Trafalgar and Italy
- Date:
- c. 1801 - 1815
- Location:
- Europe
- Participants:
- Austria
- France
- Ottoman Empire
- Portugal
- Prussia
- Russia
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- Context:
- British Empire
The war at sea culminated in the Battle of Trafalgar, on October 21, 1805. On September 14, Napoleon had instructed Adm. Pierre-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Silvestre de Villeneuve at Cádiz to enter the Mediterranean and to hold some of the coalition’s forces in Italy by attacking Naples while the French army marched to the Danube. On October 19–20, Villeneuve left harbour with 33 ships of the line, his Spanish vessels mingled with the French. Nelson met him off Cape Trafalgar with 27 ships. The French and Spanish lost 19 ships on the day of the battle, and 4 more were captured early in November; the British lost none in the battle or in the storm which followed. Nelson and 448 British were killed and an additional 1,200 were wounded. French and Spanish casualties numbered about 4,400 killed, 2,500 wounded, and 7,000 captured, including Villeneuve. The immediate result was to frustrate French plans for a diversion against Naples, and there could be no return to plans for an invasion of England.
The Anglo-Russian force that landed at Naples in November 1805 arrived long after Napoleon had withdrawn his troops from the south to strengthen his defenses on the Mincio and too late to affect the outcome of the year’s campaigns. The Neapolitans welcomed it and joined the coalition, but the French forced the allies to withdraw to Corfu and Sicily (Reggio, on the mainland, remained in British hands until February 17, 1808). Napoleon’s brother Joseph was proclaimed king of Naples on March 30, 1806, in place of the Bourbon Ferdinand IV (whose deposition Napoleon had announced in December 1805). With the occupation of the Papal States the whole of Italy was under French control.
Hanover and the Confederation of the Rhine
In Vienna on December 15, 1805, Napoleon and Haugwitz drafted the Treaty of Schönbrunn whereby Prussia was to enter into an offensive-defensive alliance with France; cede Neuchâtel, Cleves, and Ansbach; and acquire Hanover. The Prussian government, wishing simply to occupy Hanover until peace should have been made, did not ratify this treaty. However, it was soon forced, under the Treaty of Paris (February 15, 1806), to annex Hanover outright and to close the Prussian as well as the Hanoverian ports to British commerce. Great Britain consequently declared war on Prussia (April 21) and seized 250 Prussian ships in British harbours.
Having thus embroiled Prussia with Great Britain, Napoleon obstructed the plan for a confederation, under Prussian leadership, to include Saxony and other states of northern Germany. He set up his brother Louis as king of Holland (June 1806) and then proceeded to form the Confederation of the Rhine in July, embracing Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Aschaffenburg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, Berg, and several smaller states of western Germany, with himself as its protector. When these confederates announced that the ancient Reich had ceased to exist, Francis of Austria acquiesced by renouncing his title of Holy Roman emperor (August 1806). Negotiations had meanwhile been proceeding between the belligerents, but Charles James Fox’s ministry, which had taken office in Great Britain after Pitt’s death (January 1806), made no more progress with Napoleon than did the Russians.
The Russo-Prussian alliance
The hardening of anti-French feeling in Berlin put an end to an uneasy stalemate, and Russia and Prussia signed a secret defensive alliance against France in July 1806. Napoleon, however, still discounted the notion that Prussia might go to war against him. He was preparing to honour his undertaking to withdraw French forces from Germany even when Prussia, on August 9, had ordered partial mobilization. Growing tension in Prussia and the stronger tone of Russian diplomacy soon made him change his mind. On September 5, 1806, a day before the Prussians opened the North Sea ports to the British, he instructed his forces in the triangle of Coblenz, Constance, and Passau to regroup farther north between Frankfurt and Amberg.
Prussia had chosen to go to war with France in far less favourable circumstances than those which had existed in 1805. The French were now within easy reach of the frontier, the Austrians could no longer intervene, and the Russians were behind the Vistula. Furthermore, the Prussian army had little light infantry, poor artillery and only cumbersome supply trains and had not yet adopted the divisional system. In the face of Napoleon’s army corps, the Prussians took the field in three armies commanded by elderly men. The first and fundamental mistake of the Prussian high command was to come forward, instead of withdrawing to form a line along the Elbe and awaiting the arrival of the Russians.
