Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

January 28th.—Murat deserts the French army for Naples, and leaves Posen. "Your husband is very brave on the battlefield, but he is weaker than a woman or a monk when he is not face to face with an enemy. He has no moral courage" ( Napoleon to his sister Caroline, January 24, 1813. Brotonne, 1032). Replaced by Eugène (Napoleon's letter dated January 22nd).

February 1st. —Proclamation of Louis XVIII. to the French people (dated London).

February 8th. —Warsaw surrenders to Russia.

February 10th. —Proclamation of Emperor Alexander calling on the people of Germany to shake off the yoke of "one man."

February 28th. —Sixth Continental Coalition against France. Treaty signed between Russia and Prussia at Kalisch.

March 3rd. —New treaty between England and Sweden at Stockholm: Sweden to receive a subsidy of a million sterling and the island of Guadaloupe in return for supporting the Coalition with 30,000 men.

March 4th. —Cossacks occupy Berlin. Madison inaugurated President U.S.A.

March 9th. —Eugène removes his headquarters to Leipsic.

March 12th. —French evacuate Hamburg.

March 21st. —Russians and Prussians take new town of Dresden.

April 1st. —France declares war on Prussia.

April 10th. — Death of Lagrange, mathematician ; greatly bemoaned by Napoleon, who considered his death as a "presentiment" (D'Abrantès).

April 14th. —Swedish army lands in Germany.

April 15th.—Napoleon leaves Paris; arrives Erfurt (April 25th). Americans take Mobile.

April 16th. —Thorn (garrisoned by 900 Bavarians) surrenders to the Russians. Fort York (now Toronto) and

April 27th. —Upper Canada taken by the Americans.

May 1st. —Death of the Abbé Delille, poet. Opening of campaign. French forces scattered in Germany, 166,000 men; Allies' forces ready for action, 225,000 men. Marshal Bessières killed by a cannon-ball at Poserna.

May 2nd.—Napoleon with 90,000 men defeats Prussians and Russians at Lutzen (Gross-Goerschen) with 110,000; French loss, 10,000. Battle won

chiefly by French artillery. Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia present.

May 8th.—Napoleon and the French reoccupy Dresden.

May 18th. —Eugène reaches Milan, and enrols an Italian army 47,000 strong.

May 19th-21st.—Combats of Konigswartha, Bautzen, Hochkirch, Würschen. Napoleon defeats Prussians and Russians; French loss, 12,000; Allies, 20,000.

May 23rd.—Duroc (shot on May 22nd) dies. "Duroc," said the Emperor, "there is another life. It is there you will go to await me, and there we shall meet again some day."

May 27th. —Americans capture Fort George (Lake Ontario) and

May 29th. —Defeat English at Sackett's Harbour.

May 30th. —French re-enter Hamburg and

June 1st. —Occupy Breslau. British frigate Shannon captures Chesapeake in fifteen minutes outside Boston harbour.

June 4th.—Armistice of Plesswitz, between Napoleon and the Allies.

June 6th. —Americans (3500) surprised at Burlington Heights by 700 British.

June 15th.—Siege of Tarragona raised by Suchet; English re-embark, leaving their artillery. "If I had had two marshals such as Suchet, I should not only have conquered Spain, but I should have kept it" ( Napoleon in Campan's Memoirs).

June 21st. —Battle of Vittoria; total rout of the French under Marshal Jourdan and King Joseph. In retreat the army is much more harassed by the guerillas than by the English.

June 23rd. —Admiral Cockburn defeated at Craney Island by Americans.

June 24th. —Five hundred Americans surrender to two hundred Canadians at Beaver's Dams.

June 25th. —Combat of Tolosa. Foy stops the advance of the English right wing.

June 30th.—Convention at Dresden. Napoleon accepts the mediation of Austria; armistice prolonged to August 10th.

July 1st. —Soult sent to take chief command in Spain.

July 10th. —Alliance between France and Denmark.

July 12th.—Congress of Prague. Austria, Prussia, and Russia decide that Germany must be independent, and the French Empire bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; "but to reign over 36,000,000 men did not appear to Napoleon a sufficiently great destiny" (Montgaillard). Congress breaks up July 28th.

July 26th. —Moreau arrives from U.S., and lands at Gothenburg.

July 31st. —Soult attacks Anglo-Spanish army near Roncesvalles in order to succour Pampeluna. Is repulsed, with loss of 8000 men.

August 12th. —Austria notifies its adhesion to the Allies.

August 15th.—Jomini, the Swiss tactician, turns traitor and escapes to the Allies. He advises them of Napoleon's plans to seize Berlin and relieve Dantzic [see letter to Ney, No. 19,714, 20,006, and especially 20,360 (August 12th) in Correspondence]. On August 16th Napoleon writes to Cambacérès: "Jomini, Ney's chief of staff, has deserted. It is he who published some volumes on the campaigns and who has been in the pay of Russia for a long time. He has yielded to corruption. He is a soldier of little value, yet he is a writer who has grasped some of the sound principles of war."

August 17th.—Renewal of hostilities in Germany. Napoleon's army, 280,000, of whom half recruits who had never seen a battle; the Allies 520,000, excluding militia. In his counter-manifesto to Austria, dated Bautzen, Napoleon declares "Austria, the enemy of France, and cloaking her ambition under the mask of a mediation, complicated everything.... But Austria, our avowed foe, is in a truer guise, and one perfectly obvious. Europe is therefore much nearer peace; there is one complication the less."

August 18th. —Suchet, having blown up fortifications of Tarragona, evacuates Valentia.

August 21st. —Opening of the campaign in Italy. Eugène, with 50,000 men, commands the Franco-Italian army.

August 23rd. —Combats of Gross-Beeren and Ahrensdorf, near Berlin. Bernadotte defeats Oudinot with loss of 1500 men and 20 guns. Berlin is preserved to the Allies. Oudinot replaced by Ney. Lauriston defeats Army of Silesia at Goldberg with heavy loss.

August 26th-27th.—Battle of Dresden.—Napoleon marches a hundred miles in seventy hours to the rescue. With less than 100,000 men he defeats the Allied Army of 180,000 under Schwartzenberg, Wittgenstein, and Kleist. Austrians lose 20,000 prisoners and 60 guns. Moreau is mortally wounded (dies September 1st). Combat of the Katzbach, in Silesia. Blucher defeats Macdonald with heavy loss, who loses 10,000 to 12,000 men in his retreat.

August 30th. —Combat of Kulm. Vandamme enveloped in Bohemia, and surrenders with 12,000 men.

August 31st. —Combat of Irun. Soult attacks Wellington to save San Sebastian, but is repulsed. Graham storms San Sebastian.

September 6th. —Combat of Dennewitz (near Berlin). Ney routed by Bulow and Bernadotte; loses his artillery, baggage, and 12,000 men.

September 10th —Americans capture the English flotilla on Lake Erie.

September 12th. —Combat of Villafranca (near Barcelona). Suchet defeats English General Bentinck.

October 7th. —Wellington crosses the Bidassoa into France. "It is on the frontier of France itself that ends the enterprise of Napoleon on Spain. The Spaniards have given the first conception of a people's war versus a war of professionals. For it would be a mistake to think that the battles of Salamanca (July 22nd, 1812) and Vittoria (June 21st, 1813) forced the French to abandon the Peninsula.... It was the daily losses, the destruction of man by man, the drops of French blood falling one by one, which in five years aggregated a death-roll of 150,000 men. As to the English, they appeared in this war only as they do in every world-crisis, to gather, in the midst of general desolation, the fruits of their policy, and to consolidate their plans of maritime despotism, of exclusive commerce" (Montgaillard).