Battle of Reims (1814)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Reims on the 12th and the 13th of March 1814 stands as one of the most compressed reversals of fortune in the final chapter of Napoleon's imperial wars. On the first morning, a combined Russian-Prussian force swept into the city with such speed that its French National Guard garrison barely had time to react. By the second evening, Napoleon himself was riding into Reims at midnight, the Allies in full flight. What made the difference was not just numbers or tactics. It was a single overconfident decision by a general who did not believe Napoleon was coming. That general, Emmanuel de Saint-Priest, paid for the mistake with his life. The howitzer shell that struck him down, Napoleon later claimed, had been fired by the same gunner who killed Jean Victor Marie Moreau at the Battle of Dresden. Whether true or not, the story tells you something about how Napoleon chose to remember this fight: not as a desperate scramble, but as an act of fate.

• 2. The Road to Reims

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  Napoleon arrived at this moment battered. On the 9th and the 10th of March 1814, Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher's 100,000-strong Allied army had defeated Napoleon's 39,000-man force at the Battle of Laon. The French lost 4,000 killed and wounded, plus 2,500 men, 45 guns, and 130 caissons captured. Before that, the Battle of Craonne on the 7th of March had cost another 5,400 to 8,000 French soldiers. The French army withdrawing from Laon was battered, its morale shaken, its formations depleted. Blücher himself was so ill with an eye infection on the second day of Laon that he handed command to his chief of staff, August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, who cancelled Blücher's orders to press the attack. That cancellation allowed Napoleon to pull his army back to Soissons almost unmolested, with only 1,500 Russians giving chase. Napoleon used the breathing room to reorganize. He consolidated the shattered Young Guard corps of Marshals Michel Ney and Claude Perrin Victor into the surviving divisions of Philibert Jean-Baptiste Curial and Henri François Marie Charpentier. After that reorganization, Marshal Édouard Mortier's corps stood at 10,609 men. The broader political picture was equally grim. The Allies were negotiating the Treaty of Chaumont to bind their coalition more tightly, and the French people were exhausted by the war. Napoleon needed a win, and Reims offered one.

• 3. Storming the City

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  Emmanuel de Saint-Priest was a French émigré who had made his career in Russian service and now commanded the Russian 8th Infantry Corps, composed of the 11th and 17th Infantry Divisions. In early 1814, his corps numbered 11,900 soldiers. Prussian General Friedrich Wilhelm von Jagow brought his brigade to join Saint-Priest, adding around 5,600 soldiers to Saint-Priest's 7,800 Russians. Together, their attacking columns assembled at Cormontreuil at 3:00 am on the 12th of March. Reims in 1814 had a population of 30,000 and sat 38 miles north of Châlons-sur-Marne. Its garrison was small: one estimate put it at 4,000 National Guards with a handful of line infantry and eight artillery pieces; another authority counted only 1,256 infantry and 150 cavalry. The assault came from multiple directions simultaneously. Jagow's Prussians broke in through the Paris gate on the southwest, covered by 12-pound cannons. Pillar's column forced entry through the Châlons gate in the southeast. The column under Georgi Emmanuel swept down from the northeast. The attack was a complete surprise. A Young Guard cadre was pushed back street by street to the Place des Arcades, and Pillar's troops worked around behind the defenders, cutting off their escape. When a body of French soldiers tried to flee north toward Berry-au-Bac, Russian cavalry intercepted them and captured more than 200. Altogether, 2,500 French infantry and 11 guns fell into Allied hands. The city was taken in a morning.

