On 29 January 1814 Napoleon attacked the Prussian and Russian army of Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher at Brienne-le-Château in Champagne, the town where he had gone to military school as a boy. After fighting that ran into the night, Blücher withdrew and the French held Brienne, but the victory was narrow and incomplete.
Battle of Brienne
29 January 1814 · 212 years ago
France invaded
After his defeat at Leipzig in 1813, Napoleon could not stop the coalition armies from crossing into France. At the end of January 1814 Blücher's Army of Silesia was nearing Brienne, while the larger army of Prince Schwarzenberg was further south. Napoleon wanted to strike Blücher before the two armies could join. Gildas Bernard, writing for the Fondation Napoléon, gives him about 30,000 men for the blow.1
His hope of surprise failed before the battle began. Cossacks captured French dispatches, and from them Blücher learned that Napoleon was coming down on his rear. The Fondation Napoléon names the captured messenger as Colonel Bénard.2
Fighting for the château
The French attack developed in the afternoon and went on after dark. Blücher and his chief of staff Gneisenau had gone up to the château above the town for the evening when a column under General Château broke into the grounds, and they escaped only narrowly. According to the Fondation Napoléon, Blücher had sat down to dinner when the attack reached the château. Among the French dead was Admiral Baste, commanding a brigade.3
In the confusion Napoleon himself came close to death: Gaspard Gourgaud, an officer of his staff and later a general, saved him from a Cossack's lance. During the night Blücher pulled his army back to the south, and the French occupied Brienne.4
For Napoleon the place was personal. He had been a pupil at the military school of Brienne from 1779 to 1784. Our biography of Napoleon Bonaparte tells the longer story.5
Losses and the verdict
The military historian F. Loraine Petre put the cost at about 3,000 men on each side.6
Napoleon held the field but failed to destroy Blücher before he could join Schwarzenberg. Petre judged that Brienne was scarcely a tactical victory and, strategically, little short of a defeat; J. Holland Rose called the success illusory. Three days later, on 1 February, the allies attacked Napoleon at La Rothière and forced him back.7
Also on this day
Battle of the Scheldt
29 January 1574 · 452 years ago
A Dutch Sea Beggar fleet under Lodewijk van Boisot intercepted a Spanish fleet under Julián Romero that was trying to relieve besieged Middelburg in the Eighty Years' War. The rebels destroyed or took close to fifteen ships, and Middelburg gave up nine days later.
