1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow

This detail was to be the crucial element in the forthcoming campaign. It even decided the timing of its start: as there could be no question of hauling fodder for the horses as well as supplies for the men along with the army, the horses would have to be fed on the new harvest of hay and oats (cavalrymen were issued with sickles for this purpose), and none of these crops would be ripe for harvesting before the end of June at the very earliest. This meant that while he had to begin moving up his troops in the inclement marching conditions of the winter and early spring, Napoleon could not open his campaign until the middle of the summer, which left him with very little time in which to achieve his victory.

On 1 January 1812 François Dumonceau, a Belgian officer in the Lancers of Berg, was on parade in the courtyard of the Tuileries. ‘The Imperial Guard, the Young and the Old, appeared more numerous and imposing than ever,’ he recalled. The band of the Polish Chevau-Légers played, led by a kettle drummer magnificently mounted, caparisoned, uniformed and plumed. There were also two Illyrian infantry regiments, ‘whose fine and robust bearing drew admiring looks’. They had just marched up from the Balkans so that they could see their Emperor before they joined the Grande Armée in Germany, and they were hosted and shown around Paris by the Grenadiers of the Old Guard. A few days later Dumonceau and his men set off from their regimental depot in Versailles, marching through Brussels, Maastricht, Osnabrück, Hanover, Brunswick, Magdeburg and Stettin to Danzig.

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Soon the whole of Germany was covered in troops marching eastwards and northwards. There were files of cavalry: cuirassiers in helmets and breastplates, chasseurs in green uniforms and bearskin kolpaks, lancers in blue and crimson with four-cornered Polish caps, dragoons in helmets and uniforms of every hue. There were long convoys of artillery, in lighter blue with black shakos. And above all, endless columns of infantry.

The French footsoldier wore a standard cutaway blue coat, white breeches or trousers, white or black gaiters and a shako or a bearskin bonnet. It was not a uniform designed for convenience, let alone comfort. ‘I have never understood why under Napoleon, when we were constantly at war, the soldier should have been forced to wear the ghastly breeches, which, by pressing in on the hams at the back of the knee, prevented him from walking easily,’ wrote Lieutenant Blaze de Bury. ‘On top of that, the knee, which was covered by a long buttoned-up gaiter, was further strangled by another garter which pressed on the garter of the breeches. Underneath, the long undergarment, held in place with a cord, further restricted the movement of the knee. It was, all in all, a conspiracy by three thicknesses of cloth, two rows of buttons one on top of the other, and three garters to paralyse the efforts of the bravest of marchers.’ He wore shoes with unfashionably square toes – to prevent theft or the resale of military shoes to civilians. These shoes were supposed to last for a thousand kilometres of march, but usually fell apart far sooner.

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Every footsoldier carried a heavy musket 1.54 metres long without its bayonet – taller than Napoleon. On a bandolier slung across his shoulder he carried his giberne, a stiff leather case containing two packets of cartridges, a phial of oil, a screwdriver and other gun-cleaning implements. On his back he carried a pack made of stiffened cowhide, in which he carried a couple of shirts, collars, kerchiefs, canvas gaiters, cotton stockings, a spare pair of shoes, a sewing kit, clothes brush, pipeclay and bootwax, as well as a supply of hard tack, flour and bread. His rolled-up overcoat and other items of kit were strapped to the top of the backpack.

Most of the ornamental features of the uniform were absent on the march. Shakos and bearskins disappeared into oilcloth covers and strapped to the backpack or hung off it, plumes were put away in waxed canvas containers which were strapped to the swordbelt or bandolier. In their place the men donned the bonnet de police, a flat forage cap with a tasselled bob hanging down the side. Breeches and gaiters were replaced by baggy canvas trousers, and the Old Guard wore long blue tunics instead of their white-faced uniforms.

