1806: A Precis
The Turning of the Tide
by James Gaite, UK
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The Cattaro Affair Cattaro, or Kotor as it is known now, lies on the Adriatic coast and was the southernmost town in the Dalmatian territories, ceded to France by the Treaty of Pressburg. It is not clear which party initiated communications and for what reason, but in January 1806, the commander of the Russian Fleet, Admiral Seniavin, landed a Russian contingent to take control of the town, with the complicity of the retiring Austrian governor. Despite having nominal naval superiority in the Adriatic and a sizeable military force under his command, Seniavin did not believe that he had sufficient numbers to safeguard both the Ionian Islands and the newly acquired town of Cattaro. Deciding to leave the bulk of his Russian troops on the Ionians to guard against an amphibious assault from the French forces in Italy, the Admiral entered into hasty negotiations with King Peter of Montenegro, whose staunchly independent state bordered the new French province of Dalmatia. In early February 1806, a mutual defence pact was signed; Seniavin, soon to be confronted by two French armies under Generals Molitor and Lauriston, could now count on the help of the Montenegrin irregulars to aid in his defence of Cattaro. Faced now by the numerically superior Russian-Montenegrin forces, the French stopped short of Cattaro and occupied the previously independent city-state of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) instead. A stalemate then ensued; a combined Russo-Montenegrin assault
on Ragusa was successfully beaten off in July, while a French campaign against Cattaro in August, under the leadership of the newly arrived General Auguste Marmont [5] , achieved little. Despite the inability of the Russians to make significant headway against the remainder of Napoleon’s Balkan provinces, the capture and retention of Cattaro against French aggression can be considered the only European success for the allied armies of the Third Coalition.
The Cattaro issue, itself, greatly perplexed Napoleon. Threats and delegations issued to both the Austrian and Russian governments and a significant reinforcement of his army in that region achieved nothing - he was only able to gain possession of the town when the Russian Tsar signed over its control as part of the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807.
Setbacks in Italy
In Italy, the initial campaign had been a great success - in only forty-two days, the French had succeeded in occupying almost the entire Kingdom of Naples. However, after their lightning campaign, problems began to beset the French army of occupation -
Reynier did not have the manpower to force the Straits of Messina and complete the conquest of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and Masséna was unable to reinforce him while the garrison of Gaeta still held out and posed a threat to his communications.
To add to their problems, sporadic uprisings amongst the indigenous population, incited and partially funded by Queen Maria-Carolina, tied down an ever-increasing number of troops throughout the province. French problems doubled with the arrival of a British fleet off the coast in April 1806.
Its commander was Rear Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith, the “fireship captain” of Toulon and the saviour of Acre. On May 5th, Sidney Smith reinforced and re-victualled the flagging Neapolitan garrison of Gaeta and, on May 12th, captured the isle of
Capri, just two miles off the coast of the city of Naples, where a celebration of Joseph’s coronation was in progress.
On the 13th and 15th May, the enigmatic Prince von Hesse-Philipsthal, commander of the Gaeta garrison, led two sorties against the besieging force, with British naval assistance, causing such disarray that Masséna was forced to significantly increase the French presence in front of this town to prevent a reoccurrence.
Sidney Smith’s operations did not cease there; petitioned by the Sicilian Queen, he began stripping the British arsenals on Sicily to supply the Neapolitan insurgents and in June persuaded the temporary British commander of the Sicilian garrison, Major General Stuart [6] , to organise an invasion of Calabria to support the general uprising. The British forces landed at Santa Eufemia on 1st July
and comprehensively defeated Reynier’s hastily gathered forces at the Battle of Maida three days later. Stuart then followed up his victory by liberating Lower Calabria and, supported by British land forces, partisan activity in that, and surrounding, areas doubled in its intensity.
However, with limited forces available, the British could not hope to hold their position on mainland Italy indefinitely. On July 18th, the town of Gaeta finally fell and Masséna, his communications now secure, began massing his forces for the re-conquest
of Calabria. The British withdrew their forces to Sicily at the end of August, leaving the guerrillas to face the full fury of Masséna’s onslaught.
Nevertheless, it was to be a gruelling campaign for the French and it was January 1807 before they could claim that they had the province under control. Even then, they failed in their attempt to remove a small British garrison from the fortress of Scilla, which remained a thorn in their side until 1808.
The War at Sea
While Napoleon was gaining glory in Europe, his admirals were being comprehensively defeated on the oceans of the world. The Battle of Trafalgar had spelt the end of the Franco-Spanish Mediterranean fleet while the French fleet from Brest, which broke the British blockade in December 1805, was defeated by Vice-Admiral Duckworth off San Domingo, on 6th February 1806. Another squadron from Brest, under the command of Rear-Admiral Willaumez, sailed for the South Atlantic but was broken by a fierce storm off South America; battered and harassed by the British navy, Willaumez’s force was forced to limp back to Brest in early 1807.
