Napoleon’s army entered into the desolation of a city levelled by fire, with mounds of charred and slaughtered corpses alongside the still smoking shells of wooden buildings. ‘You should remember the saying of one of the Roman Emperors, the corpse of an enemy always smells good,’ he remarked grimly. He rode across the city to gaze across the Dnieper at the St Petersburg suburb, only to see that the Russians had already evacuated that too. The French made a half-hearted attempt to pursue them. But Napoleon was content to remain a week in the smouldering ruins of Smolensk, a city which now could offer no shelter or sustenance and only a handful of intact buildings for use as hospitals.
Napoleon was again faced with a fateful choice: to call a halt to his advance or to press on; once more the Russians had escaped more or less intact and a decisive victory had eluded the Emperor. It seems that Napoleon was more determined at Smolensk than at Vitebsk, although he was later to say that the decision to press on from Smolensk was the greatest mistake in his life. Moscow was some 200 miles away and offered an irresistible target: the Russians, Napoleon believed, were sure to fight to save their capital. Napoleon was also afraid that the Russians would be able to recruit new forces if he delayed, and that even the Austrians and the Prussians might join in on the Russian side if he failed to inflict a decisive defeat upon them.
Virtually all of Napoleon’s top commanders disagreed: while the Grande Armée had been reduced to 125,000 infantry, 32,000 cavalry and under 600 guns, the French risked further extending their supply lines in order to fight a difficult battle before Moscow. Napoleon brushed aside their fears: ‘We have gone too far to turn back. Peace is in front of us; we are but ten days’ march from it; so near the goal, there is nothing more to consider. Let us march on Moscow!’ In fact there was logic to Napoleon’s position, given the distance he had already travelled into the Russian heartland: what were a couple of hundred miles more?
Yet it was the same logic that had precipitated the whole disastrous Russian adventure: the need to maintain the myth of French invincibility, of Napoleon’s ability to vanquish any foe on which Europe’s subjugation depended. Napoleon had become the prisoner of his own mythology. If he had wintered in Smolensk – although he might have had trouble securing the necessary supplies to do so safely and would have had to build proper shelters – he might have avoided the terrible debacle that was to follow. If he had stayed in Vitebsk, he would certainly have done so. But he now believed the only chance of success was to inflict a decisive defeat on Moscow.
On 25 August 1812, under a burning sun in searing heat and choking dust, with supplies already so scarce that the men were forced to drink their horses’ urine, the Grande Armée marched forward to its doom. They reached the small town of Viasma a hundred miles further on: its 15,000 men had been driven out and the town burnt down by the retreating Russians: there was nothing to be had there.
They marched on forty miles to find the same desolate scene of flames and ruin at Gzhatsk. From there the French plodded onwards, haemorrhaging men at the appalling rate of 6,000 a day to disease, desertion and suicide in the torrid summer heat: indeed the Grande Armée lost more men on the advance to Moscow than it was to lose on the much more famous retreat: Napoleon himself, in a luxury carriage jolting along in the stifling heat, was suffering from a host of minor ailments and had lost his usual vigour.
On the Russian side, the constant sniping against the defensive and cautious policies of Barclay de Tolly finally made their mark. Alexander was forced to bow to the pressure of his senior officers to replace the dour, solitary general. But his rival Bagration was not the beneficiary: instead the job went to the failed Russian commander at Austerlitz. General Mikhail Kutuzov, now sixty-seven, was fat, pleasure-seeking, a noted philanderer with an idle streak, impatient with bureaucracy and prone to fall asleep at staff meetings. Kutuzov had enjoyed a remarkable rollercoaster career. He was nevertheless enormously shrewd. His greatest asset was that, being Russian and a disciple of the famous Suvorov, [who had rolled back Napoleon’s conquests in Italy after the latter’s departure for Egypt in 1797,] he was acceptable both to the Russian people and to senior officers.
