Book review: Napoleon 1814: The Defence of France

For the cover of his latest book, leading British military historian Andrew Uffindell features Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier's painting of Napoleon riding with his staff along a frozen track, which has often misinterpreted as depicting his retreat from Moscow in 1812.  In fact, the picture was meant to show Napoleon at bay more than a year later as the Allies closed in on France itself, and thus draws the reader's attention to two factors that distinguished that campaign: the weather and the terrain.

In fact a study carried out in England during World War II determined that 1814 began with the harshest winter since 1783.  The exceptional bitterness of that winter may have been linked to what is now called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).  A strong ENSO event is also known to have occurred in 1789-1793.  In regard to the terrain, Uffindell notes that the majority of the battles of 1814 were fought within a surprisingly small swathe of land which extended just 120 miles from Paris in the west to Saint Dizier in the east, and contained between the Marne river in the north and the Seine in the south about 40 miles.  That arena was equivalent to the land area of Connecticut or half the size of Wales, and only three major battles, Craon, Laon and Reims, were fought outside of it.  Never in the course of his entire career had Napoleon conducted a campaign within a the confines of such a small area of operations.

The Allied armies crossed the Rhine River without synchronizing their movements, each initially conducting short-range probes, especially into the region known as Pouillese, or barren Champagne, a territory that was dry, infertile and consequently sparse in population.  Napoleon, on the other hand, had the difficulty of retaking the initiative with Paris at his back, compounded by another problem brought to the reader's attention by the author: typhus.  Survivors of the Grande Armée had contacted the disease in Russia, where it had been endemic, and brought it with them, first to Germany and then to France. Uffindell estimates that about 30,000 recruits died in hospital in the Rhine region alone.   

In his effort to form a new army Napoleon depended upon, to an unprecedented degree, his veteran Guard divisions, for which reason 1814 was been called “The Campaign of the Guard.”  He also succeeded in reviving the French cavalry, which was so superior to its Allied counterparts that it became a key factor in his victories, although it should be noted that this partly due to the generally high motivation of French soldiers with their “backs to the wall”.  Nevertheless, for all the battles Napoleon may have won, he inevitably lost the war once the Allies concentrated their forces against the French capital.  The Battle of Paris, on 30 March, was the largest, bloodiest, and most important of the campaign. 

Andrew Uffindell, whose previous book Napoleon's Immortals was part of a series that collectively won the Royal United Services Institute's Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature, laces his lucid recounting of this last critical campaign of the First Empire with many little-known details, such as the story of Jean Caupeil, whose remarkable conception of an armoured personnel carrier never reached fruition.
 
Napoleonic enthusiasts will find Napoleon 1814 an equally engrossing read, supplemented by statistical tables and very analytical military maps, all making it a highly recommended addition to their libraries.