Battle of Champaubert

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  On the 10th of February 1814, a 19-year-old French conscript with fewer than six months of military service walked up to one of Russia's senior generals and took him prisoner. That moment of extraordinary reversal captures something essential about the Battle of Champaubert. What questions does that image raise? How did a green recruit come to capture a general? How did Napoleon, nine days after suffering a defeat at La Rothière, find himself in a position to destroy an entire Russian corps? And what does it mean that the defeated general, Count Zakhar Dmitrievich Olsufiev, had chosen to fight rather than retreat, partly to clear his name from earlier criticisms? Champaubert sits 22 kilometers southwest of Épernay and 85 kilometers east of Paris. On that February morning, the village became the stage for the opening act of what history would call the Six Days' Campaign.

• 2. An Army Pulled Apart

  ›

  On the 1st of February 1814, Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher and Austrian Field Marshal Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, combined their forces to defeat Napoleon at the Battle of La Rothière. The Allied force numbered 80,000 troops against Napoleon's 45,000. Both sides took roughly 6,000 casualties, but the Allies captured 50-60 artillery pieces. The victory put the Allies in high spirits.

  Then they made a decision that would cost them dearly. Rather than keeping their armies together, Blücher and Schwarzenberg chose to separate. Blücher would drive northwest from Châlons-sur-Marne toward Meaux; Schwarzenberg would angle south from Troyes toward Paris. The separation turned a coherent force into two isolated columns, each marching into territory where they could no longer support each other.

  By the 5th of February, a further problem had emerged. Russian General Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly shifted Alexander Nikitich Seslavin's scouting force from Schwarzenberg's right flank to the left, without telling Blücher. Since Blücher had no liaison officer with Seslavin's unit, he did not know that a gap in his surveillance had opened up on his left side. That gap was exactly the space through which Napoleon would soon strike.

• 3. Blücher's Overconfidence

  ›

  Karl Freiherr von Müffling, a staff officer with Blücher's Army of Silesia, recorded that the army counted 57,000 men: Sacken's corps at 20,000, Yorck's at 18,000, and the combined corps of Kaptzevich, Olsufiev, and Kleist at 19,000. Those numbers looked formidable on paper. The problem was geography.

  By the 8th of February, Blücher's forces were strung across a front of 44 miles. Sacken's cavalry had reached Viels-Maisons while his infantry remained at Montmirail, 12 miles to the east. Olsufiev's small corps held Étoges, another 12 miles beyond. Blücher's headquarters sat 9 miles further east at Vertus. Kaptzevich and Kleist were positioned 16 miles east of their commander in Châlons-sur-Marne. Yorck's corps was at least 12 miles to the north, cut off by bad roads.

  On that same night, Sacken's Cossacks were driven out of Sézanne. Rather than report the incident to Blücher, Sacken did not bother. The force responsible was Marmont's corps, Napoleon's leading column. Blücher's chief of staff August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, when told of cavalry appearing near Talus-Saint-Prix on the Petit Morin River, dismissed the horsemen as representing no danger. Gneisenau also authorized Sacken to continue pursuing MacDonald to the west, even after Blücher finally received word that night that Napoleon was at Sézanne.

• 4. The French Advance

  ›

  Napoleon left 39,000 troops to occupy Schwarzenberg's attention. The formations left behind included Oudinot's VII Corps, Victor's II Corps, Gérard's Reserve of Paris, Rottembourg's Young Guard infantry division, Milhaud's V Cavalry Corps, and smaller units. His striking force bound for Blücher numbered roughly 20,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, supported by 120 guns.

  The march was grinding. Roads turned to mud after days of rain. Provision wagons failed to appear and the soldiers went hungry. The artillery became so bogged down that the rural population, tired of suffering under the Allied occupation and now eager to help Napoleon, turned out in large numbers to haul the guns through the mire. Bringing up the rear at Nogent was Marshal Édouard Mortier, duc de Trévise, commanding two Old Guard infantry divisions.

  By the 9th of February, Marmont's cavalry advance guard had already appeared at Talus-Saint-Prix on the Petit Morin River, the same probe that Gneisenau had waved off. The following morning, Blücher was accompanying Kaptzevich and Kleist's column on its march southwest toward Sézanne when the sound of artillery began rolling in from the right, near Champaubert. Olsufiev, whom Blücher had ordered to march south from Champaubert that day, was already under attack.

• 5. The Fight at Champaubert

  ›

  Napoleon's force caught Olsufiev's IX Corps near the village of Baye, just south of Champaubert. The French enjoyed a six-to-one numerical advantage, one of the largest imbalances the war had produced in France's favor. Olsufiev had left the Saint-Prix bridge over the Petit Morin unguarded, and Napoleon's cavalry seized it early in the morning. Marmont's two VI Corps divisions, Joseph Lagrange's 3rd Division and Étienne Pierre Sylvestre Ricard's 8th Division, led the column across.

