Russia Against Napoleon

by Lieven, Dominic

  In fact, by the time the two armies had united at Smolensk Alexander’s position had changed radically and he himself was putting Barclay under heavy pressure to advance against Napoleon. Probably the emperor was sincere in stating that he had never expected retreat to reach Smolensk before risking a battle but he will also have been aware of the political risks if Barclay continued to retreat without fighting. On 9 August he wrote to the commander-in-chief that ‘I now hope that with the help of the Supreme Being you will be able to take the offensive and thereby stop the invasion of our provinces. I have placed the safety of Russia in your hands, general, and I like to hope that you will justify all my confidence in you.’ Two days later Alexander repeated his calls for an attack, adding without any apparent sense of irony that ‘you are free to act without any impediment or interference’. Under great pressure to attack from his own generals and Bagration, Barclay was in no position to ignore his master also. In any case he was the captive of his own earlier promise to Alexander that he would attack once the armies joined.37

  Barclay was therefore forced to agree that the army would go over to the offensive but it is clear from both his words and his actions that he had strong doubts about the wisdom of this policy. In part this reflected his fear that Napoleon would take the opportunity to sweep round the flanks of the advancing Russians and cut them off from their communications back to Moscow. The Russian cavalry had lost contact with Napoleon’s forces and Barclay would be advancing without a clear idea where the enemy was concentrated or definite knowledge about their numbers. In addition, Barclay had some concerns about the Russian army’s own quality when compared to its enemy.

  He wrote to Alexander that ‘the simple soldier of Your Imperial Majesty’s army is without doubt the best in the world’ but that this was not true of the officers. In particular, the junior officers were usually too young and inexperienced. This was a little unfair since any criticism of the army’s subalterns needed to be qualified by recognition of their great courage, their loyalty to their comrades and regiments, and their impatience to get to grips with the French. Much more solidly based were doubts about the Russian army’s high command. Barclay would also have been less than human had he not experienced some fears about facing the greatest commander of the era.38

  Moreover, it was one thing to take up a strong defensive position and invite Napoleon to attack, as Bennigsen had done successfully at Eylau and the Archduke Charles at Aspern, and as Wellington was to do at Waterloo. It was quite another to attempt to outmanoeuvre Napoleon and defeat him on the offensive. So long as Napoleon was present in person, his authority over his commanders, the power of his reputation, and his exceptional military instincts were likely to give the French victory in such a war. His corps’ movements would be better coordinated, opportunities more quickly spotted, and any advantage more ruthlessly exploited. If this was true in all cases, it was doubly so in present circumstances when the Russians were heavily outnumbered and were operating with two independent armies whose commanders had very different perceptions and instincts.

  Above all, Barclay remained faithful to the strategy on which he and Alexander had agreed before the war started. It was far easier to express this honestly to outsiders than to his own increasingly hostile and frustrated generals. On 11 August he wrote to Admiral Chichagov, whose Army of the Danube was marching northwards towards Napoleon’s rear, that ‘the enemy’s desire is to finish this war by decisive battles and we on the contrary have to try to avoid such battles because we have no army of any sort in reserve which could sustain us in the event of a defeat. Therefore our main goal must be to gain as much time as possible which will allow our militia and the troops being formed in the interior to be organized and made ready.’ Until that happened First and Second armies must not take any risks which might lead to their destruction.

  Subsequently Barclay was to justify his strategy in very similar terms to Kutuzov, stating that he had sought to avoid decisive battles because if First and Second armies were destroyed no other forces yet existed in the rear to continue the war. Instead, he had attempted with considerable success ‘to stop the enemy’s rapid advance only by limited engagements, by which his forces were diminished more and more every day’. As he wrote to Alexander at the end of August, ‘had I been guided by a foolish and blind ambition, Your Imperial Majesty would perhaps have received many dispatches telling of battles fought but the enemy would be at the walls of Moscow without it being possible to find any forces to resist him’.39

  As the Russian official history of the war subsequently recognized, though Barclay was almost in a minority of one at the time, in fact he was right and his opponents were wrong. Among other things, they greatly underestimated the strength of Napoleon’s forces and they exaggerated the extent to which they were dispersed. But Barclay’s ‘offensive’, crippled by his doubts, brought him only ridicule at the time. Even his loyal aide-de-camp, Vladimir Löwenstern, wrote that ‘it was the first time that I wasn’t entirely happy with his performance’.40

