Russia Against Napoleon

by Lieven, Dominic

  For Napoleon, the outcome of Bautzen was a great disappointment. Instead of a decisive victory he had merely pushed the allies back along their line of retreat after losing 25,000 men as against 10,850 Russian and Prussian casualties. His pursuit of the retreating allies brought him no more joy. The day after Bautzen, on 22 May, the French caught up with the Russian rearguard at Reichenbach. Its retreat was blocked by a traffic jam in the streets of the town but this did not fluster its commanders, Miloradovich and Eugen of Württemberg. Once again Odeleben was watching:

  The dispositions made for the defence of the height in question confer the highest honour on the commander of the Russian rearguard. The road to Reichenbach, which comes out opposite the hill, turns where it leaves the town. The Russian general took advantage of the position until the last moment, and his troops did not withdraw until the French came up in such strong numbers that resistance became totally impossible. Directly after, he was seen defending another height between Reichenbach and Markersdorf, where he again arrested the march of the French.64

  This was Eugen’s ‘retreat in echelon’ in action and the snail-like progress it imposed on the French infuriated Napoleon and inspired him to such impatient rage that he took over the command of the advance guard himself. That evening the Russian rearguard took up yet another defensive position behind the village of Markersdorf. When Napoleon pressed on through the village the first shot of the Russian artillery mortally wounded his Marshal of the Court and closest friend, Géraud Duroc. Four days later at Hainau the Prussian cavalry ambushed and routed an incautious French advance guard under General Maison. As usual, these exploits of the allied rearguards bought their comrades the time to make an orderly retreat, but in the last ten days of the spring 1813 campaign they actually achieved much more than this. What Napoleon saw of the allies was a far superior enemy cavalry and imperturbable Russian rearguards like those whom he had pursued all the way to Moscow in the previous year without achieving anything. He would have been less than human had he not shuddered at renewing the same game with the very inferior cavalry he possessed in May 1813. What the allied rearguard hid totally from him were the deep dissensions and potential confusion affecting allied headquarters at this time.

  The dissension above all stemmed from the fact that the allies were facing very difficult strategic dilemmas. If Austrian intervention was indeed imminent the priority should probably be to hug the Silesian border with Bohemia and prepare to link up with the invading Habsburg forces. If Austrian help was delayed or failed altogether, however, such a move could be fatal. The Prusso-Russian army could easily find itself outflanked from the east and trapped against a neutral border by Napoleon. At a minimum, attempting to remain near the Silesian–Bohemian border would make it difficult to feed the army for any length of time and would risk its communications back to Poland from where its supplies and reinforcements were coming.

  This was anathema to Barclay de Tolly, who replaced Wittgenstein as commander-in-chief on 29 May. Months of campaigning, added to Wittgenstein’s inept administration, had reduced the Russian army to a degree of confusion with corps, divisions and even regiments disordered and mutilated by detachments and special assignments. Wittgenstein did not even know where all his units were, let alone their numbers. By late May the men were also beginning to go hungry. Barclay’s solution to these problems was to retreat across the Oder into Poland in order to reorganize his army. He promised that this reorganization would be completed within six weeks. By retreating to their own supply bases the Russians’ problem of feeding the army and restoring its structure could quickly be solved. In addition, scores of thousands of reinforcements were now arriving in the theatre of operations. These included Fabian Osten-Sacken’s formidable divisions, packed with more veterans than any other corps apart from the Guards; Dmitrii Neverovsky’s excellent 27th division; Peter Pahlen’s cavalry; and tens of thousands of reserves formed in Russia over the winter of 1812–13. Thousands of men were about to return from hospital and needed a breathing space to be fitted back into their regiments.

  If Barclay’s solution made good sense in narrowly Russian military terms, however, it was political dynamite. For the Prussians it would have meant abandoning Silesia and allowing Napoleon to detach a number of corps to reconquer Berlin and Brandenburg. It would probably also have doomed Austrian intervention, certainly in the short run and perhaps for ever. On 31 May, after the news of Bautzen had reached Vienna, the Hanoverian envoy wrote that

  the fears of the emperor [i.e. Francis II] of a French invasion grow from day to day. Perhaps they are increased by anxiety lest the Russian emperor abandon the cause. People go as far as to fear that if the allies are pushed back to the Vistula, in a few months Bonaparte will be reinforced by the class of 1814 and will just leave an observation corps of 100,000 opposite the allies and will fall on Austria with the rest of his forces. To avoid this misfortune people are saying that Austria must move at top speed to get peace negotiations underway.