The men marched at the pas ordinaire, of seventy-six steps a minute, or the pas accéléré, of a hundred steps a minute. A usual day’s march was between fifteen and thirty-five kilometres, but in a forced march they could cover anything up to fifty-five kilometres. Every unit, every horse, every man had a route prescribed for them, was instructed where to stop for the night and provided with food and accommodation. On arrival at a given stop, the unit’s farrier or some other non-commissioned officer would go to the local military commander or commissaire des guerres and collect a visa from him. He would then take this to the town hall, where he would be given a full list of billets for the men, and chits for forage and victuals. These chits were then taken to the appointed provisioning merchants, and the unit would collect its supplies for that evening and the next day. The system worked like clockwork in France and Germany, with the required supplies ready and waiting for the tired men when they reached their prescribed halt.

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There were nevertheless jams of horses, cannon and wagons of every description, of straggling men and single platoons as well as large units snaking along over several miles of road, of officers in private carriages hurrying to join their units, and couriers trying to gallop in both directions, particularly at the crossings over the Rhine, at Wesel, Cologne, Bonn, Coblenz and Mainz.

Those still in Paris tried to make the most of what was a particularly glittering carnival, and the Comte de Lignières, Lieutenant in the Chasseurs of the Guard, found his order to march out when he returned to barracks at four in the morning after a ball. The notaries of Paris were kept busy writing wills, and some followed the departing troops, along with wives and lovers who wanted to see their dear ones for a few days longer.

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The Army of Italy came over the Brenner pass and down into the valley of the Danube, where it met up with the contingent from Bavaria. ‘Our march was like a brilliant and agreeable military promenade,’ noted Cesare de Laugier, a native of Elba. Lieutenant von Meerheimb found leavetaking from his native Saxony gloomy and tearful, but the mood changed as soon as they were on the march. ‘From the very first stage, every face reflected universal gaiety, and good humour reigned along the whole length of the snaking column,’ he wrote. They were warmly greeted as they trudged through southern Germany, and had many an amorous adventure along the way.

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‘The ancients had a great advantage over us in that their armies were not tailed by a second army of penpushers,’ Napoleon frequently complained in conversation.

(#litres_trial_promo) He was not referring to the vastly expanded commissariat he had organised for this campaign.

From the moment he became ruler of France, he had begun to take elements of government as well as a military staff off to war with him. And when he became Emperor, he began to take a skeleton court. For this campaign, whose scope and duration were both so imponderable, he decided to take his whole life-support system, the means to exercise government, and everything that was necessary to make a grand show wherever he went and whatever he might decide to do – be it enthroning a King of Poland or having himself crowned Emperor of India. Napoleon’s equipage, under the command of the Master of the Horse Caulaincourt, consisted of some four hundred horses and forty mules carrying or drawing tents, camp beds, office, wardrobe, pharmacy, silver plate, kitchen, cellar and forges as well as an assortment of secretaries, officials, servants, cooks and grooms; and 130 saddle horses for the Emperor and his aides-de-camp. His baggage included a great many tents that would never be pitched and equipment that would never be unpacked. There was also a force of a hundred postillions attached to him. These would be posted along the road of the advance to supervise the rapid movement of mail between Paris and Napoleon’s headquarters by passing over the locked boxes containing his state correspondence from one courier or estafette to another.

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The exigencies of administrating the army, its support services and the Emperor’s entourage had exponentially inflated the numbers. Thousands of commissaires and lesser administrators, each with his servants, followed in the wake of the army. ‘The military administration was full of people who had never seen war and who said out loud that they had come on this campaign in order to make their fortune,’ complained Colonel de Saint-Chamans. Colonel Henri-Joseph Paixhans ranted against these people, ‘penetrated with the importance of their little persons’, who together with their minions made up ‘a cloaca of ineptitude, baseness and rapacity’.

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Every officer had at least one carriage, in which he kept spare uniforms, arms, maps, books and personal effects, driven by his own coachman and attended by at least one servant. General Compans, commanding the 5th Division in Davout’s 1st Corps, was by no means a sybarite; if anything, he was one of the plainer-living officers. Yet his establishment at the outset of the campaign consisted of his maitre d’hôtel Louis; his valet de chambre Duval; his coachman Vaud; two valets, Simon and Louis; his gendarme Trouillet; three other servants, Pierre, Valentin and Janvier; five carriage horses, half a dozen saddle horses and some thirty draught horses; one carriage and several wagons.

