Battle of Montmirail, 1814: Napoleon's second blow of the Six Days

Montmirail was the second of the four blows Napoleon struck at Blücher's Army of Silesia in February 1814, the run of victories known as the Six Days Campaign. It was fought in deep mud by the Guard and by young conscripts, and for a few hours it hung on the fate of a single village.²

An army scattered along the road to Paris

After escaping from La Rothière on 1 February, Napoleon fell back to the Seine. The Allies then split their forces: Schwarzenberg's Army of Bohemia was to pin him on the Seine while Blücher marched on Paris along the Marne. Blücher's corps were strung out along the road, and on 10 February Napoleon fell on the isolated Russian corps of General Olsufiev at Champaubert and destroyed it, which put him in the middle of the Army of Silesia.³

Blücher fell back east to Vertus and ordered his two western corps, Osten-Sacken's Russians and Yorck's Prussians, to concentrate at Montmirail and fight their way through to him. Napoleon left Marshal Marmont to watch Blücher and marched west through the night with the rest, over roads so muddy that his columns arrived only gradually. He sent Marshal Macdonald to seize the bridge over the Marne at Château-Thierry, behind the Allies.⁴ › Napoleon Bonaparte

Three armies on the same muddy roads

On 11 February three forces converged on Montmirail. Sacken came from the west, having rejected advice to head north to Yorck instead; Yorck came south along the road from Château-Thierry, his orders having reached him late; Napoleon came from the east. Napoléon et Empire notes that Sacken had been convinced by a reliable source that only a small French detachment stood in his way, and had no idea Napoleon himself was there.⁵

General Nansouty's cavalry of the Guard had already taken Montmirail from its small Russian garrison and blocked the roads west and north. Sacken had about 14,000 men; the French had about 27,000 on the way, though far fewer at the start.⁶

Marchais changes hands

At about 11 a.m. Sacken attacked south of the Paris road, took the hamlet of Marchais and the farms beside it, and then paused. General Ricard's division counterattacked, and the village changed hands five times in the fighting that followed. By about 2 p.m. Ricard's men, their numbers halved, had been pushed back to Le Tremblay, and scouts were reporting Prussians at Fontenelle, less than three kilometers to the north.⁷

Marshal Mortier arrived around 3 p.m. with General Michel's division of the Guard and a cavalry division, almost 6,000 men. Marshal Lefebvre, with two battalions of the Old Guard, and what was left of Ricard's division went back into Marchais, which was in French hands by 4 p.m.; at one farm alone 400 dead were found. Marshal Ney led General Friant's Old Guard division in a bayonet charge on foot that took the entrenched Greneaux farm, while cavalry charges split the Russian center.⁸

Yorck comes too late

At about 5 p.m., according to John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org, Sacken gave up and ordered a retreat, trying to swing north across country to join Yorck. The move exposed his flank, and French infantry fire and cavalry broke up several Russian squares in the wet ground.⁹

Yorck had left his heavy artillery behind at Château-Thierry and came on cautiously. His brigades attacked around 4 p.m. near Bailly and the Grange-en-chart farm, threatening to cut off Friant's division, until Napoleon sent in his last reserves under Mortier. Caught in crossfire, the Prussians were pushed back toward Presle, where Yorck steadied them. The fighting stopped after dark, at about 8 p.m..¹⁰

A victory without a trap

Rickard puts French losses at about 2,000 and the Allied loss at about 3,000 casualties and 700 prisoners, most of them Russian. Napoléon et Empire gives the same French figure and 3,000 to 4,000 Allied dead, wounded or prisoners, with some 20 guns. The same authors note that the young conscripts of 1814, the so called Marie-Louises, won the admiration of the Guard veterans that day.¹¹

The battle was not the decisive stroke Napoleon wanted. Macdonald never reached Château-Thierry, so the bridge over the Marne stayed open, and Sacken and Yorck escaped north across the river with most of their troops. The French caught their rear guard at Château-Thierry the next day. Three days later, at Vauchamps, Napoleon turned on Blücher himself.¹²