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By Root 2731 0

no more than the £ million that had initially been on offer - but the final treaties, which in both cases incorporated a promise not to make a separate peace, were not signed until 14 and 15 June. Thereafter British aid was extensive: counting aid in kind as well as money, as well as payments made under the so-called ‘federative paper’ scheme agreed in the autumn, by 1814 Prussia had received £2,008,682, Austria £1,639,523, Russia £3,366,334 and Sweden £2,334,992 while a small British expeditionary force was also soon being readied for service in northern Germany. Yet there was still no Sixth Coalition as such. Britain was linked to Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Spain and Portugal by separate treaties, while Russia had agreements with both Prussia and Spain.

Given the problems that the Allies were to face in defeating Napoleon, British aid was vital. Backed by his new grande armée, Napoleon was easily able to hold his own against the roughly similar number of Prussians and Russians available for service at this time. Striking east into Saxony (whose monarch had fled into exile in Prague rather than declare for the Allies in the style of Prussia), the emperor overshot the Russians and Prussians, who were advancing westwards on a roughly parallel course in accordance with plans developed by the Prussian chief of staff, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, for a march on the Rhine designed to bring the German people out in revolt and force the princes to change sides. Discovering that there were French troops in their vicinity, the leading allied forces turned on them at Lützen only to find not only that far more of the enemy were in their vicinity than they expected, but also that Napoleon’s main body was perfectly poised to fall on their flank. By the end of the day there were 12,000 allied casualties, including Scharnhorst, who was mortally wounded, while the Russians and Prussians had been badly enveloped. Yet Lützen was not the decisive victory for which Napoleon was looking. Want of cavalry ensured that the grande armée was not able to deliver the hammer blows of the past, and so its badly shaken opponents were able to retire in good order. Still worse, French losses came to some 20,000 men, the fact being that training and experience were so lacking amongst the new troops that they had no option but to operate in the most clumsy and unsophisticated of styles and, in consequence, suffered casualties that were far worse than should have been the case.

Nor did matters improve as the campaign went on. After the battle of Lützen the Allies abandoned their offensive and fell back to a strong defensive position at Bautzen. Here they were attacked by Napoleon on 20 May. Well protected though their troops were - the front line ran along a line of hills and was studded with entrenchments and redoubts - they were vulnerable to attack from the north as their right flank was open to envelopment. Only a few miles south, meanwhile, lay the Austrian frontier and deliberately so: the allied advance westwards had hugged the northern limits of Moravia so as to ensure that Napoleon could not interpose himself between the Prussians and Russians on the one hand and the Austrians on the other, and thereby deter the latter from joining the war. Napoleon was therefore able to formulate a plan that might well have caused his men to triumph. After Lützen, the grande armée had moved east in two columns. Led by the emperor himself, the southernmost column headed straight for Bautzen and struck the enemy more or less head on. The second column, which was commanded by Marshal Ney, had advanced on a more northerly axis, however, and this was now ordered to swing south and take the Allies in the flank and rear. The only line of retreat left to the latter being towards the Austrian frontier, they would face a straight choice of surrender, or violating Austrian neutrality, thereby - or so it was hoped - forcing Vienna to come out in support of Napoleon. Again, however, things went wrong. Arriving on the battlefield on the second day of the battle, Ney misunderstood