The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  There followed surely the most apocalyptically symbolic event in the whole of Napoleon’s terrible and awesome career of bloodshed, destruction, plunder and inflicted suffering, a window opened into hell itself, the sudden snatching of his great prize and its reduction to ashes before him. Not until the fall of Berlin a century later and of the bombing of Tokyo was such damage to be wrought to a great capital, such vandalism upon a thousand years of history.

  Even as Napoleon occupied the Kremlin, fires had been discovered in a number of houses. The French authorities tried to put them out but discovered that all fire-fighting equipment had been deliberately withdrawn by the departing Russians. What they did not know was that the departing governor of Moscow, Count Feodor Rostopchin, almost certainly acting on the Tsar’s direct orders, had left instructions to Russian police officers remaining in the capital, as well as professional incendiaries, many of them recently released from gaol, systematically to start fires throughout the Russian capital.

  Initially, the French feared that their own drunken soldiers might be responsible for the arson. Then there were eyewitness reports of these professional fire-raisers, of the police stirring the flames with tarred lances, of howitzer shells being used to start conflagrations. The night after Napoleon arrived in the Kremlin, a string of elegant palaces caught fire, with the north wind driving the flames and sparks towards the Kremlin, which contained a huge cache of gunpowder. As dawn broke it was over a city bathed in flames and covered in dense columns of smoke.

  Napoleon, now awake, was in a state of manic agitation. He exclaimed feverishly: ‘What a tremendous spectacle! It is their own work! So many palaces! What extraordinary resolution! What men! These are indeed Scythians!’ As he watched, the fires spread and crept even closer. Thousands of French soldiers began to stream out of the city while others were trapped and perished in the flames. Murat and de Beauharnais went to the Kremlin to urge the Emperor to leave. He refused to abandon the symbol of his conquest, the bejewelled and dazzling city that had been his hard-won prize and which was now being devoured by the flames before his eyes.

  Soon it was reported that the Kremlin itself was on fire: it had been set alight in the tower which contained the arsenal by a policeman who was brought before Napoleon. He was promptly hauled off to be bayoneted: the order went out to shoot all incendiaries on sight. Napoleon at last decided to leave – too late, it seemed.

  Ségur took up the story of how the Emperor himself nearly suffered the terrible fate of being consumed by the flames in the doomed capital.

  We were encircled by a sea of fire which blocked up all the gates of the citadel and frustrated the first attempts that were made to depart. After some searching, we discovered a postern gate leading between the rocks to the Moskva. It was by this narrow passage that Napoleon, his officers and Guard, escaped from the Kremlin. But what had they gained by this movement? They had approached nearer to the fire and could neither retreat nor remain where they were; and how were they to advance? How force a passage through the waves of this ocean of flame? Those who had crossed the city, stunned by the tempest and blinded by the ashes, could not find their way, since the streets themselves were no longer distinguishable amidst smoke and ruins.

  There was no time to be lost. The roaring of the flames around us became every moment more violent. A single narrow street, completely on fire, appeared to be rather the entrance than the exit to this hell. The Emperor rushed on foot without hesitation into this winding passage. He advanced amid the crackling of the flames, the crash of floors and the fall of burning timbers which tumbled around him. These ruins impeded his progress. The flames, which with a wild bellow consumed the buildings between which we were proceeding, spreading beyond the walls, were blown about by the wind and formed an arch over our heads.

  We walked on a ground of fire, beneath a fiery sky and between two walls of fire. The intense heat burned our eyes, which we were nevertheless obliged to keep open and fixed on the danger. A consuming atmosphere parched our throats and rendered our breathing short and dry; and we were already almost suffocated by the smoke. Our hands were burned, either in attempting to protect our faces from the heat, or in brushing off the sparks which every moment covered and penetrated our clothes.

