1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow

The Russian forces in Lithuania were divided into two armies. The First, the stronger of the two, under General Barclay de Tolly, was deployed along the river Niemen in a slight arc almost a hundred kilometres long in advance of Vilna, a position from which it could either move out to attack or mount a defence. The Second Army, under General Bagration, was concentrated like a strike force, ready either to support the advance of the First Army by outflanking any enemy defence, or to ram the exposed flank of any force that attacked the First Army before Vilna. A Third Army, under General Tormasov, guarded the frontier to the south of the Pripet marshes. Exact figures for the strength of these forces are impossible to establish: the conflicting calculations of Russian historians put the total land forces as low as 356,000 and as high as 716,000, with as few as 180,000 and as many as 251,000 effectives in the front line. Most recent studies have been more consistent, but there is some confusion as a result of Russian historians’ habit of breaking down effectives into ‘front-line’ figures and totals, which include all the support services. The myth of the Russians being vastly outnumbered during this campaign has stemmed from the juxtaposition of Russian ‘front-line’ figures with French totals. The strength of the First Army was 127,800 frontline and 159,800 in total, that of the Second 52,000 and 62,000 respectively, and of the Third 45,800 and 58,200, making up a force of 225,000 front-line and 280,000 in total positioned along the frontier, supported by just over nine hundred guns.

This force was backed up by two reserve corps, Ertel’s of 55,000/ 65,000, and Meller Zakomelsky’s of 31,000/47,000, bringing the total of the Russian forces facing Napoleon to 392,000. Behind them a second wave of units was being formed. As soon as Alexander’s diplomatic demarches had secured peace with Sweden and Turkey, another 28,500/37,200 troops from Finland and 54,500/70,000 from Moldavia would be brought into play. The armies at the front were well supplied and supported for an offensive by a series of magazines at Vilna, Shvienchiany, Grodno and elsewhere, and a second line stretching behind that from Riga in the north to Kaluga in the south.

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It is difficult to gauge what Alexander intended by coming to Vilna, as he gave no indication that he meant to take command. His armies had been massing in the region for the past eighteen months, and were poised along the frontier in readiness to attack. The Tsar’s arrival at advance headquarters would, in the circumstances, suggest that the decision had been taken to launch the attack, since there could be no conceivable point in His Imperial Majesty coming all that way just to review them. In the event, Alexander’s presence helped to confuse what was already a highly confused situation.

The man ostensibly in command was the fifty-one-year-old Minister of War, General Mikhail Barclay de Tolly. He was an intelligent, sensible and competent man of strong character and independent judgement, who had shown his mettle in the field against Swedes, Poles, Turks and Frenchmen, being seriously wounded at Eylau. He was undoubtedly very brave and steady under fire. Alexander liked him and had promoted him over the heads of others, arousing their jealousy. He was reserved and stoical rather than affable, which did nothing to increase his popularity among his peers. As he could not count on their cordial cooperation, he was wont to look to everything himself. And although he had done more than any other to ease the lot of the common soldier, he was not the kind of commander who inspires devotion in the rank and file.

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While Barclay had been appointed commander of the First Army, he had not been nominated commander-in-chief. This may have been because Alexander felt this to be unnecessary since he was also Minister of War, or it may have been because he intended to command himself, or did not want to offend others vying for the post.

Ostensibly, Alexander took no part in military affairs beyond inspecting fortifications and attending parades. But he did interfere in day-to-day business. And his presence at headquarters ineluctably diminished Barclay’s already fragile authority, as it gave huge scope for insubordination – and there was no lack of those who hated Barclay and resented the idea of serving under him.

Foremost amongst these was General Prince Piotr Ivanovich Bagration, commanding the Second Army. Bagration was a dashing battlefield general, recklessly brave, with a volcanic temper, a warm heart, and all the fiery bravado necessary to make him worshipped by his officers and men. Although younger than Barclay, he had been a general for longer and therefore felt he had a right to overall command. In the absence of any document stipulating that he must take his orders from Barclay, Bagration took the view that his command was an independent one. Alexander’s arrival at headquarters provided him with an excuse to send all his reports to the Tsar, as supreme commander, bypassing Barclay entirely.

Bagration’s position was a strong one. He was extremely popular with his fellow generals and had a great following at court. And, having been for a time Grand Duchess Catherine’s lover, he also had a slight ascendancy over Alexander, who did not like him but could not be seen to put him down.