  As agreed with Bagration at the council of war of the previous day, on 7 August Barclay advanced to the north of the river Dnieper towards Rudnia and Vitebsk. But he did so with the proviso that he would not initially go more than three marches from Smolensk. No serious offensive was possible with such equivocation and uncertainty. When Barclay was informed in the night of 8 August that a large enemy force had been discovered to his north at Poreche he immediately believed that this was the outflanking movement he had feared. As a result he shifted his line of march northwards to meet the threat, only to discover that the ‘large enemy force’ was little more than a figment of his scouts’ imagination. Bagration complained that ‘mere rumours shouldn’t be allowed to alter operations’. Officers and men grumbled as uncertainty reigned and the troops marched and counter-marched.41

  Moving ahead of Barclay down the road to Rudnia, Platov routed a large force of French cavalry near the village of Molevo-Bolota, capturing General Sebastiani’s headquarters and much of his correspondence in the process. When these documents seemed to show that the French had been tipped off about the offensive an ugly wave of xenophobia and spy-mania spread in the Russian army. A number of officers at headquarters who were not ethnic Russians, including even some officers such as Löwenstern who were the emperor’s subjects, were escorted to the rear under suspicion of treason. Bagration wrote to Arakcheev: ‘I just cannot work with the minister [i.e. Barclay]. For God’s sake send me anywhere you like, even to command a regiment in Moldavia or the Caucasus but I just cannot stand it here. The whole of headquarters is packed with Germans so it is impossible for a Russian to live there.’42

  While the Russians were dithering and arguing Napoleon struck. He concentrated his army near Rasasna south of the river Dnieper and on 14 August marched on Smolensk via Krasnyi. The only Russian forces in his way were the 7,200 men commanded by Dmitrii Neverovsky, whose core were the regiments of his own 27th Division. These regiments had been formed just before the war, mostly from new recruits and soldiers from the disbanded garrison regiments. Given time and efficient training, most of the recruits and garrison soldiers could be turned into good troops. The big problem was finding good officers to train and lead them. Most of the officers were initially drawn from the former garrison regiments but they quickly proved useless. In the Odessa Regiment, for example, within a few weeks only one of the initial twenty-two former garrison officers was considered fit for front-line service. Desperate measures were sometimes required to find officers. Dmitrii Dushenkovich, for instance, was commissioned as an ensign into the newly formed Simbirsk Regiment aged only 15, after a crash course as a cadet in the Noble Regiment.43

  Neverovsky’s force was buttressed by two experienced regiments of line infantry and included one dragoon regiment, some Cossacks and fourteen guns. Nevertheless it should have been very easy meat for the far larger enemy advance guard under Marshal Murat which it faced on 14 August. In fact Neverovsky lost
some guns and possibly as many as 1,400 men, but the bulk of his force escaped, despite between thirty and forty assaults by Murat’s cavalry.

  Napoleon’s secretary, Baron Fain, had the following to say about the affair at Krasnyi:

  our cavalry dashes forward, it attacks the Russians in more than forty consecutive charges: many times our squadrons penetrate into the square;…but the very inexperience of the Russian peasants who make up this body gives them a strength of inertia which takes the place of resistance. The élan of the horsemen is deadened in this mob which packs together, presses against each other, and closes up all its gaps. Ultimately the most brilliant valour is exhausted in striking a compact mass which we chop up but cannot break.44

  Fighting in what to many of them seemed to be Europe’s semi-savage periphery, many of the French have left descriptions of the 1812 campaign that have a ring of cultural arrogance more familiar from European descriptions of colonial warfare. Not surprisingly, Russian descriptions of the battle at Krasnyi are rather different from Fain’s account.