  In this inexpressible distress and when a rapid advance seemed to be our only means of safety, our guide stopped in uncertainty and agitation. Here would probably have ended our adventurous career, had not some pillagers of I Corps recognized the Emperor amidst the whirling flames: they ran up and guided him towards the smoking ruins of a quarter which had been reduced to ashes in the morning. Reaching safety at last, Napoleon gazed out over the Sodom destroyed not by act of God but by the deliberate act of one man – the very Russian Emperor whose capital it had been. ‘The whole city appeared like a vast spume of fire rising in whistling eddies to the sky which it deeply coloured . . . This forebodes great misfortune to us,’ he proclaimed, observing this biblical scene. He declared with a typically grandiose flourish that he would now march on St Petersburg – which was utterly impractical for his reduced, exhausted army, now denied the comforts and shelter of Moscow.

  Napoleon desperately wrote a conciliatory letter to Alexander.

  Monsieur Mon Frère:

  The beautiful and splendid city of Moscow no longer exists. Rostopchin has burnt it down. Four hundred incendiaries have been caught in the act; all declared they were starting fires by order of the governor and of the chief of police: they were shot. The fire seems to have died out at last; three quarters of the houses have gone, a quarter remains. Such conduct is atrocious and aimless. Was the object to deprive us of a few resources? Well, those resources were in cellars that the fire did not reach. Even then the destruction of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the work of centuries, for so slight an object, is inconceivable. If I supposed that such things were being done under the orders of Your Majesty, I should not write this letter; but I hold it impossible that any one with the high principles of Your Majesty, such heart, such right feelings, could have authorized these excesses, unworthy as they are of a great nation. I have conducted the war against Your Majesty with no animosity. A line written to me before or after the last battle would have stopped my march, and I would gladly have foregone the advantage of entering Moscow. If anything of our old friendship remains, Your Majesty will take this letter in good part. In any case I shall deserve thanks for rendering this account of what is happening in Moscow.

  In that terrible act of self-immolation, the destruction of his own capital and the nation’s heritage, the Tsar had turned the tables. Contemptuously he declined to answer. The cold young man with the psychopathic personality would offer Napoleon no hope of peace: the self-destruction of Moscow had been his answer. Truly, the Frenchman was helpless against such an enemy as this.

  Napoleon was left facing an appalling dilemma. He could hardly move on into the vast interior of Russia without endangering his army – and what anyway would be the objective – another city, another pile of ashes, another retreating Russian army? But with much of Moscow in ruins and deserted, there was soon likely to be a severe shortage of horses and such supplies as winter clothing for his men, although there was some food. Daru advised that he should stay in Moscow. Napoleon replied:

  Remain here, make one vast entrenched camp of Moscow and pass the winter in it. Here we might stay till the return of spring, when our reinforcements and all Lithuania in arms should come to relieve us and complete the conquest. This is a lion’s counsel! But what would Paris say? What would they do there? What have they been doing for the last three weeks that they have not heard from me? Who knows what would be the effect of a suspension of communications for six months? No: France would not accustom itself to my absence and Prussia and Austria would take advantage of it.

  It was in fact his main concern that his absence from Paris would encourage his enemies there to move against him, both within and without France. Daru’s counsel was hop
elessly unrealistic.

  The man of decision, Napoleon, did nothing: he was thrown into a miasma of indecision. With every passing day the predicament of Napoleon’s shrunken army amid the ruins of Moscow grew more precarious. To do nothing was not a neutral option: it was further to endanger his men.

  His scant lines of communication, back to Smolensk were threatened by the emergence of peasant guerrillas who visited Peninsular-style atrocities upon the French soldiers they caught along the road: eventually Napoleon ordered that the French could only move in force – a minimum of some 1,500 men – along that highway of death. Napoleon sought a guarantee from Kutuzov to desist from this barbaric method of warfare; he was rebuffed: ‘It is difficult to control a people who for three hundred years have never known war within their frontiers, who are ready to immolate themselves for their country, and who are not susceptible to the distinction between what is and what is not the usage of civilized warfare.’ Meanwhile Napoleon sent foraging expeditions southwards to provide for the army camped miserably in blackened Moscow, which was still burning. When the men set out in small groups, they were attacked by peasants. The Russians set fire to whole villages to deny them provisions.

