Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

by Alan Schom

  He was bewildered. The vanquished did not act like this.

  At the head of the long column of cavalry, Napoleon made straight for the immense walls of the Kremlin, looming dramatically before him: “Within its ramparts stand the Imperial Palace, the arsenal, the Senate Palace, the National Archives, the principal public buildings, a great number of churches and temples filled with historical curiosities...including some of the trophies and regimental colors recently taken from the Turks,” not to mention the celebrated basilica containing the tombs of the czars in its “semi-barbarous magnificence...its walls covered with heavy gold and silver plaques.”

  On entering the Kremlin at noon on September 15, Napoleon discovered that “nothing had been disturbed, all the clocks still striking every quarter of an hour, chiming as if their Russian masters were still there.” It was quite uncanny, as Napoleon moved into the czar’s private apartments, while Marshal Mortier, as commander of the Young Guard, was made responsible for maintaining order in the city, which the former governor, Fyodor Rostopchin, had left barely an hour before.

  The lack of anyone to greet him in the name of the city, along with “all the strange reports he was receiving, left the Emperor more anxious than before,” Caulaincourt noted. “The most mournful silence reigned...We had not encountered a soul during our entry.” The army took up positions around the Kremlin, and other units were quartered in the imperial barracks.

  At 8 P.M. on the fifteenth, fires were reported in the...Chinese quarter, an immense bazaar of long galleries enclosing a vast series of warehouses and cellars...filled with precious merchandise of every description, from fur stoles, to the delicate cloths and silks from India and China. All efforts to extinguish the fire in the bazaar proved fruitless, as it spread, now threatening the whole city...whole streets of houses igniting simultaneously. The city became an immense furnace.

  Initially French officials did not take the fire seriously; it was attributed to some drunken soldiers and looters. “The Emperor had retired early...but at 10:30 P.M,” Caulaincourt related, “my valet de chambre...woke me up to tell me that the city had been on fire for three quarters of an hour. I could hardly doubt it, as it flooded my room, leaving it so light that I could have read by the flames. I leapt out of bed and had the Grand Marshal of the Palace [Gen. Christophe Duroc] awakened...” The Imperial Guard was called out, although it was decided “to let the Emperor rest for a while yet.” Caulaincourt continued: “I quickly got on my horse to see for myself what was happening, and to organize what help I could...[But] a strong wind was blowing from the north, the direction from which the initial two fires could be seen, their flames pushed towards the center of the city, giving them an extraordinary violence.”

  By 12:30 A.M. another fire had started, and then another, and yet another. The danger was now so imminent that it was decided to awaken Napoleon, who had slept through all the commotion. All the pumps and hoses, it was discovered, had been sabotaged by Rostopchin before leaving, but Caulaincourt managed to get two pumps working in the Kremlin, while servants and soldiers alike carried out buckets of water and brooms to extinguish the ring of fiery ash around the walls, the heat becoming so extreme that windows shattered, though the magazines of the arsenals were protected by hundreds of men. “At first Napoleon thought that the fires had been set by our own disorderly troops,” Caulaincourt continued. “He simply could not believe that...the Russians themselves were deliberately destroying their own city to prevent us from occupying it.” But arsonists captured by the French soon established that Count Rostopchin had left specific orders to burn the city, himself torching his own resplendent mansion. “I next went over to the imperial stables where some of the European horses were kept along with the official state carriages of the czar,” Caulaincourt reported. “It took all the zeal, and I must say, all the courage of everyone there to save them. We were literally breathing the fire, and our lungs were inhaling pure smoke.” The bridge to the south of the Kremlin was saved only thanks to the intervention of the Imperial Guard. The heat was so intense everywhere “that one could not remain for more than a minute in any one place, the fur on the shakos singed on the heads of the grenadiers.”

  At 4:30 that afternoon Napoleon finally gave the order to depart and to leave nothing behind. Their destination was the Petrovskoye Palace, only a few miles outside Moscow on the road to St. Petersburg. But even so Napoleon had a hard time escaping the city. Winds were fanning the fire, and the western part of the city was already destroyed. Napoleon finally reached the safety of the suburbs at nightfall.

