On 18 February 1814 Napoleon won one of the last victories of his reign at Montereau, where the Yonne flows into the Seine southeast of Paris. Allied armies were already deep inside France. Napoleon had just beaten Blücher's army in the Six Days' Campaign and then turned south against the main Allied army under Prince Schwarzenberg. At Montereau the Crown Prince of Württemberg held the heights north of the river with Württemberg and Austrian troops. After a morning of failed French attacks, his line broke in the afternoon, and General Pajol's cavalry galloped over the bridges before they could be blown up. Schwarzenberg fell back toward Troyes.
From the Marne to the Seine
In the winter of 1814 the Allied armies invaded France from the east. Between 10 and 14 February Napoleon defeated Blücher's Army of Silesia in a run of battles known as the Six Days' Campaign. Meanwhile Schwarzenberg's Army of Bohemia was advancing along the Seine toward Paris. The campaign had opened at Brienne, told in our page on 29 January.1
On 15 February Napoleon left Montmirail with the Imperial Guard. About 36 hours later his leading troops reached Guignes, where they joined the corps of Marshals Oudinot and Victor. On 17 February the French overran the Russian vanguard of General Pahlen at Mormant and sent the marshals on toward the Seine crossings. Victor, ordered to take Montereau, halted short of the town that evening. Napoleon reprimanded him and ordered him to take it at dawn.2
The heights of Surville
Schwarzenberg ordered the Crown Prince of Württemberg to hold Montereau. The Crown Prince placed most of his troops on the plateau of Surville on the north bank, which looks down on the town and on the bridges over the Seine and the Yonne. His strength is uncertain. HistoryOfWar.org gives 20,000 infantry and 1,900 cavalry and Napoleon-Empire.com 15,000 infantry and almost 3,000 cavalry.3
Accounts differ on how the battle opened on the morning of 18 February. According to Napoleon-Empire.com, the cavalry of General Pierre-Claude Pajol and the National Guard division of General Pacthod began the fighting, and Victor came up late, around nine o'clock. HistoryOfWar.org says the French arrived piecemeal and that General Huguet-Chataux's division arrived first and attacked early in the morning. Attacks on the village of Les Ormeaux, then called Villaron, and on the Surville slope were thrown back, above all by the defenders' artillery. Angry at the delays, Napoleon took Victor's corps away from him and gave it to General Gérard, who brought more guns into action.4
Pajol's charge
In the afternoon Napoleon arrived with the Guard and renewed the attack. The Crown Prince began to pull his troops back over the river, but the retreat down the steep slope turned into a rout, and the whole force crowded toward the bridges. Pajol charged into the Allied left, while French batteries fired into the mass at the crossing. His horsemen seized the bridges over the Seine and the Yonne before the defenders could blow them up, and French infantry followed them into the town. The town of Montereau credits Pajol's charge, with the 3rd Hussars, as the decisive blow.5
Montereau is also the battle of a famous story. According to the memoir of Napoleon's secretary Baron Fain, quoted by the Fondation Napoléon, the emperor aimed a horse artillery gun himself, and when the gunners worried about him he told them that the cannonball that would kill him had not yet been cast. A plaque marks the spot on the Surville heights, and an equestrian statue of Napoleon by Pajol's eldest son, Charles-Pierre-Victor Pajol, stands on the bridge at the confluence.6
Losses and results
The losses are disputed. Napoleon-Empire.com gives 3,000 Allied dead and as many prisoners, with 2,000 French killed. HistoryOfWar.org estimates that the Württemberg corps lost about 4,000 men and that an Austrian brigade of about 2,500 was almost wiped out, mostly taken prisoner, against about 2,500 French casualties.7
Schwarzenberg ordered a withdrawal toward Troyes. But the hours lost by Victor had cost Napoleon the chance to strike the divided Allied armies before they could reunite, and his pursuit was slow. For Napoleon's earlier and greater victories, see our guide to the greatest Napoleonic battles and our portrait of Napoleon.8
