Russia Against Napoleon (41 page)

Alexander was kept aware of Kutuzov’s unwillingness to confront the retreating enemy, not least by Wilson. The emperor had encouraged the Englishman to write to him, employing this foreigner as an additional, ‘unaffiliated’ source of information on his generals, while secretly intercepting and deciphering Wilson’s correspondence with the British government to make sure that his British ‘agent’ was not trying to pull the wool over his eyes. Wilson was one of a number of people who begged the emperor to return to headquarters and take over command himself. Another officer who did so was Colonel Michaud de Beauretour, who came to Petersburg on 27 October with news of the victory over Murat at Tarutino.
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Alexander responded to Michaud that

all human beings are ambitious for fame (
chestoliubivye
) and I admit openly that I am no less ambitious than others. If I listened only to this feeling, then I would get into your carriage and set off for the army. Given the unfavourable position into which we have lured the enemy, our army’s excellent spirit, the empire’s inexhaustible resources, the large reserve forces which I have made ready, and the orders sent by me to the Army of Moldavia [i.e. Chichagov’s army] – I am very confident that we cannot be denied victory and that all that remains to us, as they say, is to put on the laurels. I know that if I was with the army, then I would gather all the glory and that I would take my place in history. But when I think how inexperienced I am in military matters in comparison to our enemy and that, for all my goodwill, I could make a mistake which would cost the precious blood of my children, then despite my ambition for fame I am very ready to sacrifice my glory for the good of the army.
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To some extent, as usual, this was Alexander striking a pose. Other factors were also important in his decision to stay away from headquarters and leave Kutuzov in command. The field-marshal’s enormous popularity as the reality of victory sank in to Russian consciousness was one such factor. But there is good reason to believe Alexander’s lack of confidence in his own military abilities, a lack of confidence which had haunted this sensitive and proud man since the humiliation of Austerlitz. Though the emperor had more faith in Bennigsen’s ability and shared his views on strategy, he nevertheless allowed Kutuzov to remove the chief of staff from headquarters, recognizing that in present circumstances he had no alternative but to put his faith in his commander-in-chief and had no interest in allowing the army’s high command to be undermined by personal hatreds.
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Kutuzov’s retreat after Maloiaroslavets had left his main body three days’ march behind the enemy as it headed for Mozhaisk and the Moscow–Smolensk highway. Aleksei Ermolov reported on 28 October that Napoleon was retreating at such speed that it was impossible for Russian regular troops to keep up without exhausting themselves. Other reports confirmed this, while adding that this speed was destroying the French army. Two days later Matvei Platov, in command of the Cossacks swarming around the enemy’s column, wrote that ‘the enemy army is fleeing like no other army has ever retreated in history. It is abandoning its baggage, its sick and its wounded. It leaves behind horrible sights in its wake: at every step one sees the dying or the dead.’ Platov added that the Cossacks were stopping the enemy from foraging and Napoleon’s troops were running very short of food and fodder. Nor could the enemy rearguards hold for any length of time against the light cavalry which moved around their flanks and the concentrated fire of the Russian horse artillery.
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By 29 October Napoleon’s headquarters were at Gzhatsk, back on the highway and 230 kilometres from Smolensk. After rejoining the Moscow–Smolensk road at Mozhaisk, his army passed the battlefield of Borodino and the Kolotskoe monastery, which had been turned into a hospital. Many hundreds of wounded men remained there, who should have been evacuated well before the army’s arrival. Instead Napoleon now tried to load them onto the carts of his baggage train, many of whose drivers took the first opportunity to tip them off into the ditches beside the road.
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The battlefield itself was a terrible sight. None of the bodies had been buried. Scores of thousands of corpses lay out in the fields or in great mounds around the Raevsky battery and other points where the fighting had been most fierce.

