Excerpt from "Pride Comes Before the Fall: The Third Coalition War"

Strained Winter

German winters were mild compared to Russian winters, yet harsh enough to stall the French offensive into the Holy Roman Empire. With temperatures falling below zero degrees Celsius and snow covering the region, Marshal Suchet faced new dilemmas with continuing his campaign. The leading French encampment was in Halle, just forty kilometers from Leipzig and one hundred and forty kilometers from Dresden. If the French seized those two cities, the road to northern Austria would be open, allowing the Grand Army to capture Prague and Vienna in rapid succession. Yet, as winter settled in, it became increasingly clear that Halle sat at the edges of France's logistics, mainly due to Clausewitz's scorched-earth tactics and the difficulty of overland transportation.

Hanover served as France’s primary supply hub for the massive three hundred thousand men French army. Initially, supply came by sea through the ports of Bremerhaven and Hamburg (which the French captured immediately after the war began). From there, wagons pulled supplies to Hanover and then to the frontlines. However, this was no easy feat as the Grand Army ate through a staggering 450 tonnes of food per day, with additional tonnes of ammunition and other necessities that an army of its size needed. These supply requirements did not include the tens of thousands of members of the National Guard that occupied the ‘liberated’ territories within the HRE.

While the French merchant marine was sizeable, it was nowhere near enough to supply the army fully, and direct overland transportation without rails was both costly and time-consuming. By December, the French occupied the western half of Germany, much of which had been stripped bare due to Clausewitz’s scorched earth policy. As winter set in, the supply lines could not keep up with the massive demands..

The French military quickly realized the importance of railroads for supplies towards the beginning of the invasion and convinced the government to negotiate a treaty with the Rhineland Kingdom for a rail line through the Ruhr Valley towards Hanover. The offer enticed the Rhineland Kingdom as it promised more significant economic investments. After a short debate, the proposal was quickly accepted, which secured the first half of the railway between Liege and Hanover.

The other half was secured through military force. Marshal Suchet ordered one of his armies to “clear a path” between the Ruhr Valley and Hanover. This army, led by General Moise Garcon, managed to create such a path by September 2nd. While he faced nearly no serious military opposition during his campaign, the local population was highly uncooperative, and numerous skirmishes broke out between civilians and French soldiers. Unwilling to inflict disproportionate civilian casualties, General Garcon moved slowly and carefully to pacify the region. His efforts resulted in a direct overland pass from Dortmund to Detmold to Hanover, though control over this pass was still tenuous at best.

However, even with a land route secured between Liege and Hanover, creating a rail network proved more difficult than expected. The French military needed more than eight hundred kilometers of rail, and large portions needed to be guarded constantly from the locals and Coalition forces. Additionally, the project was an expensive investment in non-French territory, and the railway needed to cross three different rivers (Rhine, Ruhr, and Weser).

The French High Command estimated it would take at least three months to complete the rail line, well into the winter. As such, it demanded construction to begin immediately. Initially, some officers in the military believed that the French government would be unwilling to part with eighty million francs (approximately twenty million US dollars at the time) to complete the endeavor. However, stubborn insistence from Marshal Suchet and public pressure to win the war swiftly forced the French government’s hands. A defeat against the Austrians and Prussians due to logistics was an embarrassment that neither the government nor the military would tolerate. Hence, construction began in earnest in late September, with the French government hiring its largest railway company, Baudin Rail Union, to oversee the effort.

As such, construction quickly began with rail workers under the Baudin Rail Union and members of the National Guard working on the railroad. A proposal to draft the locals was shot down as a “security risk,” and an unnecessary expenditure increase. Under extreme pressure from the French government, they worked day and night to finish the rail line in time for winter. By December, they were only twenty kilometers from Hanover, with the mirroring line closing in on Liege..

Clausewitz knew the railway was the bloodline of the Grand Army. He was informed of its construction a week after it began and saw it as the biggest threat to his carefully crafted plans. If France could move supplies into Germany freely, his scorched-earth tactics would become moot. Thus, he spent several days contemplating a method to turn France’s engineering triumphant into a bitter disaster. Soon, he realized the simplest way to throw the French into chaos.. was to reveal himself.

