fumbling. He sent word to Eugene that Hamburg was more important
than Dresden, so Eugene pulled out and occupied Magdeburg instead,
leaving Field-Marshal Blucher and the Prussians to enter Dresden.
Napoleon then announced his battle-plan: to open the offensive in May,
retake Danzig and then throw the enemy back behind the Vistula. He
therefore moved to link with Eugene so that he would have rso,ooo men
on the Saale; he then intended to advance on Dresden via Leipzig, seize
the Elbe crossings in the allied rear and so cut them off fr om Berlin and
Silesia. With any luck, this would lead to a battle and a quick victory.
The revised plan did not mean that the Emperor had lost sight of his
grand strategy in the north, but he needed a triumph in the south to
retrieve his own reputation, restore morale in his Army and dissuade the
waverers in the Confederation of the Rhine.
He spent much of March in painstaking preparations and pepping up
the confidence of the marshals, from whom there was much muttering to
the effect that the Emperor was over the hill as a military commander and
now listened to court sycophants rather than them. A litany of complaints
contained the following: the Emperor rarely visited battlefields any more,
issued vague and impenetrable orders, and showed no concern for the
increasing indiscipline and looting that was making the Grande Armee a
byword for pillage and alienating support continent-wide. Informed of
these canards, Napoleon decided to underline the fact that the marshals
owed all their wealth and prosperity to him. Pointedly he created a new
title for Ney, whose proper mark was as an unimaginative corps
commander: the 'bravest of the brave' was now dubbed Prince of the
Moskova, with a month's leave and a further annuity of 8oo,ooo francs a
year.
On rs April r8r3 Napoleon left St-Cloud, reached Mainz two days
later and stayed there for a week, working on details of the campaign.
Ney's III Corps had a strength of 45,000, Marmont's VI Corps 25,000
while the depleted IV Corps under Bertrand and XII Corps under
Oudinot together barely mustered 36,ooo. The Guard had been brought
up to a strength of rs,ooo. Additionally the Emperor could call on
Davout's I Corps (2o,ooo), II Corps (the Army of the Elbe) and units
fr om V, VIII and XI Corps, plus Sebastiani's 14,000 cavalry.
His main worry was the severe shortage of horses, which deprived him
of an effective cavalry arm, but he comforted himself with the thought
that the Allies were overconfident and could probably be gulled into a
battle. After all, was it not Russian veterans against raw French recruits?
Napoleon therefore set out for Leipzig with a 2oo,ooo-strong army and
was at Erfurt on the 25th. Heavy fighting began almost immediately,
marcin
(Marcin)
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