1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow

(#litres_trial_promo) Things did indeed get much worse as hundreds of thousands of hungry men and horses flooded into the area.

As there were no stores, military or otherwise, the troops took what they needed where they could find it. Giuseppe Venturini, a Piedmontese lieutenant in the 11th Light Infantry, bemoaned the fact that when he was ordered to go out and requisition supplies, he ‘reduced two or three hundred families to beggary’. As the locals were unwilling to sell or give away the little that stood between them and hunger, the troops took it by force. The French system of provisioning effortlessly turned into looting.

(#litres_trial_promo) And matters quickly degenerated from there.

‘The French destroy more than they take or even want to take,’ noted an eighteen-year-old captain in the 5th Polish Mounted Rifles. ‘In the houses, they smash everything they can. They set fire to barns. Wherever there is a field of corn, they ride into the middle of it, trampling more than they feed on, without a thought for the fact that in a couple of hours their own army will come up looking for forage.’ The situation was aggravated by the multinational make-up of the army, as there was no sense of national pride or responsibility to restrain men who marched under a foreign flag. Everyone blamed another nationality, and even Polish troops looted their compatriots.

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A Polish officer travelling to join the army found himself moving though a scene of devastation: every window was smashed, every fence had been ripped up for firewood, many houses were half demolished; horse carcases as well as the heads and skins of slaughtered cattle lay by the roadside being gnawed by dogs and pecked at by carrion birds; people fled at the sight of a rider in uniform. ‘One felt that one was following a fleeing rather than an advancing army,’ wrote a Bavarian officer following in the wake of Prince Eugène’s corps, astonished at the numbers of dead horses and abandoned wagons littering the road.

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The situation was no better in East Prussia, where violent national animosities also came into play. Even troops from other parts of Germany found the atmosphere hostile, and stragglers were attacked by locals. The soldiers responded in kind. The Dutchman Jef Abbeel and his comrades took full advantage of their position to show what they thought of the Prussians. ‘We would force them to slaughter all the livestock we judged we needed for our sustenance,’ he writes. ‘Cows, sheep, geese, chickens, all of it! We demanded spirits, beer, liqueurs. We were billeted in villages, and, since only the towns were provided with shops, we would sometimes demand the locals to drive three or four leagues to satisfy our needs. And they would be thanked on their return with blows if they failed to procure everything we demanded. They had to dance as we sang, or they would be beaten!’

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A cold start to the year meant that the harvest was late. ‘We were obliged to cut the grass of the meadows, and, when there was none, reap corn, barley and oats which were only just sprouting,’ wrote Colonel Boulart of the artillery of the Guard. ‘In doing so we both destroyed the harvest and prepared the death of our horses, by giving them the worst possible nourishment for the forced marches and labours to which we were subjecting them day after day.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Fed on unripe barley and oats, the horses blew up with colic and died in large numbers.

Without bread, meat or vegetables, the men, particularly the younger recruits, fell ill and perished in alarming numbers. Many sought salvation in desertion and a dash for home. Others, preferring quick release to the long-drawn-out pangs of hunger and the uncertainties that lay ahead, put their muskets to their heads and shot themselves. One major in the 85th Line Infantry of Davout’s corps complained he had lost a fifth of his young recruits by the time he reached his position on the Russian border.

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Napoleon did not see the worst of this as he rushed ahead. Before leaving Poznan he had written to Marie-Louise that he would be back in three months; either the Tsar’s nerve would break when he saw the Grande Armée come up to the border or he would be knocked out in a quick battle. Napoleon was now in a hurry to bring things to a head. He raced to Danzig, moving so fast that he left most of his household behind, arriving there on 8 June. He inspected troops and supplies, accompanied by the military governor, General Rapp. At Danzig he also met up with Marshal Davout, commander of the 1st Corps, and with his brother-in-law Joachim Murat, King of Naples.

It would be hard to bring together two more different characters. Louis-Nicolas Davout was a year younger than Napoleon. He came from an old Burgundian family with roots in the Crusades, and was the most devoted as well as the ablest of Napoleon’s marshals. He was strict and demanding, a hard taskmaster to those serving under him, feared and disliked by most of his peers, but loved by his soldiers because, in order to get the most out of them, he made sure they had everything they needed and were not tired out with unnecessary duties.

