Russia Against Napoleon (28 page)

Unfortunately, however, confusion on the Moscow road very nearly allowed the French to get first to Lubino, block the paths out of the forest, and undermine everything Eugen and his men had achieved. Barclay had just made what arrangements he could to deal with the emergency facing Eugen, when he was informed that Second Army had retreated eastwards along the Moscow road without waiting for First Army, leaving the vital crossroads near Lubino open for the French to seize. Friedrich von Schubert was alone with Barclay when the message was delivered and he recalled that the commander-in-chief, normally so self-controlled and calm in crisis, said out aloud: ‘Everything is lost.’ Barclay can be forgiven his temporary loss of composure because this was one of the most dangerous moments for the Russians in the 1812 campaign.
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The situation was partly saved by Pavel Tuchkov. After a long and exhausting night-time march through the forests he moved onto the Moscow road near to Lubino at about eight o’clock in the morning. Tuchkov was astonished to find no one there from Second Army save a few Cossacks. Though his orders had been to turn eastwards on the high road and head for Solovevo, this had presumed that Gorchakov’s troops would be on the road to block any French advance and guarantee the rest of First Army a safe retreat. To make matters worse, Cossacks reported that Junot’s Westphalian corps was preparing to ford the Dnieper at Prudishchevo, which would allow them to move onto the road from the south against minimal opposition.

Pavel Tuchkov kept his head and showed praiseworthy initiative. Ignoring his orders, he turned his 3,000 men right rather than left onto the Moscow road and took up a good defensive position as far to the west of Lubino as possible, behind the river Kolodnia. Here his men hung on against growing French pressure for five hours, reinforced by two fine Grenadier regiments rushed forward to his assistance by his elder brother. In mid-afternoon Pavel Tuchkov fell back to a new position behind the river Strogan, which was the last defensible position if the army’s exit routes from the forests onto the Moscow road were to be kept open. Ferocious fighting continued until the evening but Tuchkov held out, supported by a growing stream of reinforcements organized by Aleksei Ermolov.

As at Krasnyi, the Russian generals had kept their heads and the Russian infantry had shown great steadiness and courage in emergency. Unlike at Krasnyi, the cavalry and artillery had also contributed to the victory. In particular, Count Vasili Orlov-Denisov’s cavalry had protected Tuchkov’s vulnerable left flank against strong pressure from French cavalry and infantry, using the terrain with great skill and timing their counter-attacks to perfection.

Nevertheless, no amount of Russian skill and courage could have saved Tuchkov had the French used all their available troops intelligently. Having crossed the Dnieper at the ford near Prudishchevo, for most of the day General Junot’s corps stood motionless behind the Russian left flank and rear, with Tuchkov at their mercy. French sources later explained this failure by Junot’s incipient mental illness but it also made clear that the French army’s reputation for rapid and decisive exploitation of opportunities on the battlefield only applied when Napoleon was present. But the emperor had no reason to expect a serious battle on 19 August and had remained in Smolensk. His absence rescued the Russians from disaster, as their commanders well understood. Aleksei Ermolov wrote to Alexander that ‘we ought to have perished’. Barclay told Bennigsen that one chance in a hundred had saved First Army.
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As the Russian armies retreated eastwards the initiative lay with Napoleon. Either he could pursue them or he could end his campaign at Smolensk, and seek to turn Lithuania and Belorussia into a formidable base from which to launch a second, decisive strike in 1813. Both at the time and subsequently there has been much debate about the relative advantages and dangers of these two options.

In favour of stopping at Smolensk were the dangers of extending French communications still further eastwards. Not merely were the lines of communication already very long but by mid-August they were facing a growing threat on both flanks, especially in the south where Admiral Chichagov’s formidable Army of the Danube was approaching the theatre of operations. In addition, two months of war had not only greatly reduced French numbers, they had also seriously weakened discipline and morale. With sick, deserters and marauders scattered across Lithuania and Belorussia in their tens of thousands was it not more sensible to consolidate one’s base, restore order to one’s army and not risk even more pressure on its fragile discipline?

There were also powerful political reasons for stopping in Smolensk. Given satisfied elites and effective administration, Lithuania and Belorussia could have become key allies in a war against Russia. The Russian leaders had always feared that by abandoning the western provinces they would allow Napoleon to consolidate his power there and mobilize Polish resources against them. One of the calculations on which Napoleon had based his invasion was that the Russian elites would never fight to the death to preserve their empire’s Polish provinces. If he conquered and organized these provinces, how much pain would the Russians be willing to endure in the hope of getting them back?

