Russia Against Napoleon (42 page)

Napoleon himself arrived in Smolensk on 9 November and left five days later. For the soldiers retreating down the highway the city offered the hope of warmth, food and security. In different circumstances it might have been just that. Its stores contained plentiful food and until recently the fresh corps of Marshal Victor, 30,000 strong, had been located in Smolensk. The advance of Peter Wittgenstein had forced Victor to march to the support of Saint-Cyr and Oudinot, however, leaving the city with a feeble garrison, far too weak to protect the food-stores or impose order on the arriving horde of desperate soldiers from Moscow. Even the day before the main body of the
Grande Armée
arrived a senior commissariat officer in Smolensk was predicting disaster. Marauders were already trying to storm the magazines and he had almost no troops to stop them. Subsequently he wrote that the ‘regiments’ entering the city looked like convicts or lunatics and had lost all traces of discipline. The Guards took far more than their share, whereas those corps which arrived last received a pittance. Amidst the chaos, food which could have lasted a week was devoured in a day. Stores of food and spirits were stormed and looted, with his own men overwhelmed and often deserting in droves.
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Napoleon’s advance guard left Smolensk on 12 November and began the retreat westwards. His army’s immediate goal was to cross the river Dnieper at Orsha.

The emperor’s lack of cavalry made reconnaissance impossible and meant that he did not know Kutuzov’s whereabouts. In fact Napoleon’s delay in Smolensk, however essential, had enabled the main Russian enemy to catch up and move around the city to the south. By 12 November it was within Kutuzov’s power to place his whole army across the road to Orsha and force Napoleon to fight his way back to the Dnieper. Most Russian generals longed for Kutuzov to do this. They included Karl von Toll, who later said that if Kutuzov had acted in this way the great majority of the enemy army would have been destroyed, though no doubt Napoleon himself and a picked escort would have sneaked away.
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Kutuzov, however, remained true to his system of offering Napoleon a ‘golden bridge’. He refused to commit the bulk of his army to battle, and certainly not until he was sure that Napoleon and his Guards were safely out of the way. The last thing he wanted was to wreck the core of the Russian army in the life-and-death struggle that the French Guards would undoubtedly wage to save their emperor and themselves. Kutuzov’s caution inevitably affected his subordinates. Vladimir Löwenstern recalls how Baron Korff, the commander of much of the main army’s cavalry, cited Kutuzov’s words about a ‘golden bridge’ as a reason not to allow his corps to become too closely engaged with the French. Miloradovich was more direct. His subordinate, Eugen of Württemberg, was furious at being ordered to let the enemy pass, as he had also been told to do once before at Viazma. Miloradovich responded that ‘the field-marshal has forbidden us to get involved in a battle’. He added: ‘The old man’s view is this: if we incite the enemy to desperation, that will cost us useless blood: but if we let him run and give him a decent escort he will destroy himself in the course of a few days. You know: people cannot live on air, snow doesn’t make a very homely bivouac and without horses he cannot move his food, munitions or guns.’
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Kutuzov’s strategy is the key to understanding what happened in the so-called battle at Krasnyi between 15 and 18 November. In reality this was less a battle than an uncoordinated succession of clashes as Napoleon’s corps passed one after the other around the Russians on the same ground where Neverovsky’s detachment had held off Murat three months before. Napoleon sent his corps out of Smolensk at one-day intervals, which could have had serious consequences if Kutuzov had made a serious effort to intercept the retreat. Instead the Russian commander-in-chief watched happily as the French Guards and the remnants of the Polish and Westphalian corps brushed past him down the road from Smolensk to Orsha. By the evening of 15 November they had reached the village of Krasnyi. They were followed by the corps of Beauharnais and Davout: any thought Kutuzov might have had of intervening to block their retreat ended when Napoleon threatened to move back with part of his Guard to their rescue. Eugène and Davout therefore both escaped though only after losing hordes of men and almost all their remaining baggage and guns as they struggled down the highroad and cross country under fire from Miloradovich’s infantry and guns, and harassed by his cavalry. Most of the senior officers and staffs survived but as fighting units the corps of Eugène and Davout no longer existed after Krasnyi.

