Battle of Mormant

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Mormant on the 17th of February 1814 began before sunrise, with French infantry advancing at five in the morning toward a Russian force that was already trying to escape. Count Peter Petrovich Pahlen, commanding somewhere between two thousand and twenty-five hundred foot soldiers and nearly two thousand mounted troops, had spent the night aware that overwhelming numbers were closing in. His orders to withdraw had arrived too late. By the time the sun was up, one of the sharpest one-day engagements of the final phase of Napoleon's reign was underway, roughly fifty kilometres southeast of Paris.

  How did a French emperor on the verge of losing his empire manage to nearly destroy an entire Allied division in a single morning? And what does this forgotten skirmish near a small French town reveal about the wild swings of fortune that marked the War of the Sixth Coalition's closing weeks?

• 2. A Week That Changed Everything

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  On the 1st of February 1814, the Allied armies were riding high after defeating Napoleon at the Battle of La Rothiere. The Prussian commanders in particular were exuberant, and their confidence shaped a bold advance on Paris. Austrian Field Marshal Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, drove his main army toward the capital via Troyes. Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher took a separate northern route along the Marne River toward Meaux.

  Napoleon read the situation and made a rapid judgment. By the 6th of February he concluded that Blucher was the greater threat, and on the 9th of February he headed north with thirty thousand troops. He left Marshals Victor and Nicolas Oudinot behind with thirty-four thousand men to contain Schwarzenberg's much larger force.

  What followed in the north was a sequence of blows rarely matched in speed or ferocity. At Champaubert on the 10th of February, the French fell on Zakhar Dmitrievich Olsufiev's corps, which held just four thousand infantry and twenty-four guns. Only seventeen hundred Russians escaped; Olsufiev himself was taken prisoner. The next day at Montmirail, Napoleon defeated Fabian Gottlieb von Osten-Sacken's Russians and Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg's Prussians at a cost of two thousand French casualties. The Allies lost thirty-seven hundred men and thirteen guns. At Chateau-Thierry on the 12th, the combined Allied force of Sacken and Yorck was beaten again; French losses were six hundred against Allied losses of twenty-seven hundred men and nine guns.

  At Vauchamps on the 14th of February, Blucher himself attacked and was nearly destroyed. The French sustained only six hundred casualties while the Allies lost six thousand men and sixteen guns. In a single week, Blucher's army of fifty-six thousand shed over sixteen thousand soldiers and forty-seven guns. Napoleon's losses for that same week totalled roughly four thousand.

• 3. Schwarzenberg Overreaches

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  While Napoleon was dismantling Blucher's army in the north, Schwarzenberg's main force was pressing Victor and Oudinot back toward Paris. Peter Wittgenstein's Russian corps pushed toward Nogent-sur-Seine; Karl Philipp von Wrede's Austro-Bavarian corps struck toward Bray-sur-Seine. On the Allied left, the Wurttemberg corps moved on Sens with Frederick Bianchi's Austrians alongside them. Wrede managed to cross the Seine at Bray, which forced the French to abandon Nogent. Victor and Oudinot fell back behind the Yerres stream, dangerously close to the capital.

  When the marshals called for help, Napoleon sent Marshal Jacques MacDonald to Guignes, where he arrived on the 14th of February with a corps rebuilt from Parisian replacements. A logistical blunder then made things worse: the army's wagon train withdrew across the Marne near Paris, triggering panic in the French capital.

  Schwarzenberg had over a hundred thousand soldiers in his main force. When he learned about Blucher's defeats in the north, he ordered his army to pull back behind the Seine. Wittgenstein, however, defied that order. He aggressively pushed his corps west beyond Provins toward Nangis, with his advance guard under Pahlen reaching as far as Mormant. That decision to press forward rather than obey put Pahlen's isolated command directly in the path of Napoleon's returning hammer.

• 4. The Trap Closes at Mormant

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  Pahlen placed two infantry battalions inside the village of Mormant itself and massed the rest of his force on both sides of the main highway, with his artillery in the center. He was prepared either to fight or to retreat. During the night, Wittgenstein received firm orders to withdraw and marched his corps eastward toward Provins at dawn. He sent the withdrawal orders forward to Pahlen, but they arrived too late.

  At five in the morning, the French infantry began its advance. Guillaume Philibert Duhesme's division held the left, Etienne Maurice Gerard's Paris Reserve held the center, and Louis Huguet-Chateau's division took the right. The cavalry corps of Edouard Milhaud and Francois de Kellermann fanned out on both flanks, with their squadrons echeloned in multiple lines to block any escape.