  Dmitrii Dushenkovich experienced his first battle before his sixteenth birthday. He wrote in his memoirs:

  Anyone who has been through the experience of a first hot, dangerous and noisy battle can imagine the feelings of a soldier of my age. Everything seemed incomprehensible to me. I felt that I was alive, saw everything that was going on around me, but simply could not comprehend how this awful, indescribable chaos was going to end. To this day I can still vividly recall Neverovsky riding around the square every time the cavalry approached with his sword drawn and repeating in a voice which seemed to exude confidence in his troops: ‘Lads! Remember what you were taught in Moscow. Follow your orders and no cavalry will defeat you. Don’t hurry with your volleys. Shoot straight at the enemy and don’t anyone dare to start firing before my word of command.’45

  After retreating over 20 kilometres under intense pressure Neverovsky’s men were relieved by Major-General Ivan Paskevich’s 26th Division, which Bagration had rushed forward to rescue them. Paskevich wrote that ‘on that day our infantry covered itself in glory’. He also recognized Neverovsky’s excellent leadership. He pointed out, however, that if Murat had shown minimal professional competence the Russians would never have escaped. It was true that the double line of trees on either side of the highway down which Neverovsky retreated had impeded the French attacks. That was no excuse, however, for complete failure to coordinate the cavalry attacks and use his overwhelming superiority in numbers to slow the Russians’ march. It was also elementary tactics that cavalry attacking disciplined infantry in square needed the help of horse artillery. ‘To the shame of the French one has to note that though they brought up 19,000 cavalry and a whole division of infantry they only deployed one battery of artillery.’ Whether this omission occurred through sheer incompetence or whether Murat wanted all the glory for his horsemen Paskevich could not guess.46

  Maybe Paskevich was a little unfair. French sources claimed that their artillery had been stopped by a broken bridge. Nor was the fight at Krasnyi in itself very significant. The fate of Neverovsky’s 7,000 men would hardly decide the campaign one way or another. Neverovsky’s action did not even seriously slow down the French advance. But what happened at Krasnyi was to prove symptomatic. During August 1812, in and around Smolensk, Napoleon was to have a number of opportunities seriously to weaken the Russian army and possibly even to decide the campaign. These chances were lost because of failures in executing his plans, above all by his senior generals.

  When he heard of Neverovsky’s plight and the threat to Smolensk Bagration ordered Nikolai Raevsky’s corps (which included Paskevich’s division) back to the city at top speed. By the late afternoon of 15 August when Napoleon’s army approached Smolensk, Raevsky and Neverovsky were deployed behind its walls. Even together, however, their force probably only added up to 15,000 men and if Napoleon had pushed hard from dawn on 16 August Smolensk might well have fallen. Instead he delayed throughout that day, allowing both Bagration and Barclay’s armies to arrive.

  That night First Army took over responsibility for Smolensk’s defence, with Second Army moving out to defend the Russian left and the road to Moscow from any French outflanking movement. By the morning of 17 August 30,000 men of Barclay’s army were strongly posted in the suburbs and behind the walls of Smolensk. Had Napoleon chosen to dislodge them, at little cost, it was within his power to do so by an outflanking movement, since he well outnumbered the Russians, there were many fords across the Dnieper and any serious threat to their communications back to Moscow would have forced Barclay to abandon the city. Instead he chose a head-on assault, losing heavily in the process.

  Ever since 1812 historians have puzzled as to why Napoleon acted in this fashion. The most plausible explanation is that he did not want to dislodge the Russians but rather to destroy their army in a battle for the city. Perhaps he believed that if he gave them the chance to fight for Smolensk they would not dare simply to abandon so famous a Russian city. If so, Napoleon’s calculation proved wrong, because after a day’s ferocious fighting on 17 August Barclay once again ordered his army to retreat. It is worth remembering, however, that Barclay did this against the strong and universal opposition of Bagration and all of First Army’s senior generals. He faced furious accusations of incompetence and even treason. Predictably, the Grand Duke Constantine’s was the loudest and most hysterical voice, screaming out within earshot of junior officers and men that ‘it isn’t Russian blood that flows in those who command us’. Barclay de Tolly also knew that his decision to retreat would anger Alexander and probably wreck his standing with the emperor. It took great resolution, unselfishness and moral courage for Barclay to act in the way he did. Perhaps Napoleon cannot be blamed for failing to predict this.47

  The Russian generals’ opposition to abandoning Smolensk was all the stronger because they had defended it successfully against great odds and with heavy losses throughout 17 August. In the battle for Smolensk, 11,000 Russians died or were wounded. Nevertheless, nowhere had the French broken through the walls and into the city. Though Smolensk’s defences were medieval they did sometimes provide good cover for Russian artillery and skirmishers. In some cases, too, attacking French columns could be hit by Russian batteries firing from across the river Dnieper.