Finally, on 13th March, Admiral Linois, returning from a marauding mission in the Indian Ocean, was surprised and defeated by Vice-Admiral Warren off the Atlantic coast of Africa. Hence, in six months, the British had broken the back of the French fleet [7] , while their Spanish allies, bloodied at Trafalgar, became increasingly reluctant to quit the safety of their ports.
Their Dutch allies fared little better. The strategically important naval base at the Cape of Good Hope was seized by the British in January 1806 and, despite the fact that the Dutch clung onto their East Indian colonies until 1809, a successful raid on Batavia in November by Rear-Admiral Pellew put these forces very firmly on the defensive.
Following Trafalgar, the naval conflict in Europe was reduced to infrequent and abortive attempts by French frigates to break the renewed British blockade; the few French vessels that managed to make it to the open seas fled for port the instant they spied any ships of the British navy, even if the odds were in their favour. Unable to entice their adversaries into combat on the open seas, the British navy began a campaign against the beleaguered French fleet by sending raiding parties to destroy the warships resting at anchor in the French ports.
Captain Thomas Cochrane’s attack on the Basque Roads on 14th May 1806, showed the vulnerability of the French coastal defences and, if that valiant officer had been supported in this action, a large proportion of Napoleon’s remaining warships may well have been destroyed.
The destruction of French naval power gave Britain a greater freedom for amphibious operations abroad. The capture of Buenos Aires in June 1806 by a combined naval and military force highlighted this fact. Although the Argentine expedition subsequently
failed in 1807 despite the application of numerous parties of British reinforcements, it highlighted the vulnerability of the French, Spanish and Dutch colonies now that they were deprived of naval protection. The Dutch East Indies capitulated in 1809 after a
British invasion and in 1811, the French bases on Mauritius and Reunion suffered a similar fate. In the West Indies, the British consolidated their control over their existing colonies while slowly swallowing up the remaining French and Spanish
territories in that area.
The Portuguese Crisis
During 1806, Napoleon became obsessed with his policy of excluding British trade from continental Europe. Most historians state that Napoleon’s “Continental System” came into force after his famous “Berlin Decrees” in December 1806, and this may be so; but he was certainly laying the groundwork for this ideal throughout 1805 and, especially, during the first half of 1806. One example of this occurred between June and August 1806.
The Braganza dynasty - Portugal’s royal house - were openly anglophile. Their close ties to the British Isles made their land of Portugal a perfect back door for British merchants to infiltrate their wares onto the markets of Spain, Napoleon’s ally, and
eventually onto the black markets of France itself. With the French economy still fragile after its near collapse earlier in the year, Napoleon determined that it was time to finally place a stopper in this loophole, and take control of Portugal. Consequently, whilst
organising a French force at Bayonne, he also coerced Spain into fielding a similar army on the Portuguese border, to assist in this task, planning a rerun of a similar operation undertaken in 1801.
However, the “Ministry of All Talents” in Britain got wind of this proposed operation and immediately set a counter-operation in motion. A military force for Portugal’s defence was cobbled together from reinforcements earmarked for the Italian and Argentine theatres, whilst the navy was instructed to tighten the blockades on the Atlantic ports and post a squadron off the Portuguese coast to deter any amphibious operations along her shores.
However, with war imminent, a naval reconnaissance of the environs of Bayonne in August reported a large reduction in the French forces in the area - Napoleon had been forced to climb down. Co-operation from Spain had been reluctant, the peace talks were faltering and tension was growing over his new German Confederation. Portugal would have to wait.
The Spanish Betrayal
Spain had allied herself with France by the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1796. Subsequent French demands for subsidies, men and ships for the wars against the allied powers threatened to cripple the nation; yet, at the resumption of hostilities in 1803, Charles IV, under the influence of the Francophile Manuel Godoy, once more declared allegiance to the French Republic.
However, the destruction of Spanish naval power at Trafalgar and the ever-increasing demands for pecuniary subsidies by Napoleon saw the growth of a strong antipathy to the French alliance in the Spanish Court. By mid-1806, even Godoy, who saw this growing opposition as a threat to his own position of power, began to question the direction of Spanish foreign policy; the demand by Napoleon for the formation of yet another Spanish army to invade Portugal in June was the final straw. Though not yet willing to display open defiance to the Napoleonic regime, Godoy nevertheless showed his dissatisfaction at this new demand by obstructing the formation of the Spanish armed forces.
When Napoleon was forced to abandon his plans for the Portuguese expedition in August, Godoy ordered an immediate dispersal of the partly assembled force and began planning a strategy to extricate himself and his nation from its alliance with the
French Emperor. Once lauded the “Prince of Peace” for his defiance of the French Revolution in 1793, he saw an opportunity to once more gain the popularity of his nation in the growing tension between France and Prussia over Napoleon’s occupation of the
Rhenish territories. A Prusso-Spanish treaty was drawn up and ratified by the respective monarchs in September 1806; if Napoleon attacked Prussia, Spain now vowed to cross the Pyrenees and take his forces in the rear.