For Napoleon, 1812 was a cabinet war fought for strictly limited political purposes. At the absolute maximum he would have annexed Lithuania and part of Belorussia and Ukraine, forced Russia back into the Continental System, and – possibly – coerced the Russians into helping him to challenge British power in Asia. Having experienced the problems of campaigning in Russia he might have settled for less, even in the event of victory. Already embroiled in one national war in Spain, the last thing he wanted was to ignite another in Russia. From the start there had been strong signs that Alexander and his generals were trying to incite a national war against him. As he approached Smolensk these signs became more ominous. The further he penetrated into Great Russia the likelier a national war became.

Napoleon was a man of order who had put the lid on the French Revolution and married the daughter of the Habsburg emperor. He had no desire to launch a serf insurrection in Russia. But the threat might be a useful form of political leverage. It was much more likely to work with the French army poised menacingly on Great Russia’s borders than if it actually invaded the Russian heartland. With their churches desecrated, their women raped and their farms destroyed the Russian peasants were unlikely to listen to French promises.

All these points were fully comprehensible at the time. To them one might add other points with the wisdom of hindsight. The restoration of a powerful Polish state was crucial if French hegemony in Europe was to survive. A restored Poland would be a far more reliable ally of France than the Habsburg, Romanov or Hohenzollern monarchies could ever be. It was also well within Napoleon’s means to make Poland’s restoration fully acceptable to Austria, by restoring the Illyrian provinces he had annexed from it in 1809. Standing even further back from events and looking at the last three centuries of Russian history, it is true to say that whereas simple military assaults on Russia tend to break against the country’s immense scale and resources, the Russian Empire has been vulnerable to a combination of military and political pressures. This proved true both in the First World War and in the Cold War, both of which Russia lost in large part because of the revolt of non-Russians but also of the Russians themselves against the price of empire and the nature of the regimes required to secure it. In the early nineteenth century military pressure combined with exploiting the Romanov empire’s political weaknesses might have worked when geared to strictly limited war aims.

Even leaving aside the fact that Napoleon could not see into the future, there were, however, powerful arguments against stopping in Smolensk. Napoleon was very unwilling to spend more than one campaigning season away from Paris. As we have seen, Chernyshev had pointed this out before 1812 and linked it to the nature of the Bonapartist regime and the challenges it faced. After noting a number of these challenges (the economy, the Pope, Spain, the elites) the leading contemporary French expert on Napoleon concludes that ‘Chernyshev was correct when he reported to his government that Napoleon would take a major domestic risk if the war against Russia was prolonged’. If this judgement can be made now in calm retrospect, how much greater must Napoleon’s feeling of insecurity have been in 1812? He had seen the enormous instability of French politics in the 1790s. He understood how very conditional was the French elite’s loyalty to him. He knew how much his throne owed to victory and to chance.
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He also knew that consolidating a secure base in the western borderlands would be difficult. Lithuania and Belorussia found it hard to feed armies even in peacetime, and especially in winter and spring. The Russian First Army was far smaller than Napoleon’s forces and by no means all of it had wintered in the western borderlands in 1811–12. Even so it had been forced to quarter itself across a huge area to secure adequate supplies. This was particularly true of the cavalry. The five regiments of Baron Korff’s Second Cavalry Corps had been quartered all the way from the Prussian frontier to central Ukraine in order to feed their horses.
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Matters were hardly likely to be better in the winter of 1812 after a year in which the region had been plundered by two armies. The Russian light cavalry was superior to the French even in the early summer of 1812. As Napoleon had discovered in 1806–7, however, the Cossacks revealed their true potential in winter, when they could operate in conditions which destroyed regular light cavalry. With the full manpower of the Cossack regions now being mobilized by the Russians, the French would face huge difficulties in securing their base or feeding their horses and even their men in the winter of 1812.

Of course, if Napoleon had stopped at Smolensk his entire army would not have been destroyed, as happened after his botched invasion of the Russian heartland. But the destruction of Napoleon’s army was by no means inevitable just because he advanced from Smolensk. Other factors – and mistakes – intervened.

