Battle of Château-Thierry

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Battle of Château-Thierry

Part of: Wars of Liberation

Territory of the Napoleonic six-day campaign

date	February 12, 1814
place	Château-Thierry , France
output	Withdrawal of the Russian corps under von Osten-Sacken and the Prussian corps under Yorck over the Marne to Reims

Parties to the conflict
France	Russia Prussia
Commander
Napoleon Bonaparte Michel Ney	Fabian von der Osten-Sacken Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg
losses
600	1,250 Prussians 1,500 Russians

The battle of Château-Thierry was a battle of the six-day campaign of the Wars of Liberation .

The battle took place on February 12, 1814 at Château-Thierry on the Marne in France. It was fought between a French army under Napoleon's command and a contingent of the Silesian Army consisting of a Russian corps under General von der Osten-Sacken and a Prussian corps under General Yorck . The result was the withdrawal of coalition troops across the Marne to Reims . The coalition troops suffered high losses, the Napoleonic troops only minor ones.

prehistory

The day before, Napoleon had forced the same two corps of the Silesian Army to retreat to the north in the battle of Montmirail and in particular inflicted heavy losses on the Russian corps von der Osten-Sacken. During the night the coalition troops had approached Château-Thierry on muddy, groundless roads . General Yorck had already left his heavy artillery there the day before, as well as a considerable part of his troops, who had used the time to build a second (ship) bridge to cross the Marne .

General Yorck spent the night near the small village of Viffort , where General Sacken joined him the next morning. General Sacken was the senior officer and was in command of joint operations.

Napoleon let his troops rest that night and spent them himself on a farm. That evening he sent a courier to Marshal MacDonald, who was standing with his troops at Meaux , 51 km further west on the Marne, and instructed him to march immediately on the north bank of the Marne to Château-Thierry in order to pass the passage to the coalition troops refuse. MacDonald was not to appear, however, to Napoleon's disappointment.

Course of battle

The Marne Valley near Château-Thierry

Napoleon gave his troops enough time on the morning of February 12, 1814 to supply themselves. It was not until around 10 a.m. that he assembled a new cavalry corps of at least 4,000 riders, which he placed under the command of Marshal Ney and sent after the withdrawing coalition troops. These were then followed by selected infantry, including at least one division of the Old Guard under Marshal Mortier .

At Sacken's urgent request, Yorck and his troops had taken over cover for the common retreat. On the northern edge of a long depression about 6 km south of Château-Thierry , in which a stream ( Ru des Grandes Noues , Ru des Fonciaux) flows to the Marne, he had set up several battalions and his reserve armament, a total of 24 squadrons , i.e. 3,600 riders . The rest of the Prussian cavalry under Katzler , which had brought up the rear until then, had been allowed to withdraw to Château-Thierry and across the Marne. Yorck's team was reinforced by some Russian troops and especially Russian cavalry, which Sacken had expressly promised him.

When Napoleon's advancing troops met the Prussian, they began to bypass them in the east. When the Prussians opposed this attempt to circumvent them, they were thrown back by a massive attack by the numerically superior French cavalry and had to go back in disarray on the southern slope of the Marne Valley. The Russian cavalry did not enter the battle at any time and went to Château-Thierry to cross the Marne. The Prussian reserve cavalry did the same, insofar as they could escape the French cavalry. The remaining infantry had to escape into Château-Thierry under repeated attacks by the French cavalry and persistent losses, only supported by five squadrons of hussars (one regiment). After that, the French cavalry around Château-Thierry on the south bank of the Marne attacked those infantry units that did not defend themselves as one or escaped across the Marne bridges quickly enough, causing further considerable losses to Prussians and Russians, and their retreat into disorder. It was not until late that some of the guns of the coalition troops were able to keep the French cavalry at bay from the northern bank of the Marne.

In the evening the ship's bridge was pulled in by the coalition troops and the central part of the old Marne bridge was burned by pulling a burning boat underneath. A significant part of the luggage, many ammunition wagons and some guns that got stuck in the mud were left behind.

