Trachenberg war-planning conference, he had travelled to Austrian headquarters for lengthy discussions with Schwarzenberg and Radetsky, who agreed with the Trachenberg plan’s principles. Austrian caution did subsequently modify the plan in one respect: all allied armies were now enjoined to avoid battle against Napoleon himself unless the other allied armies were able to join in.18
In many ways the Trachenberg plan made good sense. Napoleon was in Germany and the only way to remove him was by a coordinated offensive of all the allied armies. Avoiding a battle between any one allied army and Napoleon’s main forces under his personal command was also sensible. Whether it was achievable was another matter. An army which invaded Saxony and then retreated in the face of Napoleon’s counter-movements would be doing a great deal of exhausting marching. Avoiding battle with Napoleon on your tail was anyway easier said than done. The Russian army would probably have the skill in rearguard actions and the endurance to sustain this strategy. Whether the Austrian army or the Prussian Landwehr could do so was a moot point. In the absence of radio or telephones it was in any case impossible to coordinate the concentric movements of three armies in anything but the barest outlines. Some armies were bound to move more quickly than others. As the allies closed in, Napoleon’s chances of using his central position to strike one and hold off the others for a few crucial days would improve. The personalities of the three allied commanders added to this likelihood. Blucher was bold, aggressive and much inclined to take risks. He had no fear of Napoleon. Schwarzenberg and Bernadotte were the exact opposite in all respects.
At the beginning of the campaign Alexander seems to have had high hopes that Bernadotte would mount a vigorous offensive. Perhaps he was seduced by his respect for foreign, and above all Napoleonic, generals. In a letter to Bernadotte of 21 August, for example, he held out the prospect that with Napoleon seemingly moving eastwards the Swedish crown prince could storm into his rear, taking Dresden and Leipzig, occupying the defiles into Bohemia, and even dispatching light forces westwards to encourage the confederation of the Rhine princes to abandon their alliance with Napoleon. In fact, however, there was nothing in Bernadotte’s past to suggest that he might be willing or able to carry out such grandiose offensive operations. Over the years he had shown himself to be an excellent administrator and a skilful politician but nothing more than a competent, if cautious, general.19
Bernadotte was also operating under serious constraints, some of them political. The Swedish elites who had offered him their crown had done so in the expectation that this would improve relations with Napoleon and maybe help their planned revenge against Russia. Instead Bernadotte had led Sweden into alliance with Alexander, abandoning what seemed a golden opportunity to regain Finland in the process. To justify this policy, Bernadotte had to deliver on his promise to take Norway from the Danish king in compensation. In one sense this bound him to the allies, because Napoleon would never agree to robbing his Danish ally. Allied victory was a necessary but far from sufficient condition as regards grabbing Norway for Sweden, however. Apart from anything else, this was a minor issue for the allied great powers. They would be very slow to commit their own troops against Denmark. Bernadotte would also be well advised to have Norway firmly in his grasp before the horse-trading began at a post-war peace conference. All this helps to explain why the crown prince was so determined to keep his Swedish corps intact during the autumn campaign. There was also a simpler reason. Of all the allied troops the Swedes were probably the worst. If their infantry got into serious combat with the French there was every chance they would be badly mauled. The likely result would be that Bernadotte would return to Sweden with no Norway and half an army. In that case his chances of gaining the throne on the king’s death would probably be slim.20
The Army of the North also faced a strategic dilemma. If Napoleon advanced against Blucher or Schwarzenberg at the beginning of the campaign both had room to retreat. Schwarzenberg, for example, could move back on to his supply bases, fortresses and good defensive positions in central and southern Bohemia. With the two other allied armies and a horde of light cavalry moving into his rear there were strict limits to how long Napoleon could pursue either Blucher or Schwarzenberg.
