STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 098

Why Napoleon’s Cavalry Failed in 1813

12. Why Napoleon’s Cavalry Failed in 1813 (6)

In the later part of the Napoleonic regime, therefore, from 1807 onward, the mounted infantry idea may be considered to have disappeared. It may be noted that by far the larger part of the 30 dragoon regiments, 24 out of 30, were transferred to Spain after 1808. Napoleon never sent his cuirassier brigades to the Peninsular War, mainly, as it seems, because he wished to keep them massed in central Europe, even in time of peace, in order to have them ready to oppose to the heavy cavalry of Austria and Russia.

In Spain there was practically nothing but light cavalry among the allied armies—the two or three English heavy regiments which were there in 1808–10 were hardly worth noticing. It was not till 1812 that Wellington had as many as six regiments which were not light cavalry. But partly also it would seem that the cuirassiers and carabineers were kept out of the Spanish War, because the Emperor rightly thought that it would be difficult to keep their horses in good order in those arid regions, and impossible to replace them from local sources, since Spain breeds no mounts suitable for such ponderous troops as his cuirassiers. In the countless narratives of engagements between the French and British cavalry which I have had to go through, I have never found that the numerous French dragoon regiments showed any marked tendency to act as mounted infantry—they worked like any other cavalry except that occasionally we hear of their throwing dismounted skirmishers into villages or passes, as at Calcalbellos and Usagre, but not on any large scale nor particularly effectively. Indeed, the heavy brass helmet and the tall boots made them unsuitable for long and continuous fighting on foot, as I have already had occasion to observe.

The Peninsular War practically absorbed all Napoleon’s dragoon force: only 6 of the 30 regiments were available for the Wagram campaign of 1809 or the Russian campaign of 1812; only 4 regiments went to Russia. After the Moscow disaster the Emperor began to withdraw his dragoons by successive brigades from Spain, and they were all that he had of good veteran cavalry in his Leipzig campaign, and in the defence of France in 1814. During those two campaigns he used them as his real heavy cavalry, having lost his 14 cuirassier regiments in the snows of Russia, and never having been able to replace them. For the so-called cuirassier regiments of 1813 were mostly weak units, hastily organized on the depots of the old regiments with recruits, and horses of all sorts and sizes obtained by requisition. They never had the weight or ascendancy in battle that had belonged to the old corps that had perished in the Moscow retreat.

If any one wants to realize what one of the reorganized cuirassier regiments was like at the opening of the campaign of 1813, he may find a humorous account of the mishaps of the colonel sent to organize one of these assemblies of raw men and horses in the memoirs of that officer, De Gonneville—a very readable work. The first time that the commanding officer got the whole regiment out for drill, and gave the order to draw swords, many scores of horses bolted: one whole squadron was carried away in a stampede for a mile, there was a general breaking of lines and a jam. Over two hundred men got dismounted, and it was two hours before the whole corps could be collected again in line. When reading the narrative, and realizing that only a few weeks later this sort of cavalry was taken on to the battlefield, one realizes why Napoleon’s mounted arm in 1813 failed him, except for the veteran dragoon regiments withdrawn by degrees from Spain, and set to leaven too large a lump of raw and incapable conscript cavalry.

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