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Updated: May 14, 2025
The real administrator is M. Vandamme, the Secrétaire-Général, the ubiquitous, the mysterious, whose name before you leave Southampton is in the air, of whom all men, whether they speak in French or English, speak well.
The Cossacks of the Elbe could not sustain the shock of the French; Vandamme repulsed the troops who defended Wilhelmsburg, the largest of the two islands, and easily took possession of the smaller one, Fidden, of which the point nearest the right bank of the Elbe is not half a gunshot distant from Hamburg.
Unable to remain with the columns in the rear of Schwartzenberg, he returned to Dresden weary and sick; and thenceforth evil tidings awaited him. Vandamme continued the pursuit on the Pirna road.
Napoleon then left to Marshals Mortier and Saint-Cyr the task of supporting General Vandamme, commander of 1st Corps, who, detached from the Grande Armée for three days, had defeated a Russian corps and now threatened the enemy rear.
When after the first campaign of Vienna, so happily terminated by the peace of Presburg, the Emperor was returning to Paris, many complaints reached him against the exactions of certain generals, notably General Vandamme.
As the campaign opened, however, fortune took her place with the tricolour flag. Minor successes fell to Moreau, Souham, Macdonald, Vandamme. In June the campaign culminated. The armies met south of Brussels at Fleurus on the 25th of that month. For fifteen hours the battle raged, Kléber with the French right wing holding his ground, the centre and left slowly driven back.
On the whole, regular night surprises excepted, such cases will always be of rare occurrence, and those in which an enemy is compelled to fight by being practically surrounded, will happen mostly to single corps only, like Mortier's at Durrenstein 1809, and Vandamme at Kulm, 1813.
Certain it is that he recalled his Old Guard to Dresden, busied himself with plans for a march on Berlin, and at 5.30 next morning directed Berthier to order St. Cyr to "pursue the foe to Maxen and in all directions that he has taken." This order led St. Cyr westwards, in pursuit of Barclay's Russians, who had diverged sharply in that direction in order to escape Vandamme.
Napoleon had the meanness to charge Vandamme with going too far and seeking to do too much, as he supposed he was slain, and therefore could not prove that he was simply obeying orders, as well as acting in exact accordance with sound military principles.
But not being aware of all the difficulties of his position, he did not like to abandon it; and merely changed his ground so as to embrace Kulm in his line, and there awaited on the morrow a renewal of the contest. Vandamme committed a very grievous error in this. The night was at his own disposal, and he ought to have availed himself of it to recover the heights of Peterswald.
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