The March to Bamberg

Despite his reservations about a pitched battle, the Prussian marshal massed his troops and resources shortly after snow began to fall and prepared a two-pronged assault into occupied territory. At this time, Clausewitz had nearly two hundred thousand men under his command, with additional troops arriving from Prussia and Austria to swell his ranks. For this ‘lightning maneuver,’ he settled with five divisions under his direct command. In contrast, a single division under Brigadier Spiegel would rush into enemy territory with explosives to sabotage the French railway..

Marshal Suchet’s uncanny maneuvers during the final days before the beginning of winter had alarmed Clausewitz, who readily believed that the French had managed to either infiltrate his ranks or had informants to relay troop movements. Thus, as Clausewitz headed south with his men, the Duke of Teschen marched north with two divisions towards Stendal to tie down a portion of the Grand Army and to confuse the French. At the same time, the Duke ordered Brigadier General Franz Bandiera of Austria and his two divisions to go deeper south to Regensburg (which the French had abandoned in mid-November) to divide the French further and reinforce Clausewitz if needed.

As Clausewitz feared, the MSE informed Suchet of both operations, even identifying Clausewitz leading the southern thrust. Though unaware of Clausewitz’s true intentions, it was clear that this movement was an offensive campaign into occupied territory. Suchet was sore and embarrassed from being dragged around by his Prussian counterpart. As such, he committed to an all-out engagement to finally achieve his ‘decisive victory.’ He left behind a whole army group at Magdeburg to deal with the northern attack, with another army group at Halle to defend against a potential surprise attack. A third army group was already waiting in the south at Ulm, which would strike north if the opportunity presented itself. With three army groups preoccupied with defense, Suchet devoted the other half of his army, two under his direct control and another under the supervision of Major General Remi Bossuet, against the Coalition..

On December 8th of 1836, Clausewitz attacked the town of Nurnberg, defended by a small detachment of the National Guard, and overran it within hours. This was according to Suchet’s plan to track the Coalition army’s movements and to bait him deeper into occupied territory. From Nurnberg, the group rapidly converged on Wurzburg, which prompted Suchet to move to Bamberg (about ninety kilometers east of Wurzburg) to flank the Coalition forces and force their hand. Unexpectedly, Clausewitz turned about and marched swiftly into Bamberg ahead of the French. At the same time, Spiegel, whose division consisted of nearly all the cavalry and dragoons at the Coalition’s disposal, bolted westward. This sudden shift and split happened in the dead of night, and while the MSE managed to track Clausewitz, they had missed Spiegel.

Yet, the situation was not disastrous for Suchet. There were thousands of National Guards protecting the rail line, and they would inform him if they were attacked. Despite arriving at Bamberg first, Clausewitz had less than a day to set up defensive positions in the town. Additionally, while Bamberg sat behind the Main River, there was a shallow crossing a few kilometers north of the town at Breitengü?bach. Thus, after ensuring that the main bridges into Bamberg were destroyed (they were blown by Coalition forces hours before the French arrived), Suchet moved his army to cross the river and ordered his artillery to rain fire upon the Coalition.

It was a move that Clausewitz expected. Knowing better than allowing the French to use their superior artillery to pound his positions, he had placed three divisions, sixty thousand men, in Hallstadt, just north of Bamberg. Meanwhile, two divisions led by Brigadier Friedrich Graf von Wrangel held positions in Gundelsheim and Memmelsdorf, holding the eastern wing of the defensive lines. Prussian and Austrian artillery opened fire the moment they spotted the French, and Suchet’s own cannons scrambled to unlimber and respond in kind. The Prussians landed two volleys into French lines before receiving a response, wreaking havoc on the crossing effort. Not wanting to remain idle amid an artillery duel, the French soldiers scrambled across the river, arriving on the eastern banks disorganized and confused.

