Montmirail Errata

by Major A W Field, UK

Editor: The following text was omitted from Major Field's excellent article in last issue. To locate its position turn to page 8 go to the end of the first paragraph column 1 which ends ". . . the advancing Prussians from the North, would be forced to withdraw or risk being crushed between the two forces." Original Article Note: MagWeb inserted this errata into the original article--RL Perhaps being more aware of the difficulty of the ground south of the road, Napoleon felt the open ground along the main road and to it's north was the key to the battle. This space gave him the opportunity to use the speed of manoeuvre, of which he was the master, to launch the decisive attack and outmanoeuvre the Russian forces bogged down in the south. However, before he could consider launching such an attack, particularly in the light of the Prussian approach, it was vital that he should have a properly constituted reserve. He was therefore forced to act on the defensive until Michel's 2nd Old Guard Infantry Division (which incidentally contained no Old Guard units) and Defrance's Gardes d'Honneur arrived. This had the advantage of allowing Sacken time to compromise himself in the south before launching the decisive attack. The Battle Having deployed, Sacken's troops swung quickly into action; Gen. Heidenreich, who had been ordered to take Marchais, advanced with over 2,000 men made up of the infantry regiments Pskof, Vladimir, Tambov and Kostroma, two companies of the 11th Jägers, the Don Cossacks and 6 light guns. It seems that this attack was supported by the balance of Prince Scherbatov's 7th Div. with the aim of swinging round the captured Marchais and rolling up the French line. At the same time, the advance along the main road was developed; this was generally unopposed and the farm of les Greneaux was occupied and fortified. Despite his guns being unable to support his attack due to the mud, Heidenreich had successfully driven Ricard's troops out of Marchais by 11 o'clock. The ease with which this was achieved suggests that it was not vigorously contested, perhaps as part of Napoleon's plan of drawing as much of the Russian force south of the road as possible (or perhaps not depending on your viewpoint!) Either way, to ensure that they were unable to exploit this success, Ricard was ordered to counterattack and if unable to retake the village at least to keep the Russians in check. The rest of the morning and the early afternoon settled into something of a pattern: The Russians, determined to control Marchais, committed more and more troops to achieve this. Napoleon, restricted by his shortage of troops was able to conduct only localised counterattacks to maintain his position, draw as many Russian troops south of the road as possible and buy time for the arrival of reinforcements. There seems little doubt that Napoleon's tactics proved more successful: Marchais changed hands at least three times, Sacken was forced to weaken his centre (where Napoleon planned to attack) to secure the village and by the time that Ricard's infantry, which by this time had been reinforced by a battalion of the Old Guard and the arrival of some more artillery, had been forced back to le Tremblay, Napoleon's much needed reinforcements were in sight. The fighting around Marchais was clearly quite fierce as statistics testify: Around 7,000 Russians got drawn into the fighting around this small village and at one point they had managed to advance from it and gain a foothold in le Tremblay before being pushed out again. Ricard's small division lost 50% casualties in the battle. Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #37 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com