In August 1812 Napoleon would have preferred not to be sitting in Smolensk with an undefeated Russian army still in the field. His strategy had been rooted in the correct belief that if he could destroy First and Second armies Russia would lose any hope of ultimate victory. He had chased the Russians all the way to Smolensk in pursuit of this strategy but they had frustrated him. One political calculation made by Napoleon was correct: the Russians could not surrender Moscow without a fight. Moscow was two weeks’ march from Smolensk. Since he had come this far in pursuit of a battle, it might well seem foolish to give up now with the prize so nearly in his grasp. Operating in the rich Moscow region in the midst of the harvest season, he would have no serious problems feeding his men and horses so long as they kept on the move. No doubt to advance was a gamble, but Napoleon was a great gambler. He was also right to believe that in August 1812 stopping in Smolensk was by no means a safe bet. So he decided to push on towards Moscow.

As Napoleon’s main body advanced into central Russia in the second half of August 1812 the situation on its northern and southern flanks began to turn against the French. In part this reflected the enormous area across which Napoleon’s armies were now being forced to operate. In the north, Marshal MacDonald, the descendant of a Scottish Jacobite émigré, had been given the task of covering Napoleon’s left flank, clearing Courland and capturing Riga. In the south, the Austrians and Saxons were facing General Aleksandr Tormasov’s Third Army on the borders of Ukraine. More than 1,000 kilometres separated these forces. The distance between Napoleon’s spearhead beyond Smolensk and his bases in East Prussia and Poland was even greater. Inevitably, as distance and sickness took their toll, his forces began to thin out. Napoleon could not be strong everywhere.

Marshal MacDonald’s Tenth Corps comprised 32,500 men. Almost two-thirds of these troops were Prussians and in the early stages of the campaign they fought hard. Their commander, Lieutenant-General von Gräwert, stressed the need to restore Prussian military pride and regain the respect of the French for the army of Frederick the Great. Near the main estate of the Pahlen family at Gross Eckau on 19 July 1812 the Prussians defeated a Russian attempt to check their advance. Within a month of the war’s commencement the Prussians were in the vicinity of Riga, a huge Russian supply base, the largest city in the Baltic provinces and the key to the river Dvina.

Riga was not a strong fortress. Uniquely, the costs of its upkeep were borne not by the Russian state but by the Riga municipal government. In the century that had passed since the city was last seriously threatened its defences had been allowed to deteriorate. Only in June 1810 did the state take back responsibility for the city’s fortifications. During the next two years much was done to prepare Riga for a siege, but major weaknesses remained. Many of the key fortifications were out of date. The citadel was very cramped and hemmed in by residential areas. Riga’s suburbs had also grown greatly during the eighteenth century, occupying much of what had been open ground in front of the city’s outer walls.

The 19,000-strong garrison of Riga was commanded by Lieutenant-General Magnus von Essen. Most of these men came from reserve battalions and many were poorly trained. Sickness was rife in the garrison even before the siege began. Immediately on hearing that Napoleon had crossed the Neman Essen declared Riga to be in a state of siege: every household was ordered to store four months’ supply of food and any civilian departing the town was required to leave behind two able-bodied citizens in his household to help defend the city. In the fourth week of July, as the enemy approached Riga, Essen ordered that its western and southern suburbs be burned to the ground, in order to give the garrison a free field of fire beyond the walls. More than 750 buildings were destroyed, at an estimated cost of 17 million rubles. Nevertheless, it was generally agreed that Riga could not hope to hold out for more than two months against a serious siege.

If Napoleon had stopped in Vitebsk or Smolensk and dispatched part of his main army to help MacDonald, Riga would certainly have fallen. Without additional help, however, the French commander could not hope to take the city. A complete blockade line would have needed to stretch around Riga for more than 50 kilometres on both sides of the river Dvina. MacDonald’s 32,500 men on their own could never man such a line. In addition, Russian gunboats controlled the river and the British navy dominated the Baltic Sea and raided MacDonald’s communications along the coast. The French siege artillery, initially sent to Dünaburg, did finally arrive near Riga, but by the time it could be deployed for a serious siege the balance of forces on Napoleon’s northern flank was beginning to turn against the French.

