Battle of La Rothière

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of La Rothière, fought on the 1st of February 1814, was one of the rare occasions when Napoleon faced a numerical disadvantage of roughly three to one and lost on French soil. A snowstorm swept across the plain. Artillery primers went wet. Muskets refused to fire. And yet the French held their ground for hours before retreating under cover of darkness.

  The battle raises questions that still occupy military historians. Why did Napoleon linger after the inconclusive clash at Brienne just days earlier? Why did the Coalition, after winning so decisively, allow the French army to slip away and regroup? And why did a victory that elated the Allied powers ultimately lead, within weeks, to a stinging reversal? The answers lie in the decisions made by a handful of commanders in the frozen fields outside a small French village.

• 2. A Coalition on the March

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  After the catastrophe at Leipzig, Napoleon retreated across the Rhine River in November 1813 with somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 French soldiers. He left 100,000 more garrisoned in German fortresses, and those men would be lost to him entirely during the campaign ahead. Former allies, Bavaria among them, switched sides and joined the Coalition forces massing on his borders.

  By the 1st of December 1813, Napoleon could deploy only 129,106 men to oppose the forces closing in from the east. Three Coalition armies were preparing to invade. Field Marshal Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, led the Army of Bohemia across the upper Rhine near Basel on the 20th of December 1813. Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher brought the Army of Silesia across the middle Rhine on the 1st of January 1814. General Ferdinand von Wintzingerode crossed the lower Rhine five days after that. On that same first day of the new year, the Army of Bohemia numbered 156,868 men and the Army of Silesia counted 77,100 soldiers. From a third force, Wintzingerode directed 36,000 Russians and General Friedrich Wilhelm von Bülow controlled 30,000 Prussians.

  Napoleon spread his scanty forces thin along the Rhine while scrambling to organize a new army. The First Battle of Bar-sur-Aube on the 24th of January 1814 marked the first significant clash of the campaign. Marshal Édouard Mortier, Duke of Treviso, fought there with 20,000 men before pulling back to Troyes. Napoleon himself reached the theater on the 26th of January, assumed command of the 41,303 soldiers available, and immediately set about attacking Blücher before Schwarzenberg could reinforce him.

• 3. Brienne and the Fatal Pause

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  At Brienne on the 29th of January, French troops came close enough to Blücher that he was nearly captured in a sudden rush. Historian David G. Chandler regarded the outcome as inconclusive; historian Francis Loraine Petre noted that Napoleon failed to destroy Blücher's army before Schwarzenberg could come to its assistance.

  Blücher fell back the next morning to a strong position covering the exits from the Bar-sur-Aube defile, then moved to Trannes, south of Brienne. Napoleon remained fixed on the 30th and the 31st of January. He drew the wrong conclusion from Allied movements, persuading himself that the Allies intended to keep him stationary at Brienne while directing their main effort at Troyes. Chandler later observed that Napoleon, in those two days, "somewhat uncharacteristically bided his time, waiting upon events." Petre added another possible explanation: Napoleon may have feared the effect a retreat would have on public opinion back home.

  On the morning of the 1st of February, Napoleon sent Marshal Michel Ney marching from Brienne toward Troyes. Around noon, Blücher's movements signaled that an Allied attack was imminent. It was too late. Napoleon had 45,100 men and 128 guns spread across a 7-mile front, holding villages with infantry and relying on cavalry to plug the gaps between them. The snow, the mud, and the overextension of his line had already undercut the artillery arm that was the foundation of his tactical system.

• 4. How the Battle Unfolded

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  Sacken's Russian corps began its advance from Trannes at noon on the 1st of February. Wet primers and damp powder made muskets unreliable, so the main assault at 4:00 pm went in with the bayonet. Duhesme's 4,000 soldiers, holding La Rothière itself, were eventually driven out after a tremendous fight, though some French infantry clung to a cluster of houses on the village's north edge.

  On the French right, Gyulai's Austrians moved against Dienville from across the Aube River. Feldmarschall-Leutnant Jean Hennequin de Fresnel sent GM Philipp Pflüger's brigade at the bridge; it was seized and then retaken by a French counterattack. A second attempt with GM Marko Csollich's brigade also failed. Gyulai ordered his 12-pounder artillery to bombard Dienville, but he could not press a heavy assault. The Austrians only occupied the village at midnight after the French pulled out on their own.

