Bavaria 1809

The 1809 war between Austria and France opened in April with Austrian troops invading neighboring Bavaria, hoping to raise the Bavarians against their French overlords. Napoleon’s promotion of Max Joseph from elector to king, and substantial enlargement of his realm, kept the head of the Bavarian ruling family loyal to the French alliance and the army followed its king's lead. The Bavarians not only did not turn against the French, they fought with distinction against the Austrians on the battlefield. As occupiers their record was much less honorable.

Bavarian troops play a key role in two of the largest battles included in our Napoleon on the Danube Classic Wargame proposal. Bavaria had not carried much of a military reputation since the days of the Thirty Years War a century and a half earlier, but the blue-and-white banners did well in 1809.

Under the Holy Roman Empire, the electorate’s armed forces had been a typical German army: small, manned by the desperate and the criminal, its soldiers poorly fed, trained and armed, and its dilettante officers recruited by purchase. In addition to their more typical complaints, Bavarian soldiers also hated their white Austrian-style uniforms.

Max Joseph, who’d served in the French army, started a series of reforms soon after taking the electorial throne in 1799, while still allied to Austria. The white uniform gave way to coats of Bavarian cornflower-blue, with a distinctive helmet. In 1804 the old recruiting system was replaced by general conscription, with judges ordered to cease using military service as a punishment. Officers no longer could purchase commissions and promotions, pay and living standards improved, and the army obtained a professional medical corps.

Max Joseph joined the Austrian side during the 1800 war with the French, but withdrew from the Allied coalition and made a separate peace. In 1805, Napoleon pushed for open alliance between France and Bavaria, and the elector finally agreed in August 1805.

Participation on the winning side in 1805, and dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire at the start of 1806, brought even greater changes to Bavaria’s army. Napoleon elevated Max Joseph to King of Bavaria and added the Austrian province of Tirol and other territories to the old electorate, but these rewards came with a price. Bavaria became the centerpiece of the new Confederation of the Rhine, a grouping of Napoleon’s German satellites. The French emperor required Bavaria to maintain an army of 30,000 men, far larger than the old electorate’s establishment. The Bavarian military professionals responded with some enthusiasm, adopting French-style drill and tactics, and artillery equipment.

Bavaria mobilized in the autumn of 1808 during a war scare between France and Russia, and when it became obvious that Austria was arming for war in early 1809 much of the Bavarian cadre was still with the colors. When mobilization began again in February, the recall of soldiers and requisition of animals went quickly and reasonable smoothly.

The army called up 35,000 soldiers initially, and reached a strength of 47,000 by the end of the year. The Bavarians organized three infantry divisions, each with two infantry and one cavalry brigades, plus a composite brigade attempting to suppress Tirolese freedom fighters, as well as assorted fortress garrisons.

Lt. Gen. Karl Philipp von Wrede

Max Joseph wanted the overall command to go to his son, 22-year-old Ludwig, but the young prince’s anti-French politics and lack of military experience ruled him out. Napoleon insisted on a French commander for every allied contingent, bypassing Bavaria’s top candidate, Karl Philipp Freiherr von Wrede. The Bavarians, styled the VII Corps of the Grande Armée, would be commanded by the French Marshal François Joseph Lefebvre, with a French chief of staff. All orders from corps headquarters were issued in French, and even sentries were ordered to use French passwords. Bavarian generals did command all three divisions: Ludwig led the 1st Division, Wrede the 2nd and Bernhard Graf von Deroy the 3rd.

On 16 April Deroy’s division fought the war’s first action, at Landshut on the river Iser against the advance guard of the Austrian V Corps led by Josef Graf Radetzky. The Austrians fought their way across the river in a sharply-contested action; despite hopes that Bavaria could be turned from her French allegiance, it seemed the kingdom’s army planned to fight.

Four days later, the Bavarian corps spearheaded the French attack that opened the battle of Abensburg. “Bavarians!” shouted Napoleon to the assembled officers of 1st and 3rd Divisions, while Ludwig translated. “Today you fight alone against the Austrians. . . . I will make you so great that you will not need my protection in any future war with Austria. We will march to Vienna, where we will punish it for all the evil it has caused your fatherland.”

Even Ludwig, who had called Napoleon, “Satan in human form,” was carried away by “the presence and personality of the Emperor.” The Bavarian attack carried the Austrian positions, and drove them back almost 14 kilometers. Abensburg was the first major French victory of the 1809 war, and was won primarily by Bavarian arms. The corps also was in the forefront at Eckmühl the next day.

The Bavarian corps marched into upper Austria, and remained there throughout May and most of June, marching into Tirol several times to fight the insurgents. Here both sides traded atrocities, the Bavarians committing rape and murder to the extent that Wrede (known to the Tirolese as the “Angel of Death”) issued an order of the day on 12 May lamenting, “Who gave you the right to murder the unarmed?” Tirolese women retaliated by burning captured Bavarian wounded alive. Snipers took a regular toll of stragglers, and any column smaller than a battalion could find itself trapped in the mountain passes and wiped out.

The Bavarians did not fight at Aspern on 21-22 May, but immediately afterwards Napoleon called for Wrede’s division to join him for the push across the Danube that resulted in the Battle of Wagram. The Tirolese took quick advantage, attacking and defeating Deroy at Bergisel just outside Innsbruck on the 29th.

Sacred Ground. Tirolese men and women hold Bergisel
against the Bavarian hordes, 13 August 1809.

After an exhausting forced march, Wrede’s men arrived at Wagram on 6 July for the battle’s last day, too late to see much action but in time to join the pursuit of the withdrawing Austrians. But Bavaria’s 32 casualties at Wagram did include Wrede, wounded by an artillery shell.

Without their leader, the Bavarian division joined Marmont’s IX Corps for the march to Znaim, and undertook the brunt of the fighting there before a cease-fire ended the battle on the evening of 11 July. The Bavarians suffered 900 casualties at Znaim, making it the bloodiest action of the 1809 war for the kingdom’s army.

The other two divisions marched into Tirol where the bloody struggle continued, not subduing the mountaineers until the Austrian emperor made peace with Napoleon in July and directed that resistance cease.

Bavaria’s participation in 1809 was marked by battlefield success at Abensburg and Eckmühl and mixed performance at Znaim. Thus they rate reasonably well in Napoleon on the Danube. Their criminal behavior in Tirol is beyond the scope of the game, but the Alpine uprising is a subject we’ll treat in the future.