In the end, the brevity of the Jena-Auerstädt campaign in October and the overwhelming defeat of the Prussian armed forces in the following month, gave Godoy no time to enact his planned switch of allegiance to the anti-French powers. Nevertheless, the
seeds of dissension had now been firmly sown in Spanish foreign policy and the discovery by Napoleon of the Prusso-Spanish treaty, upon his capture of Berlin in December 1806, came as a blow to his esteem and was a principal factor in his disastrous attempt to conquer the Iberian Peninsula in 1808.
The Failed Peace Talks
Apart from the Prussian peace talks, held at Schönbrunn and Paris, two other sets of negotiations were enacted in 1806; the Franco-Russian talks held in Paris and the Anglo-French conference at Lille. Moves were initiated for the Franco-Russian talks in early May and Count D’Oubril was dispatched from St Petersburg with a schedule of concessions and gains which were acceptable to the Russian government.
D’Oubril reached Paris an ill man, having picked up an infection en-route from Russia. Napoleon, seeing the advantages implicit in this situation and eager to conclude an arrangement with Russia, refused the Russian emissary time to recover and began the talks
immediately. Confronted by the combined wits of Napoleon, Talleyrand and General Clarke, D’Oubril, usually a capable man, was manoeuvred into a disadvantageous agreement, including the surrender of Cattaro and the Ionian Islands [8] and the official Russian
acceptance of the future Confederation of the Rhine.
The instant the Franco-Russian agreement was signed, D’Oubril, still in a tender state, was sent back to St Petersburg to have the agreement ratified by the Tsar. However, even as weak as he was, D’Oubril realised that he had been outmanoeuvred in France
and wrote to Paul Stroganov stating:
Stroganov and Prince Adam Czartoryski were aghast upon seeing the terms and urged the Tsar not to sign, whilst key figures in the Russian military [9] believed that Russia needed peace to reorganise the army after the defeat it had received at Austerlitz, and
urged the Tsar to concur with the terms. Alexander, after a period of indecision, and to the surprise of Napoleon and the rest of Europe, followed the advice of his councillors and tore up the treaty.
Furthermore, when Napoleon attempted to reopen negotiations, his entreaties were answered with a blank refusal to talk.
The Anglo-French talks at Lille met with a similar lack of success, despite much enthusiasm shown by both parties at the start. Whereas the Russian talks faltered over the harshness of the terms, the British negotiations stumbled over Napoleon’s
insistence on the handing over of the Kingdom of Sicily into French control.
The British, unwilling to give up their only base in the Central Mediterranean, stalled and ceased talks completely when Napoleon’s planned invasion of Portugal was discovered. Although the negotiations were resumed in late August, they were now in the hands of the Francophobe Lord Lauerdale who seemed determined to scupper the process at the earliest opportunity. The death of Sir Charles Fox, arguably the “grand mover” behind the talks, dealt another blow to any hopes of success and, when Lord Grenville insisted that any terms needed the agreement of the Russian Tsar, it became apparent that the talks were going nowhere.
The final death knell to the proceedings came in late September, with the escalation of Franco-Prussian hostility over the
Confederation of the Rhine and, by the end of 1806, Lord Lauerdale had returned to Britain, leaving the talks in ruins behind him.
Escalation to War
Franco-Prussian relations became increasingly strained as the year of 1806 progressed. Discontent with Napoleon’s growing dominance in Northern Germany; the frustrated humiliation of the debacle of the 1805 and 1806 treaties; the growing economic hardships incurred by the forced embargo of British goods; and the fact that, in June, Prussia found herself at war with Britain and Sweden over its occupation of Hanover - all these factors convinced even Frederick William III’s most pacifist advisors that something must be done.
In reaction to these events, a Prussian War Party had formed. Prominent amongst its members were the King’s nephew, Louis Ferdinand, the deposed foreign minister, Hardenburg, and many of the leading generals of the Prussian army. Unable to directly influence their monarch, who had shrouded himself with a cocoon of like-minded advisors, they attempted to recruit Frederick William’s wife, Queen Louise of Mecklenburg-Stretlitz, to their cause. Louise’s sympathy with their ideas were well known but her
loyalty to her husband would not allow her to openly join their ranks while Frederick William still pursued a policy of “neutrality at all costs”. However, by suggestion and gentle persuasion, the Queen attempted to bring her husband round to recognise the intense feelings of his aristocracy.
To this cauldron of simmering dissatisfaction, Tsar Alexander I now added his own ingredients. Recovering from the lassitude that had afflicted him over the past five months, the Russian Emperor opened secret negotiations with the Prussian King for a mutual
defence pact. With the signing of this treaty on July 12th 1806, the same day Napoleon declared his Act of Confederation, Prussia started down the road to war.
1806: A Precis
Prussians in 1806
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