  At Petrovskoye Palace, Napoleon was silent and distant. Originally he had planned on remaining in Moscow to negotiate a peace settlement with the czar. But it now finally dawned on him that the Russians would not have sacrificed Moscow if they were desperate to conclude a treaty. Napoleon decided to cut short his stay here, and everything was put in order for a final retreat. But this atmosphere was countered brilliantly by a fresh series of reports from Murat, who informed Napoleon that, after having interrogated many Russian officials and prisoners, he was convinced that the Russian army was in total disarray, in poor morale, and that the czar would soon be forced to capitulate. This persuaded Napoleon to prolong his stay after all.

  On September 18 Napoleon returned to the Kremlin. In only two days the city had been sacked. Even the houses that had been saved from the fire had been pillaged, while the Sloboda Palace — the sprawling mansion Napoleon had reserved for himself outside the Kremlin walls — had been burned to the ground, along with three-quarters of the entire city, including some eight hundred churches. French troops had to turn their bayonets on their own rioting comrades, and many a summary execution took place.

  Napoleon was convinced that the Russians would capitulate and sent messages to St. Petersburg to open negotiations. “The Emperor repeated that the war he was waging was purely political...not one of personal animosity, and that achieving a rapid peace was his main objective...and that indeed he had been forced to come to Moscow in spite of himself.”

  Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg events were seen in a very different light. Kutuzov had announced a great victory over Bonaparte at Borodino, and the czar had ordered the chanting of the Te Deum in the capital’s cathedral. Gradually, however, as more detailed reports followed, Alexander came to realize that although Kutuzov had indeed inflicted heavy losses on the French, he had been unable to prevent them from occupying Moscow and forcing Kutuzov’s army to flee. The jubilation on the Nevsky gave way to clamors for peace, beginning with Chancellor Rumanzov, Grand Duke Constantine, and even by the dowager empress.

  The czar would have none of this, however. No one had ever seen Alexander so angry, so determined, silencing all treasonous talk of surrender. Bonaparte and the pillaging French invaders had to be stopped and exterminated, whatever the cost. “It is Napoleon or I, I or he!” the czar proclaimed, despite the numerical superiority of the French, with roughly 248,000 troops including French garrisons from as far away as Königsberg, Danzig, and Warsaw, and another 59,000 or so recruits en route to eastern Europe. Nevertheless the French were thousands of miles from home and lacked the troops and horses required to keep their extensive line of communications and supplies, literally their lifeline, open. And winter was not yet upon them. Bonaparte’s immense cavalry under Murat had been so reduced in numbers, including mounts and superior officers, that they had literally had to walk their few remaining horses most of the way from Borodino to Moscow. The czar might have only 193,000 troops immediately at hand, but his large cavalry was well mounted and fed, accustomed to the rigors of this climate and land, and the men were more determined, defending their own country. Czar Alexander was in no mood to negotiate. As Caulaincourt reflected:

  Our return to Moscow was at least as depressing as had been our departure. I cannot begin to find the words with which to express everything I felt since the death of my brother. The spectacle of the most recent events left me simply stunned, overwhelme
d. The horror of everything now surrounding us just added to my loss...I was at the end of my tether! Fortunate indeed are those who did not witness this awful desolation, this scene of awesome destruction everywhere around us!

  Several days after their return to the Kremlin, Napoleon announced his decision to make his winter quarters in Moscow after all. Troops were ordered to bring in food, grain, provisions, furs, clothing. Fortifications had to be strengthened, and fresh levees of conscripts from France and Poland ordered up. The long network of posting stations linking Paris with Erfurt and then with Danzig, Warsaw, and Moscow also had to be reinforced. Comte Lavalette was held responsible for maintaining full messenger service, twenty-four hours a day, the posting stations to be situated between fifteen and twenty-one miles apart, with a minimum of four fresh mounts available at each one. This involved hundreds of such stations and the assigning of thousands of fresh troops to guard this vital line of communications. Despite warnings by everyone that he had no idea what a Russian winter was like, Napoleon was determined. He would show Alexander yet and defy the Cassandras. What is more, once the czar saw how determined he was to stay in Moscow, he would give in, just as Napoleon had predicted from the very start.

