Ryde, 22 September 1857 
Dear Marx, 

Here is a bit more about Bernadotte at Wagram”: On 5 July, 
when the French attack had been halted—largely as a result of his 
irresolute conduct—Bernadotte was occupying the village of 
Aderklaa in the centre, and slightly in advance of the French line. 
On the morning of the 6th, when the Austrians moved up for a 
concentric attack, he was out in the open plain in front of 
Aderklaa instead of occupying the village in strength and 
positioning his front to the rear of it. When the Austrians arrived 
on the scene he thought this position too hazardous (on the 
previous day his troops had ultimately suffered severe losses 
owing to his irresolute conduct) and withdrew to a plateau behind 
Aderklaa, yet left the village unoccupied, whereupon Bellegarde’s 
Austrians promptly occupied it'in strength. 

This endangered the French centre, and Masséna, who com- 
manded it, sent forward a division which recaptured the place 

only to be thrown out by d’Aspre’s grenadiers. ‘Then Napoleon 
himself arrived, assumed command and devised a new battle plan, 
thereby foiling the manoeuvres of the Austrians. If Jomini’s 
account is at all accurate,” there can be absolutely no dispute about 
Bernadotte’s blunders on this occasion. 

‘Army’ is finished, so far as the historical side is concerned, up 
to the French Revolution. I shall now get on with the modern 
period and questions of organisation generally, with which I 
conclude, and then, as soon as possible, go back to doing B’s so 
that you can keep on sending stuff, thus putting Mr Dana into a 
better humour. Meanwhile I have received a litthe more money 
and enclose a £5 note. Perhaps you will manage to spend one or 
two days in Brighton after all; I shall stay here a day or two longer 
and let you know when I am going there. 

Bugeaud. Most of this is already implicit in the article ‘Algeria’. 
He was a mediocre general whose victories in Algeria and 
Morocco are of no great significance. That he conquered Algeria 
with 100,000 men, adapted his conduct of the war there to the 
terrain and the enemy, and broke, or rather suppressed, the 
resistance of the Arabs (not the Kabyles), does not, to my mind, 
earn him a very high rating, for I don’t believe he was responsible 
for the plans. He was something of a sabreur and, on the Tafna,” 
showed not only that he was venal but also that he was irresolute 
when in a tight corner. With 100,000 men and subordinates such 
as Lamoriciére, Changarnier, Cavaignac, Négrier and Duvivier, 
who had ten years of warfare behind them, he would not need 
very much natural ability to achieve something—especially since 
the French General Staff is very good; furthermore, his activity was 
largely confined to making dispositions (where there’s no knowing 
how much was done for him by the staff) and to commanding the 
reserve, since only individual divisions and brigades were operat- 
ing at any one spot. 

Bosquet. On the Alma” he led the French right wing in an 
outflanking movement against the Russian left wing with a 
determination and speed which earned the recognition of the 
Russians; he even succeeded in getting the artillery onto the 
plateau up trackless defiles regarded as impassable. For this he 
would deserve high praise had he not been facing a numerically 
very much inferior opponent.—At Balaklava he was immediate- 

a A. H. Jomini, Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon, t. 3. Engels’ notes on Bernadotte 
(see this volume, pp. 164-65) were used by Marx in his article ‘Bernadotte’. - 
b swashbuckler 

ly at hand to help disengage the English right wing, thus enabling 
the rest of the English light cavalry. to withdraw under cover of his 
troops and discouraging the Russians from advancing any further. 
At Inkerman,” in the early hours of the morning, he was ready to 
intervene with 3 battalions and 2 batteries, but, his help having 
been refused, he placed 3 brigades in reserve behind the English 
right wing (on the Chernaya slope) and at 11 o’clock moved up 
with 2 of them into the firing line, whereupon the Russians began 
to withdraw. The English had committed all their troops whereas 
the Russians still had 16 battalions at their disposal and, but for 
Bosquet, the English would have been lost. The 16 intact Russian 
battalions covered the retreat. There could be little question of 
pursuit in this case, there being no more than 3,000 paces between 
the battle field and the edge of the plateau. On each occasion, 
then, Bosquet showed himself quick off the mark, alert, active, in 
short, an exemplary corps commander—as he did also throughout 
the time he led the covering corps on the Chernaya slope.* 
Whether he’s up to much as a général en chef is hard to say; he has 
a number of qualities and if, as in his case, a man is a first-rate 
vanguard general, all that remains is for him to prove his strategic 
ability, but for this there was not much opportunity throughout 
the whole of the Sebastopol campaign.” 