Joachim Murat, who was three years Davout’s senior, was of a different cut in every way. The son of a Gascon innkeeper from Cahors, he had studied for the priesthood at a seminary in Toulouse before running away to join the army. Although not without a certain cunning, he was stupid, which allowed him to be absurdly and recklessly brave even though he lacked real courage. He was, in Napoleon’s words, ‘an imbecille [sic] without judgement’. But he was an instinctively brilliant cavalry commander in battle. He was also devoted to Napoleon. He had married the Emperor’s sister Caroline, and in 1808 he was made King of Naples.

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In Danzig, Napoleon explained to Davout and Murat what part they were to play in his plans. Murat would command the huge body of cavalry, a great battering ram of four divisions, with a nominal strength of 40,000, which was to spearhead the attack. Napoleon wanted to fight and defeat the Russians as quickly as possible, so he decided to strike them at the point where they might feel strong enough to make a stand, which meant a frontal attack at Vilna. He would attack Barclay’s First Army, using Davout’s 1st Corps of 70,000 men, flanked by Ney’s 3rd Corps of 40,000 to the north and backed up by the Guard, numbering some 40,000. Prince Eugène’s 4th and St Cyr’s 6th Corps, totalling 67,000 Italians, Bavarians and Croats as well as Frenchmen, would advance to the south of this thrust, driving a wedge between Barclay and Bagration. Further south, Jérôme was to advance against Bagration with three other army corps (5th Polish, 7th Saxon and 8th Westphalian), altogether some 60,000 men. In the north, Marshal Macdonald’s 10th Corps, made up of Prussians as well as Frenchmen, would cross the Niemen at Tilsit and advance on Riga, while Oudinot’s 2nd Corps supported both him and the main strike force by attacking Barclay’s right wing. South of the Pripet, Schwarzenberg’s Austrians were to mark Tormasov’s Third Army.

It is impossible to be precise about the numbers involved. On paper, the overall strength of the forces poised for invasion was 590,687 men and 157,878 horses, while the total number of French and allied troops in the whole theatre of operations, including Poland and Germany, was 678,000. But these figures beg many questions.

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The strength of an army which has taken up positions, as the Russian had done over the months, can be established fairly accurately, as the units are concentrated in one place, and there is little reason or scope for anyone to absent themselves for more than the few hours it might take to report to headquarters or pick up some stores. But an army on the move is far more volatile.

Whatever the technical strength of any unit on campaign, it is never concentrated in a single place, or even area, at one time. It always leaves a skeleton force, sometimes a whole battalion, at its depot. It does not move, lock stock and barrel, from one place to another: its head races ahead, leaving its body and tail to catch up, which they occasionally do, only to be left behind once more, in the manner of a huge centipede. It is constantly leaving behind platoons or smaller clusters of men to hold, defend or police areas. Numbers vary, almost always downwards, with every day.

A company of 140 men marches out from town A on its way to town B. On the morning they are setting off, it turns out that three of the men are too ill to march, so they are left behind, in the care of a corporal and two orderlies. In addition, one of the captain’s four horses is lame, and a second is out of condition, so they remain behind, in the care of an orderly. One of the company’s ammunition caissons or luggage wagons has a broken axle, and remains in town A while it is being repaired, in the care of two men. One man failed to report for roll call before the company marched out. This means that only 130 men actually set off. Along the way, eight men are detailed to find supplies, and they set off into the countryside with a couple of wagons. Another ten men fall behind in the course of the day’s twenty-five-kilometre trek, and, another of the wagons having broken a wheel, two more are detailed to look after it until it can be fixed. By that evening, the company with a technical strength of 140 men can only assemble 110 men in a single place. And that diminution took place without the intervention of disease, bad weather or the enemy. It would probably have been more drastic in the case of a cavalry squadron, where lameness and saddle sores played their part. And there has been no account taken of desertion, which is far easier on the march than in a fixed position, and which increases the further an army is from its home ground.

(#litres_trial_promo) Some of the men left behind catch up, but the faster and further an army moves, the fewer do, and so the gap between those catching up and those falling away widens. If that same company had to make a forced march over three days and then fight on the fourth, its captain would be lucky to lead much more than half its paper strength into battle – less than a week after setting out.