  If the unusually warm autumn had misled Napoleon into believing that everyone had been hoodwinking him, the great distances separating him from Vilna, Warsaw, Dresden, and Erfurt, however, were no illusions. When his couriers were murdered — one was expected to deliver mail to Napoleon daily from Paris and vice versa — and his personal dispatches from his own ministers seized, along with all the mail for the army, even Napoleon grew uneasy about the decision to stay. And Caulaincourt, who spent hours with him daily, noted that despite the burning of Moscow, Napoleon remained “always prepared to believe in his guiding star, and that the Russians, tired of this war, would seize any occasion to put an end to this struggle.”

  As for the weather, Caulaincourt continued:

  The mild temperatures that lasted much longer than usual this year all contributed in lulling him...Even in private so strongly did the emperor express his conviction of remaining in Moscow now that those held in his closest confidence continued to believe him for quite some time. Such then was our situation ten to twelve days after our return to Moscow.

  Napoleon kept busy as never before, reviewing military parades in the courtyard of the Kremlin, ordering the construction of large new baking ovens for the troops, mills for the preparation of flour, extending his defenses, sending out strong detachments of troops “to collect the cattle that were becoming very rare now” for the long winter ahead. Napoleon’s activity went beyond the phenomenal to the frenetic or, as Caulaincourt put it, “the nights doubled the length of his days.” Behind all this intense activity, however, his growing private anxieties he kept largely to himself, except for Duroc, his closest friend and confidant, and to Caulaincourt:

  Paris and France remained his ultimate concern, as his daily decrees and decisions dispatched from Moscow attested. The Spanish War [and its setbacks] too aroused his concerns more and more [Wellington marched into Madrid on August 12, and Marshal Soult raised his siege of Cadiz on the twenty-fifth]...Accustomed to dictating peace upon arriving in the palaces of his newly conquered capitals, he was astonished by the unique silence that now greeted him...

  But if he left Moscow now, after all his boasting, he would be forced to eat his own words. Instead of admitting his error, Napoleon insisted “that his position in Moscow was most disturbing and even threatening for Russia.” Nevertheless, after dispatching more personal messages to the czar in St. Petersburg, he gradually, finally began to realize “that by the silence of his enemy over the very real dangers of his position, he had no choice but to quit the country.”

  From the military point of view his position was also worsening daily, as the Russian troops reached Podolsk on September 18 and General Miloradovich seized Desna — only fifteen miles south of Moscow — by the twenty-first. With fresh campaign plans, morale in the Russian lines was raised. In October the czar ordered Wittgenstein’s and Chitchagov’s armies to the Berezina. Meanwhile due to his poor intelligence service, Napoleon had no idea of the extent of the Russian threat that was slowly closing in him, intent on exterminating him and the entire French army. What is more, many of the reports Napoleon did receive were contradictory or misleading, and in any event the exhausted and demoralized French army had neither the strength nor the will to fight, with Cossack units now striking successfully even at the suburbs of Moscow itself. Frightened French troops sometimes panicked, rampaging through empty shops and mansions, despite harsh penalties for looting announced by Napoleon. By October 6 the Russian army had moved into some effective positions, its army established at Tarutino and Vinkovo. With the main Russian army now successfully regrouped, its leaders promised the czar to wreak full vengeance on the French capital itself.

  “I waged war on Your Majesty without personal animosity,” Napoleon had written Alexander on September 20. “The fine, beautiful city of Moscow no longer exists, because Rostopchin had it burned...A letter of capitulation from you before or after the battle [at Borodino] could have stopped my march...If Your Majesty still holds some of his former attachments toward me, he will take this letter to heart.” The czar of course did not condescend to reply. “The emperor, my master, has a sincere desire to end the differences between our two great and generous nations, and to end them forever,” General Lauriston told Kutuzov. “I have received no instructions on that subject,” Kutuzov curtly replied, for “the Russian people consider the French as destructive as they did the Tartars of Genghis Khan himself!” Lauriston was sent back to Moscow.

