Battle of Montereau

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Montereau was fought on the 18th of February 1814, and it turned on a single bridge. Two bridges, actually. One crossing the Seine, one crossing the Yonne, both rigged for demolition, both captured by French cavalry before the fuses could be lit. That moment of daring horsemanship would seal the fate of thousands of Allied soldiers crowded on a steep riverbank slope, scrambling to escape.

  The battle sits inside one of the most audacious weeks in Napoleon's career. Outnumbered, fighting on French soil with an exhausted army, he had just torn apart Prussian Field Marshal Blücher's forces in the Six Days' Campaign. Now he pivoted south to deal with a second threat: the Army of Bohemia under Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, which had pushed dangerously close to Paris. Napoleon had to cover ground fast, regroup scattered units, and strike before the cautious Austrian commander could consolidate his strength.

  Who would defend the critical crossing at Montereau? What would Napoleon do when his own generals moved too slowly? And what does a French emperor say when his guards beg him to step away from a cannon on a battlefield? Those questions unfold across a single February afternoon in a town surrounded by vineyards, meadows, and the ghosts of an older slaughter.

• 2. The Allied Advance

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  On the 10th of February, Schwarzenberg's Army of Bohemia began pushing out of Troyes. The force spread across a wide front. Peter Wittgenstein and Karl Philipp von Wrede drove toward Nogent-sur-Seine and Bray-sur-Seine. Crown Prince Frederick William of Württemberg moved on Sens. Ignác Gyulay's corps backed up the left flank.

  At Nogent, just 1,000 French troops under Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont briefly checked the Allied right wing on the 10th. Sens fell the following day after a skirmish between the Crown Prince and Jacques Alexandre Allix de Vaux. On the 12th, the Allies seized Bray from a weak detachment of French National Guards, along with the bridge at Pont-sur-Seine.

  Marshal Claude-Victor Perrin held Nogent and Marshal Nicolas Oudinot held Montereau-Fault-Yonne, but the twin pressures of the Allied advance were too much to resist. Victor feared being encircled and pulled back, and even the arrival of Marshal Jacques MacDonald's troops failed to stop the French retreat. By the 15th of February, the French had fallen back to the Yerres River, only 18 miles from Paris.

  The mood in Paris was close to panic. When Victor's wagon train appeared at Charenton-le-Pont, ordinary Parisians took it as a sign of catastrophe. Fleeing peasants spread the rumour that 200,000 Cossacks were about to storm the capital. Meanwhile, Alexander Nikitich Seslavin led a scouting force of three Russian hussar squadrons and one Cossack regiment far south to seize Montargis and threaten Orléans. Cossacks roamed the Forest and Palace of Fontainebleau itself, and Auxerre was stormed, its garrison wiped out. France's heartland seemed to be splitting open.

• 3. Napoleon's Counterstrike

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  Napoleon left Montmirail on the 15th of February with the Imperial Guard and Emmanuel Grouchy's cavalry. The march that followed was extraordinary. Some infantry rode in carts and wagons. His leading forces reached Guignes at 3:00 in the afternoon on the 16th, having covered 47 miles in 36 hours. One account put the figure even higher, at 60 miles in the same span.

  Hearing of the French approach, Schwarzenberg scrambled to put the Seine River between his army and Napoleon. On the 17th he ordered Wittgenstein to fall back to Provins, directed Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly to mass Russian and Prussian Guards near Nogent, and told Wrede to retreat to Donnemarie. Württemberg and Bianchi were posted near Montereau. If the Army of Bohemia had to keep retreating, holding the Montereau crossing was essential.

  Napoleon's vanguard under Etienne Maurice Gérard found one of those retreating forces early on the 17th. At the Battle of Mormant, Peter Petrovich Pahlen's mixed force of 2,500 infantry and 1,250 cavalry was overwhelmed by the French and suffered 3,114 killed, wounded, or captured. A nearby Austrian force led by Anton von Hardegg stayed largely inactive while its allies were being cut apart, only finally releasing 550 troopers from the Schwarzenberg Uhlan Regiment Nr. 2 to assist.

  At the crossroads town of Nangis, Napoleon divided his army into three columns. Wrede's corps absorbed 2,500 casualties during engagements that day. Victor's men were exhausted by evening and he halted his advance, directly violating Napoleon's orders to press on to Montereau through the night. Napoleon was furious and instructed his chief of staff Louis-Alexandre Berthier to send Victor a harsh written reprimand. That anger would have consequences the following morning.

• 4. The Battlefield at Montereau

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  Montereau-Fault-Yonne sits at the confluence of the Seine and the Yonne, and its geography shaped every decision made on the 18th of February. The south bank, where the town itself stood, was flat and open, ringed by vineyards and meadows. The north bank was crowned by a ridge 150 to 200 feet high, with a steep face dropping directly to the river and a gentler slope on the opposite side.

  Atop that ridge sat Surville chateau, which commanded a wide view of the bridges and the town below. The hamlet of Les Ormeaux lay a short distance east of the Paris road, which approached from the northwest through a forest. The road from Salins came from the northeast and ran beside the river past Courbeton chateau to the bridge. Both bridges, the one over the Seine and the one over the Yonne, connected at a single point in the eastern suburb before entering Montereau proper.

  That bridge over the Seine carried a grim historical footnote. It was the site of the Assassination of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy in 1419, nearly four centuries before Napoleon's guns arrived.