He shared Barclay de Tolly’s sensible reluctance to do open battle. However, he had been given clear instructions to stand and fight – which would give Napoleon his chance at last. Kutuzov decided to make the stand which might determine the fate of Mother Russia at the small village of Borodino on the banks of the river Moskva just seventy-five miles west of Moscow. Inexplicably, he sent a force across the river to secure the Shevardino Redoubt in the face of the advancing French, believing it could be defended. This was promptly taken by the French at a cost of some 4,000 casualities and some 6,000 Russian losses.
The remaining army of Kutuzov was drawn up in a strong defensive position along hills straddling the Moscow–Smolensk road. The most heavily entrenched Russian force followed the line of the river Kalatsha, a tributary of the Moskva; the centre was based on Borodino; and the more weakly defended left was around the village of Semiovskaya. In the centre the Great Redoubt, a hill bristling with several hundred of the 640 Russian guns at the battle made a formidable defensive position. Further south were three entrenched defensive earthworks – the Bagration Flèches (arrows). Perhaps because of the strength of these, and also because Kutuzov believed Napoleon would attack in the centre along the road, he kept the bulk of his forces on the right and centre.
Napoleon, always contrary, chose to march his forces to his right flank and attack the centre and the south, forcing Kutuzov hastily to transfer troops from the north. After this, however, Napoleon’s strategy was an unimaginative frontal assault. He refused Davout’s request to stage a flanking movement further around the Russian left with 40,000 men. Napoleon was fearful this would take time and permit the Russians to escape as they had so often done before; and the terrain Devout’s forces would have to cross was broken and uneven.
Napoleon’s choice of a frontal attack seems to have been dictated by his near certainty that the Russians had inferior forces compared to his own: again he was a prisoner of his own propaganda. The armies were, in fact, evenly matched, with some 120,000 Russian men against 130,000 French and about 600 guns on the French side to the Russians’ 640. Napoleon badly underestimated the fighting spirit of the Russians, believing that a direct assault would quickly break them. Throughout the night preceding the battle – that of 6 September – he repeatedly awoke to check that the Russians had not slipped away as they had on so many previous occasions. Here at last was his chance to inflict a decisive defeat, which would threaten Moscow and bring the recalcitrant Tsar to the negotiating table.
The following morning Napoleon issued his proclamation as he at last joined battle with his elusive foe:
Soldiers, here at last is the battle that you have so long expected! Victory now depends on your efforts, and is essential. It will give us abundance, good winter quarters, and a speedy return to our country. Do what you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Vitebsk, at Smolensk, and let posterity point with pride to your conduct on this day: let people say of you: ‘He was at that great battle fought under the walls of Moscow!’ The battle of Borodino is the most glorious, most difficult, and most creditable operation of war carried out by the Gauls, of which either ancient or modern history makes mention. Dauntless heroes, – Murat, Ney, Poniatowski, – it is to you the glory is due! What great, what splendid deeds History might place on record! How our intrepid cuirassiers charged and sabred the gunners on their guns; the heroic devotion of Montbrun, who found death in the midst of their glory; our gunners, in the open and without cover, firing against a heavier artillery protected by earthworks; and our brave infantry, at the most critical moment, not in need of their general’s steadying voice, but calling out to him: ‘It’s all right! Your soldiers have sworn they will conquer, and they will!’
Borodino has, in fact, entered history as an unimaginative slugfest of two almost evenly matched armies confronti
ng each other frontally and inflicting huge casualties upon one another. Both Kutuzov, and more surprisingly Napoleon, remained a mile behind their respective lines at the village of Gorky and in the captured Shevardino Redoubt respectively. Certainly Napoleon’s old spark appeared to be missing. Yet it was much more decisive than it appeared: although the Russians are said to have lost, in fact they won. Napoleon’s objective was to inflict a colossal and shattering defeat on the Russians of the kind he had craved ever since he had entered that forbidding country; the stakes were thus much higher for him. The Russian objective was simply to deny him that victory.