The campaign of Jena and Auerstädt
Having won the support of the elector Frederick Augustus of Saxony, the Prussians marched into Saxon territory on September 13, 1806. The news reached Paris five days later, and on September 19 Napoleon ordered the concentration of the Grande Armée, by the beginning of October, along the Main as far as Bamberg and thence to the south. At Mainz on September 29 he learned that the Prussians were still between Eisenach and Hildburghausen in front of the Thuringerwald and roughly at right angles with the Main. This news suggested that Napoleon had time to enter Saxony so as to appear in the rear of their left flank. Having reached Würzburg on October 2, he closed up his forces, and on October 5 he gave orders for the march to the northeast. In three columns, the French were to cross the Frankenwald and debouch on the upper Saale at Saalfeld, Schleiz, and Hof. On October 9 a Saxon division was attacked at Schleiz. The following day a Prussian detachment was routed at Saalfeld, and Hof was occupied without opposition. While Napoleon continued his advance toward Gera, the Prussian army under Prince Friedrich von Hohenlohe retired northward to Kahla, 20 miles (32 km) to the west of Napoleon’s objective.
The engagement of Saalfeld convinced the Prussians that they might be cut off from the Elbe, and they decided to concentrate their forces, under King Frederick William III and Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick, at Weimar. When the French forces reached the Saale (October 12, 1806), Napoleon ceased his march to the northeast and moved his forces to the left to close in on the river line. As Hohenlohe retreated from Kahla to Jena, Napoleon swung his right wing northwestward to gain the Saale and march up its right bank, while the main body of the French was directed to cross the river between Kahla and Jena and then to advance on the mass of the Prussian forces. By the evening of October 12 Napoleon’s main advance guard had made contact with the outposts left at Jena by Hohenlohe. Louis-Nicolas Davout, commanding the French Third Corps, was at Naumburg, 20 miles (32 km) downstream, within easy reach of the roads from Weimar along the left bank of the Saale via Auerstädt and Freiburg toward the Elbe. The following day, the French routed the Prussians at the battles of Jena and Auerstädt. Napoleon swept Hohenlohe’s forces from the field at Jena, while a vastly outnumbered Davout destroyed the main Prussian army under Charles William Ferdinand at Auerstädt. The Prussians lost 22,000 killed and wounded in the two battles and 18,000 prisoners. Among those lost was Charles William Ferdinand, who succumbed to his wounds on November 10. The most famous pursuit of the Napoleonic period began on October 15 and ended with the capitulation, at Ratkau, near Lübeck, on November 7, of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher’s detachment. Of the Prussian army, only 15,000 men under Anton Wilhelm von Lestocq escaped to East Prussia. Together with 120,000 prisoners, vast quantities of matériel had been taken: one month’s campaigning had destroyed the Prussian war machine.
The price of such defeat was severe. Pending the final settlement a war contribution of 160,000,000 francs and extensive requisitions throughout northern Germany were exacted. Napoleon’s immediate demands were for all Prussian territory west of the Elbe except Magdeburg and the Altmark, but the rapid collapse of Prussia, the Russian advance into Prussian Poland (October 23, 1806), and the disclosure of the Russo-Prussian alliance soon led him to offer an armistice instead of a peace treaty. On November 10 he announced that he would occupy Berlin until a general settlement had been made, including the restoration by the British of the colonies seized from the French and their allies. Frederick William preferred to remain in the allied camp. Meanwhile the French had occupied Brunswick and Hesse-Kassel, and Würzburg had joined the Confederation of the Rhine in September. The peace of Posen (Poznań) between France and Saxony was concluded on December 11, 1806, bringing Saxony into the Confederation of the Rhine and giving its elector, Frederick Augustus, the title of king.