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The unknown object of the campaign, the uncertainty as to where it might take them and the likelihood of great distances to be covered made many an officer stock up against all eventualities, and more than one had new uniforms made for himself and new liveries for his servants. Faced with the possibility of a long absence from home, many, particularly among the Italians, appear to have defied Napoleon’s strict instructions and brought their wives along.

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As they marched across Germany and Poland, they had no clear vision of the aims of the campaign, and this dampened the ardour of some. ‘The future was vague, and its fortunes very distant; there was no inkling, nothing to exercise the imagination, nothing to awaken the enthusiasm,’ wrote Colonel Boulart of the artillery of the Guard. This did not stop them from speculating wildly. Jakob Walter of Stuttgart thought they were being marched up to some Baltic port, from which they would be shipped to Spain. But most looked eastwards. ‘We thought that, together with the Russians, we would cross the deserts of that great empire in order to go and attack England in her possessions in India,’ wrote General Pouget. One soldier wrote home saying they were marching to England, overland through Russia.

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‘Some said that Napoleon had made a secret alliance with Alexander, and that a combined Franco-Russian army was going to march against Turkey and take hold of its possessions in Europe and Asia; others said that the war would take us to the Great Indies, to chase out the English,’ remembered one volunteer.

(#ulink_37ae585c-b7a3-5cdb-b0cd-32d21241154d) ‘All of this concerned me very little: whether we were going to go to the right, to the left or straight ahead was a matter of indifference to me, as long as I could enter into the real world,’ wrote another. ‘My friends, my childhood companions were almost all in the army; they were already storing up glory. Was I, useless burden on this earth, to remain with my hands crossed to shamefully await their return? I was eighteen years old.’ Another, a fusilier in the 6th Regiment of the Guard, wrote to his parents telling them he was off to the ‘the Great Indies’ or possibly ‘Egippe’. ‘As for me, I don’t care either way; I would like us to go the ends of the earth.’ He spoke for many.

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* (#ulink_451d5022-26d9-5f74-a0cf-ef2d2e6151bf) The term ‘grande armée’ in French military parlance designated the main operational force in any given campaign, but in the popular imagination the two words are above all associated with the great force that marched on Moscow.

* (#ulink_9ba9355f-9f24-531a-8fd3-d813be77178c) Curiously enough, Alexander’s secret information services had also reported to him that Napoleon’s plan was to knock out Russia with a quick blow, force peace on her and then, using 100,000 Russian auxiliaries, march on Constantinople, thence to Egypt, and then to Bengal.

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6 (#ulink_27aa6565-e750-53d1-b037-f976932b56cd)

Confrontation (#ulink_27aa6565-e750-53d1-b037-f976932b56cd)

As hundreds of thousands of men drawn from every corner of Europe tramped across Germany ready to fight and die for him, dreaming of an epic march to India or just of getting back home as quickly as possible, the Emperor of the French was setting the scene for the catastrophe that would engulf all but a handful of them.

Napoleon was about to pit himself against a huge empire while still engaged in a wasting war in Spain, with Germany in a state of ferment and Britain hovering on the sidelines ready to take advantage of any opportunity that might arise. It is customary before going to war to firm up as many allies as possible, and for one such as this it was an absolute necessity. As luck would have it, he had a number of them lining up to support him. Sweden was a natural ally, with a long history of francophilia and an interest in recovering Finland and her enclaves on the Baltic from Russia; Turkey, another traditional ally of France, was actually engaged in a bloody war with Russia; Austria, whose emperor was Napoleon’s father-in-law, had many interests in common with the French; Prussia was begging to be allowed into an alliance with France; and the Poles were only waiting to be given the signal to rise up all over western Russia.

In the circumstances, Napoleon’s behaviour is astonishing. On 27 January 1812, under the pretext that the Continental System was not being enforced rigorously enough there, he sent his armies into Swedish Pomerania and took possession of it. He followed this up with a demand to Sweden for an alliance against Russia and a contingent of troops. When this was rejected by Bernadotte, he said he would allow the Swedes to recapture Finland, and offered some trading concessions. When this too was rejected, Napoleon offered to return Pomerania and threw in Mecklemburg as well as a large subsidy. But it was too late. His high-handed seizure of Pomerania had been taken as an insult in Sweden, and within two weeks of the news reaching Stockholm, Bernadotte’s special envoy was in St Petersburg asking for a treaty with Russia, which was duly signed on 5 April.