Yet, Clausewitz hesitated to launch a mass attack into the French ranks, which may have shattered the French lines and ended the battle before it could even begin. While most of his cavalry was with Spiegel, Clausewitz’s men were disciplined and well-trained. It was possible, if not likely, that the combined Prussian and Austrian armies would’ve been able to descend upon the French and force them into close combat, in which the Coalition had a slight edge in.

Historians have the foresight to make such judgments. However, Clausewitz saw a French army with superior numbers and equipment. Despite their disorganization, the French were still a formidable force, and every French soldier was armed to the teeth. And with plenty of open space for the French artillery to land shrapnel into his soldiers before crashing into the French wave, the Prussian marshal decided to hold behind his defensive earthworks. What he feared was not the French themselves but their weapons.

At the time of the clash, the French Army fielded one of Europe's most advanced militaries. It would be an exaggeration to claim that the French had invented their weapons without outside assistance (indeed, the United States lent weapons research and designs to France in late 1834, continuing their partnership that stemmed from the First French Revolution). However, France had numerous capable engineers and expanded upon American designs and suggestions, especially in developing field guns.

Indeed, this can be seen in the design of the French Beaulieu 12-pounder Cannon, one of the finest and most devastating cannons of its time [1]. Long, accurate, and mobile, the Beaulieu 12-pounder was a rifled breechloading cannon with a two-kilometer range and six-shot-per-minute fire rate. Its development began in 1830, with the final advancement needed for a ‘perfect’ breechloading artillery piece from the United States: the Davis breech obturator system. This system solved the problem of gas escaping the breechloaders, making them unreliable and dangerous. The Davis breech obturator system led to the development of the American Springfield guns and was the finishing touch for France’s own breechloading cannon. By late 1836, France fielded nearly eight hundred of these guns, and more were on the way.

While the Prussians also had their own field artillery engineering genius in the Krupp family (Friedrich Krupp was offered an enormous sum of money to move to France for his works, though he refused and his family remained in Prussia), the best field cannon at their disposal was the breechloading 6-Pfünder-Feldkanone C/30. However, unlike the French and Americans, this 6-pounder suffered from previous issues with sealing and thus was generally inferior in range, accuracy, and power. Yet, in terms of fire rate, it remained a match to the French Beaulieu cannon. Hence Clausewitz’s decision to fight as close as possible instead of allowing Suchet to utilize his artillery’s longer range.

Regarding rifles, France fielded the Delvigne Fusil modèle 1826, designed by Henri-Gustave Delvigne (one of Pauly’s many apprentices) [2]. Capable of firing ten to fifteen shots in a minute and a maximum range of fifteen hundred meters, it was a terrifying weapon that stood at the apex of military rifles. Building upon the advancements brought by the Pauly gun, the Delvigne enhanced all the strengths of a breechloading rifle but with additional range, power, and accuracy. The only downside was the rubber obturator wearing out after repeated use (the obturator for rifles had been first discovered by the French, though they had been unable to apply it to cannons for some time). Even then, it was hardly an issue as they were easily replaceable. The Delvigne was a French infantryman's main staple, yet it was already superseded by the newly designed Fusil modèle 1836 [3]. The creator, Noelle Bouchard, had applied a metallic cartridge to the rifle (similar to that of the American Pelissier rifles), with greater range and a box magazine that made it a vast improvement over the Delvigne. Yet, only a few French soldiers were equipped with the Bouchard at Bamberg. Even so, a French infantryman's standard fire rate and power could not be understated..

On the flip side, the Coalition soldiers were primarily armed with the Dreyse Needle Gun. Another apprentice of Pauly, Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse, returned to Prussia with intimate knowledge of rifles and breechloaders and created a variant of the Pauly gun, with his own modifications and improvements (his understanding of breechloading capabilities contributed to the creation of the Krupp 6-Pfünder-Feldkanone C/30).? However, it was inferior to the Delvgine in that the average firing rate was only six to ten per minute, and its maximum range was twelve hundred meters, well below the capabilities of the Delvgine. Nevertheless, it gave Coalition soldiers enough to match their French counterparts somewhat, and with plans to fight much of the war on the defensive, it was the perfect weapon for its users. Not to mention, the production costs and time for the Dreyse were far lower than that of the Delvigne or the Bouchard..

