Collection(s) : The forgotten battles
Paru le 06/12/2018 | Broché 103 pages
Tout public
artwork by Florent Vincent
« Never did the Emperor appear more wonderful than during this utmost campaign of France ; by struggling against the fate, he once more achieved the miracles of the first wars in Italy when chance gave him a smile : the attack embodied the beginning of his career ; the end put mark on the most beautiful defence of which war records could keep recollection of ».
Constant, Memoirs.
On 6th February 1814, the Reims deputy mayor opened his city gates to a handful of Cossacks quoted the army as Winzingerode's authority. Following this bluff shot, the city would fall from French to Coalition troops' hands four times within the month of March.
As a King Louis XVI's former minister's son, it was renegade General Saint-Priest who pushed Napoleon to commit himself in this battle in order to restore a critical tactical situation after he seized the city by force on 12th March at the head of a Russian-Prussian Army Corps.
He triumphantly entered Reims from the day after at nightfall upon rough fights which took place in Tinqueux and at the gate of Vesle.
The Emperor compounded there for three days, not only to have his army rest, but also and mainly to govern France in dire needs by the same time. Leaving the city under inhabitants' acclamations, in the morning of 17th March, he had to proceed on his tragic destiny about to be achieved a few days later in Fontainebleau.
Lieutenant Colonel Fabrice Delaître is a retired officer from the French army. As a « Souvenir Napoléonien » association member and lecturer, he has already published in this series two pieces of work dedicated to the epic of the French expeditionary corps in Egypt between 1798 and 1800. Relying on numerous archives documents and a perfect knowledge of places where Napoleon and Saint-Priest confronted each other, the author relates for us this forgotten battle qualified by Marmont in his Memoirs as « The last smile of fortune » since Reims is indeed the ultimate victory won by the Emperor in the course of his reign.
