrand had slipped so much secret advice and information in the years before 1812. When Napoleon launched his assault on allied communications on 22 March, almost all the allied diplomats had been cut off from headquarters and had scuttled southwards to safety, to the undisguised glee of many of the generals, who were glad to be rid of them. The one exception was Nesselrode, who had got away just in time from Chaumont to find his way back to