The winter campaign of 1806–07: Eylau
From Berlin the French advanced into Poland. Behind the Vistula were Lestocq’s Prussians and 55,000 Russians under Leonty Leontyevich, count von Bennigsen, who had occupied Warsaw and the right bank. There, Bennigsen awaited a further Russian army of 35,000 men under Friedrich Wilhelm von Buxhöwden. On November 28, 1806, Bennigsen abandoned Warsaw without resistance to Murat, whom Napoleon had sent ahead with Davout, Jean Lannes, and Pierre-François-Charles Augereau. As the three remaining French corps became available, Napoleon directed Ney’s and Bernadotte’s toward Thorn (Torún) and Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult’s between Thorn and Warsaw. At Berlin, on November 19, Napoleon had informed a Polish deputation that he sympathized with their desire for the restoration of Poland. Although he was ready to recruit Polish assistance, he did not contemplate a thoroughgoing revival of the Polish state, which would have aroused further Russian enmity and Austrian opposition.
Bennigsen withdrew his forces to the Narew, principally around Pultusk, and was reinforced by Buxhöwden. On December 18, 1806, Napoleon himself reached Warsaw. After some indecisive engagements between December 22 and December 29 he gave up all hope of an effective pursuit of the retreating Russians and ordered his army into winter quarters. The combined Russian and Prussian forces had numbered about 115,000, of whom about 20,000 had been killed, wounded, and captured. The French had suffered approximately 5,000 casualties. Weather, terrain, and poor communications robbed the French of their mobility, and Napoleon was handicapped by the unfamiliar difficulty of feeding an army in an unfertile area whose resources the Russians had already exhausted.
Most of the French army was grouped in front of Warsaw. On the extreme left one corps was placed before Elbing (Elbląg), while another at Neidenburg (Nidzica) linked that force with the mass of the army. Outposts were established along the Passarge (Pasłeka), the Omulew, and as far south as the Bug. Ney, who had been ordered to push the Prussians northward late in December 1806, so exceeded his instructions that his troops had not reached winter quarters when Bennigsen advanced against the French left wing in the last days of January 1807. On January 25 Bernadotte concentrated his corps at Mohrungen (Morag), 8 miles (13 km) west of the Passarge, where he repulsed the numerically superior Russian advance guard before withdrawing southward toward Osterode (Ostroda). Anxious to appear in the rear of his enemy, Napoleon marched northward along the right bank of the Alle (Lyna) with three corps. He reached the Russians, who had retreated to the north between the Passarge and the Alle, at Göttkendorf (Gutkowo) on February 3, but night fell before a battle could be fought. By morning the Russians had decamped, abandoning their magazines on the Alle. The French continued their pursuit, and on February 7 their forward troops attacked the Russian rear guard outside Eylau, occupying the town that night. The Battle of Eylau was fought on the following day, February 8, 1807. The Russians suffered 25,000 casualties and were able to retreat in good order. The French, having had 28,000 casualties and being unable to pursue the Russians, fell back into winter quarters along the Passarge.
Great Britain and the Fourth Coalition
Though he had more than 600,000 men under arms in Europe altogether, Napoleon had barely 150,000 available for the war in East Prussia, and of those only 100,000 could be used for the decisive operations of summer 1807. Some 50,000 remained in Poland, protecting lines of communications and covering the 30,000 Russians disposed along the Narew. To the north, in East Prussia, there were 24,000 Prussians and 85,000 Russians by June 1807, and more Russian troops were expected. The allies, however, were not well placed to profit from the dispersal of Napoleon’s forces. While Russia was handicapped by having undertaken war against Persia (1804) and Turkey (1806), Great Britain’s practice of piecemeal warfare overseas precluded the dispatch of a strong expedition to help the eastern allies.
The progress of the campaign in East Prussia was obscured for the British by developments in South America. On June 27, 1806, a squadron under Sir Home Popham, with 1,600 troops, had captured Buenos Aires. Although the Spaniards had recovered the city in August the prospect of opening up new markets was so attractive to the British that a second expedition of 7,800 men under Sir John Whitelocke was sent out. Landing near Buenos Aires on June 28, 1807, it suffered such heavy losses in the assault on the city’s defenses that the project had to be abandoned. Failure had also overtaken the 6,000 troops sent from Sicily to Alexandria in March and the naval squadron dispatched in February to assist the Russians by attacking Constantinople.