At dawn on 7 September a hundred French guns initiated the battle with a tremendous barrage against the Russian centre. After this softening up, Ney’s infantry were ordered into action against the Bagration Flèches and Eugène de Beauharnais against the Russian centre. At first the ferocity of the French assault carried all before it: De Beauharnais took Borodino after fierce fighting, while Ney, supported by Murat and Davout, captured the Flèches but then was pushed back. At around 10 a.m., Poniatoski’s Polish cavalry attacked the centre, threatening a breakthrough that would cut the Russian line in two. The Great Redoubt was also captured in a brave and unsupported attack by General Morand; the Russians counter-attacked and retook it, but only after major casualties. Bagration himself was mortally wounded, and it seemed that the French were about to secure the decisive victory they had craved.
Napoleon from his comfortable and far-off vantage point could be well satisfied. But the Russians now staged a superb cavalry attack, outflanking the French left, which for a time diverted them into easing the pressure on the Great Redoubt. Ney, Davout and Murat sent an urgent emissary to Napoleon, who could not see the battle, demanding that he send in the Imperial Guard. But Napoleon refused to give the order. The emissary found him seated, his features sunken and dull-looking, giving orders weakly ‘in the midst of these dreadful warlike noises, to which he seemed a complete stranger!’ At this account, which was communicated to Ney, the latter – furious and carried away by his passionate and impetuous nature – exclaimed,
What business has the Emperor in the rear of the army? There, he is only within reach of reverses and not of victory. Since he will no longer make war himself, since he is no longer the general, as he wishes to be Emperor everywhere, let him return to the Tuileries and leave us to be generals for him!
Murat was more calm. He recalled having seen the Emperor the day before, as he was riding along observing part of the enemy’s line, halt several times, dismount and with his head resting upon a cannon, remain there some time in an attitude of suffering. He knew what a restless night he had passed and that a violent and incessant cough cut short his breathing. Murat guessed that fatigue had shaken his weakened frame and that at that critical moment, the action of his genius was in a sense chained down by his body; which had sunk under the triple load of fatigue, fever and a malady which, probably more than any other, drains the moral and physical strength of its victims.
Napoleon remarked lamely. ‘And if there should be another battle tomorrow, with what is my army to fight?’ This was a changed man from the bold risk-taker of the past.
It was not until 3 p.m. that de Beauharnais sent Caulaincourt in with his cuirassiers in a final attempt to carry the Great Redoubt and its eighty murderous cannon ‘bristling with iron and flames’. Caulaincourt rode in declaring: ‘You shall see me there presently alive or dead.’ He was as good as his word. His charge was successful and at last spiked the guns, but he was killed by a musket bullet.
After a further cavalry and infantry attack to retake the redoubt, the Russian line was broken at last. But to the astonishment of the French the Russians simply withdrew to another line of hills overlooking the former position and their guns renewed their ceaseless barrage against the French, who were forced to take shelter in the Russian defences they had captured. Napoleon at last deigned to come forward and inspect the battlefield, and to tell Ney and Murat, both impatient to renew the attack, that it was too late to continue the battle. He remained, according to Ségur, in a state of ‘great mental anguish added to his previous physical dejection’.
During the night, Kutuzov’s army stole away from its new positions, unhindered by the exhausted French. The following day Napoleon rode over the field of battle. Ségur described what met his gaze:
Never did one present so horrible an appearance. Everything concurred to make it so: a gloomy sky, a cold rain, a violent wind; houses burnt to ashes, a plain turned topsy-turvy, covered with ruins and rubbish, and in the distance the sad, sombre trees of the north; soldiers roaming about in all directions, hunting for provisions, even in the haversacks of their dead comrades; horrible wounds (for the Russian musket balls are larger than ours), silent bivouacs, no singing or storytelling. Around the eagles were seen the remaining officers, subalterns and a few soldiers: scarcely enough to protect the colours. Their clothes had been torn in the fury of the combat, blackened with powder and spotted with blood; and yet, in the midst of their rags, their misery and disasters, they had a proud look; and at the sight of the Emperor uttered some shouts of triumph: but they were rare and forced. For in this army, capable at once of reason and enthusiasm, everyone was sensible of the position of all.
As he passed, some suffering men begged to be put to death, but Napoleon’s entourage did not answer their pleas. A man with just his torso and a single arm remaining was rescued, such was his state of animation, hope and even gaiety, although complaining of feeling pain in limbs no longer possessed.