Above all, this was because of the intervention of the Russian army in Finland. In the last week of August Alexander travelled to Åbo in Finland to meet the Swedish crown prince, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. The two leaders confirmed their alliance as well as arrangements for future military collaboration in northern Germany and Denmark. Of more immediate importance was the fact that Bernadotte released Alexander from his promise to use the Russian troops in Finland for a joint Russo-Swedish landing in Denmark in 1812 and urged him to send them to Riga instead. As a result, the Russian navy transported the bulk of the 21,000-strong Finland Corps to the Baltic provinces. Commanded by Count Fabian von Steinhel, these were mostly battle-hardened troops. By the second half of September their arrival in Riga was promising to end the stalemate on the northern front.
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Though Riga was Marshal MacDonald’s main preoccupation, he was also forced to keep one eye over his right shoulder towards Dünaburg and Polotsk. This was the area in which Lieutenant-General Count Peter von Wittgenstein’s First Russian Corps was operating. When Barclay’s army abandoned the camp at Drissa and headed for Vitebsk Wittgenstein’s corps was detached to block the roads leading north-westwards to Pskov, Novgorod and ultimately Petersburg. Wittgenstein’s main opponent was Marshal Oudinot, whose orders were to advance over the river Dvina and drive the Russians back on Pskov. In principle, this task should not have been beyond Oudinot, whose corps was more than 40,000-strong when it entered Russian territory. By contrast, Wittgenstein had only 23,000 men in First Corps and, though his forces were reinforced by two other small detachments, he was also responsible for containing any attempt by MacDonald’s right-wing division to advance from Dünaburg.
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In fact, however, Oudinot was to prove a complete failure as the commander of an independent force, allowing himself to be dominated and overawed by Wittgenstein. Russian light cavalry raided constantly over the Dvina, disrupting French communications and supplies. When Oudinot advanced on Wittgenstein’s army in late July he allowed himself to be surprised and routed by the Russians in three days of battle at Kliastitsy and Golovshchina between 30 July and 1 August. One reason for his defeat was his failure to concentrate all his forces on the battlefield. According to the Russian account, he had more than 8,000 men in the neighbourhood of Kliastitsy who never got into action.

In addition, however, the Russian troops fought exceptionally well. The core of Wittgenstein’s little army had recent experience of fighting in Finland’s forests during the war of 1808–9. Not only Wittgenstein’s jaegers but also some of his infantry proved very adept at skirmishing in the similar terrain of north-western Russia. Perhaps it was their example that inspired the many reserve battalions and new regiments formed from garrison troops in Wittgenstein’s divisions to perform much better than anyone had the right to expect right from the start of the campaign. Wittgenstein immediately took the offensive, won battles and imposed his will on the enemy; as a result, his soldiers’ morale was high and no one carped at his German origins.
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It probably helped Wittgenstein that, unlike Barclay de Tolly, he came from an aristocratic, albeit rather impoverished, family. Born in Russia and the son of a general in Russian service, he moved much more assuredly in Russian aristocratic circles than was the case with the awkward Barclay. In addition, Peter Wittgenstein was a cavalryman and something of a
beau sabreur
. A fine horseman, bold, generous and often chivalrous, Wittgenstein’s values were very much those of the Russian military aristocracy. In addition, he was personally modest and kindly, as well as very generous in recognizing and reporting his subordinates’ achievements. Combined with a string of victories, these qualities ensured that great harmony reigned at Wittgenstein’s headquarters in 1812.
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Harmony at headquarters was combined with professional skill. Wittgenstein’s chief of staff was Friedrich d’Auvray, an intelligent, loyal and excellently educated staff officer of French origin who was born in Dresden and began his military career in the Polish army. The commander of First Corps’s artillery was the Georgian, Prince Lev Iashvili. His deputy was the 24-year-old Ivan Sukhozhanet, the son of a Polish officer. Both men had performed well in the East Prussian campaign of 1806–7.
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The pick of the bunch, however, was the 27-year-old quartermaster-general of Wittgenstein’s corps, Colonel Johann von Diebitsch. He was the son of a senior Prussian staff officer who had transferred to the Russian service in 1798. The young Diebitsch had begun his military service in the Semenovsky Guards regiment, from which Petr Mikhailovich Volkonsky – another former Semenovsky officer – had plucked him for the general staff. Diminutive, pop-eyed and ugly, Diebitsch’s appearance had so appalled the Semenovskys’ colonel that he had tried to keep the young officer away from service at court and on the parade ground. Diebitsch was known by his many friends as ‘the samovar’ because when he became excited he boiled over, with words spilling out in almost incomprehensible fashion. For all his oddities, Diebitsch was probably the ablest staff officer in the Russian army in 1812–14. He also showed energy, initiative and judgement on the occasions when called upon to command detachments. Though ambitious and determined, Diebitsch was also very loyal to the army and the cause which he served. By 1814, aged only 28, he was a lieutenant-general, having skyrocketed past his former peers in the Semenovskys. Nevertheless, to his credit and theirs, he remained on good terms with his old comrades.
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After Kliastitsy Oudinot complained to Napoleon that he was faced by far superior Russian numbers. Often in 1812–14 the emperor was to torment his subordinates by underestimating the size of the enemy forces they faced. On this occasion, however, his sour response to Oudinot was accurate and justified:

