Napoleon's schemes. The war of 1813, far from being a defence of the Elbe line, may rather be termed a series of movements, from that line as base, for the recapture of that of the Oder, and, if possible, of that of the Vistula. The relief of the French garrisons named above and the prospect of securing the help of the Poles drew Napoleon eastwards, even though the centre of gravity of the war had shifted towards the Bohemian frontier. The note of passion is observable in his letters respecting Hamburg. That city (French since December 1810), having admitted a force of Cossacks in March 1813, was to be severely punished. On May 7 he ordered Davout to levy a fine of 50,000,000 francs, shoot the ringleaders of the rebellion, send the less guilty to the galleys, and confiscate the property of all disaffected landholders in the neighbourhood. With the funds thus raised he was to strengthen the old fortifications and construct a citadel on the left bank of the Elbe, near Harburg, for a garrison of 4000 or 5000 men. Napoleon also framed an alliance with Denmark, subsidising a force of 6000 to 8000 infantry and 5000 to 6000 cavalry. On the 15th of June he insisted on the extreme importance of Hamburg; Davout must make it a fortress provided with food and stores for several months. Recognising that it was too far distant from Magdeburg, the Emperor proposed to construct a small fortress at the confluence of the Havel and Elbe. Davout was also warned to prepare for an advance against Stettin and Berlin with 38,000 troops, including 15,000 Danes.

Napoleon's plans for Hamburg now expand apace. On the 18th of June he orders the construction of a great dockyard and arsenal at that city. On the 22nd of June he fixes its garrison at 10,000 men; on the 30th of June, at 15,000; he also orders the construction of twelve sail of the line at the newly ordered dockyard: their keels must be laid in July 1814, so as to form part of a great naval operation against England. On the 1st of July he states that, if he prolongs the armistice, it will be in order to gain time for completing the fortifications of Hamburg. On the 8th of August he orders Davout to advance against the rear of Bernadotte's army to compel it to retreat to the Baltic and facilitate Oudinot's entry into Berlin. Then Davout will push on to relieve the French garrison at Stettin, possibly also those of Küstrin

and Danzig. Obviously these designs were influenced by political and personal considerations which were alien to the original plan of campaign.

Probably no other marshal than Davout could have even partially kept pace with the accelerating march of the Emperor's ideas. By dint of ruthless exactions and pitiless energy he extemporised a fortress and an army corps in some two months. That he did not move more rapidly against Bernadotte's rear was due to the veto of the Danish Government on the export of horses from Holstein. Napoleon had counted on the providing of 10,000 horses from that quarter. Nevertheless, Davout assembled his raw conscripts and Danes at Schwerin by the 22nd of August. There he heard of the disembarkation of British and Swedish contingents at Stralsund; and a week later came news of the defeat of Oudinot at Gross Beeren on the 23rd of August. For Napoleon, with his usual eager optimism, had allowed no margin for unavoidable delays in the operations either of Oudinot or Davout. But the inexperience of Davout's troops, the lack of transport, and the opposition of Walmoden's corps, so far hindered the marshal's advance as to leave Oudinot exposed to the onset of the entire army of the Allies at Berlin. The reverse at Gross Beeren compromised Davout; and a defeat of Girard's division at Hagelberg on the 27th of August severed the weak link connecting the two marshals. Cut off from all news of Napoleon, and deeming Schwerin unsafe, Davout fell back to a position covering both the Hanse towns, and thence, early in November, to Hamburg, where he held out until May 1814. Thus the outcome of the far-reaching plans of Napoleon for Davout was the loss of that marshal and 38,000 troops during the autumn of 1813 and the spring of 1814. At a later time the Emperor implicitly censured his plans for Davout by declaring that an army should have but one line of communications, and that movements conducted far apart were essentially faulty. The opinion may be hazarded here that Magdeburg'un véritable dépôt d'armée' Napoleon called it would have been a far better base than Hamburg for Davout's operations. The Emperor had directed Girard with 15,000 men in front of Magdeburg to connect the advance of Davout with that of Oudinot; but he also cautioned him not to move far from that fortress so as not to endanger its safety.

1

The disadvantage of parcelling forces along the immense front, Wittenberg to Hamburg, a distance of nearly 200 miles, is sufficiently obvious. Neither Davout, Girard, nor Oudinot was strong enough for the task assigned to him, unless the concentric moves on Berlin took place with the precision of the parade-ground against an inert enemy.

Too late, also, the Emperor realised his mistake in allotting a small force to Davout and one nearly twice as large to Oudinot, who (as he wrote bitterly on the 2nd of September) attacked the Prussians with only part of his array. The assignment of a subordinate rôle to the victor of Auerstädt resulted from other than military considerations. Napoleon's resolve to keep his Empire intact, to re-invigorate the Continental system, and to prepare for a naval campaign against England, called for the presence of his ablest organiser at Hamburg. But these political and naval schemes told against the concentration of strength in Saxony, which, as Marmont pointed out, was essential to a decisive success. The first plan, that of May 1813, contemplated merely the holding of Hamburg by a garrison of from 4000 to 6000 men; and it would have set free Davout and an army corps for service on the upper Elbe. In this sphere, as in others, the Emperor's first decision was sounder than those which supervened.

