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By Root 2609 0

also now came forward 40,000 Swedes and 127,000 Austrians. Dividing his forces so that he could strike out in several directions at once, Napoleon succeeded for a while in staving off disaster. Yet France’s generals were so used to the emperor’s guiding hand that few of them were capable of independent command and several were heavily defeated. Where Napoleon himself was in charge, things were better, but the allied generals had agreed to refuse battle whenever he was present, the result being that all his offensives achieved was to exhaust his own troops. All the time, meanwhile, the supply convoys and communications of the grande armée were being constantly harassed by parties of light cavalry and Cossacks. Desperately hungry, the troops were also in severe need of new footwear and clothing, all this being made still worse by the coming of an autumn marked by torrential rains. Confidence in the French camp had been lacking to start with: ‘The emperor’s fête fell on 15 August ... This was the last time that the French army celebrated its emperor’s birthday. There was little enthusiasm, for even the least foreseeing of the officers realized that we were on the eve of great changes, and their forebodings were reflected in the minds of the subalterns . . . Our allies of the Confederation of the Rhine were wavering and the Saxon General Thielmann with his brigade had already gone over to the Prussians. So there was much uneasiness and little confidence among our troops.’76 As can be imagined, hope was now running out fast.

In the six weeks [Napoleon] spent in and around Dresden, he lost a lot of men. This was as much the result of the want of supplies and the desertion and sickness that began to make themselves felt as of battle. The hospitals were overwhelmed. Our soldiers were lying dead on the roads, having collapsed from hunger, cold and misery . . . After the unfortunate affair on the river Bober, a violent scene took place between Marshal Macdonald and the emperor. Going straight into the marshal’s camp, the emperor shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Monsieur le Maréchal, what have you done with the army I gave you?’ At this, Macdonald indignantly replied, ‘You no longer have an army: there is nothing left but a few unfortunates dying of starvation. Go and have a look in the mountains: you will find plenty of soldiers there all right, but they are all dead of misery. You have lost everything: your only hope is peace.’77

Such was the mystique of Napoleon and his army that the emperor’s French soldiers continued to show extraordinary levels of devotion, but the subject nationalities began to melt away in large numbers, while in the grande armée as a whole morale was clearly very fragile. When Ney was defeated at Dennewitz on 6 September, for example, the day ended in a panic-stricken rout that swept away even formations that were still intact. In addition, there were stirrings behind the lines. After months of procrastination, on 8 October Bavaria, menaced by Austrian invasion, signed a treaty of alliance with Vienna that committed her to uniting her forces with the Allies. With the allied armies closing in, the only solution was either negotiations in good faith or a retreat to the Rhine, but neither of these options was acceptable to Napoleon:

The emperor one morning sent one of his orderly officers to me to ask my opinion of the situation, and what we had better do. We were now in October [and] without rations, except such as could be collected by main force . . . I told the officer plainly that, unless the emperor immediately took the offensive - that is, if he saw any chance of success, which, in my opinion was improbable as we had hitherto failed to force our entrance into Bohemia - he exposed us to serious catastrophes: the army was daily growing weaker by sickness and the ordinary losses of war; that an unsuccessful battle would weaken us still further, and use up . . . ammunition which we could not replace; that the magazines were empty [and] the country ruined; [and] that the prudent course would