  Olsufiev's pickets were overrun by 10:00 am. Badly outnumbered, the Russian commander nonetheless chose to stand and fight. His decision was not purely tactical. He had been criticized for losing a château at the Battle of Brienne on the 29th of January, and blamed for mishandling his troops at La Rothière. Sacken had wanted him court-martialed. Facing those pressures, Olsufiev concluded that fighting it out was the only way to clear his name. He sent messengers to Blücher for reinforcements. Blücher dismissed the couriers, insisting Napoleon was not present and that the attackers were no more than 2,000 French partisans.

  Olsufiev sent General Evstafi Evstafievich Udom with two jäger battalions to push French skirmishers out of Baye. As the pressure increased, Udom's force grew to include the 10th, 12th, 22nd, and 38th Jäger Regiments plus six guns. By around 11:00 am, Ricard had forced Udom's troops back into Baye and the nearby woods. At 1:00 pm, Olsufiev held a council of war in which his generals voted to retreat to Étoges. He refused. He had specific orders to hold Champaubert.

  Marmont organized a general attack around the key terrain, a small wood. The 113th Line Infantry advanced in skirmish order, supported by a horse artillery battery and a lancer squadron under Cyrille-Simon Picquet. French cavalry under Bordesoulle and Jean-Pierre Doumerc began edging around both Russian flanks. The 7th Battalion of the 4th Light Infantry became the first French troops into Baye; Pelleport's brigade took Bannay. Olsufiev pulled back to the Andecy Farm, then to Champaubert itself.

  At Champaubert's crossroads, Prince Konstantin Poltoratsky's brigade, holding the Apsheron and Nacheburg Infantry Regiments and nine guns, drove off multiple cavalry charges. Ricard's soldiers stormed the village, lost it in a counterattack, and then clawed back into part of it. Around 3:00 pm, with escape to the east already cut off, Poltoratsky began a fighting retreat to the north, his men maintaining square formation. About two miles north of Champaubert, ammunition began to run out. When the French brought up a horse artillery battery and opened fire with canister shot, the nearby woods offered no refuge; they were full of French skirmishers. Poltoratsky surrendered his two regiments and their cannons.

  Olsufiev's main body veered north, attempting to slip into a swampy forest. Exposing a flank in the maneuver, Olsufiev's column was hit by a brigade of Bordesoulle's cuirassiers on Marmont's order. The heavy cavalry split the Russian formation in two. Soldiers threw away their muskets and packs and fled into the woods. Marmont blocked the exits. Udom and division commander Peter Yakovlevich Kornilov escaped with 1,500-2,000 men, reaching Port-à-Binson on the Marne that night by cutting cross-country. Olsufiev himself was taken prisoner by that 19-year-old conscript.

• 6. Losses and Reckoning

  ›

  The casualty figures from Champaubert vary depending on the source. Digby Smith credited French losses at 600 killed and wounded from the 13,300 infantry and 1,700 cavalry engaged. David G. Chandler placed French losses as low as 200 men. For the Russians, Smith and Gaston Bodart agreed on 2,400 men and 9 guns lost from a force of around 4,000. George Nafziger cited sources placing Russian dead at 1,400 with a further 1,894 captured, including three generals and 21 guns. Francis Loraine Petre credited Olsufiev with 4,000 infantry and 24 guns, of which 1,600-1,700 men and 15 guns got away. By any account, the IX Corps had been destroyed as a fighting formation.

  Kornilov took command of what remained. Roughly 1,500 survivors were organized into three or four temporary battalions. That shattered remnant did not last long. At the Battle of Vauchamps on the 14th of February, the IX Corps suffered 600 more casualties and lost all its remaining guns.

  Captured along with Olsufiev was General-major Prince Konstantin Poltoratsky. When news of the disaster reached Blücher, he ordered Kaptzevich and Kleist to reverse their march and return to Vertus overnight. Sacken, who had pushed as far west as Trilport, was called back to Montmirail. Yorck was directed to link up with Sacken near Montmirail while keeping an escape route open across the Marne at Château-Thierry.

• 7. Napoleon's Next Move

  ›

  Champaubert placed Napoleon in an unusual position. He now sat directly in the middle of Blücher's overextended Army of Silesia, with fragments of the Prussian army on both sides of him. Advancing east would simply push Kaptzevich and Kleist further back, accomplishing little. But advancing west opened a different possibility: trapping and destroying Sacken and Yorck before they could escape across the Marne.

  Napoleon chose west. He ordered Marmont with Lagrange's division and the I Cavalry Corps to stay at Étoges, watching Blücher and keeping him from interfering. At 7:00 pm on the 10th of February, Napoleon directed Étienne Marie Antoine Champion de Nansouty and two cavalry divisions to occupy Montmirail, with Ricard's division and the divisions under Ney and Mortier to follow in the morning. The Battle of Montmirail was fought the very next day against Sacken and Yorck, the second blow in what would become the Six Days' Campaign.