  The Crown Prince deployed 8,500 foot soldiers, 1,000 horsemen, and 26 field guns on the north bank. His left flank anchored at Les Ormeaux, his center incorporated Surville chateau and its park, and his right blocked the Salins road at Courbeton chateau. Two Austrian batteries from Bianchi's corps were positioned on the south bank, one covering each flank. Joseph Schäffer's Austrian brigade held the Surville park at the center. Combined, the Allies were supported by 40 field pieces. A second source puts total Allied defenders at 12,000 men, a substantially higher figure than the numbers assigned to the Crown Prince's corps alone.

• 5. The French Assault

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  Napoleon ordered Victor to have his men at Montereau by 6:00 in the morning. The first French troops to arrive were Pierre Claude Pajol's cavalry and Michel-Marie Pacthod's National Guards at 8:00 am. That force numbered no more than 4,500 men. The horsemen were almost untrained, and the National Guards were ill-equipped. They made no impression on the Crown Prince's well-posted defenders.

  Victor's lead elements reached the field at 9:00 am and their opening attack was thrown back. When the divisions of Louis Huguet-Chateau and Guillaume Philibert Duhesme arrived and attacked Les Ormeaux, they were also beaten back. Chateau, who was Victor's son-in-law, was fatally wounded in that assault. The Württemberg cavalry then charged and drove the French horsemen back into the forest. By 11:00 am, with no progress made, Victor waited for Gérard's corps to come up. His slow performance was too much for Napoleon, who removed Victor from command and handed the II Corps directly to Gérard.

  Gérard drove his troops up the heights but the Allied artillery was well-served and repelled assault after assault. The turning point came in the afternoon when the Imperial Guard artillery arrived and an additional 40 guns came into action. At 3:00 pm, Napoleon sent three attack columns against Les Ormeaux and Surville and a fourth against the Allied right along the Seine. The French infantry overran Les Ormeaux. The Crown Prince ordered Schäffer's Austrians to cover the retreat. As the Württembergers began pulling back, Pajol launched a cavalry charge down the Paris highway against the Allied left. French infantry simultaneously rushed Surville chateau and took its garrison prisoner. By that point, 30,000 French troops and 70 to 80 field guns were on the field.

• 6. Collapse and the Bridges

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  The Allied withdrawal began in reasonable order, but the terrain undid everything. The steep slope down to the Seine broke the formations apart. Then the retreating soldiers encountered a sunken road, and the collapse became complete. Every Allied soldier was running for the Seine bridge.

  Napoleon ordered 60 guns up onto the Surville heights. They unlimbered and fired into the mass of Allied soldiers jammed against the bridges. The Crown Prince tried to rally his men and came close to being captured by the French cavalry. When Napoleon himself stepped up to personally sight one of the cannons, his guardsmen begged him to move back from the danger. He refused, telling them: "Courage my friends, the bullet which is to kill me is not yet cast."

  Pajol's horsemen charged into the fleeing crowd of soldiers and seized the Seine bridge, then the Yonne bridge, before either could be demolished, though both had been rigged for that purpose. Duhesme's infantry division crossed quickly after the cavalry and helped clear Montereau of its remaining defenders. The broken Allied force joined Hohenlohe's brigade and began a disorganized retreat toward Le Tombe, a village on the road to Bray, covered by Jett's cavalry brigade.

  Napoleon sent Marshal François Joseph Lefebvre and his own cavalry escort in pursuit toward Bray. An eyewitness account recorded that Lefebvre foamed at the mouth and struck at Allied soldiers with his saber.

• 7. Losses and Aftermath

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  The casualty figures for Montereau vary significantly depending on the source. Digby Smith recorded Allied losses of 1,400 killed and wounded, with the Württembergers accounting for 92 killed and 714 wounded. The French captured 3,600 men, two cannons, and two ammunition wagons. The Austrians suffered about 2,000 casualties among those totals, and Schäffer was taken prisoner. Francis Loraine Petre put Allied losses at nearly 5,000 men and 15 field pieces. David G. Chandler raised that to 6,000 Allied casualties and 15 cannons. Prince Hohenlohe was killed in the fighting. Victor's son-in-law Chateau, wounded in the morning assault on Les Ormeaux, died from his wounds on the 8th of May 1814.

  Napoleon was unsatisfied with the result despite the victory. He complained that the Allies had been saved by heavy frosts that allowed them to move over open fields, claiming that otherwise at least half their guns and transport would have been taken. His frustration turned quickly on his own commanders. Victor complained about being stripped of his command, and Napoleon responded with a storm of abuse, even directing anger at Victor's wife for allegedly snubbing Empress Marie Louise. Victor finally defused the emperor's fury by pointing to their shared campaigns in Italy and reminding Napoleon that his son-in-law lay dying. Napoleon relented and gave Victor command of the two Young Guard divisions of Charpentier and Joseph Boyer de Rebeval. Lhéritier was also rebuked for his failure to charge at Valjouan, and Jean François Aimé Dejean and Claude-Étienne Guyot both faced Napoleon's anger for separate failings.

  Schwarzenberg had already ordered a general withdrawal to Troyes before the battle even ended. He directed Wrede to hold Bray until the evening of the 19th and sent a dispatch to Blücher requesting support at Méry-sur-Seine on the 21st. Blücher replied that he would arrive with 53,000 troops and 300 guns. Napoleon's pursuit was hobbled by a shortage of intact bridges, giving the Allies a two-day head start on the road to Troyes. The next series of engagements between the two armies opened at Méry-sur-Seine on the 22nd of February and led directly to the Battle of Bar-sur-Aube.