Matters were made no easier by the Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the Imperial Guard, an unbalanced blusterer whose only real pleasure in life derived from making troops parade before him. For him, the parade was a kind of ballet – perfect precision in the choreography and meticulous attention to dress were assured by the generous distribution of savage punishments for being a few inches out of line or missing a button. Between parades, Constantine could be counted on to support anyone who criticised Barclay or failed to carry out one of his orders.

This state of affairs opened the door for a comeback by General Levin Bennigsen. A Hanoverian by birth, this old professional soldier had taken service in Russia more than fifty years before. A competent commander, if a little fussy and ponderous, he had risen slowly but surely, and assured his survival in Alexander’s good graces by being one of those who had murdered his father. He had ended his military career on a less than satisfactory note, leading the Russian army to defeat at Friedland. He was now sixty-seven years old. He had retired, and was living on his estate of Zakrent, which happened to be a few kilometres outside Vilna. Ever since Friedland he had longed for a chance to redeem his reputation, and felt it was he, not Barclay, who should be given overall command. Upon his arrival in Vilna, Alexander summoned Bennigsen and asked him to return to service in an unspecified capacity in his personal entourage.

This was already alarmingly large. Alexander was surrounded by a swarm of unofficial advisers, including his brother-in-law Prince George of Oldenburg, his uncle Prince Alexander of Württemberg, the Swedish adventurer Gustav Mauritz Armfeld, the French émigré Jean Protais Anstett, and a host of others. This was partly the result of Alexander’s longer-term views and ambitions. ‘Napoleon means to complete the enslavement of Europe, and to do so he has to strike Russia down,’ he wrote to Baron vom Stein, inviting him to come and help plan the crusade for its liberation. ‘Every friend of virtue, every human being who is animated by the sentiment of independence and love of humanity is interested in the success of this struggle.’

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Since Alexander also needed to carry on exercising political power, he had instructed his most important ministers to follow him to headquarters. He was soon joined in Vilna by Admiral Shishkov, who was slightly baffled to find himself, the effective Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, stuck out at military headquarters. General Arakcheev, head of the Council of State’s Military Committee and Secretary to the Emperor for Military Affairs, was also in attendance. Chancellor Rumiantsev suffered a mild stroke on his way to Vilna, but this did not stop him joining the Tsar, though Alexander henceforth conducted his diplomatic business through his Secretary for Foreign Affairs Karl von Nesselrode.

The presence of so many different hierarchies of power had undesirable repercussions in the army at every level, and exacerbated a problem, created by the dearth of native officer material, which was to bring forth torrents of bad blood and bedevil the conduct of the campaign: the presence of large numbers of foreigners.

There were literally hundreds of French officers serving in the Russian army, most of them émigré aristocrats who had fled the revolution. They occupied a variety of posts, including some of the highest, with the Marquis de Traversay Admiral-in-Chief of the Russian Fleet, the Comte de Langeron and the Marquis Charles Lambert in command of army corps and General de Saint-Priest as chief of staff to the Second Army. There were also Italians, Swiss, Swedes, Poles and others: Barclay came of a family of Baltic barons who traced their ancestry to the Barclays of Towie in Scotland; Bagration’s origins were Georgian. But those who caused the greatest problem were the Germans, and particularly the Prussians.

Hundreds of officers who had been cashiered as a result of the reduction of the Prussian army after Jena had taken service in Russia. More joined them over the next years, with a second great wave after Napoleon’s defeat of Austria in 1809. And a final batch had just arrived, disgusted by the servile alliance Prussia had signed with France in February. Among these officers were the Prussian military reformers Major von Boyen and Colonel von Gneisenau, the future military theorist Major von Clausewitz, the staff officer Colonel Karl von Toll, and Baron Ludwig von Wolzogen, a native of Saxe-Meiningen and former aide-de-camp to the King of Württemberg.

All the Russian officers spoke French amongst themselves, and that was the language in which orders were normally given, but many of the Prussians lapsed into German when communicating with each other. As Barclay also spoke good German, they would address him in that language, creating an impression of a foreign club within the army, particularly at headquarters, since most of the Germans were employed as staff officers.

Alexander’s presence in Vilna had a paralysing effect on the vital question of Russia’s overall strategy. While he refrained from favouring any particular option, he lent a willing ear to anyone who expressed a view, and then asked others what they thought of it, thus seemingly opening to discussion something that should have been decided in small committee at the outset. There were a number of options to be considered.

