12 defeats of Napoleon Bonaparte. Epilogue of St. Helena
Chandler Lists
In modern Napoleonics, lists of military clashes, as well as their participants, compiled, more precisely, scrupulously systematized by the British historian David Chandler, are considered classical. He prepared them in parallel with an extensive Napoleonic bibliography, free from dummies and outright propaganda, while working on his books, which later became famous: On the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon's Military Campaigns, Waterloo and Napoleon's Marshals.
All apologists of Napoleon Bonaparte rely on them today, analyzing the campaigns and battles of the general, the first consul and twice the emperor of the French, his numerous victories and defeats. Even before Chandler, it was believed that the French commander gave 60 battles, and only 12 of them failed to win.
It is worth recalling in this connection that many generals, and above all the great Suvorov, whom foreign military historians stubbornly do not want to recognize as such, did not know defeats at all. But it is also worth recognizing that too much in that era was against Napoleon, and against France and the French, who were looking for their own path to freedom. The more significant their victories seem, and the more interesting their defeats.
So, 12 defeats of Napoleon Bonaparte - this is a failed siege of Saint-Jean-d'Acra in 1799, Preisch-Eylau in 1807, Aspern-Essling in May 1809, four battles of 1812 - the Battle of Borodino, bloody battles at Maloyaroslavets and Krasnoye as well as the collapse and amazing salvation on the Berezina, the four-day 1813 Leipzig, rightly called the “Battle of the Nations”, La Rottiere, Laon and Arcy-sur-Ob in the French campaign, and finally the epic Waterloo on June 18, 1815.
To these twelve failures on the battlefield, the authors of the cycle decided to add two large military campaigns - the Spanish and the Russian, in which even the repeated brilliant victories of the emperor did not help to change anything at all. Many with certain reasons consider the Egyptian campaign unsuccessful, although to General Bonaparte it, in addition to fame, also brought power.
In the six years that, after Waterloo and the second abdication, the prisoner of Europe spent on Fr. St. Helena, he did not have time to tell or describe many of his victories, but he did not miss almost a single defeat. The same Egyptian campaign is dedicated to a separate work of Napoleon with a detailed analysis of the reasons for the first failure of a genius. However, he managed to visit Count Las Cazu on the fact that no one even tried in hot pursuit to tell about the unprecedented campaign of 1814.
It was Las Cas, who spent only eight months with the emperor on a distant island, laid the foundation for the creation of the Napoleonic legend. It is hardly possible to take Napoleon’s famous bulletins as such, in which, with tenacity worthy of a better application, he deceived rather than the public, but himself.
Amazing in laconicism, “Thoughts and Maxims”, recorded by the count, are inferior in volume by several times to the memoirs and later works of his overlord and sovereign. Nevertheless, it was in them, it seems, that there was a place for those assessments and emotions that Napoleon experienced in relation to his own failures. And yet, the emperor did not have time in conversations with Las Caz, or, most likely, did not want to speak about most of those who defeated him.
By the way, even among the failures, a truly worthy place was found only for Waterloo, who, according to Napoleon himself, outweighed all his 40 victories. But here, too, the great vanquished did not deny himself the right to voice an alternative, giving at the same time an exceptional compliment to Marshal Pear.
The passage of the Pear from Namur to Paris (after Waterloo) the emperor did not hesitate to call "one of the most brilliant exploits of the war of 1815." “I already thought,” he wrote, “that the Pears with his forty thousand soldiers were lost for me and I won’t be able to rejoin them in my army beyond Valenciennes and Bushen, relying on the northern fortresses. I could organize a defense system there and defend every inch of the earth. ”
Napoleon also mentioned the battle of Eilau, which, according to him, "was expensive for both sides and had no decisive outcome." And no other way, and no analysis of their own flights and even the mention of General Bennigsen. It is better to broadcast beautifully to the interlocutor about "one of those vague battles when they defend every inch of the earth."
It’s not so important for us that Napoleon decided to note that “he wouldn’t choose such a place for the battle”, the fact that Las Cazu in his extremely lapidary work still had to be reminded of Eilau is important. Hooked, but how could it be otherwise, and here, as with Borodin or Berezin, there is no need to convince anyone of his dubious victory.
In his own works, Napoleon somehow recalls almost all the failures that befell him. He will start with Saint-Jean-d'Acre, the description of the siege of which will take more than a third of the book dedicated to the Egyptian campaign. And Napoleon simply does not have time to complete everything by a detailed analysis of the campaign of 1815.
The right of the vanquished
Do not you, dear readers, think that a well-known maxim is that history winners write, is it not an axiom? On the example of the Napoleonic wars, this is felt especially strongly. By the right of the vanquished, Napoleon was able to masterfully place accents both in his personal history and in the history of France and the entire civilized world of that time.