Blücher. During the 1794 campaign in the Palatinate’'’ he 
distinguished himself as an outpost general and light cavalry 
commander. The best proof of this is to be found in his published 
diary, still regarded as a classic despite the bad German.” He kept 
the French constantly on the quit vive, while providing his 
headquarters with first-rate intelligence on the movements of the 
enemy, and he was continually carrying out coups de main and 
surprise attacks, for the most part successfully. At Auerstedt in 
1806," when his cavalry charge miscarried, his advice that it be 
repeated using all available reinforcements was rejected (this from 
memory). His withdrawal to Lubeck and the stubborn stand he put 
up is one of the few honourable episodes in this affair, though 
during the course of it his strategic moves were often of the 
Hussar type. Nor was it his fault that he was finally captured for, 
like the whole of the Prussian army, he was cut off and had, 
moreover, the longest detour to make round the rearguard. 
During the period up to 1813 he was regarded by Scharnhorst 
and the Tugendbund*” (being one of its known leaders, 

a Almost the whole of this passage is reproduced in the article ‘Bosquet’ by Marx and 
Engels. - > G. L. Blücher, Kampagne-Journal der Jahre 1793 und 1794. 

Gneisenau remained throughout his life suspecr in the King’s* eyes) 
as the only possible and suitable leader and was dubbed a hero by 
them, as Hecker was by Blind and Co.?" Nor could they have 
picked on a better man. He was, as Miffling says,” THE MODEL oF A 
soldier While at the same time sharing to the full the intense popular 
antipathy to Napoleon and the French. Plebeian in his appetites, 
dialect, turns of phrase and manners, he had a tremendous gift 
for inspiring the common soldier with enthusiasm. As a soldier he 
possessed reckless courage, a keen eye for terrain, quickness of 
decision and enough intelligence to discover for himself what was 
best in more simple situations, and to rely on Gneisenau 
and Muffling in more complex ones. Of strategy, he had no 
inkling. 

*‘It was no secret to Europe, that Prince Blücher who had now, 1815, passed 
his 70th year, understood nothing whatever of the conduct of a war; so little, 
indeed, that when a plan was laid before him for approval, even relating to some 
unimportant operation, he could not form any clear idea-of it or judge whether it 
was good or bad.’* 

For he was quite incapable of reading a map, a strategical 
disability he shared with almost half of Napoleon’s marshals. On 
the other hand he had Gneisenau, whom he trusted implicitly. 
Without Blicher, the campaign of 1813 and 1814 would have 
ended very differently; no other general of that time could have 
done what he did—namely, by means of a victory and a skilfully 
conducted pursuit (Katzbach‘) weld the most refractory elements 
(Langeron and York in open rebellion against him) into a 
homogeneous army” capable of anything and with which, on his 
own responsibility, he could risk marching on Wartenburg and the 
Saale—militarily a most audacious but politically (because of 
Bernadotte) an essential move, thereby abandoning all his 
communications and compelling the sluggish large army (which he 
had saved in Silesia after the battle of Dresden,” by pursuing the 
French as far as Bautzen so that Napoleon had to turn against 
him) to chance its arm too at Leipzig.” Altogether it was a 
somewhat rebellious time, and Blicher had agreed with 51, of the 
Army of the North (Bulow, Tauentzien, Wintzingerode) that if 
Bernadotte made no move they would, on their own responsibility, 
join up with Blicher. After the battle of Leipzig, Blucher was the 
only one who applied himself in any way to the pursuit, though 

a Frederick William III - > [F. K. F.] Mitffling, Passages from My Life (below Engels 
quotes from p. 225 of this book). - ¢ Polish name: Kaczawa. 

even this wasn’t what it should have been—he was hampered by 
the presence of the princes. The strategic blunders that were so 
severely punished in the Montmirail region in 1814 must be laid at 
the door of Gneisenau and Müffling,” while the decision to 
march on Paris, cotite que cotite,’ which resolved the campaign, must 
be credited to Blicher. The march on Waterloo in 1815 after the 
battle of Ligny?'” is another considerable feather in Blicher’s cap; 
here he is almost without equal and no general except Blicher 
could have spurred his troops on to such EFForts—namely, to 
embark forthwith on the exemplary pursuit to Paris which ranks 
equally with that from Jena* to Stettin” as a classic prototype. 
That Blücher was able to overawe even abler generals is evident 
from his attitude to Langeron (who had commanded a large army 
against the Turks and was a cultivated French émigré) and to 
York, both of whom, for all their initial refractoriness, not only 
soon submitted to him, but actually went right over onto his side, 
. becoming his best subordinates. Au fond Blitcher was a cavalry 
general; that was his speciality and in it he excelled because this is 
a purely tactical role which does not presuppose any strategic 
knowledge. He asked a great deal of his troops but they did it, 
and willingly, and I don’t suppose any other 19th-century general 
save Napoleon and, more latterly, Radetzky, could have exacted 
from them what Bltcher did. It should further be recognised that 
nowhere and at no time did he lose head or heart, that he was as 
dogged in defence as he was resolute in attack and that in difficult 
situations he was quick to make up his mind. Enfin,’ in the 
1813-15 war, which was half way to being an insurrectionary 
war, he was quite the right man and was well complemented by 
his staff; and such being the case he was a very dangerous adver- 
sary.“ 

Your 
F. E. 
Note O/H 06012, Manchester, 15 Jan. 1857