On 18 February 1814 Napoleon defeated a Württemberg and Austrian corps under the Crown Prince of Württemberg at Montereau, where the Yonne flows into the Seine southeast of Paris. General Pajol's cavalry seized the bridges before they could be blown up, and Schwarzenberg's main Allied army fell back toward Troyes.
From the Marne to the Seine
In the winter of 1814 the Allied armies invaded France from the east. In mid-February Napoleon beat Blücher's Army of Silesia in a run of battles ending at Vauchamps on 14 February, while Schwarzenberg's Army of Bohemia pushed its advance guards along the Seine toward Paris. The campaign had opened at Brienne, told in our page on 29 January.1
Napoleon turned south at once. By 16 February his forced marches had brought him with the Guard to Guignes, where he joined the corps of his marshals facing Schwarzenberg. On 17 February the French routed the Russian advance guard of Count Pahlen at Mormant and pushed on toward the Seine crossings. Marshal Victor, sent to seize the bridge at Montereau, halted short of the town that evening, and Napoleon was furious with him.2
The heights of Surville
Montereau stands where the Yonne joins the Seine, and a bridge over each river carried the road through the town. The Crown Prince of Württemberg, ordered to hold the crossing, put his troops on the plateau of Surville on the north bank, which rises steeply above the town and the bridges. His strength is uncertain: Petre counts about 8,500 infantry, 1,000 cavalry and 26 guns on the plateau, with another brigade behind, while Houssaye speaks of 14,000 Württembergers.3
The French attacks of the morning of 18 February were thrown back, and the fighting went on for most of the day. Angry at Victor's slowness, Napoleon took his corps away from him and gave it to General Étienne Gérard.4
Pajol's charge
In the afternoon Napoleon arrived with the Guard, and his guns were brought into action on the Surville heights. The Crown Prince began to pull back across the river, but the retreat down the steep slope turned into a rout. General Claude-Pierre Pajol charged with his cavalry along the main road and over the bridges with the fugitives, so that the defenders had no time to blow them up. The French took the town and drove the beaten Allies into the country beyond the Yonne.5
Montereau is also the setting of a famous story. According to the memoir of Napoleon's secretary Baron Fain, the emperor aimed a gun himself on the heights, and when the gunners worried about him he told them not to fear, because the cannonball that would kill him had not yet been cast.6
Results
Schwarzenberg ordered his army back to Troyes. The historian Henry Houssaye argued that if Victor had taken the bridge on 17 February, Napoleon could have cut off part of the Allied army and dealt it the kind of blow he had just given Blücher. Montereau was one of the last victories of Napoleon's reign. It did not save him: the Allies took Paris, and in April he abdicated. For his earlier and greater victories, see our guide to the greatest Napoleonic battles and our portrait of Napoleon.7