  Gerard's infantry forced its way into Mormant village, flushing the two defending Russian battalions into the open. Pierre Ismert, commanding a brigade in Trelliard's division, threw the 4th Dragoons at the fleeing soldiers and forced many to surrender. On the right flank, August Etienne Lamotte's brigade dispersed the first two Cossack regiments, and when the Illowaiski and Rebrikov Cossacks tried to intervene, they were swept away by Jean Antoine de Collaert's brigade. As Kellermann's horsemen galloped after the routed Cossacks, the 16th Dragoons charged and broke a Russian square.

  On the north flank, Pahlen's cavalry commander Theodor von Rudiger deployed nine squadrons in his first line and five in his second. Milhaud's divisions attacked in three successive lines; the charges of Piré and Gabriel Gaspard Montelégier broke Rudiger's squadrons and drove them from the field. Milhaud then directed Montelégier against the Russian infantry while Denis Éloi Ludot swept wide to cut off the escape route. Stripped of cavalry protection, Pahlen's infantry battalions had no choice but to form squares. Antoine Drouot pushed thirty-six guns of the French Guard artillery into the front line and hammered the exposed formations.

  Pahlen sent messengers to Nangis begging for reinforcement. Anton Leonhard von Hardegg's Austrian division from Wrede's corps was the only force that could have helped, but Hardegg declined and ordered an immediate retreat. Two Austrian cavalry regiments that had not yet pulled out were then disordered by the fleeing Cossacks and scattered by Pire and Lamotte's horsemen. On the outskirts of Grandpuits, Ludot's brigade finally blocked the Russian line of retreat. Surrounded and hammered by artillery, each Russian square was overrun. The last one fell when Ludot's and Ismert's brigades charged it simultaneously.

• 5. Losses and Aftermath

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  The Russian infantry losses at Mormant were severe. The French claimed nine to twelve guns and forty caissons captured; the Russians insisted they had saved two cannons. The French cavalry commanders reported losing around one hundred and fifty horsemen, and Gerard reported only thirty casualties among his infantry. The Reval and Selenginsk Regiments suffered so heavily that they were withdrawn to Plock in Poland to reorganize.

  Later the same day, Napoleon split his advancing force at Nangis into three columns. Victor led the rightmost column south toward Montereau. Oudinot took the leftmost column, with the VII Corps and Trelliard's dragoons, to pursue Wittgenstein eastward toward Provins. MacDonald's center column headed southeast toward Donnemarie. Napoleon kept the Imperial Guard in reserve at Nangis. Wittgenstein retreated rapidly and crossed the Seine at Nogent that evening.

  Victor's column departed Nangis at one-thirty in the afternoon and encountered resistance near Villeneuve-le-Comte around three in the afternoon. Peter de Lamotte had deployed the 3rd Bavarian Division on the Valjouan heights. Supported by twelve cannons, Jacques Felix Jan de La Hamelinaye's brigade stormed Villeneuve and the Grand-Maison farm at three-thirty, and as the Bavarian soldiers broke from both positions, Bordesoulle's cavalrymen set upon them. The Iller Mobile Legion attempted to intervene and was routed. Bordesoulle's half-trained horsemen inflicted roughly three hundred casualties. Two Austrian mounted regiments later suffered two hundred more casualties when attacked by a large French cavalry force during the withdrawal.

  Different sources give slightly different final tallies for Mormant and Valjouan combined. George Nafziger estimated eight hundred French casualties against Allied losses of three thousand men and fourteen guns. Digby Smith recorded six hundred French and thirty-one hundred and fourteen Allied casualties, with nine guns and forty caissons captured. Gaston Bodart credited the Coalition with five thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry and put their losses at twenty-four hundred, including five hundred and fifty Austrians, against six hundred French.

• 6. Napoleon's Anger and What Came Next

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  Napoleon was not satisfied with the day's results. He had expected Victor to push on after Valjouan and arrive at Montereau by six in the morning on the 18th of February. Victor did not reach the town until nine in the morning, and the delay cost him his command. Napoleon replaced him with Gerard.

  Schwarzenberg ordered the Crown Prince of Wurttemberg to hold a bridgehead at Montereau for a single day to cover the Allied withdrawal. The Battle of Montereau was fought on the 18th of February, and together the Mormant-Valjouan actions and Montereau marked the opening of a sustained French counteroffensive aimed at driving back Schwarzenberg's entire Army of Bohemia. That offensive concluded when Schwarzenberg's army was pushed beyond Troyes on the 24th of February, a week after Pahlen's force had been destroyed near a small town fifty kilometres from Paris.