On 29 January 1814 Napoleon attacked the Prussian and Russian army of Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher at Brienne-le-Château in Champagne. It was one of the opening battles of the campaign of France, fought in the small town where Napoleon had studied at military school as a boy. The French took the château and Blücher withdrew in the night, but the victory was narrow and incomplete.
France invaded
After the 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 moving along the Aube river, while the larger Austrian-led army of Schwarzenberg was further south. Napoleon, who had far fewer troops and many young conscripts, wanted to strike Blücher before the two armies could join.1
His plan of surprise failed before the battle began. A French staff officer carrying orders, named as Colonel Bénard by napoleon.org, was captured by Cossacks, and Blücher learned what was coming. He pulled his forces together around Brienne.2
Fighting for the château
The French attacked in the afternoon. One column, under General Château, broke into the grounds of the château above the town. Blücher and his chief of staff Gneisenau, who had been staying there, escaped only narrowly; according to napoleon.org, Blücher had just sat down to dinner when the attack reached the château and slipped out by a side gate. In the town below, the Russian corps of Sacken and Olsufiev held on and threw back the French attacks, and the fighting went on into the night.3
In the confusion a party of Cossacks came close to Napoleon himself. According to napoleon.org, one of them was about to kill him when General Gaspard Gourgaud fired first and saved the emperor.4
Around midnight Blücher ordered a retreat toward Trannes, and the French were left holding Brienne. For Napoleon the place was personal: he had been a pupil at the military school of Brienne from 1779 to 1784. According to napoleon.org, he visited the school the day after the battle. Our biography of Napoleon Bonaparte tells the longer story.5
Numbers, losses and the verdict
The figures are uncertain. Gildas Bernard, writing for napoleon.org, gives Napoleon about 30,000 men at Saint-Dizier on the eve of the battle. John Rickard puts the losses at about 3,000 French and about 4,000 allied.6
Historians also disagree on the result. Rickard calls it a narrow French victory, and napoleon.org a victory that was far from complete. Napoleon held the field but failed to destroy Blücher, and three days later, on 1 February, the combined allied armies attacked him at La Rothière and forced him back.7