The evidence seems to warrant the following conclusions. Napoleon's confidence as to the issue of the war increased during the armistice, owing to his over-estimating the efficiency of his own troops and under-estimating the strength of Austria. Apart from the hasty outworks on the south side of Dresden, his dispositions show very few signs of concern at the probability of a rupture with the Hapsburg Power. For a time, on and before the 12th of August, he resolved on a concentration behind the river Neisse; but on the morrow he prepared to advance far into Silesia, probably in order to sever Blücher entirely from all connexion with Bernadotte. This advance, finally entrusted to Macdonald, was beyond the strength of that marshal and ended in disaster, thereby facilitating the union of the allied armies which the Emperor had sought to prevent. The concentric moves on Berlin were also far beyond reach of his controlling hand. The causes of the failure were the great distance of Hamburg, Davout's base,

from Oudinot's base at Wittenberg; the consequent lack of concert between those marshals, and the great difficulties besetting Davout's advance. On the other hand, by a timely concentration at Dresden, the Emperor won a brilliant triumph, an event which shows what might have happened on a larger scale if he had throughout acted on a strategic defensive with forces concentrated on or near the line of the Elbe from the Bohemian frontier to Magdeburg. This course of action (probably the original plan of campaign) was profoundly modified by the addition of the schemes respecting Hamburg and the movements towards Breslau and the French garrisons on the Oder and Vistula. Consequently the issue of this campaign does not per se prove the inefficacy of a river-line, such as the Elbe, if it be pierced at any one point. The dictum of Clausewitz to this effect is scarcely warranted by the campaign of 1813; for it was not, strictly speaking, a river-campaign; and the passage of the Elbe by Blücher at Wartenburg might have effected little but for the co-operation of the Grand Army of the Allies from the passes of the Erzgebirge. The convergence of these armies towards Leipzig, on the track of Napoleon's communications, compelled him to give up the line of the Elbe. Events therefore proved that the preservation of that line, to which he assigned the first place in his plans, was of less importance than the retention of his communications with France, which on the 17th of August he declared to be of little account in comparison with the defence of the Elbe. It is singular that that declaration was made to Marshal Saint-Cyr, who, along with 33,000 men, had to surrender at Dresden at the close of that disastrous campaign. Four other garrisons of the Elbe fortresses were likewise cut off by the crowning calamity of Leipzig, which resulted from the overwhelming concentration of the Allies against a vital point in the Emperor's communications. The moral could scarcely escape his penetrating judgment. May he not have included his own plans for the autumn of 1813 in the general criticism which he penned at St. Helena on the campaigns of Frederick in the Seven Years' War'Conservez avec soin et n'abandonnez jamais de gaieté de cœur votre ligne d'opération'?

J. HOLLAND Rose.

THE FOUNDATION OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY

I. Histoire de l'Académie Française.

Par PELLISSON et D'OLIVET. Avec une introduction par CH. L. LIVET. 2 tom. Paris. 1858. 2. Lettres de Chapelain. Publiées par TAMIZEY DE LABROQUE. 2 tom. Paris. 1880, 1883.

3. Lettres du Sieur de Balzac. (Première partie.) Paris. 1624. 4. Saint-Evremond. La Comédie des Académistes pour la Réformation de la langue française. 1650. Réimpression, avec une préface par R. DE BONNIÈRES. Paris. 1879.

5. Le plaisant Abbé de Boisrobert. Par EMILE MAGNE. Paris. 1909.

FOR three as to the possibility of founding an Academy

OR three centuries past there have been frequent dis

of Letters in England, but it was not until June 1910 that a modest and partial experiment in this direction was successfully made. After long deliberations between two accredited bodies, the Royal Society of Literature and the Society of Authors, thirty-three persons were nominated to form, within the corporation of the former, an Academic Committee which should attempt to exercise something resembling the functions of the Académie Française. Lord Morley was elected President, and now, for more than three years, without claiming any excessive publicity, this Academic Committee, founded for the protection and encouragement of a pure English style in prose and verse, has occupied a position in letters which gives every evidence of persisting and increasing. It was assailed, as was natural and right, by satire and by caricature, but it has survived the attacks which were directed against it, and there can be little doubt that, with good luck, it will become a prominent feature of our intellectual and social system. Already, although so young, it has received that consecration of death which makes it a part of history. No fewer than eight, that is to say nearly a quarter, of its original members have passed away, and among them those delicate humanists Butcher and Verrall, a poet so philosophical as Alfred Lyall, critics of such fine temper as Andrew Lang