  Worst of all, Kutuzov was busily reinforcing his army. His 70,000-strong force was swollen to some 215,000 men by the soldiers of General Wittgenstein, recently reinforced from Finland, and by other troops from the south. Moscow was turning into a gigantic trap while Napoleon dithered. If Napoleon’s army stayed much longer, it would be faced with slow starvation, complete encirclement and isolation from outside, dwindling as his men were picked off and eventually facing a far larger force than his own. Daru’s counsel had indeed been madness.

  Napoleon’s best option after the burning of the city would have been to declare he had won a great victory by capturing the capital and to retire to winter quarters at Vitebsk, or perhaps across the Prussian border, declaring his honour satisfied, his troops undefeated and continuing to threaten Russia with a renewed offensive by a much strengthened French army the following spring. But having come so far and been deprived of the object of his dreams, Napoleon was now prey to delusions and indecision – the latter entirely untypical of him. He could not bear to abandon his charred and ruined prize, the pile of ashes that were all that remained of his triumph.

  The surreal atmosphere of burned-out Moscow seemed to turn his mind. Ségur wrote:

  Scarcely a third of his army – and of that capital – now existed. But himself and the Kremlin were still standing. His renown was still intact and he persuaded himself that those two great names, Napoleon and Moscow combined, would be sufficient to accomplish everything. He determined, therefore, to return to the Kremlin, which a battalion of his Guard had unfortunately preserved. The camps which he crossed on his way there presented an extraordinary sight. In the fields, amidst thick and cold mud, large fires were kept up with mahogany furniture, windows and gilded doors. Around these fires, on a damp straw, imperfectly sheltered by a few boards, were seen the soldiers and their officers, splashed all over with mud and blackened with smoke, seated in armchairs or reclined on silken couches. At their feet were spread or heaped cashmere shawls, the rarest furs of Siberia, the gold stuffs of Persia and silver dishes, off which they had nothing to eat but a black dough baked in the ashes and half-broiled and bloody horseflesh. A singular assemblage of abundance and want, of riches and filth, of luxury and wretchedness!

  Amid this wreckage, Napoleon wrapped himself in false hopes. The destruction of Moscow, he said ‘is no doubt a misfortune . . . But this misfortune is not without advantage. They have left us nothing but ruins, but at least we are quiet among them. Millions have no doubt slipped through our hands but how many thousand millions is Russia losing! Her commerce is ruined for a century to come. The nation is thrown back fifty years: this, of itself, is an important result. When the first moment of enthusiasm is passed, this reflection will fill them with consternation.’ He alternated between ferocious and undignified outbursts of temper in front of his troops, sleepless nights in which he unburdened himself to his faithful Davout, huge meals, reading novels in a reclining position, and playing cards with the reliable de Beauharnais.

  He despatched an envoy, Jacques-Alexandre Lauriston, to Alexander, with a litany of despair in his instructions: ‘I want peace, I must have peace, I absolutely will have peace – only save my honour.’ Kutuzov met Lauriston but refused to permit him to travel to St Petersburg to deliver the message to the Tsar. A Russian emissary took the message instead.

  Alexander’s contemptuous response was: ‘Peace? My campaign is just beginning.’ He did not trouble to reply. Alexander explained his view: ‘Let us vow redoubled courage and perseverance! The enemy is in deserted Moscow as in a tomb, without means of domination or even of existence. He entered Russia with 300,000 men of all countries, without union or any national or religious bond; he has lost half of them by the sword, famine and desertion: he has but the wreck of his army at Moscow. He is in the heart of Russia and not a single Russian is at his feet!’

  The same hand that had burnt down his own capital city showed no inclination to display the slightest weakness towards his opponent. Napoleon lingered in Moscow for five fateful weeks, in a miasma of indecision, depression and wishful thinking, waiting for Alexander’s reply which never came, while his enemies reinforced themselves around Moscow and the Russian winter inexorably approached.