It was not until April 26, 1807, that Russia and Prussia concluded the convention of Bartenstein (Bartoszyce), by which they undertook to make no separate peace treaties and to free Germany and Italy. The British proposed to grant Prussia a subsidy of £1,000,000 and to send an expeditionary force to Stralsund to join 16,000 Swedes in opposing the French, who had occupied Swedish Pomerania. Sweden, however, had signed an armistice with the French on April 18, and this truce lasted until July 3. When 8,000 British troops under William Cathcart disembarked at Rügen in mid-July, the Russians and Prussians, farther to the east, had already been defeated. The Fourth Coalition had come into being too late.
Friedland
Soon after the suspension of the winter campaign, Napoleon issued orders for the siege of Danzig (Gdańsk). The investment began on March 12, 1807, and the town was surrendered on May 26, offering a valuable base for operations. The French army had left winter quarters early in May to assemble behind the Passarge. On June 5 the Russians appeared before the French left wing. As Bennigsen’s opening moves traversed the French front, Napoleon grouped his forces.
On June 8, 1807, an encounter with 10,000 Russians suggested that the mass of the Russian army was around Guttstadt (Dobre Miasto), on which Napoleon proceeded to march and where on June 9 he dislodged the Russian rear guard. The Russians retreated to Heilsberg (Lidzbark Warmiński) on the Alle, where they had prepared an entrenched camp, 35 miles (56 km) south of Königsberg (Kaliningrad) and 27 miles (43 km) southwest of Friedland. Heavy fighting took place before Heilsberg on June 10, in which the French had the advantage. The next day Napoleon brought up the rest of his forces, trusting that the threat to their lines of retreat would make the Russians withdraw—as they did late in the evening. Bennigsen crossed to the right bank of the Alle, while Napoleon, anticipating that he would soon reappear on the left bank, headed north toward Eylau to place himself between the Russians on the Alle and the Prussians in front of Königsberg. On June 13 the French were massed close to Eylau, with strong detachments pushed forward in the direction of both Königsberg and Friedland. That evening it was learned that the Russians had crossed the Alle at Friedland, which Lannes had already been instructed to occupy next day. The Battle of Friedland, on June 14, ended with the crushing defeat of the Russians, who suffered 25,000 casualties. Meanwhile the corps detached to keep the Prussians away from the battlefield had driven Lestocq into Königsberg, which he abandoned on June 16, withdrawing his forces to join Bennigsen at Tilsit. Napoleon reached the Neman on June 19 and found the Russians ready for an armistice.
The Treaties of Tilsit
A variety of political motives, as well as his reverses in the field, prompted Alexander to make peace. Chief among them were his dissatisfaction with Great Britain and his belief that a French invasion of Russia would stimulate opposition to his regime. Yet Napoleon had not the means to contemplate an early invasion of Russia and had resolved, should Alexander remain in the war, to maintain his forces on the Neman and to await the eventual reappearance of the enemy army.
Alexander was ready to accept not only peace, but an alliance with France. He hoped to acquire the greater part of Turkey’s Balkan possessions, though Constantinople itself was not to fall to his share. Furthermore, an understanding with France and hostility toward Great Britain would give him the opportunity to pose as an arbiter of European affairs in common with Napoleon and to preserve Russia’s Polish lands. Though Napoleon would not agree to restore Prussia’s western territories in exchange for the cession of Polish provinces to Saxony and excluded Frederick William from the Franco-Russian negotiations and from the secret alliance signed at Tilsit on July 7, 1807, Russia lost nothing in the peace treaty of the same day.
The settlement between France and Prussia (July 9, 1807) furnished the spoils of the recent campaigns. Prussia was reduced to half its former population, losing all possessions west of the Elbe and almost all the territory gained in the three partitions of Poland. Danzig was to be a free city, garrisoned by the French, and Prussia was to be occupied by French forces until a heavy war indemnity had been paid. Further, Prussia agreed to close its ports to British trade and, if necessary, to join Russia and France in war against Great Britain.
The ceded territory west of the Elbe was distributed mostly between Murat’s grand duchy of Berg and the new kingdom of Westphalia (created for Jérôme Bonaparte in August 1807 and including also Brunswick and Hesse-Kassel). East Frisia went to Holland, and some other lands were left at Napoleon’s disposal. The bulk of the Polish provinces, with a population of 2,000,000, were made into the duchy of Warsaw for the king of Saxony, with a French garrison. Westphalia entered the Confederation of the Rhine, into which Mecklenburg and Oldenburg followed in 1808.