There remained only Michel Ney’s rearguard, which Napoleon was forced to abandon to its fate. Ney evacuated Smolensk on 17 November with roughly 15,000 men, of whom almost half were still in the ranks and ready for battle. By now Miloradovich’s corps was deployed across the road westward. After a number of desperate efforts to break through the Russian lines on 18 November failed, Ney’s corps disintegrated, with the overwhelming majority of its men killed or captured. Thanks to Ney’s courageous and inspiring leadership a hard core of 800 men evaded the Russians by taking to the woods, crossing the river Dnieper and rejoining Napoleon at Orsha on 20 November.
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Once Napoleon’s army had passed Kutuzov and crossed the river Dnieper at Orsha the Russian main army ceased to play an active fighting role in the 1812 campaign. Even had Kutuzov wished to catch up with Napoleon, there was no way that he could match the speed of the French retreat without wrecking his army. The old field-marshal was very happy with this situation. He regarded the ‘battle’ of Krasnyi as a triumph and as a vindication of his strategy. Well over 20,000 prisoners and 200 guns had fallen into Russian hands, and a further 10,000 enemy troops had been killed, at a minimal cost in his own soldiers’ lives. Captain Pushchin of the Semenovskys recalled that when Kutuzov visited the regiment to tell them the results of the battle ‘his face shone with happiness’. Pushchin added that after hearing Kutuzov’s account of guns, flags and prisoners taken, ‘the universal joy was immeasurable and we even cried a bit from happiness. A huge cheer thundered out which moved our old general.’
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Many Russian commanders on the other hand were deeply dissatisfied with the results of the battle, among them Prince Eugen of Württemberg.

He recalled that he met Kutuzov for the first time since the camp at Tarutino in a little village between Krasnyi and Orsha. The commander-in-chief knew of Eugen’s unhappiness and tried to justify his strategy, saying: ‘You don’t realize that circumstances will in and of themselves achieve more than our troops. And we ourselves must not arrive on our borders as emaciated tramps.’
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Kutuzov’s concern for his troops was well justified. Although in the first half of the campaign the main body suffered less than Miloradovich’s advance guard, by mid-November it too was under great strain. Forced to move themselves, their baggage and artillery down country roads in deep snow, the men were becoming exhausted. Many of them did not have adequate winter clothing, since some provinces’ wagons with fur coats and felt boots only arrived when the army reached Vilna. Food supplies were facing an emergency, with mobile magazines well in the rear and requisitioning becoming more and more difficult as they advanced through Smolensk province. Their next destination, Belorussia, fought over and plundered for six months, was unlikely to prove easier in this respect. Worst of all were medical services, which had almost collapsed under the strain of constant movement and enormous numbers of sick and wounded. The army’s medical officials and doctors were scattered along the army’s line of march, attempting desperately to set up temporary hospitals and procure medicines in a desert where no civilian authorities existed to help them and most buildings suitable as hospitals had been ruined.
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It may well be, however, that when Kutuzov spoke to Eugen he was thinking of more than just his army’s immediate material needs. He did not believe that Russian interests could simply be reduced to the defeat of the French Empire. Britain and Austria were at least as ‘natural’ rivals as France. Moreover, even if the Russians captured Napoleon himself, which was possible though unlikely, this was no guarantee of peace and stability in Europe. It took no foresight to realize that if French dominion collapsed, the other European states would be in sharp competition to inherit the spoils. Nor was it easy to predict what kind of regime might replace Napoleon in France. From French prisoners Kutuzov had heard of the attempted coup by General Malet, aimed at replacing the Bonapartes by a republic. If the 1790s were anything to go by, a French republic might be anything but pacific or stable. In a very uncertain world, the one clear point was that the defence of Russian interests rested with its army, for whose survival Kutuzov was responsible.
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By early November another factor was also becoming important for Kutuzov. He had always known that, in accordance with Alexander’s plan, Admiral Chichagov’s army was supposed to be heading for Minsk and the river Berezina to block Napoleon’s retreat. An old soldier like Kutuzov also knew, however, that grandiose plans which looked brilliant on paper had a way of going wrong when faced with war’s reality. This was what Clausewitz meant when in his great work on war he wrote of ‘friction’, and never was there more of it than in the winter of 1812. Throughout October and in the first days of November Kutuzov had no clear idea of Chichagov’s movements but was frustrated by their seeming slowness. On the very day that Napoleon left Smolensk, however, the commander-in-chief received a letter from Chichagov written in Pruzhany twelve days before. This letter detailed how successful Chichagov’s recent advance had been and stated that the admiral expected to be in Minsk by 19 November. One key point about Minsk was that it was Napoleon’s main food magazine in Belorussia. Another was that it was only 75 kilometres from Borisov and the vital bridge over which Napoleon’s army would try to cross the river Berezina.
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Kutuzov responded that ‘I received your report of 20 October [1 November NS] with immense satisfaction. From it I see that you hope to be in Minsk around 7 November [19 November NS]. This advance by you will have decisive consequences in present circumstances.’ Kutuzov wrote to Wittgenstein that by 19 November Chichagov should be only 75 kilometres from the Berezina with 45,000 troops. Subsequently he wrote to Chichagov that even ‘if General Wittgenstein is pinned down by Victor and Saint-Cyr and won’t be able to help you to defeat the enemy, you should be strong enough together with the forces of Lieutenant-General Oertel and Major-General Lüders to destroy the fleeing enemy army, which has almost no artillery or cavalry, and is being pressed from behind by me’. To Aleksei Ermolov, whom Kutuzov appointed to command his advance guard, Kutuzov was – so it is reported – more blunt. ‘Look, brother Aleksei Petrovich, don’t get too carried away and take care of our Guards regiments. We have done our bit and now it’s Chichagov’s turn.’
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At one level Kutuzov’s attitude is a perfect example of the selfishness and lack of collective loyalty which dogged the Russian high command. The commander-in-chief knew that Chichagov stood much higher in Alexander’s esteem than he did himself and he resented the fact that the admiral had been sent to replace him as commander-in-chief of the Army of the Danube. On the other hand, some allowance should be made for the exhaustion of both the old and by now distinctly decrepit Kutuzov and his army. Clausewitz comments that