  For all Metternich’s fine words about Austrian policy not being affected by military events, Stadion was terrified by the impact on Austrian behaviour of the allied army retreating into Poland and he was entirely correct to be so.65

  Initially Alexander deferred to the Prussians and to the need to hug the Bohemian border and keep in close touch with the Austrians. The army was ordered to swing south, off the line of retreat to Poland, and to take up position near Schweidnitz and the old fortified position at Bunzelwitz where Frederick II had defied the Austrians in the Seven Years War. On the Prussians’ advice Alexander believed that, if necessary, the allies could fight Napoleon there on favourable ground. On arrival, however, it quickly became clear that the local authorities had done nothing to execute Frederick William’s orders to rebuild the old defences and that the only favourable ground in the neighbourhood could not be held by a force of 100,000 men. The Silesian Landwehr, which was supposed to be present in force to reinforce the army, was nowhere to be found. In addition, difficulties in feeding the troops soon became acute.66

  The basic reason for this was, as already noted, that Upper Silesia depended even in peacetime for food supplies from Poland and could not suddenly accommodate the entire allied army, concentrated as it had to be with the enemy in the offing. Although Kutuzov, back in April, had begged Stein to create food magazines in eastern Saxony nothing had been done: this was just one part of Stein’s overall failure efficiently to mobilize Saxon resources while the allies occupied the kingdom. Barclay partly blamed Wittgenstein, pointedly noting in a letter to him that ‘when first taking over the supreme command of the armies and looking into the question of victualling, it became clear to me that no preparatory measures had been taken to secure food. While the troops were in the Duchy of Warsaw and Saxony earlier they were fed exclusively by requisitioning in the area where they were deployed or through which they were marching, and the requisitioning lasted only so long as they were there. Almost no reserve supplies were created anywhere in the rear for the army.’ Inevitably too, the intendant-general, Georg Kankrin, came in for criticism as the army began to go hungry. On 4 June he responded plaintively to Barclay by stating that the Prussians were providing almost nothing and on Prussian territory he could not requisition food or ‘exert any authority and no one asked me about the possibility of feeding the troops when the route to Schweidnitz was chosen’.67

  With the army going hungry, and the Austrian timetable for intervention visibly receding, a Russo-Prussian conference on 2 June backed a retreat towards the river Oder. Petr Volkonsky had already ordered the army’s treasury to be escorted back to Kalicz and for preparations to be made to destroy the bridges over the Oder once the army had passed. Meanwhile the Prussian leaders were in uproar as their campaign to liberate their country reached its nadir.

  General L’Estocq, the fierce military governor of Berlin, reported to Chancellor Hardenburg on 30 May that the French were heading for the Oder crossings ‘in order to p
ush on towards Poland and set off an insurrection there. The inconceivable level of tolerance shown in Warsaw has prepared the ground for this rather well.’ The attempt to turn Silesia into a new Spain and launch a mass insurrection against the invading French had proved a damp squib. Had it mobilized against the French, l’Estoq believed that the Landsturm (i.e. the ‘home guard’) might have absorbed the efforts of thousands of enemy soldiers. In fact it had done nothing. He commented that ‘the Silesian nobility want nothing to do with the Landsturm which easily explains why such miserable departures from duty and obedience happen’, adding that the commander of the Landsturm ‘must be charged as a traitor to the Fatherland and must immediately be shot’. Meanwhile at the conference of 2 June Blücher and Yorck argued that if the Russians retreated over the Oder the Prussian army must detach itself from them in order to defend what was left of Prussian territory.68

  In this week of supreme crisis, as his whole strategy threatened to fall apart, Alexander showed outstanding leadership. Amidst Austrian prevarication, Prussian hysteria and the griping of his own generals he remained admirably calm, reasonable and optimistic about final victory. As in September 1812 his calm courage was partly sustained by faith in God’s will and mercy. In late April he had taken a day out of the war to make an unannounced visit to the community of the Moravian brothers at Herrnhut, where he remained in deep conversation with the brothers for two hours and without an escort. His spirit had also been buoyed by the Easter services at Dresden, after which he wrote to Aleksandr Golitsyn that ‘it would be hard for me to express to you the emotion which I felt in thinking over everything that has happened during the past year and where Divine Providence has led us’.69

  Miraculously, Alexander’s optimism was to be rewarded, as Napoleon bowed to Austrian pleas and agreed to an armistice which would last until 20 July and be accompanied by peace negotiations. Faced with this option, Napoleon’s initial ploy had been to try to enter into negotiations directly with the Russians. Only when Alexander rejected this approach did Napoleon accept Austrian mediation and order his envoys to sign the armistice on 4 June. Subsequently he was to write that this was one of the worst decisions of his life.

  The reasons Napoleon gave at the time for his decision were the need to get his cavalry in order and to take preparations against possible Austrian intervention. He might have added other good reasons too. His troops were exhausted, sick lists were mounting alarmingly and would undoubtedly rise further if he plunged forward into Poland. As his communications lengthened, so too would their vulnerability to allied raiding parties. In fact on the eve of the armistice a large force under Aleksandr Chernyshev and Mikhail Vorontsov was on the point of seizing Leipzig, far in Napoleon’s rear, with its garrison and its vast stores. This was a reminder of the need to create fortified, secure bases for his future campaign. Nevertheless, good though all these reasons were, they did not outweigh the enormous advantages Napoleon would have gained by pressing on into Poland, dividing the Russians and Prussians, and terrifying the Austrians away from intervention. Napoleon’s subsequent self-criticism was correct. In all probability had he continued the spring 1813 campaign for just a few more weeks he could have secured a very favourable peace.