• 4. A Fatal Overconfidence

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  After the capture, Gneisenau declared from afar that the French were not capable of quickly retaking Reims. Saint-Priest shared that view. His scouts were sent as far west as Fismes but their patrolling was not aggressive. He knew of the Allied victory at Laon and expected no serious trouble. The Russian 8th Corps camped inside the city while Jagow's Prussians bivouacked in the villages to the west. On the morning of the 13th, Saint-Priest deployed his troops on the western side of Reims in a double line supported by 24 field guns. His right flank rested on the Vesle River, his center on the Tinqueux heights, and his left at the La Muire ravine. He was still convinced, even as French cavalry began pressing his forward positions, that the activity amounted to nothing more than a reconnaissance. He gave no order to move the corps wagon train out of the city. Napoleon meanwhile had written a direct statement of his plan: "My intention being to attack Saint-Priest near Reims tomorrow, to defeat him and reoccupy the town." He left Mortier with 8,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry to hold Soissons and directed Marshal Marmont to march from Fismes at 6:00 am. Louis Friant's division began marching from Soissons at 2:00 am and reached Reims by 4:00 pm. Marshal Ney's infantry left Soissons around 8:00 am and also arrived before 4:00 pm. Napoleon approached with roughly 20,000 troops.

• 5. The Assault and Its Chaos

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  At around 4:00 pm, with evening only two hours away, Napoleon ordered an immediate attack. Étienne Pierre Sylvestre Ricard's infantry division led the assault, crossing the La Muire ravine and forcing its way onto the Sainte-Geneviève heights. That thrust split the center of the Allied line and drove the Russians back toward the city. The violence of it finally convinced Saint-Priest that he was facing Napoleon in person. He ordered his second line to retreat through Reims toward Laon and directed his wagon train south toward Châlons. Then, while riding between the Soissons road and Tinqueux village, Saint-Priest drew fire from French artillery on the Croix-Saint-Pierre heights and was struck in the shoulder by a howitzer shell. A second source described the projectile as a solid shot. Either way, Saint-Priest was thrown senseless from his horse. The next officer in seniority, Pandschulishev, had himself been injured earlier that day and could not mount a horse. He stayed behind in Reims. Emmanuel, who should have assumed command, instead rode back into the city to ask Pandschulishev what to do. One account described it simply: he "lost his head." The Allied command structure collapsed. Soldiers abandoned cannons and jettisoned equipment to flee faster. Philippe Paul, comte de Ségur led a charge of cuirassiers and the 14th Young Guard Battery that forced some Russian dragoons into the Vesle, but his horsemen were then caught between the Russian defenders on the city walls and the retreating Riazan Regiment, and were shot down by the score. Musketry drove back the first infantry attempt to storm the Soissons gate. It took 16 cannons of the Guard artillery, wheeled into position at 11:00 pm, to blow the gate open. Cuirassiers poured in and cleared the streets. Napoleon entered Reims at midnight.

• 6. Aftermath

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  Saint-Priest died two weeks after the battle from the wound he sustained. His decision to leave his wagon train parked in Reims, and to deploy carelessly west of the city without accounting for Napoleon's approach, defined what the historian F.W.O. Maycock called, "surely one of the greatest triumphs of Napoleon's remarkable career, and speaks volumes for his powers as a leader of men." French casualties in the recapture were estimated at around 700 to 900. Allied losses were higher and disputed. Historian Digby Smith put the Russians at 1,400 men and 12 guns lost, with the Prussians losing 1,300 men and 10 guns. George Nafziger's estimates ranged wider, listing Allied losses at 700-800 dead, 1,500-1,600 wounded, and 2,500-3,500 captured, with 11-14 guns and 100 caissons or wagons. When Jagow reached Berry-au-Bac early on the 14th of March, he reported having only two intact battalions left. Napoleon spent three days at Reims after the battle. Blücher, still ill, made no move to threaten him. Ney was sent to seize Châlons-sur-Marne, which fell without opposition. But the strategic picture did not hold. Schwarzenberg's army was advancing close to Paris. Napoleon decided to leave Marmont and Mortier with 21,000 soldiers to watch Blücher and move south toward Arcis-sur-Aube to threaten Schwarzenberg's supply line. The Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube followed on the 20th and the 21st of March 1814.