The 30-year-old General Bonaparte, seriously trying on the laurels and the right of power of Alexander the Great, will study his first defeat in Syria, we can say, lengthwise and crosswise. It is difficult to find the best textbook for the commander who is preparing a long siege of the fortress. However, Napoleon himself always subsequently avoided sieges, preferring to solve the matter in open battles.
Napoleon preferred to either go around the fortresses, trying to find other strong points for communications, or isolate them, moreover, in such a way as to immediately make continued resistance pointless. However, he himself, having not yet tried on the imperial crown, began to actively build fortresses in France and occupied countries. And he himself more than once relied on them already in his last campaigns, when he had to retreat much more often than wage an offensive war.
More than once he considered the fortress garrisons as the last reserve. But it is no coincidence that Napoleon began all the wars that he waged right up to the Russian campaign, with a great advantage in strength, following his own rule that in a different scenario it would be better not to start the business at all. Nevertheless, during the siege of Saint-Jean-d'Acre (Acre), the French had no talk of any superior strength, but in the East of Bonaparte it did not bother too much.
Sydney Smith under Acre, 1799
Particular attention to Acre prompted Napoleon not only to the fact that he avoided a protracted struggle for fortresses, but also to a very close analysis of such a struggle. Moreover, in two works at once, which even today can be considered textbook: “On the Defensive War” and “On the Offensive War”.
But let him down under Acre, by and large, just a coincidence that deprived the professional artilleryman of a sufficient number of heavy guns. And no engineering talent of Picard de Filippo, no persistence of the future Sir Sydney Smith would have helped the defenders. Although it is unlikely that even taking Saint-Jean-d'Acre, General Bonaparte really could become the emperor of the East. And the point is not in his talents and ambitions, but in the real possibilities of revolutionary France.
Nevertheless, Napoleon in his memoirs and notes was by no means out of academic interest devoted to Sydney Smith almost the most caustic and lengthy comments. And this is among all who managed to deprive him of the laurels of the winner.
It should also be noted that Napoleon in his works and even working notes minimized everything related to the Spanish and Russian campaigns. In the same way, nothing was awarded to them except for certain critical, and sometimes even insulting, statements that fell into the memoirs and memoirs of his comrades-in-arms, such commanders as Kutuzov, as well as all the Spanish military commanders.
In fact, the great commander is very stingy with attention not only to his failures, but also to those generals who defeated him. The winner of Waterloo, Duke of Wellington, did not receive any close attention, the emperor emphasized contempt for him quite regularly, although Napoleon most likely simply did not manage to get to him in his memoirs and works.
And for example, Schwarzenberg, in the future the generalissimo, who received the field marshal’s rod actually under the patronage of the French emperor, is mentioned in Napoleon’s writings only twice - in the context of specific events. For Kutuzov, the one who had the army of an elderly prince, as it was said, "face and in r ... oh," did not even have a word. But Admiral Chichagov Napoleon obviously remembered not without pleasure, because he "threw him away for the Berezina."
By the way, if we leave Britain behind the brackets, then the Corsican upstart also did not have time to speak out thoroughly about his main geopolitical rival, Emperor Alexander I. However, even Blucher, who had repeatedly literally infuriated the emperor, could have considered himself deprived of Napoleon’s attention if he had not completed his voluminous research on the campaign of 1813. Regarding Waterloo, Blucher is also spoken mostly simply in the course of the narrative. Without ratings and characteristics, as well as without emotions.
Napoleon is risen. thin V. Kossak
In addition to Acra, only almost complete defeat under Aspern and Essling, which Napoleon himself stubbornly did not consider failure, was awarded a truly thorough analysis. At the same time, the emperor of France never skimped on compliments to the Austrian commander-in-chief Archduke Charles. We conclude our epilogue with a short quote, citing only two paragraphs from several pages about this battle. They can be considered, without any reservations, the peak of Napoleonic myth-making.
But, firstly, we did not lose the battle of Esslingen, but won it, because the battlefield from Gross Aspern to Esslingen remained in our power, the Duke of Montebell (Marshal Lann. - Auth.) Attacked not in columns, but in deployed formation ; on the battlefield, he maneuvered more skillfully than all the other army generals; thirdly, not the Archduke tore off our bridges, but the Danube, which rose 14 feet in three days. ”
- Alexey Podymov, Maxim Zarezin, Oleg Sergeev
- Wellington or Blucher? Who defeated Napoleon
Waterloo. Point of no return
Generalissimo Schwarzenberg: he also defeated Napoleon
Ten days before Paris. Napoleon’s last chance
There is no land beyond the Rhine. The First Failures of the Great Army in 1814
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