Numbers arrived at by means of adding up the paper strength of the units present in an army can therefore serve only as a rough guide to the situation on the ground. It is generally accepted that the strength of the Grande Armée as it invaded Russia was about 450,000, but this has been arrived at by computing theoretical data, and the reality was certainly very different.

On 14 June Napoleon issued a circular to the commanders of every corps insisting that they must provide honest figures on the numbers of the able-bodied, the sick and deserters, as well as the dead and the wounded. ‘It has to be made clear to the individual corps that they must regard it as a duty towards the Emperor to provide him with the simple truth,’ ran the order.

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This admonition was ignored. ‘He was led astray in the most outrageous way,’ wrote General Berthézène of the Young Guard. ‘From the marshal to the captain, it was as if everyone had come together to hide the truth from him, and, although it was tacit, this conspiracy really did exist; for it was bound together by self-interest.’ Napoleon was always angry when provided with dwindling figures, particularly if these could not be explained by battle casualties, so those responsible simply hid the losses from him. Berthézène went on to say that the Guard, which was usually written up as being nearly 50,000 strong, never exceeded 25,000 during the whole campaign; that the Bavarian contingent, given as 24,000, was never stronger than 11,000; and that the whole Grande Armée was no larger than 235,000 when it crossed the Niemen. One can quibble with his estimates, but not with his argument, which is supported by others.

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Russian estimates of the French forces at this stage were much lower than the generally accepted figures (and intriguingly close to Berthézène’s), which has surprised historians and led them to believe that they must have had very poor intelligence. But it may simply be that while French figures were based on paper computations, the Russians based their estimates on reports from spies, and those reports may have been more accurate as to the numbers of troops actually present than the paper calculations.

It would be rash to try to be precise, but a sensible guess would be that no more than three-quarters and possibly as little as two-thirds of the 450,000 crossed the Niemen in the first wave, and that the remainder, if and when they caught up with the main body, were only plugging gaps left by men dropping away. At the same time, it would be difficult to overestimate the number of civilians following in the wake of the army, and a figure of 50,000 would certainly be on the conservative side.

Having fixed his plan, Napoleon applied himself to putting it into action. Speed was of the essence. He wanted to get at the Russian army before it had time to withdraw or concentrate. Speed was also essential for logistical reasons: with the shortage of supplies available, the ground was burning the feet of the Grande Armée. He was counting on being able to confront and defeat the Russian army inside three weeks, as he could not possibly take with him supplies for any longer.

From Danzig, he raced on to Marienburg, Elbing and Königsberg. At every point along his frantic journey he inspected troops, artillery parks and supply depots. During the four days he spent at Königsberg he inspected the stores and boatyards as, having seen for himself the state of the local roads and appreciated the shortage of draught animals, he had decided to despatch as many supplies as possible up the Niemen and its tributary the Vilia to reach him once he had occupied Vilna.

As there would be scant possibility of finding provisions along the way, he had given orders that every soldier should carry with him four days’ ration of bread and biscuit in his knapsack, and every regiment a twenty-day ration of flour in its wagons. But his orders could only ever be as productive of results as the land was fertile in the necessary means, and they were meaningless where there was nothing to be had.

On 22 June General Deroy, a splendid warrior in his eighties who had more than sixty years’ military service behind him and would soon die in battle commanding one of the Bavarian divisions, reported to his monarch that he did not see how they were going to survive at all. ‘I am looking forward to getting killed,’ one young soldier wrote home to his parents in France, ‘for I am dying as I march.’

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When he saw for himself the poverty of the surroundings, Napoleon gave the order for the units in the principal strike force under his personal command to make a last-minute requisition and seize whatever they could in the way of provisions before marching out. Thus the unfortunate inhabitants of East Prussia suddenly found that their every cart was taken and filled with anything that came to hand. Napoleon brushed aside the complaints reaching him from all quarters about shortage of supplies and dwindling forces. There was nothing he could do about it anyway – except defeat the Russians as quickly as possible. And he trusted in his extraordinary ability to achieve what he wanted in the face of insuperable obstacles.