  On the opposite flank, the Crown Prince of Württemberg's 4th Corps seized Beaulieu Wood and captured La Giberie, only to see Victor's infantry retake it. General Karl Wilhelm von Toll, serving as an adviser to Tsar Alexander I of Russia, ordered up two cuirassier divisions and a grenadier division without informing Blücher. Meanwhile, Karl Philipp von Wrede's Austro-Bavarian 5th Corps advanced on Morvilliers on the extreme right. His leading elements reached La Chaise at 2:00 pm and cleared the Bois d'Ajou by 4:00 pm. When Wrede captured Chaumesnil, Napoleon sent GD Claude Marie Meunier's Guard division and Guyot's cavalry to retake it; those attacks ultimately failed, and Wrede's cavalry captured 21 artillery pieces around 7:00 pm.

  Napoleon sent Rottembourg's Guard division to retake La Rothière. The leading brigade recaptured the village but was driven out again by Olsufiev's corps. A second brigade cleared it once more but was finally forced out by GM Anton Grimmer's Austrian brigade and Russian grenadiers. Rottembourg's men reformed north of La Rothière at 8:00 pm. In the dark, Bavarian and Württemberger cavalry mistakenly charged each other, which halted any immediate pursuit. By 9:00 pm the snowstorm had intensified, and the French broke contact and retreated to Lesmont.

• 5. Counts and Losses

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  Historians disagree on the exact numbers engaged at La Rothière, but the scale of French disadvantage is clear on every count. Digby Smith stated that the French fielded about 45,000 men in 57 battalions and 62 squadrons, while Smith put Allied forces available at 120,000, with around 80,000 coming into action. Gaston Bodart set the Coalition total at 123,000 against 41,000 French. George Nafziger estimated 78,000 Allies engaged out of 118,000 available.

  On the question of losses, Smith stated French casualties at 4,600 killed and wounded, plus 1,000 soldiers and 73 guns captured. Bodart credited the Allies with 6,000 casualties while putting French losses at 3,000 killed and wounded plus 3,000 men and 63 guns taken. Petre put Coalition casualties at 6,000, with Sacken alone losing roughly 4,000; he set French losses at 6,000 total, including 2,000 men and 50-60 guns captured. Chandler assigned 6,000 casualties to each side and noted 50 French artillery pieces taken.

  The loss of so many guns was caused in part by the Coalition's cavalry superiority and in part by the sodden ground, which made it nearly impossible to pull the pieces out in time. During the retreat to Troyes, another 4,000 French soldiers deserted. When Napoleon's army arrived at the city, the townspeople showed little interest in helping the troops.

• 6. Aftermath and Missed Opportunity

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  The Allied victory at La Rothière sent elation through the Coalition camps. As one account recorded, the Allies had overthrown Napoleon in a fair fight on French soil; the belief that had been broken at Leipzig was again confirmed, that the Emperor was not invincible. Yet the window to finish the campaign decisively was left open.

  At the Battle of Lesmont, a French force destroyed the town's bridge, and the Coalition lost contact with the retreating army. No pursuit followed, attributed by some to the state of the roads and by others to lethargy at Schwarzenberg's headquarters. Schwarzenberg then made a fateful organizational choice: he allowed the two main Allied armies to separate, citing concerns about supplying both along a single line of communications. Blücher was ordered west along the south bank of the Marne River toward Meaux; Schwarzenberg's force would move first to Troyes and then toward Paris along the Seine.

  Wittgenstein's 6th Corps and GM Alexey Seslavin's Cossacks were assigned to link the two armies. By the 4th of February, however, Schwarzenberg had begun edging left, and the next day he and Barclay ordered Seslavin's Cossacks to shift to the extreme left, without telling Blücher. Feeling safe, Blücher allowed his 50,000-man army to become dangerously strung out. The result arrived on the 10th of February: outnumbered six-to-one at Champaubert, Olsufiev's small corps was virtually wiped out by Napoleon's 30,000 men.

• 7. What the Commanders Said

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  Petre gave most of the credit for the Allied victory to Wrede, who had defied Schwarzenberg's original orders directing the 5th Corps to follow Wittgenstein. Instead, Wrede persuaded his commander to let him march toward Brienne. His aggressive advance on the French left was, in Petre's assessment, the decisive contribution to the outcome.

  Petre also argued that the Coalition chose not to order Yorck and Wittgenstein to cut off Napoleon's retreat, and that this reflected a political calculation: the Austrian government was not yet ready to crush Napoleon completely. Frederic N. Maude offered a simpler explanation, that the roads to the rear were so choked with traffic that retreat was not a real option regardless of orders.

  On the French side, Petre was critical of Blücher for hammering at La Rothière while the decisive action was taking place in Wrede's sector. The reserve divisions, meanwhile, spent much of the day marching back and forth without engaging. Smith's verdict was direct: "This was a very significant Allied victory." Chandler put it plainly from Napoleon's point of view: "There was no disguising the fact that the Battle of La Rothière had been a tactical defeat for the Emperor." Nafziger framed the broader consequence: a second major defeat had begun to shake the faith of the French army itself.