we must consider the scale of operations. In November and December, in the ice and snow of Russia, after an arduous campaign, either by side roads little beaten, or on the main road utterly devastated, under great difficulties of subsistence…Let us reflect on the winter in all its inhospitality, on shattered powers, physical and moral, an army led from bivouac to bivouac, suffering from privation, decimated by sickness, its path strewn with dead, dying, and exhausted bodies, – [the reader] will comprehend with what difficulty each motion was accomplished, and how nothing but the strongest impulses could overcome the inertia of the mass.
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None of this was of much consolation to Pavel Chichagov, onto whom Kutuzov had offloaded the emperor’s high expectations of destroying the French army and even capturing Napoleon. The admiral’s campaign had got off to a good start. Though he had needed to leave substantial garrisons behind to watch the Ottomans, the men who marched northwards with him were the veterans of many campaigns and were fine troops. On 19 September they joined Tormasov’s army on the river Styr.

Tormasov’s regiments contained fewer veterans than Chichagov’s but they had gained experience in 1812 while suffering far fewer casualties than the armies of Bagration and Barclay. There were no new recruits, let alone militia, in either army by September 1812. On 29 September Aleksandr Chernyshev arrived at their headquarters with orders for Chichagov to take over command of both armies and for Tormasov to join Kutuzov. He also brought Alexander’s plan, which required Chichagov to push the Austrian and Saxon corps westwards into the Duchy of Warsaw and himself then advance to Minsk and the river Berezina in order to block Napoleon’s retreat.

After uniting with Tormasov, Chichagov initially had 60,000 men available for the campaign, though if Alexander’s plan was properly executed he would be joined in Belorussia by General Oertel’s 15,000 troops, currently in Mozyr, and by 3,500 men under Major-General Lüders, who had fought the Ottomans in Serbia during the recent war. When Chichagov advanced in late September, the Austrian and Saxon corps retreated westwards into the Duchy of Warsaw. With his headquarters in Brest, Chichagov then spent two weeks gathering supplies for his advance towards Minsk and the Berezina. Since he would be marching 500 kilometres into a devastated war zone this made good sense, though his delay caused some grumbling. But the delay meant that Chichagov could only arrive on the Berezina just before Napoleon. He would have no time to get to know the unfamiliar terrain he was supposed to defend. It would not be possible to carry out Alexander’s instructions to fortify the key choke-points and defiles through which Napoleon’s army might pass.