On 16 June he wrote to ‘Quiouquiou’, as the King of Rome’s governess the Comtesse de Montesquiou had been dubbed by her charge, thanking her for informing him that his son’s teething was nearly over. Two days later he heard from Marie-Louise that she was not pregnant, as he had been led to believe by a hint from one of his courtiers. He registered his disappointment and his hope that they would have a chance to put that right in the autumn. He wrote to her daily, in short, scribbled, mis-spelt notes of remarkable banality. ‘I am often on horseback, and it is doing me good,’ he informed her on 19 June.

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The following day, at Gumbinnen, he was reached by a courier from the French embassy in St Petersburg who informed him that Lauriston had been refused an audience with the Tsar and forbidden to travel to Vilna. He and the diplomatic representatives of the various allied states had been instructed to call for their passports, which amounted to a declaration of hostilities.

Napoleon’s propaganda machine, the Bulletins de la Grande Armée, which presented his troops and the world with his version of events, swung into action. The first Bulletin of the campaign detailed his long and painstaking efforts to keep the peace, and reminded the world of the generosity with which he had treated the defeated Russians in 1807, all to no avail. ‘The vanquished have adopted the tone of conquerors,’ the Bulletin announced, ‘they are tempting fate; let destiny then take its course.’ He announced to his soldiers that they would be required to fight soon. ‘I promise and give you my imperial word on it that it will be for the last time, and that you will then be able to return to the bosom of your families.’

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The three corps – Davout’s, Ney’s and Oudinot’s – which were to cross the Niemen first, along with Murat’s cavalry, were massing in the low-lying ground between Wyłkowyszki and Skrawdzen, concealed from view behind the high left bank of the river. The summer heat was intense, made more unbearable for the marching men by the clouds of dust kicked up by the hundreds of thousands of feet and hooves. On 22 June Napoleon set out from Wylkowyszki, passing the marching columns, and reached Skrawdzen at dusk. He had supper in the garden of the parish priest’s house, and asked the priest whether he prayed for him or for Alexander, to which the man replied: ‘For Your Majesty.’ ‘And so you should, as a Pole and as a Catholic,’ replied Napoleon, delighted by the answer.

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At about eleven o’clock he climbed back into his carriage, which drove off in the direction of the Niemen, past large encampments of Davout’s infantry and Murat’s cavalry, which had been instructed to remain out of sight of the river. He did not want the Russians patrolling the other bank to see a single French uniform, and only Polish patrols, which were a familiar sight, were allowed to show themselves.

It was well past midnight when Napoleon’s carriage rolled up to the bivouac of the 6th Polish Lancers. He got out, proceeded to swap his famous hat and overcoat for the cap and coat of a Polish lancer, and made General Haxo of the Engineers, Berthier and Caulaincourt do the same before they mounted horses and set off, escorted by a platoon of lancers. Napoleon rode into a village, from one of whose houses he and Haxo could, unnoticed, survey the city of Kovno on the other side of the river through their telescopes. He then rode up and down the bank, looking for the best place for a crossing. As he was riding along at full gallop a hare started just in front of his horse, causing it to shy abruptly, and Napoleon was thrown. He jumped up immediately and remounted without a word.

Caulaincourt and others of his entourage were astonished: normally Napoleon would have launched into a string of curses directed at his horse, the hare and the terrain, but this time he acted as though nothing had happened. ‘We would do well not to cross the Niemen,’ Berthier said to Caulaincourt. ‘This fall was a bad omen.’ Napoleon himself must have felt the same. ‘The Emperor, who was ordinarily so gay and so full of ardour at times when his troops were executing a major manoeuvre, remained very serious and preoccupied for the rest of the day,’ wrote Caulaincourt.

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Napoleon spent most of that day, 23 June, working in the tent that had been pitched for him. He seemed in sombre mood, and his entourage reflected this by maintaining a silence that many later interpreted as being full of foreboding. But this may have been hindsight. ‘Despite the uncertain future, there was enthusiasm, a great deal of it,’ recalled Colonel Jean Boulart of the artillery of the Guard. ‘The army’s confidence in the genius of the Emperor was such that nobody even dreamed that the campaign could turn out badly.’

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