  In the event, this long and needless delay was to decide the fate of his men. The master of instant decisions and lightning manoeuvres was behaving like a befuddled old woman in the grip of hubris, unreality, uncertainty and fear. At times listless and inert, Napoleon seemed a spent force, the victim not the master of events. This was to change. But for the moment, the illusions of this conqueror of a city of ashes, this lord of the flies, were shattered.

  Chapter 79

  GENERAL WINTER

  On 18 October, Murat, in command of the French forces probing south of Moscow for food under an armistice agreement, was shot at by a Cossack. Murat promptly abrogated the armistice, then realized that his men were dangerously exposed with the Cossacks to the left moving around them to cut them off. Attacking frontally and then engaging in a forced march to his rear, Murat nearly lost his force and 4,000 of his men were killed or wounded. Murat himself was wounded, Two generals perished and twelve cannon were taken. Murat rallied his forces and, with Poniatowski’s cavalry coming to the rescue, the remainder of his men were saved. Hostilities had broken out again.

  At last the inert Emperor realized that his position in Moscow was no longer tenable. He departed from the city the following day, ordering the rest of his army to follow and leaving behind Mortier with 200,000 pounds of gunpowder and orders to blow up the Kremlin. Following him there were 140,000 men and 50,000 horses, some 220 cannon and 2,000 wagons. It was, in Ségur’s words, ‘a caravan, a wandering nation or rather one of the armies of antiquity returning loaded with slaves and spoil after a great devastation’. The army was equipped with vast quantities of useless booty, dressed in splendid furs and fabrics, and already extremely ill-disciplined; yet it was a massive body of men and still a formidable fighting force. It boasted of having taken the enemy’s capital and won a major battle. It was far from demoralized. It had no idea of the terrible fate that awaited, the horrors to come.

  The retreat from Moscow had started. Deciding neither to stay in Moscow nor to march on St Petersburg, Napoleon had in fact belatedly decided on the right course of action – to march down to Kaluga a hundred miles further south in the rich heartland of Russia, which would allow him to circle westwards, plundering across prosperous territory towards Poland. It was to be a retreat, but one in which the army could sensibly reprovision itself and prepare for another campaign in the spring. This was also a strategy of some boldness, even representing an advance into Russia rather than a retreat.

  Kutuzov’s army, having marched eastwards on its withdrawal from Moscow had circled south a
nd to the west, presumably to block a French march into these fertile areas. Napoleon was moving to confront him head on, thus recovering some of the Grande Armée’s tarnished glory. Napoleon’s real intention was to bypass Kutuzov’s base at Tarutino and enter the fertile region. If this move had succeeded the Grande Armée might have been reinvigorated and moved more or less intact back to the west to fight another day against the Russians. It was the right policy, the only possible exit from the colossal debacle of the burning of Moscow.

  Heavy rains soon began to bog the French down. Much worse, Napoleon had failed to take the elementary precaution of sending forward a force to seize the one key bridge on his route south – that at the small, nondescript town of Maloyaroslavets, which commanded the vital river crossing over the Luzha. Although few have ever heard that mouthful of a name, it was to prove a far more decisive turning point than the huge and indecisive Battle of Borodino or the burning of Moscow itself: for it marked the point of no return for the French, the moment when the invasion of Russia turned from being a victory on points or at least a draw, to the most terrible, protracted defeat ever suffered by a great army. After Maloyaroslavets, a French victory was no longer possible, defeat inevitable.

  Napoleon’s army was discovered by General Docturev, one of Kutuzov’s aides, by accident. He marched through the night to seize the little timber-framed town with a view to destroying the bridge, and there found a tiny French advance detachment on 23 October. The fighting between the two small forces was vicious, with the town being burnt to the ground and exchanging hands no fewer than seven times that day. The heroes of the day were undoubtedly the Italians under Colonel Perladi, loyal to de Beauharnais, who with around 18,000 men stormed a Russian position overlooking the town manned by 50,000. Some 4,000 Italians were killed or wounded, but they were eventually triumphant.