For fifty-two days they had lain as victims of the elements and the changing weather. Few still had a human look. Well before the frosts had arrived, maggots and putrefaction had made their mark. Other enemies had also appeared. Packs of wolves had come from every corner of Smolensk province. Birds of prey had flown from the nearby fields. Often the beasts of the forest and those of the air fought over the right to tear apart the corpses. The birds picked out the eyes, the wolves cleaned the bones of their flesh.
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As Napoleon’s army turned towards Smolensk along the highway, the closest Russian forces remained Matvei Platov’s Cossacks. Their orders were to harass the enemy day and night, allowing him little sleep and no chance to forage. By 1 November Miloradovich’s advance guard of Kutuzov’s army was also approaching. It was made up of two infantry corps and 3,500 regular cavalry. Kutuzov’s main body was still some way to the south, marching along country roads parallel to the highway. This line of march made clear Kutuzov’s intention not to fight a pitched battle with Napoleon. Food supply was also an incentive to keep well away from the highway and march through districts untouched by war.

Once Kutuzov’s army began to pursue Napoleon, problems of supply were inevitable. The army was moving away from its bases and into an impoverished war zone. Even in Smolensk province, let alone Belorussia and Lithuania, there was every likelihood that food would be impossible to find and that the army would have to feed itself from its own wagons. It required 850 carts to carry a day’s food and forage for an army of 120,000 men and 40,000 horses. To sustain itself for a long period would therefore require many thousands of carts. Even if they could be found, this would not necessarily solve the problem. The horses and drivers of the supply train had to feed themselves as well. In a vicious circle very familiar to pre-modern generals the army’s supply train could end up by eating all the food it was attempting to deliver. The longer it spent on the march, the likelier this was to happen. Moving thousands of carts along side roads in a Russian autumn was bound to be a very slow business, especially if they were travelling in the rear of a huge artillery train. These realities go a long way to explaining Kutuzov’s predicament in the autumn and winter of 1812.
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When the campaign began the men carried three days’ rations, and seven more days of ‘biscuit’ – in other words the dried black bread which was the staple of Russian regiments on the march – were in the regimental carts. This was what the regulations required and Kutuzov insisted that they were fully complied with. Large extra supplies were in the army’s wagon train to the rear of the marching columns. On 17 October the army’s chief victualling officer reported that he had sufficient biscuit to feed 120,000 men for twenty days – in other words until 6 November – and 20,000 quarters of oats for the horses.
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Well before the start of the autumn campaign Kutuzov had attempted to create a large mobile magazine to support the army’s advance. On 27 September orders had gone out to twelve provincial governors to form mobile magazines and send them to the army immediately, stressing that ‘extreme speed’ was crucial. Each magazine was to consist of 408 two-horse carts packed in equal measure with biscuit and groats for the soldiers and oats for their horses. The provincial nobility was to provide most of the food and the carts, as well as the ‘inspectors’ who were to organize and lead the magazines. The governors went through the inevitable process of summoning the noble marshals. As one of them reported to headquarters, ‘without the full cooperation of the marshals of the nobility nothing effective can be done’.
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With few exceptions the marshals did everything possible and the nobles volunteered the food and transport needed but the enemy was time and distance. Napoleon would have had to stay in Moscow for an extra month at least for mobile magazines from far-off Penza, Simbirsk and Saratov to arrive in time for the autumn campaign. In fact, however, the autumn campaign started even before the mobile magazines from less distant provinces could arrive. The first half of the Riazan mobile magazine, for instance, set off on 29 October, the first echelon of the Tambov mobile magazine on 7 November. Even these mobile magazines had a considerable journey to the army. Moreover they soon found themselves marching in its wake, behind its vast artillery train and through areas eaten out by the men and horses which had already passed. Soon the supply train began to eat its own food in order to stop men and horses from starving. Stuck in the rear with the supply train was also much of the winter clothing which Kutuzov had ordered the governors of nearby provinces to requisition for the army.
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In principle the mobile magazines should have been directed along march-routes which would intersect the advance of Kutuzov’s columns. Kutuzov did actually order the intendant-general of the combined First and Second armies, Vasili Lanskoy, to send all supplies from Tula towards the army’s line of march through the southern districts of Smolensk province. Just possibly if Barclay de Tolly and Georg Kankrin had been masterminding supply operations rather than Kutuzov, Konovnitsyn and Lanskoy the arrangements might have been more efficient but the task was difficult. Until the last week of October no one could know along which route Napoleon would retreat or Kutuzov would pursue him. Mobile magazines wrongly directed could fall into enemy hands. Once the campaign had begun the armies never stopped moving. Together with the distances involved, the pre-modern communications and the total inexperience of the noble inspectors who led the mobile magazines, this made coordination of army and supply column movements very hard.
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By 5 November Kutuzov acknowledged that ‘the rapid movement of the army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy means that the transport with food for the troops is falling behind and therefore the army is beginning to suffer a shortage of victuals’. As a result he issued detailed orders on where and how much to requisition from the local population, threatening anyone failing to cooperate with field courts martial. The problem, however, was that as the army approached Smolensk in mid-November it was entering an area ravaged by war and previously occupied by the enemy, where part of the population had fled to the forests, very many farms had been destroyed and there was no friendly local administration to help levy supplies. When they reached the area around the city of Smolensk many of Kutuzov’s troops began to go hungry for the first time in the campaign.
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The only major clash between regular Russian troops and Napoleon’s retreating army occurred at Viazma on 3 November. The various corps of Napoleon’s army retreating down the Smolensk highway were strung out over 50 kilometres. Miloradovich therefore attempted to cut off the French rearguard, commanded by Marshal Davout. The attempt failed, above all because Miloradovich was tightly constrained by Kutuzov’s cautious orders and the field-marshal refused to move up in his support with the army’s main body. The corps of Eugène de Beauharnais, Poniatowski and Ney were still close enough to help Davout, and together they well outnumbered Miloradovich’s force. Most of Davout’s corps therefore escaped but since the day ended with the Russians storming into Viazma and driving the enemy off the battlefield the Russian soldiers saw themselves as clear victors, which was good for their morale.