Bernadotte’s army on the other hand was deployed right in front of Berlin. He himself might wish to retreat towards his own Swedish bases on the Baltic coastline but if he abandoned Berlin without a struggle he would face revolt from his Prussian generals, whose troops constituted the biggest contingent in his army. Bernadotte knew this and therefore planned to beat off any French attack on Berlin. His nervousness was increased by his conviction that seizing the Prussian capital would be Napoleon’s first priority. He was actually not far wrong: Napoleon was obsessed by Berlin and directed two offensives against it, led by marshals Oudinot and Ney, in the first month of the war. Had the initial battles with the armies of Bohemia and Silesia gone successfully, Napoleon’s next move would have been to move northwards against Bernadotte with his Guards and the bulk of his other reserves.21
The armies of Silesia and Bohemia were in a safer position than Bernadotte so long as they stood on the defensive. If Napoleon was to be driven out of Germany they could not do this for long, however. Once they invaded Napoleon’s base in central Saxony they also would be vulnerable. In Schwarzenberg’s case his troops would have to cross the Erzgebirge, in other words the mountain range that ran along the whole length of the Saxon–Bohemian frontier. The only two decent roads from Bohemia across the Erzgebirge were the highways to Dresden and Leipzig. As they crossed the range these were 100 kilometres apart. If Schwarzenberg spread his advancing columns across both highways and the mountain paths between them, there was a chance that Napoleon would pounce on one of his flanks before the rest of the army could come to his aid. Rapid lateral movement across the steep valleys and along the winding mountain paths of the Erzgebirge was difficult even for messengers, let alone large bodies of troops. On the other hand, if Schwarzenberg tried to concentrate most of his army on just one highway, logistical problems would mount and his columns would move very slowly. That would increase the possibility of Napoleon pouncing on the leading divisions of the allied army while the rest of Schwarzenberg’s army was crawling forward in a long crocodile across the mountains.22
If Blucher’s army was to invade central Saxony it had to cross the Elbe. All the fortified crossings were in Napoleon’s hands, which meant that only he could move his troops across the river rapidly and in full security. The only way for Blucher to cross was by building pontoon bridges. For this he depended on his Russian pontoon companies, who did an outstanding job in getting the Army of Silesia across first the Elbe and later the Rhine. Their bridges were distinctly ramshackle affairs. A senior Russian staff officer in Blucher’s army recalled that ‘these bridges, which only lay a couple of feet above the surface of the water, had to be crossed with great care. They moved up and down all the time, horses had to be led, and any damage to the tarpaulin of one of the barges could immediately sink it.’ Once the army had crossed the river, either it dismantled the bridge and abandoned its communications or it had to construct field fortifications to protect the bridgeheads. The latter could never be as strong as permanent fortresses and therefore required much bigger garrisons. An army crossed such bridges much more slowly than over a permanent structure. It therefore had a higher chance of being caught by the enemy while moving across a river. The nightmare for any commander was to be forced to cross such a bridge in a hurry with Napoleon on his tail. True disaster loomed if the weather then turned against them, damaged the pontoons or made the bridge impossible to cross.23
Inevitably, to see things just from the allied perspective is to forget that Napoleon too faced serious problems. By standing on the defensive in Saxony with a large army he doomed his men, and above all his horses, to hunger. The marches and counter-marches imposed by the allied Trachenberg strategy exhausted Napoleon’s young conscripts. The hostility of the local population and, above all, his great inferiority in light cavalry made it difficult to gather intelligence. His main base at Dresden, on which his army’s supply of food, ammunition and fodder greatly depended, was inadequately fortified and only one day’s march from the Austrian border. Odeleben, still in Napoleon’s headquarters, relates these and other problems and recalls that Napoleon’s great aim and hope in the autumn campaign was to pounce on allied mistakes. This hope was realistic given the theatre of operations, the problems of coalition warfare, and the failings of the allied commanders.24
Telling the story of the first weeks of the autumn 1813 campaign in Germany is complicated by the fact that fighting occurred on three distinct fronts. The main army under Schwarzenberg in the south, Blucher’s Army of Silesia in the east and Bernadotte’s Army of the North in front of Berlin operated independently and it is necessary to follow each of their campaigns in turn for the sake of clarity. Only after the first half of the autumn campaign was concluded and the three allied armies advanced into Saxony towards Leipzig is it possible to tell the story of the campaign as a single integrated narrative.
Predictably, of the three allied army commanders it was Blucher who was off to the quickest start after the expiry of the armistice. In fact, thundering that ‘it’s time to finish with diplomatic buffoonery’, he went into action even before hostilities were supposed to start.25 Egged on by Barclay, he seized as an excuse minor
