Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [188]
In time unpleasant realities began to undermine the enthusiasm of this German patriot. The good burghers of Hamburg were not, as he had hoped, the German equivalents of the Spanish population of Saragossa, willing to see their houses destroyed over their heads and to fight in the ruins against French attempts to take their city. After initial enthusiasm, volunteering fell away sharply. Greatly outnumbered in Saxony by Napoleon, allied headquarters could spare no regular Russian or Prussian forces to support Tettenborn. The last hope of saving Hamburg from Marshal Davout’s counter-offensive rested with Bernadotte’s Swedish corps, whose first units began to disembark in Stralsund from 18 March. When Bernadotte refused to come to Hamburg’s rescue, however, the city’s cause was lost and Tettenborn evacuated his great prize on 30 May.
The circumstances in which Hamburg fell were the first act in the ‘Black Legend’ created by German nationalists against Bernadotte. Many further acts followed in 1813. It was whispered against him that he had no intention of fighting the French seriously since he wished to win their sympathy and replace Napoleon on France’s throne. More realistically, Bernadotte was accused of caring nothing for the allied cause and of preserving his Swedish troops for the only war that mattered to him, which was the conquest of Norway from the Danes. The latter accusation had some force and Bernadotte, who infuriated both French and German nationalists, traditionally had a very bad press. But even one of his greatest critics, Sir Charles Stewart, who was the British envoy to Prussia, wrote in his memoirs that Bernadotte was correct not to commit Swedish forces to Hamburg.38
Bernadotte himself explained his actions to Alexander’s envoys, generals Peter van Suchtelen and Charles-André Pozzo di Borgo. He stated that half of his troops and much of his baggage had not arrived due to contrary winds when the appeal from Hamburg came. His outnumbered men would have faced Davout to their front with hostile Danish forces in their rear. Acknowledging the seriousness of Hamburg’s loss, Bernadotte argued that
despite all the misfortunes which this loss can bring, the defeat of the Swedish army would be a thousand times worse, and Hamburg would in that event be occupied for certain and the Danes would reunite with the French. Instead of this, I am concentrating my forces, I am organizing my troops and am receiving reinforcements from Sweden every day – and thereby I am making the French feel my presence and will stop them crossing the Elbe unless they do this in too great force.39
Though a big disappointment to German patriots, the Hamburg operation actually remained a great success from the point of view of allied headquarters. At the cost of a relative handful of Cossacks and cavalry, Napoleon’s best marshal, Davout, and roughly 40,000 French troops were occupied in what was a strategic backwater at a time when their presence on the Saxon battlefields could have made a decisive difference. In addition, the chaos encouraged in north-western Germany by Tettenborn, Chernyshev and other ‘partisan’ leaders totally disrupted the horse-fairs which traditionally occurred in the region at this time. For the French this was a serious matter. The biggest headache faced by Napoleon as he strove to re-create the Grande Armée was the shortage of cavalry; 175,000 horses had been lost in Russia and this proved to be a more serious matter than the lost manpower. In 1813 ‘France was so poor in horses’ (according to a nineteenth-century French expert) that even requisitioning private horses for the cavalry and other emergency measures ‘could only provide 29,000