  Meanwhile Napoleon’s activities throughout this period varied from ceaseless activity to utter apathy, reflecting his own inner conflicts; between September 19 and 29, for instance, he had left the Kremlin only once. Had he had more epileptic seizures? Had he been paralyzed by his own errors at long last? Indeed, was he going quite insane, as rumor had it in both the officers’ mess and in the barracks? “The Emperor is mad, completely mad,” one French minister had confided to Marshal Marmont well before the conception of the Russian invasion.

  Even within the walls of the Kremlin, Napoleon further isolated himself. A French theatrical group, brought all the way from Paris, did present an occasional play for Bonaparte and his inner circle, and Napoleon actually tolerated two half-hour concerts offered by an Italian tenor. Otherwise he now saw little of Caulaincourt or the others; he was tired of their advice to leave Moscow. Even Duroc was often not admitted into the quarters of the great man. If he even ate alone, he did invite Berthier, Duroc, and Eugène occasionally to join him for a coffee afterward. The faithful Berthier in particular was singularly excluded from such intimacy.

  On two separate occasions Napoleon had asked Caulaincourt, as former ambassador, to travel to St. Petersburg to open negotiations with the czar, and twice he had refused to do so, pointing out that clearly Alexander had no intention of surrendering to the French. Lauriston had thus been sent instead, only to receive the blatant rebuff Caulaincourt had predicted. Napoleon complained constantly that he could get no information about what was happening in St. Petersburg.

  Murat, the only senior officer in regular contact with Kutuzov’s GHQ, continued to send absurdly optimistic reports about the softening of the Russian position, whereas in fact the Russian army was closing in. By September 22 even Napoleon had had enough of Murat’s foolishness and ordered Berthier to instruct him formally that Napoleon “had decreed the death penalty for any French officer who opened unauthorized negotiations with the enemy,” which the cocky Murat merely dismissed with a scornful laugh. He continued seeing the Russians. Alas Napoleon could not shoot his own brother-in-law, however great the temptation.

  The continued despondency, centered around Berthier’s GHQ, which initially numbered more than four hundred officers, got more and more on Napoleon’s nerves. “You just want to go back to Grosbois to be wit
h your Visconti,” Napoleon repeated, leaving Berthier frustrated, trembling, gnawing his nails, and cursing everyone in sight. But following Lauriston’s final failure with the czar at the end of the second week of October, Napoleon summoned Caulaincourt once more. “Emperor Alexander is stubborn,” he insisted. “He will regret it. He will never have had a better opportunity for a more favorable peace than what I am now offering.” But Caulaincourt, although tired of repeating ad nauseam the same sound advice, reminded Napoleon yet again that the czar was well aware that the French were in no bargaining position. “What do you mean by ‘our weaknesses here’? Napoleon snarled. ‘But winter, Sire,’ [Caulaincourt] responded.” He continued:

  We are already in great jeopardy, our shortage of supplies, of transport animals for our artillery, our great number of ill and wounded, the lack of proper winter clothing for our troops. Everyone needs a sheepskin coat, fur-lined gloves, heavy hats, stockings, and thick winter boots against the ice and snow. We lack everything. Our smiths don’t even have the proper heavy horseshoes used here [in winter]. How can teams of horses be expected to haul our artillery across ice? And then there is the question of our lines of communications. It is still unseasonably warm now, but what will it be in two weeks’ time when winter sets in?

  Napoleon listened with obvious growing impatience. “Then you think I intend to leave Moscow after all that I have said?” “Yes, sire,” Caulaincourt, now resigned to the inevitable sharp reply, continued. “I have decided nothing yet.” “I could hardly be better situated than where I am now, at Moscow, to sit out the winter.”