There was the old plan, formulated by Barclay, Bennigsen, Bagration and others in the previous year, of a strike into Poland followed by an advance into Prussia to liberate it from French domination. Bagration repeatedly begged Alexander to implement this plan even at this late stage. ‘What have we to fear?’ he wrote to his sovereign on 20 June. ‘You are with us, and Russia is behind us!’

(#litres_trial_promo) According to some sources, Barclay still favoured this plan, although he was less sanguine about the chances of success than some of his colleagues. He was presumably also aware of his master’s reluctance to be seen as the aggressor, and therefore prepared a second plan, of defending the frontier along the river Niemen. He stretched his forces along the frontier, ostensibly so they could contain and beat back any French attempt at crossing the river.

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Barclay had come up with another plan back in 1807, when he was lying in hospital recovering from a wound received at Eylau. The Russians had just been defeated by the French at Friedland, and he saw their only hope of avoiding total annihilation in a retreat deep into Russia. If the French were to follow them, they should avoid giving battle, but concentrate on consolidating their forces by marching back towards their bases. The further the French came after them, the more men they would have to leave behind, and the longer their lines of communication and supply would grow. In the end, the Russians would find themselves superior in numbers and resources and would be able to defeat the French.

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It was not a particularly original idea: the strategic asset provided by the vast country was something of a cliché, and Russian officers often brandished it as a threat in conversations with foreigners – Alexander himself had done so.

(#litres_trial_promo) But Barclay had only considered it in 1807 as a last resort, a counsel of despair, at a moment when Russia did not really have an army left. Napoleon’s willingness to treat with Alexander at Tilsit had saved the day, and no more was said of the plan.

While there was much interest in Russian and Prussian military circles in the concept of a long-drawn-out defensive war, inspired partly by Wellington’s tactics in Spain, it was not one based on retreat. In a long memorandum written for Alexander at the end of July 1811, Barclay suggested moving out to attack the French, but not in a conventional battle – he advised loose manoeuvring by large numbers of light troops, which could harry and demoralise, dragging out the campaign and avoiding decisive engagements. This was to be carried out on enemy territory. Withdrawal into Russia was not something that could be seriously considered when there was a numerous and well-equipped army standing in defence of her borders, and neither Barclay nor Alexander, nor any of the Russian generals for a moment contemplated such a strategy.

(#litres_trial_promo) It would have been politically inadmissible and militarily absurd. The troops were positioned for attack, not for retreat. Their stores and depots were as close behind them as they could be so that they could support an attack, and would be condemned to destruction or capture by the French if a retreat were ordered. And drawing an enemy into Russia raised all manner of terrifying possibilities, including peasant revolt – it was only four decades since a rebellion by the peasant leader Emelian Pugachov had brought the empire to the brink of collapse. The memory was fresh in people’s minds, kept so by regular minor eruptions of discontent.

There was only one man at Russian headquarters who entertained a plan based on retreat, and it was nothing like the poetic vision of drawing the enemy in to be devoured by the expanses and forces of Russia. He was Karl Ludwig von Phüll. He had left the Prussian service after Auerstädt and joined the Russian army, in which he had been given the rank of Lieutenant General.

Phüll’s plan was based on a tactic adopted by his hero Frederick the Great in 1761 when confronted by overwhelming forces. Frederick had fallen back into an entrenched camp and worn down the two enemy armies which besieged him there. Phüll suggested that in the event of a French invasion, the Russian First Army should fall back to a previously prepared position, drawing the French in behind them. The Second Army could then come up in the rear of the French and inflict great damage on them. For this purpose he, or rather his protégé Wolzogen, selected a site at Drissa, covering both the Moscow and the St Petersburg roads. Work had started in the last months of 1811 on the construction of massive earthworks that were to make the position impregnable.

The Drissa idea appealed to Alexander because it reminded him of Wellington’s fallback to the lines of Torres Vedras in 1811. But he did not come down firmly in favour of this or any other plan, and he simultaneously entertained various other options. One was to launch a rising in the Balkans and Hungary in order to cause a diversion. The idea was the brainchild of Admiral Pavel Vasilievich Chichagov, an eccentric but competent sailor and erstwhile admirer of Napoleon, currently serving under Kutuzov on the Turkish front. He suggested that. having made peace with Turkey, Russia should use her army on that front to invade Bulgaria, whose population was Orthodox and therefore russophile, from there launch an attack on Napoleon’s provinces along the Dalmatian coast, and thence into the heart of Napoleonic Europe via Italy and Switzerland. Alexander was entranced by the sheer scale of the scheme, and toyed with it for some time before Rumiantsev pointed out that it was unrealistic and diplomatically counter-productive, as it would rouse both Turkey and Austria against Russia and force them into Napoleon’s camp.