The battle of Viazma showed that there was still plenty of fight left in many of Napoleon’s troops but it also revealed his army’s growing weakness. For the first time in 1812, a clash between Kutuzov and Napoleon’s infantry resulted in much heavier French than Russian losses. Lieutenant Ivan Radozhitsky’s battery was part of Miloradovich’s force and fought at Viazma. He wrote that ‘our superiority was clear: the enemy had almost no cavalry and in contrast to previous occasions his artillery was weak and ineffective…we rejoiced in our glorious victory, and in addition saw our superiority over the terrible enemy’. Eugen of Württemberg wrote that at any time after the battle of Viazma a determined attack by the whole Russian army would have destroyed Napoleon’s force. But Kutuzov preferred to leave the job to the winter, which put in its first appearance three days after the battle.
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Subsequently Napoleon himself and some of his admirers were much inclined to blame the unusually cold winter for the destruction of his army. This is mostly nonsense. Only in December, after most of the French army had already perished, did the winter become unusually and ferociously cold. October had been exceptionally warm, maybe lulling Napoleon into a false sense of security. As sometimes happens in Russia, winter then came suddenly. By 6 November Napoleon’s men were marching through heavy snow. All the Russian sources say, however, that November 1812 was cold but seldom exceptionally so for this time of year. The main ‘trick’ played on Napoleon in this month by the weather was in fact the milder spell in the second half of November, which thawed the ice on the river Berezina and thereby created a major obstacle to his retreat. The basic point, however, is that Russian Novembers are cold, especially for exhausted men who sleep in the open, without even a tent, with very inadequate clothing, and with little food.
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Ivan Radozhitsky’s battery pursued the enemy down the Smolensk highway from Viazma to Dorogobuzh. He wrote that a mass of prisoners were taken and led away under Cossack escort but they still included very few officers. Dead and dying men littered the road in large numbers. For the Russian troops the sight of French soldiers eating often semi-raw horsemeat was deeply disgusting. Radozhitsky recalls one particularly awful scene of a French soldier frozen in death at the very moment he was trying to rip the liver out of a fallen horse. The Russian soldiers had no love for their enemy but even so pity often became the dominant feeling amidst such dreadful scenes. Things were not easy for the Russians themselves, however, let alone for their horses. Radozhitsky writes that there was no hay, his battery had exhausted its supply of oats and the exhausted animals were surviving on whatever scraps of straw could be scrounged. His soldiers did at least have fur jackets and felt boots, which had been distributed to his battery at the camp in Tarutino before the campaign began, but they had nothing to eat save biscuit and a very thin gruel. A growing number of sick and exhausted men dropped out of the ranks and by the time it turned off the highway and joined Kutuzov’s main body on 11 November very few infantry companies had more than eighty men. Nevertheless, buoyed by victory, their morale was excellent.
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