  The Russian infantry fought with great courage and grim determination. Ivan Liprandi was a senior staff officer in Dmitrii Dokhturov’s Sixth Corps. His accounts of the 1812 campaign are among the most thoughtful and accurate from the Russian side. He remembered that at Smolensk it was difficult for the officers to stop their men from launching wasteful counter-attacks against the French at every opportunity. Volunteers for dangerous tasks were plentiful. Many soldiers refused to go off to the rear to have their wounds seen to. The sight of the city in flames and of the wretched remnants of the civilian population was an additional incentive to fight to the death. So too was the sense, absorbed with their mother’s milk, that Smolensk was from ancient times Orthodox Russia’s citadel against invasion from the ‘Latin’ West. In previous centuries the city had at times been a prize contested between the Russians and the Poles. One officer remembered that, although the soldiers sometimes took French prisoners, on 17 August they always killed the Poles.48

  The Russian troops in the city had been commanded by Dmitrii Dokhturov and on the night of 18 August he very unwillingly obeyed Barclay’s order to evacuate Smolensk and pull back to the city’s northern suburbs across the river Dnieper. That day Barclay allowed his exhausted soldiers a rest. On the night of 18–19 August he ordered them to retreat towards the main road which led back through Solovevo and Dorogobuzh into the Great Russian heartland and ultimately to Moscow.

  The initial stages of this retreat presented serious difficulties. After it left Smolensk the main road to Moscow passed along the east bank of the Dnieper in full view and easy artillery range of the west bank. The river was also easily fordable in a number of places during
the summer. Barclay did not want his retreating column, spread out as it would be for miles, to offer a perfect opportunity for the French to attack it on the march. So he decided to move his men in the night of 18–19 August down side roads which would lead them out onto the main Moscow road at a safe distance from Smolensk and the French. First Army would be divided into two halves. Dmitrii Dokhturov would lead the smaller half of the army on the longer detour which would take a night and a day before ultimately bringing them out on the Moscow road, not far from Solovevo. This part of the operation went without a hitch but it did mean that when disaster threatened the other half of First Army on 19 August Dokhturov was far away and unable to help.

  The other column, commanded by Lieutenant-General Nikolai Tuchkov, was to make a shorter detour, coming out on to the Moscow road closer to Smolensk and just to the west of the village of Lubino. It adds something to the confusion of what is already a rather confusing story that the advance guard of Tuchkov’s column was commanded by his younger brother, Major-General Pavel Tuchkov. The younger Tuchkov was given the task of leading the march down the side roads to Lubino and the Moscow road, where he was supposed to link up with Lieutenant-General Prince Andrei Gorchakov’s division of Bagration’s Second Army. It had been agreed that Gorchakov and Second Army would guard the Moscow road until First Army’s column had emerged safely down the back lanes and onto the main highway near Lubino.

  Everything went wrong, partly because of poor coordination between the First and Second armies and partly because of the difficulty of moving down country lanes at night. In principle, these roads should have been reconnoitred in advance by staff officers who should then have guided the columns to their correct destinations. The army’s movements were these staff officers’ responsibility. Any movement at night of large bodies of men requires very careful arrangements, especially if tired troops are to march through forests and down country lanes. The historian of the general staff claims, not altogether implausibly, that there were simply too few staff officers available for all the tasks in hand in the immediate aftermath of the evacuation of Smolensk. Some had been sent ahead to look for quarters for the following night and others had been dispatched to find possible battlefields on the road to Moscow where the army might make a stand. It is certainly evident from staff officers’ memoirs that their corps was seriously overstretched in the first half of the 1812 campaign with very responsible jobs sometimes being allocated to junior and inexperienced officers. That was no doubt the inevitable price of having to build the general staff corps at such speed in the years just before the war.49