The knowledge of his weaponry's limitations guided Clausewitz’s planning and movements on the battlefield. Yet, even his cautiousness was not enough to compensate for the firepower of the French in a pitched battle..

The Battle of Bamberg and Clausewitz’s Defeat

The Coalition soldiers sat behind earthen redoubts positioned in Hallstadt, using the Main River to their west to their advantage. Hills next to the Main River and near Gundelshiem and Memmesldorf meant that there was only one area where the large French Army could advance: the plains in front of Hallstadt. The defenses were far from perfect; indeed, there were gaps and holes in their redoubts. Yet, they allowed Clausewitz to mass most of his infantry into a single section of the battlefield. It was here that the Coalition would make their stand and fight to delay the French army to allow Spiegel to complete his mission.

To begin the battle, the French regrouped and fired upon the defenders while digging temporary trenches to cover their forces. The French army had crossed too close to the defenders to utilize the superior range of their rifles and artillery, yet the intense fire rate of the Delvgine forced the Prussians and Austrians to duck under cover. The true killer of French infantry was the Prussian field guns, which whittled down the large French formations with shrapnel. While the French soldiers were dispersed to prevent the full effect of the shrapnel from being felt, there were far too many bottlenecked into the battlefield (as Clausewitz intended). Thus, during the initial phases of the battle, the French suffered nearly six thousand casualties, while the Coalition suffered only a few thousand from the French guns.

By this time, Suchet had noticed the lack of cavalry among the Coalition forces, yet he believed Clausewitz was holding them out of sight for a potential flanking maneuver (there were two passes through the hills in the east that led to Memmelsdorf, though they were rather treacherous). Thus, the legendary Second ‘Iron’ Dragoon Regiment, along with the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Cuirassiers and the First, Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Dragoon Regiments, remained behind the bulk of the French infantry and waited for a potential flank that never arrived. The First and Fifth Dragoon Regiments would skirmish with the defenders in Memmelsdorf, with light casualties to both sides. These two positions were better entrenched, and the two cavalry regiments that Clausewitz had at his disposal screened the French Dragoons effectively. As such, Suchet committed Bossuet and his men to seize the eastern redoubts and open up a flanking path. They would hold until the main assault into Hallstadt was underway.

After the French established a firm defensive line, the artillery duel picked up with newfound enthusiasm, with both sides hammering each other with cannon balls, shells, and shrapnel. It was here that the difference in artillery came into being, as the Coalition redoubts were blown apart by accurate artillery fire while the French lines were hit with less intensity (especially as the French cannons struck Prussian artillery positions with precision). Suchet decided to wear down the defenders with artillery and long-range rifle fire, as he stubbornly refused to consider attacking a well-entrenched enemy with a direct assault. The Beaulieu cannons thundered across the battlefield for three hours and pounded Clausewitz and his forces. The Coalition commander was adamant about remaining behind the relative safety of the redoubts rather than attempting to charge across the open fields for glory. Clausewitz reasoned that sooner or later, Suchet would need to attack. He had been denied his victory for far too long, and he could not win by hunkering down.

His reasoning was validated when Suchet decided to march his troops forward after hours of bombardment. The Coalition forces had held as best as they could, but there were noticeable holes in their lines, and they had suffered thousands of casualties while waiting. While they were repairing the redoubts and treating their wounded, the French descended upon them like “vultures to a corpse,” as one Prussian soldier noted. Suchet’s forces were split into two, with the main bulk attacking through the clearing while a split group moved through the hilly Zückshuter Forest (which sat in front of Gundelsheim and parts of Memmelsdorf). From there, the two groups would cut off the eastern defensive lines and pincer the main Coalition forces.

