Battle of Château-Thierry (1814)

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 12th of February 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte stood within 75 kilometers of Paris, chasing two battered Allied corps toward a single bridge over the Marne River. The bridge at Chateau-Thierry was the only way out. If the French could seize it, tens of thousands of Prussian and Russian soldiers would be trapped with a river at their backs. What unfolded that day was one of the most desperate rearguard actions of the entire Napoleonic era. It was part of a dazzling sequence of battles Napoleon later called his finest generalship, yet it ended in his deepest frustration. Two Allied corps escaped. One French marshal failed at a critical moment. And the war ground on for two more months. How did Napoleon engineer such a bold campaign with so few troops? Why could he win every battle of that week and still lose the war? And what happened to the 400 soldiers who fought their way to a bridge that was no longer there?

• 2. Six Days, Badly Strung Out

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  Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher's Army of Silesia had good reason to feel confident after the 1st of February 1814. At La Rothiere, the Allies had beaten Napoleon in open battle, and Blucher's generals believed the war would soon be over. That optimism shaped a fateful decision: the two main Allied armies would separate and advance on Paris by different routes. Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, would push west through Troyes along the Seine. Blucher would swing north to Chalons-sur-Marne and then drive west along the Marne valley toward Meaux. One historian estimated the two Allied forces together numbered 200,000 men, against 70,000 French. The Allies held an enormous numerical advantage, but they were about to spread it thin. By the 8th of February, Blucher's Army of Silesia stretched itself across 44 miles of road. Farthest west was Sacken's cavalry at Viels-Maisons; Olsufiev's small corps of 4,000 men sat 12 miles east of Sacken at Etoges; and Kaptzevich and Kleist were another 25 miles east at Chalons-sur-Marne. The army was a long, loosely connected chain. Napoleon, gathering a strike force of 20,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, aimed straight for the weakest link.

• 3. Three Blows in Three Days

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  Napoleon arrived at Sezanne with the Imperial Guard on the 9th of February after a punishing march over muddy roads. French farmers brought their teams of horses to help drag the cannons through the quagmire. The night before, Russian General Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly had quietly pulled Alexander Seslavin's screening force away to the extreme left flank without telling Blucher. The Prussian commander spent the next several days believing that Seslavin still watched his exposed left flank. He was wrong. Napoleon struck Zakhar Dmitrievich Olsufiev's corps at Champaubert on the 10th of February, effectively destroying it. Olsufiev sent several messengers to Blucher reporting that he was under attack; Blucher ignored them. The 1,500 Russian survivors were reorganized into just three or four combined battalions. The following day, Napoleon turned west and struck Sacken's 18,000 Russians and Yorck's 18,000 Prussians at Montmirail. Sacken's corps suffered 2,000 killed and wounded, plus 800 captured along with 13 field guns and six regimental colors. Yorck sustained 900 casualties of his own. Yorck's belated intervention probably saved Sacken's corps from total destruction, but both commanders now had only one direction to go: north, toward the Marne.

• 4. The Race to the Bridge

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  Marshal Edouard Mortier commanded the French pursuit on the main highway on the 12th of February, while Napoleon personally led a second column farther west through Rozoy. The emperor also ordered Marshal Jacques MacDonald to seize the all-important bridge at Chateau-Thierry. At dawn that day, Sacken's battered corps passed through Yorck's lines near Montfaucon and dropped off a rear brigade under General Heidenreich, consisting of the Tambov and Kostroma Regiments. Friedrich von Katzler's advance guard stood at Montfaucon with the 1st and 7th Prussian Brigades and reserve cavalry under Georg Ludwig von Wahlen-Jurgass in support. At 1:00 in the afternoon, Mortier's advance encountered Katzler's Prussians near Viffort and the Caquerets Hills. The position was attacked by two battalions of Old Guard Foot Chasseurs and Napoleon's duty squadrons led by Claude-Etienne Guyot. Katzler withdrew when the French began turning his flanks. Farther along the highway, Heinrich Wilhelm von Horn's 7th Brigade barred the French advance. While six French battalions under Charles-Joseph Christiani struck from the front, four divisions of elite cavalry under Pierre David de Colbert-Chabanais, Jean-Marie Defrance, Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and Louis Marie Levesque de Laferriere began swinging around the Prussian left. Yorck understood the danger immediately: with the Marne at his back, a cavalry envelopment could end everything.

• 5. Cavalry, Cannons, and a Destroyed Bridge

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  Yorck ordered Jurgass to move 3,000 reserve cavalry from the highway to the left flank to counter the French threat. They were joined by the Brandenburg Hussar Regiment under Friedrich von Sohr. Many of Yorck's cavalrymen were Landwehr, second-class soldiers pressed into service. Defrance and Laferriere placed their Guard Dragoons in the first line and the Horse Grenadiers, cuirassiers, and horse carabiniers in the second. When the Prussian front line charged, it met a volley of carbine fire from the dragoons. At the same time, Brandenburg Dragoons charged the 10th Hussars while French dragoons routed the Russian dragoons. A large cavalry melee developed near the Petite-Baloy farm. The French prevailed, driving the Prussian first line back into its second and sending both retreating in confusion. Two cannons and a howitzer were seized. Farther down the road, a French cavalry force under Louis-Michel Letort de Lorville circled around Nogentel. As the retreating Prussian column emerged from the village, Letort's horsemen charged into the Silesian and Leib Grenadier Battalions and the 5th Silesian Regiment, capturing two more cannons and a howitzer from 6-pounder Battery Nr. 2. Heidenreich's rear brigade, after firing away all its ammunition, was overrun and captured along with three more cannons. Within the streets of Chateau-Thierry itself, Major Stockhausen's two East Prussian battalions formed the last rear guard. The Leib Fusilier Battalion under Major Holleben guarded the pontoon bridge. Stockhausen's action bought enough time for other units to cross, but when his 400 survivors finally fought their way to the bridge, it had been destroyed. They were compelled to surrender. A Prussian 12-pounder battery firing from the north bank of the Marne prevented French pursuit.

• 6. Losses and a Missing Marshal

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  Historians David G. Chandler and Francis Loraine Petre counted 1,250 Prussian casualties, 1,500 Russian casualties, and 600 French. Other authorities placed French losses at 400-600, Prussian killed and wounded at 22 officers and 1,229 enlisted men, and Russian losses at 1,200-1,500. The French also captured nine cannons and a large haul of baggage and transport. When Mortier eventually rebuilt the Chateau-Thierry bridge, it took a full day; the delay let the two Allied corps reach Oulchy-la-Ville that evening. Mortier then led the divisions of Christiani, Colbert, and Defrance in pursuit, rounding up only 300-400 stragglers and finding a number of artillery caissons the Allies had destroyed in their hasty retreat. Napoleon wrote that his Foot and Horse Guard had covered themselves with glory and that the enemy seemed struck by a singular terror. Yet the emperor was extremely disappointed. MacDonald had barely moved and failed to capture the Chateau-Thierry bridge at the critical moment. Sacken and Yorck had escaped. The next day, Yorck's troops marched to Fismes and Sacken moved to Reims, where Blucher's army began to reassemble. On the 12th of February, while the battle raged, Blucher had waited at Vertus for news, eventually concluding that Napoleon was retreating. Two days later he pushed west with Kaptzevich and Kleist toward what would become the Battle of Vauchamps, where the surviving remnant of Olsufiev's destroyed corps would lose all its remaining cannons and suffer 600 more casualties.