Then there was the Polish card, which Alexander was still trying to find ways of playing. While in Vilna he devoted much effort to seducing the local Polish aristocracy, bestowing orders and honorific titles and making the odd allusion to the possibility of restoring Poland. He had a couple of trusted agents sounding out opinion, and wrote to Czartoryski asking whether now would not be a propitious moment to declare his intention of doing so. He was encouraged in this by Bernadotte, who wrote urging him to strike into Poland and to offer its crown to Poniatowski. Alexander sent Colonel Toll on a secret mission to Poniatowski to offer him high office (possibly even the crown) in a future Kingdom of Poland if he agreed to detach his corps from the French army and take it over to the Russian side. Poniatowski was astonished at this request, which would have been impossible to carry out, even had he wished to.

In his quest for ways of subverting the Poles, Alexander also instructed the notorious Catholic pugilist and Sardinian ambassador in St Petersburg, Joseph de Maistre, to employ the Jesuits (who had been disbanded by the Pope but had perversely been kept alive in Russia) to subvert Poland, using the argument that Alexander was the defender of the Papacy, while Napoleon was its enemy.

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Alexander’s sister Catherine was urging him to leave the army. ‘If one of [the generals] commits a fault, he will be blamed and punished; if you make a mistake, everything falls on your shoulders, and the destruction of confidence in him on whom everything depends and who, being the only arbiter of the destiny of the Empire, must be the support to which everything bends, is a greater evil than the loss of a few provinces,’ she wrote.

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What she did not point out was that he had already done a great deal of damage by going to Vilna, and was compounding it by his irresolute behaviour. His refusal to commit himself to any of the options laid before him or to openly place his confidence in any one of his generals meant that nobody knew what to prepare for. His brother Grand Duke Constantine drilled his soldiers mercilessly, but nobody was preparing to meet the approaching Grande Armée. No serious attempts were being made to plot the enemy’s movements, and the units had not even been issued with adequate maps of the areas they were to operate in.

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‘In the meantime we held balls and parties, and our prolonged sojourn in Vilna resembled a pleasure trip rather than preparations for war,’ in the words of Colonel Benckendorff. Shishkov was astonished by the carefree atmosphere and the lack of any sense of imminent menace he found on his arrival in Vilna. ‘Our everyday life was so carefree that there was not even any news about the enemy, as though they had been several thousands of versts

(#ulink_21f743a0-52b8-56b9-8cb6-82ee5546673a) away,’ he wrote. The troops had settled into their billets and savoured whatever pleasures the country life of Lithuania could provide. ‘The senior officers feared Napoleon, seeing him as a fearful conqueror, a new Attila,’ wrote Lieutenant Radozhitsky of the light artillery, ‘but we younger ones romped with the god of love, sighing and moaning from his wounds.’

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People far away from the front could not understand why the Russian army, whose officers wrote home letters full of bravado, did not attack and drive the French out of Prussia and Poland. There was grumbling about the lack of action, reinforced by widespread fear of a French advance into Russia, not least because it might provoke social unrest.

In May the erroneous news reached St Petersburg that Badajoz and Madrid had fallen to the British and that a Spanish army had crossed the Pyrenees into southern France. Why, people asked themselves up and down the country, was Alexander not marching out to deal the final blow against Napoleon? He and his entourage appeared to be whiling away the time at balls and parties, and it was reported in the capital that the officers were indulging in ‘orgies’.

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Russian estimates of the size of the Grande Armée were very low. Barclay and Phüll put the strength of the French forces at 200–250,000; Bagration at 200,000; Toll at 225,000; Bennigsen at 169,000; and Bernadotte at 150,000. The highest estimate drawn up by anyone on the Russian side was 350,000, and that included all reserves and rear formations.

(#litres_trial_promo) This meant that an attack on it would have been seen as perfectly feasible, and Alexander undoubtedly longed to launch one. His excitement about the Chichagov plan and his attempt to bribe Poniatowski can only be viewed in the context of an offensive. And there are other indications that he wanted to take command of it.

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But he was heavily influenced by Phüll’s views, and Phüll was against any attack, believing as he did that the Russian army was not up to it.

(#litres_trial_promo) Above all, Alexander wanted to be seen as the innocent victim rather than the aggressor, and his religious instincts told him to play the part of passive tool of the divine will.