As for France’s other traditional ally, Turkey, Napoleon did nothing, assuming that she would go on fighting Russia unbidden. It is true that relations between France and Turkey had been strained by the treaty of Tilsit, which appeared to ally France with Turkey’s enemy. It is also true that Napoleon had a low opinion of the three sultans who had followed each other in rapid and bloody succession. But at this stage any gesture of support for Turkey would have yielded real advantages: Alexander had just instructed his commander on the Turkish front, General Kutuzov, to start talks and make peace at almost any cost, as he needed all his troops to face the French.

Napoleon’s treatment of Austria was hardly less offhand. The treaty he signed with her on 14 March stipulated that following a French victory Moldavia and Wallachia would be returned to Turkey, and that if Poland were to be restored, Austria could keep Galicia, or, if she preferred, receive compensation in Illyria. While the treaty suggested a common policy in central Europe and the Balkans, it kept everything vague, as Napoleon did not wish to tie his hands. For the same reason, he only asked for a small Austrian auxiliary force under Prince Schwarzenberg, which was to cover his right flank.

Frederick William of Prussia had begged Napoleon for an alliance which would restore some dignity to his country’s enforced subjection to France. But Napoleon responded with a treaty, signed on 4 March, by which he graciously allowed Prussia to supply a small contingent of troops for the forthcoming campaign, on the most abject terms. This not only incensed the Prussian nationalists further, it also undermined the pro-French party in Berlin, paving the way for an explosion of anti-French feeling. It also meant that French troops had to be diverted to keeping an eye on the country, as Napoleon insisted that they march through Berlin every day and maintain strong garrisons in fortresses such as Spandau and Danzig.

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Finally, he refused to give the Poles an unequivocal signal, thereby strengthening the party in that country which mistrusted his intentions and believed that their best chance of survival lay with Alexander. The fact that Napoleon did not see fit to give such a signal speaks volumes both about his self-confidence and his unwillingness to damage Russia any more than was necessary. He wanted to frighten her, but he did not want to destroy her as a power. He wanted to co-opt her as an ally against Britain. There was no other reason for France to go to war with Russia: there was nothing Russia had that France could possibly have wanted. The only other conceivable motive for confronting Russia was to force her out of her newly dominant position in European affairs and neutralise her ability to threaten France.

In the first days of March, in a long conversation with one of his aides, Napoleon announced that he was determined to ‘throw back for two hundred years that inexorable threat of invasion from the north’. He expounded a historical vision according to which the fertile and civilised south of Europe would always be threatened by uncivilised ravenous hordes from the north. ‘I am therefore propelled into this hazardous war by political reality,’ he affirmed. ‘Only the affability of Alexander, the admiration he professed for me, which I believe was real, and his eagerness to embrace all my schemes, were able to make me disregard for a while this unalterable fact … Remember Suvorov and his Tartars in Italy: the only answer is to throw them back beyond Moscow; and when will Europe be in a position to do this, if not now, and by me?’

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He did not believe any of it. He had already shown that he was even prepared to add to Russia’s power if that meant she would help him vanquish Britain. And, as ever when he thought of Russia and Britain, Napoleon’s mind filled with a notion that lived uneasily beside the vision of himself as a latter-day Roman emperor throwing back the barbarian hordes, namely the Alexandrine dream of a joint march to India.

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To General Vandamme he gave a more perfunctory reason for going to war. ‘One way or another, I want to finish the thing,’ he said, ‘as we are both getting old, my dear Vandamme, and I don’t want to find myself in old age in a position in which people can kick me in the backside, so I am determined to bring things to a finish one way or the other.’

(#litres_trial_promo) In effect, he had assembled the greatest army the world had ever seen, with no defined purpose. And, by definition, aimless wars cannot be won.

One cannot help wondering whether Napoleon did not realise this. In the weeks before setting off, he made more than his usual share of cryptically fatalistic comments. ‘And anyway, how can I help it if a surfeit of power draws me towards dictatorship of the world?’ he said to one of his ministers who urged him to draw back from the war. ‘I feel myself propelled towards some unknown goal,’ he told another.