The retreat across the Marne was slow and disorderly, not least because the coalition soldiers did not let themselves be deterred from searching the town, which is largely on the northern bank of the Marne, for food and everything they found on stolen farm wagons to let go.

The next days

The Marne at Château-Thierry

Repair of the Marne Bridge

A Russian unit had been left behind on the northern bank of the Marne, which on the morning of February 13, 1814, initially prevented the Marne Bridge from being restored immediately with its barrage. Then a single French soldier managed to swim through the wintry Marne, on which ice floes were floating, to steal a boat and bring it to the south bank. On this boat, and later others, French soldiers set off across the Marne in musket fire and successfully drove the Russians off the banks of the Marne.

Napoleon, who was present in Château-Thierry himself, had the old bridge repaired immediately and the ship's bridge restored. Then he sent a unit under Marshal Mortier after the withdrawing Russians and Prussians.

The mood in the region

As a result of the ruthless plundering, the coalition troops had made themselves so hated by the citizens of Château-Thierry that they threw wounded Russians or Prussians, whom they found in the streets of the city, as they were, into the ice-cold waters of the Marne. The citizens of Château-Thierry also actively and committedly helped with the repair of their bridge, in particular by procuring the necessary building materials. There was excitement in the city and the entire region over the defeat of the coalition forces. All around the country people armed themselves and openly supported the Napoleonic troops: wherever they went they were offered horses and wagons for support.

Yorck and Sacken, on the other hand, were unable to send reports to their superior Field Marshal Blücher for days, as all the couriers were intercepted and were taken prisoner. After all, Yorck was clever enough not to punish peasants who were caught armed and thereby not to further fuel the hostile mood in the country.

The state of the coalition forces

It was a miserable procession of Russians and Prussians, which pulled far apart to the north and the head of which arrived two days later on February 14, 1814 in Reims, 58 km away . Every second Prussian was ill or was unable to march because of poor or missing footwear and only managed the route to Reims on a farm wagon.

In his first report to Blücher, Yorck wrote:

"I cannot hide the fact that my corps is extremely fatigued (tired) and the footwear is in the saddest condition, so that an extraordinarily large number of people are left behind and I have to fear leaving half the corps behind."

- General Yorck to Field Marshal Blücher after the battle at Château-Thierry

In the next few days, Yorck tried mostly in vain to get better. In his first order of the day in Reims, he openly described the grievances that he had to blame:

"It was with the greatest displeasure that I perceived the enormous increase in the corps' baggage: an innumerable number of country carts are loaded with wine barrels, old meat, rotten bread, individual sacks, women, shoe-sick people, etc."

- General Yorck in his order of the day of February 14, 1814 in Reims

Napoleon did not follow Yorck and Sacken with the bulk of his troops. He had new reports from his Marshal Marmont, who reported that Blücher had set out with two corps from Bergères-lès-Vertus to the west and was harassing him. Napoleon returned to Montmirail on February 13, 1814 for his next blow against Prussians and Russians.

literature

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Notes and individual references

1. ↑ Alison, Vol XII, p. 497 ff.
2. ↑ Forester p. 690.
3. ↑ A. Mikhailofsky-Danilefsky, Archibald Alison: History of Europe from the commencement of the French Revolution to the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, Vol. 11: 1813-1814 . 9th edition. Blackwood, Edinburgh 1860
4. ↑ Some Prussian authors suggest that this was already a consequence of the persistent differences between the commanding generals Osten-Sacken and Yorck. The Russian author Mikhailofsky-Danilefsky, on the other hand, reports that the Prussian cavalry had been so badly led against Russian advice that it was pointless to use the Russian horsemen.
5. ↑ cf. Houssaye
6. ↑ Förster p. 695 f.
7. ↑ Forster p. 698 ff.
8. ↑ Forester p. 697.

Web links

• Château-Thierry
• Montmirail