Another advantage Suchet held over Clausewitz was his communications balloons. Much like those used by the Americans during the Anglo-American War, the balloons allowed Suchet to have a constant flow of battlefield reports and to make changes to his plans accordingly. While the French military command was a bit more rigorous than its American counterpart, it allowed some tactical flexibility to its NCOs. Even Clausewitz himself envied the advantages of real-time intelligence, as he noted in the Aspects of War. However, the balloons held advantages and disadvantages, and miscommunication would ironically save Clausewitz from total defeat..

Prussian skirmishers spotted the movement in the forest a mere seven hundred meters from the redoubts. Led by Colonel Fran?ois Certain Canrobert, the thirty-thousand French soldiers had advanced a bit too early due to the colonel’s hasty actions. The main force had been seen over a kilometer away, and seeing that he had a chance to deny the French in the forest, Clausewitz ordered five of his regiments to engage the enemy head-on. As the skirmishers deterred the French from rapidly advancing, messengers relayed Clausewitz’s instructions to the officers in the area. Four Prussian regiments and one Austrian regiment responded in kind, three moving into the forest from the south while two from the redoubts on the hills moved from the east to place pressure from the side.

For two hours, the two sides were locked in fierce combat as the woods prevented the French from charging into their enemies while the Prussians and Austrians were whittled away by the rifle fire. The attack from the east caught the French by surprise and threw their lines into disarray, but due to their numbers, they were able to split their attention and slowly push the Coalition forces out of the forest. Clausewitz had ordered his men to fight a delaying action, but the sheer chaos of the forest fighting prevented an organized retreat. This proved to be a fatal mistake as Suchet, receiving information about the sudden Coalition advance, devoted three of his dragoon units to flank the enemy and encircle them.

The French advance hastened from the new information and engaged the defenders at the redoubts at six hundred meters (the effective range of the Delvgine). Soon, a gaping hole to their left was spotted by scouts, and the information was relayed to Suchet, who ordered the group to exploit it. As the French advanced closer to the redoubts, the three dragoon regiments followed closely behind and, once the French soldiers crashed into enemy lines, swung into the forest after a short skirmish with the main redoubt line. This sudden appearance of the French cavalry would doom the defenders of the forest, who would surrender after a fierce battle. Instantly, ten thousand Prussian and Austrian soldiers (about five thousand of them being captured) were removed from the battlefield and allowed the French to advance through the forest..

Once the French arrived in the trenches, they displayed tactics they had refined through their decades of experience in trench warfare. Grenades were lobbed into the trenches by grenadiers before the assault. Numerous groups were split as the main assault force went into the trenches, rolling into them and landing on their feet while immediately coming up firing. Each assault group had a dozen men remaining back to back as they dove in. Four would be prone, four would kneel, and four would remain to stand. Immediately, they would fire down both ends of the trench to clear the path for the others to follow and work down the trench to remove the remaining defenders. They were named ‘Troupes de Choc’ or the shock troops, trained explicitly in clearing trenches. While none of them were armed with American shotguns, they were still a highly trained and deadly force, which allowed the French to seize the first line of trenches despite attempts made by Coalition soldiers to dislodge them.

Yet, this second phase of the battle was highly costly for both sides. French forces suffered nearly fifteen thousand casualties to seize the first line, while the Coalition suffered over twelve thousand. This did not account for the skirmish in Zückshuter Forest, which inflicted over four thousand French casualties and much more for the Coalition. Even so, the French marched on, and Clausewitz knew the situation was turning against him. His forces had lost nearly a fourth of his troops, and half of his remaining soldiers were further east and under pressure from French attacks. He ordered his remaining artillery to pound the seized trench line and regrouped his forces in the second line. There were still two more trench lines behind the main force, and he planned to make the French bleed for every inch of ground.