  Barclay could not believe his luck. He had asked for six weeks to restore his army and Napoleon had given it to him, without the need to risk a break with the Prussians or the Austrians, or indeed even to reorganize his corps in the midst of military operations. When Langeron heard the news of the armistice he ‘went to Barclay’s headquarters and he received me with a great burst of laughter: this explosion of happiness was by no means normal with Barclay. He was always cold, serious and severe in spirit and in his manner. The two of us laughed together at Napoleon’s expense. Barclay, all the generals and our monarchs were drunk with joy and they were right to be so.’70

  Rebuilding the Army

  During the truce of summer 1813 the Russian army was transformed. By the time the autumn campaign began it was not just rested, well fed and reorganized but also much larger than had been the case in May. To understand how this happened requires us to retrace our steps a little and to look at events behind the front lines. In part this means understanding the complicated process of raising, training and equipping the hundreds of thousands of conscripts who reinforced the field armies in 1812–14. Just moving these forces from the Russian heartland to German battlefields was a challenge. In the autumn of 1812 the main training area of the reserve armies was in Nizhnii Novgorod province, some 1,840 kilometres even from Russia’s frontier with the Duchy of Warsaw. The war ministry reckoned that it took fifteen weeks of marching to cover this distance.1

  Once in Poland and Germany, Russian armies had to be fed and supplied while operating a huge distance from their home bases. One way of putting this in perspective is to remember that more than half a million Russian soldiers served outside the empire’s borders in 1813– 14, and this in a Europe where only two cities had populations of more than 500,000. It is equally useful to recall Russia’s experience in the Seven Years War (1756–63), when Russian armies operated in the same German regions as in 1813. Their efforts were crucially undermined by the need to retreat eastwards hundreds of kilometres every autumn because they could not supply themselves on Prussian soil. For the Russians in 1813–14, to defeat Napoleon was only half the problem. Getting large armies to the battlefield in a state to fight him was as great a challenge and an achievement.2

  In accordance with Barclay de Tolly’s January 1812 law on the field armies, as Russian troops advanced westwards a network of military roads spread across eastern and central Europe. It began well within the Russian Empire and stretched all the way to the front lines. Down these roads travelled the great majority of the reinforcements, ammunition and other supplies which kept the Russian army strong and in the field. At regular intervals along these roads food depots and hospitals were set up, and town commandants appointed. These commandants had detachments of up to 100 Bashkir and Kalmyk cavalry at their disposal, who if properly supervised were formidable military police. The commandant’s job was to make sure that roads and bridges were in good repair, and hospitals and depots properly supplied and administered. He registered the arrival and departure of all units on his stretch of road, reporting all movements to headquarters every ten days. The military roads made it much easier to ensure that troops en route to the front line were properly watched over, fed and cared for. The system was also a disincentive to desertion or marauding.3

  The January 1812 (OS) army law also set out in some detail how Russian soldiers were to be supplied and fed when serving abroad. A sharp distinction was made between operating on the territory of allies, where all such matters were regulated by treaties between the states involved, and campaigning on enemy soil. The law made no allowance for neutrals: their territory should be treated in the same way as that of enemies. On hostile or neutral territory the army must supply itself from the land by requisition. Its day-to-day upkeep must not be the responsibility of the Russian treasury. Requisitioning should be carried out in orderly fashion, however, in order to preserve the troops’ discipline and protect the local population and economy. Wherever possible this must be done through the local administration, overseen by officials of the army’s intendancy. The intendant-general of the field army was ex officio to be the governor-general of all occupied territory and all officials were bound to obey his orders under threat of severe penalties for disobedience. Receipts were to be given for all food and materials requisitioned in order to prevent disorder and allow the local authorities to equalize burdens by repaying the holders of these receipts from their tax revenues.4

  In the first half of 1813 Russian armies operated above all in Prussia and Poland. Well before the alliance with Frederick William was signed Alexander had agreed to pay for food requisitioned in Prussia. One-fifth of the value was to be paid immediately in Russian paper rubles, the rest subsequently in return for receipts. The instiga
tor of this policy was Stein, who argued for it on political grounds and because it made no sense to ruin the population of a future ally, all of whose meagre resources would soon be needed for the war effort. This concession to the Prussians was never repeated when Russian troops were campaigning on Saxon and French territory.5

  Immediately after the Russo-Prussian treaty of alliance was signed, the two governments came to an agreement on the upkeep of Russian forces operating on Prussian territory. Prussian commissars attached to Russian corps would requisition the necessary food in return for receipts. The commissars would then either arrange for food to be supplied from stores or for troops to be quartered on the population. The terms of repayment for the overall upkeep of the Russian forces on Prussian soil were generous. Food prices were calculated on a six-month average across the whole of Prussia, not at the hugely inflated rates of the districts in which masses of troops were actually operating. Three-eighths of the cost was to be covered by shipping grain from Russia to the Prussian ports, which the Russians were intending to do anyway for their own army. A further three-eighths would be in receipts, repayable after the end of the war. The final two-eighths was to be paid in paper rubles. Completely avoided was any requirement for the Russians to part with scarce silver and gold coin.6