The battle had been the bloodiest so far in all the sanguinary history of Napoleon’s wars – some 60,000 killed on the Russian side, some 40,000 on the French. The French had fired some 2 million cartridges and 90,000 artillery rounds. It was slaughter on a mass scale never before experienced in military history, a presage of the terrible fighting of the First World War just over a century later. Kutuzov declared he had won a victory. Napoleon, ailing and anguished, did likewise. Yet, although he had been driven from the field, Kutuzov was the real victor: Napoleon had been denied the decisive victory he sought because the Russians had been prepared to die in their thousands for their homeland, although they were inferior fighters to the French.
Some 60,000 Russians had escaped to provide the nucleus of a new army. Already battered in the Iberian Peninsula – where Wellington had just won the spectacular battle of Salamanca – the mystique of French invincibility was fast disappearing: and at Borodino the French had been commanded by the Emperor himself – if that is the right description for his listless issuing of orders from well behind the front line. That Russia’s infamous ‘army of barbarians’ had been able to resist an army which had scored such great victories against the formidable armies of Austria and Prussia was another humiliation.
Chapter 78
MOSCOW BURNS
On 13 September 1812 the battered but still formidable Russian army reached Moscow. At a desperate council of war Kutuzov took the unimaginable step – with Barclay de Tolly’s support – of ordering that Moscow be abandoned: another battle could not be fought, the city could not be defended, the army must be preserved to fight for the Russian heartland. The Russians were far from satisfied with their performance at Borodino: they considered themselves defeated, but must fight on.
After a tearful intervention, the old soldier got his way. The Tsar declared: ‘We would rather perish under the ruins than make peace with the modern Attila.’ Early the following morning the Russian troops, many openly weeping, marched out of Moscow, their banners furled, along with much of the civilian population.
The same afternoon the Grande Armée, which had just crossed the sandy desert wastes near Mojaisk, a further geographical obstacle which took Napoleon and his entourage by surprise so close to ‘one of the great capitals of the world’, arrived outside that capital. It was an incredible spectacle, a dream come true; it was, like arriving before one of the fabled cities of the east in some
oriental epic: at long last the sufferings of the troops in that interminable summer march through rain, heat and misery across desert, mud and grass steppe seemed vindicated.
The Napoleonic army had captured one of the greatest cities of the east, with a population of 250,000, and its onion domes, turrets, minarets, fabulous palaces and medieval winding streets between picturesque wooden houses. Ségur wrote vividly: ‘It was two o’clock. The sun caused this great city to glisten with a thousand colours. Struck with astonishment at the sight, they paused, exclaiming “Moscow! Moscow!” Everyone quickened his pace; the troops hurried on in disorder and the whole army, clapping their hands, repeated with joy, “Moscow! Moscow!” just as sailors shout “Land! Land!” at the end of a long and wearisome voyage.’ The Emperor rode down to the Dorogomilov Gate to accept the city’s surrender. But instead of a deputation of dignitaries, there was only an old man who offered to show him the sights.
Impatiently he sent Murat into the city. The latter, strong, dashing and fearless, was wearing a magnificent hat surmounted by ostrich feathers and a blue tunic with a scarlet pelisse made of velvet and fur, as well as red breeches and yellow boots. He galloped past lines of Russian Cossacks who cheered him, and struck a deal with the commander of the departing Russian troops to grant the latter safe conduct in exchange for a peaceful surrender of the city.
Napoleon, disappointed to find the city largely deserted, did not make his formal entrance until next day, when he entered the Kremlin, the great, medieval and renaissance palace of Ivan the Terrible. ‘At last I am in Moscow in the ancient palace of the Tsars, in the Kremlin.’ He issued peace proposals to the Tsar. He appointed Marshal Mortier governor of the city with the stern injunction: ‘No pillage.’ A wonderfully beautiful medieval city of wooden houses and fabulous churches had fallen into his hands. He was the conqueror, the man who could subdue the world, an almost godlike figure. Yet there was an eerie emptiness about the deserted city, a feeling that something was not quite right, that the victory was a hollow one.
The War of Wars Page 84