There were only two realistic options: either to preempt the Allies by
defeating the Prussian and Anglo-Dutch armies before the Russians and
Austrians could join them, or to remain on the defensive. The latter
seemed the better policy, as it would buy time in which the French
themselves could build their planned force of 8oo,ooo; even if the Allies
advanced on Paris in the summer, he would have 20o,ooo men to defend
the capital as against a mere 90,000 in 1814. There was the additional
advantage that the advancing enemy would have to leave significant
detachments behind as each successive fortress was taken; the disadvant
age was that large tracts of northern and eastern France (the very areas
where Napoleon enjoyed most support) would have to be abandoned to
the enemy.
If, on the other hand, he went for the preemptive strike option and it
failed, this would precipitate a much more rapid Allied descent on Paris.
It was a tall order to pit just I4o,ooo men against 224,000 of the enemy
(his latest intelligence estimates put the Anglo-Dutch at I04,ooo and the
Prussians and Saxons under Blucher at 12o,ooo), but Napoleon consoled
himself with the thought that in 1814, with just 4o,ooo men, he had won
a string of victories against enemy forces six times as large. The main
advantage of a successful preemptive strike was likely to be political:
Napoleon gambled that if Wellington was defeated, the Liverpool
government would fall and the incoming Whig administration would
make peace. Aware, too that the British and Prussians were poles apart in
their political aims and did not have a unified military command, he
thought there was a good chance of driving a wedge between them and
vanquishing them by local superiority of numbers. Above all, though, the
political tail wagged the military dog. Napoleon had had to make
concessions to get even grudging and qualified support from the notables;
they would certainly not support anything more than a short campaign,
and to maintain himself in power thereafter his only option would be the
Terror of I793· He therefore decided to go for the preemptive strike.
Yet even before he -Set out for Belgium, Napoleon made three bad
errors of judgement. Even at i:filslate stage he could have had the erratic
Murat on his side to command his right wing. Instead he had the newest
marshal, Grouchy, whose incompetence and lack of imagination had
ruined Hoche's 1796 descent on Ireland. As his principal field
commander he had the headstrong and unreliable Ney, when he could
have had the brilliant Suchet. Davout, too was wasted in a purely
administrative capacity at the Ministry of War, also doubling as Governor
of Paris. A fu rther blow fell on I June when his peerless chief of staff
Berthier threw himself (or was he pushed?) from a window in the
marcin
(Marcin)
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