You are not pursuing Wittgenstein…and you are allowing this general the freedom to attack the Duke of Tarento [i.e. MacDonald] or to cross the Dvina to raid our rear. You have the most exaggerated notions of Wittgenstein’s strength: he has only two or at most three divisions of the line, six reserve battalions under Prince Repnin and some militia who aren’t worth counting. You must not allow yourself to be hoodwinked so easily. The Russians are announcing everywhere that they have scored a great victory over you.
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Despite this criticism, Napoleon reinforced Oudinot by all the infantry and artillery of Gouvion Saint-Cyr’s Sixth (Bavarian) Corps. Marching in the wake of the first echelon of Napoleon’s army, Sixth Corps was 25,000-strong when it crossed the Neman but had only 13,000 men left by the time they joined Oudinot at Polotsk just five weeks later. It is true that the Bavarian cavalry had been detached to join Napoleon’s main body, but most of the losses were due to sickness, straggling and desertion. During this period the Bavarians had not fired a shot in anger.

Although Wittgenstein knew that with the arrival of Saint-Cyr’s corps he was heavily outnumbered, he was determined to retain the initiative and impose his will on the enemy. With this goal in mind he attacked the joint forces of Oudinot and Saint-Cyr at Polotsk on 17 August. Unfortunately for Wittgenstein, although on the battle’s first day he succeeded in pushing the French back into the town of Polotsk, Oudinot himself was wounded and command passed to the far more competent Saint-Cyr. The next day the new French commander concentrated much of his artillery and two fresh infantry divisions for a counter-attack on the Russian centre. With a sleight of hand rather familiar in descriptions of battles at this time, Saint-Cyr claimed that his army was substantially outnumbered. He wrote in his memoirs that one-quarter of the 31,000-strong French force was absent ‘foraging’, whereas Wittgenstein had more than 30,000 soldiers to hand. In reality, as Wittgenstein reported to Alexander, constant battles, combined with the need to need to keep an eye on MacDonald, meant that his available strike force was reduced to barely 18,000 men.
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Surprise combined with overwhelming numbers meant that the Russians were forced to retreat but they did so with great steadiness and courage. The Estland Regiment, for example, had been formed in 1811 from the soldiers of garrison units. The battle of Polotsk was its first serious action. As part of Major-General Gothard Helfreich’s 14th Division, the men of the Estland Regiment stood right in the path of the French counter-attack. Despite this and despite losing fourteen officers and more than 400 men, the Estland Regiment held off repeated enemy attacks during 18 August, skirmished effectively in the woods, and finally won their way to safety. The regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Karl Ulrikhin, was wounded twice and subsequently forced to retire from the army as a result. But he stayed with his men throughout the retreat, leading a number of counter-attacks to keep the enemy at a safe distance. Forty-three men of the Estland Regiment won military medals for their performance on 18 July and the regiment itself was awarded a standard to mark its exploits.
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One might perhaps take a regimental history’s account of its own soldiers’ courage with a pinch of salt, but in this case the Russian story is supported by Saint-Cyr himself, who wrote that

the Russians showed in this battle a sustained courage and an individual boldness of which one finds very few equivalents in the armies of other nations. Surprised, fragmented, with their battalions isolated as much as actually attacked (for we had penetrated through their lines), they nevertheless were not disconcerted and continued to fight as they retreated, which they did very slowly, facing about in all directions with a courage and a steadiness which is, I repeat, particular to the soldiers of this nation. They performed prodigies of valour but they could not beat back the simultaneous attack of four concentrated and ordered divisions.
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Technically the battle of Polotsk was a defeat for Wittgenstein but in fact it helped him to achieve his strategic goal, which was so to weaken and impress the enemy that they would refrain from advancing down the roads to Pskov, Novgorod and Petersburg. After the battle, Wittgenstein fell back roughly 40 kilometres to a fortified position near Sivoshin, where the French left him in peace for the next two months. During that time stalemate reigned in the north-west, with the war degenerating into raids and a competition between the two armies to feed themselves and rebuild their strength. To an extent, what happened next was precisely what Pfühl had planned at Drissa. Weakened by the advance across the western borderlands, Saint-Cyr lacked the numbers either to attack Wittgenstein behind his entrenchments or to move past his flank. Pinned down in a static position in a poor and devastated countryside, sickness and hunger melted away the French army.