The attack on the second trench line never came, as Suchet decided to swing around and strike with the brunt of his forces in the east, near Memmelsdorf. After Clausewitz’s forest gamble failed, a few regiments were sent to reinforce the lines in Gundelshiem, which weakened the eastern flank. Informed of this movement, Suchet committed half of his men from the main attack to peel off and support the cavalry in their attack against the weakened wing. While twenty-five thousand men remained in the Hallstadt redoubts to hold the Coalition forces in place, the defenders on the hill redoubts near Gundelsheim were swarmed with a mass of French infantry and cavalry led by General Bossuet. The relentless attack saw thousands of Coalition soldiers holding their ground to the last man, with only a few withdrawing down the hill to Memmelsdorf. However, the French still retained a numerical advantage as they marched down to claim the small town below. Once the French dragoons managed to whittle down the Prussian and Austrian cavalry, they rode in between the Coalition positions to cleave the defenders at Memmelsdorf from Gundelshiem.

Wrangel immediately took notice and, without input from Clausewitz, pulled back his men and retreated towards Bamberg itself. This effectively collapsed the eastern lines and forced the defenders from Gundelshiem to withdraw as well. While the Prussian brigadier had requested aid, he failed to receive any because French skirmishers shot the messenger. Nevertheless, even if his message went through, Clausewitz was busy being pinned down by the entrenched French soldiers and artillery, which had readjusted their aim at the remaining Coalition lines.

When Clausewitz learned of the collapse, he immediately ordered an organized retreat toward Nurnberg. While his forces had taken heavy casualties, they could continue the fight against the French and threaten them as long as they remained relatively intact. However, despite his best efforts, the retreat turned into a disorganized panic as French dragoons were spotted just east of Bamberg. The constant artillery bombardment also pounded away at the retreating Prussians and Austrians, sowing more confusion as the trickle of organized retreat turned into a sea of routing soldiers. Suchet had his victory; the enemy was on the run.

The Thin Blue Wall and the Charge of the Iron Dragoons

It was at this time that one of the greatest blunders of the Third Coalition War occurred and changed the course of the battle and, quite possibly, the war. The Second Dragoon Regiment, which had waited patiently with the First Dragoon Regiment just north of Memmelsdorf, was led by Lieutenant Jean-Pascal Ouvrard. He led a famed unit that stemmed its history back to the 16th century and held a long and prestigious career, especially during the First French Revolution and the First and Second Coalition Wars. He was noted for his temperament and glorifying war heroes such as Kim, Lafayette, and Murat.

During the rout of the Coalition forces, one of the Prussian artillery officers launched a cannonball whizzed by one of the military balloons. Whether it was by accident or on purpose, it rattled the balloon’s crew. The balloon’s signal corp members were unharmed, but the flag signal codebook dropped onto the ground below during the panic. At the same time, the balloon was receiving commands from Suchet to relay to Lieutenant Ouvrard. Having to remember the signal combinations instead of double checking with his book, the officer of the balloon mistakenly signaled for Ouvrard to “charge with due haste” instead of “prepare for a charge.” Lieutenant Ouvrard, who was rearing to chase down the retreating masses, eagerly ordered his men to charge forward after receiving the mistaken message. The signal officer under his command remained skeptical and wanted to confirm with the balloon to see if it was the right message, as there were reports of Coalition forces making a stand. However, Ouvrard dismissed him and charged forward with his unit, with the First Dragoons close behind him.

While the Coalition was in full retreat, several notable units were keen on preventing the French from exploiting the chaos. Most of them were Prussians, and Clausewitz ordered them to stand their ground to allow their compatriots to retreat intact. Led by Wrangel himself, the five thousand Prussians steeled their resolve to enable the main army to escape, even at the cost of their own lives. Several surviving cannons had also remained behind, intent on blasting the French full of shrapnel to delay their advance. This group held its position in the southernmost defensive redoubts, just south of Bamberg. They had fought off the Third French Dragoons with the assistance of the remaining Coalition cavalry and prepared for further enemy assaults.

It was this “Thin Blue Line” that was the first enemy soldiers Ouvrard encountered, and seeing the fleeing masses behind the line, he decided to charge. The four-thousand-strong cavalry of the First and Second Dragoons galloped toward the enemy and, before they could fire with their carbines, were met with a hail of bullets and shrapnel that shredded their numbers. Before they reached the Prussian lines, the Prussians landed-->>

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