The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  It was no easy task to produce sufficient men to meet the massive new requirements, but every possible expedient was resorted to. Of course, the fact that two and a half years of comparative peace ensued from October 1809 to June 1812 (apart, of course, from the Peninsular struggle) proved of considerable assistance, providing a fair time for the raising and training of more classes of conscripts, the reorganization of old formations* and the arming of new allies. To cite one example, Bessières was ordered, in August 1810, to create a reserve of a hundred battalions for the Imperial Guard, which for the first time was made into a completely self-contained formation. By 1812, this enlargement had made no less than 50,000 Guardsmen available for the Army of Russia; Napoleon’s corps d’élite had never been more imposing.

  The Emperor organized this mass of manpower into three lines. Into the first he collected some 449,000 soldiers, forming a group of three armies destined to be the spearhead of the invasion. The principal army, under his own command, consisted of almost a quarter of a million troops, gathered into two cavalry corps (commanded by the King of Naples), the Imperial Guard and three corps d’armée of varying sizes, led by Davout, Oudinot and Ney. The number of men in these formations ranged from 72,000 (Davout’s 1st Corps) to 37,000 (Oudinot’s IInd Corps), according to the Emperor’s estimates of their commanders’ capabilities. This army contained the greater number of native-born French soldiers, but a handful of allied formations were included with a view to relieving the best troops of such chores as escort duty and line of communication guarding. Napoleon had occasion to send a mild rebuke to Davout on June 15, 1812, for neglecting to comply with this intention: “You have for escort duties the troops of Mecklenburg and other German forces. You should not therefore give these duties to French troops, frittering them away. It appears to me that you are not following this system closely enough, but it is important.”7

  Next, to guard the flanks and rear of the main force, Napoleon created two auxiliary armies and two semiautonomous corps, predominantly made up of allied soldiers. In addition to flanking duties, Napoleon intended to use these armies for mounting feint attacks when the main campaign was underway.* The first auxiliary army was entrusted to his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, with 80,000 Italians and Bavarians under his command. The second was given to Napoleon’s brother, King Jerome, and consisted of rather more than 70,000 Westphalians, Saxons, Hessians and Poles. The selection of these commanders has earned some justifiable criticism. Anxious to avoid jealousies among his marshals, Napoleon seems to have been determined that the highest positions in his forces should be held by members of the Imperial family, heedless of their proven military ability. Jerome, for example, had never shone as a general; Eugène had proved reasonably competent in 1809, but little more. However, to allow for their relative inexperience, Napoleon appointed two carefully chosen Chiefs of Staff—Desolles for Eugène, Marchand for Jerome. He hoped that these experienced generals would keep their highly connected masters on the right track. The extreme flanks of the Grande Armée were to be guarded by two semiautonomous formations—Macdonald’s Xth Corps (32,500) on the left (on the Baltic side) and Prince Schwarzenberg’s Austrian Corps (34,000) on the right.

  The troops placed in the second line amounted to 165,000 men, intended primarily as a source of replacements for the three chief armies already described. These reserves were organized into a number of formations, the largest being Marshal Victor’s IXth Corps (33,000); in addition there were two French divisions (part of the XIth Corps), a large number of Polish and Lithuanian levies and more German troops. Finally, in the third line, Napoleon organized an ultimate reserve of 60,000 men, including the rest of the XIth Corps under the command of Marshal Augereau, the garrisons left at Danzig and along the Vistula and various other rear formations. In addition, the King of Denmark was desired to place 10,000 troops in Holstein.

  For the defense of the Empire, which would be practically denuded of regular troops by this massed exodus to the east, the Emperor ordered the minister of war to register all the remaining males in France into one of three bans, according to age. The premier ban (all men aged between 20 and 26) was to be mobilized without delay and formed into 100 cohortes totaling 80,000 men. To these would be added, for the purposes of home defense, the two regiments of the Young Guard left in France, 24 line and 8 foreign battalions, eight squadrons of cavalry and 48 artillery batteries besides the 156 assorted depot battalions and the various forces guarding the coast—douaniers, the coast guard and the National Guard regiments.

  All in all, the formations put under marching orders for the Russian campaign comprised the largest army Europe had seen for many centuries. Size alone was not everything, however, for in terms of quality there were important limitations. Although its higher organization was superior to that of any other European force at the time, the new Grande Armée de la Russie was far too heterogeneous a body. It comprised at least a dozen nationalities, and apart from the French and the Poles the great majority of these were serving under duress without any real enthusiasm. Of the 614,000 troops of the first and second lines, rather less than half (perhaps 302,000) were Frenchmen; the Germans, Austrians, Prussians and Swiss between them accounting for a further 190,000, the Poles and Lithuanians for 90,000, the balance being made up of Italians, Illyrians and a handful of unwilling Spaniards and Portuguese (32,000 in all). Most of these contingents fought with the greatest gallantry at one time or another during the campaign, but the problem of controlling and disciplining such numbers was immense, and the loyalty of some formations, most especially the Dutch, Spaniards and Prussians, was justifiably suspect.

  The leadership of this huge array was also potentially weaker than was desirable. In typical fashion, Napoleon insisted on centralizing all authority under his own control, although this was now an impossible load for one man to bear alone. With the exception of Jerome, his senior generals were for the most part as good fighting soldiers as ever, but never having been permitted any real initiative by their master, many were to find themselves frequently at a loss when acting on their own. Napoleon, of course, could not be everywhere at once in so vast a terrain as Russia, and so, as we shall see, his strategic schemes broke down repeatedly as his subordinates misunderstood or bungled their tasks. Indeed, the scale of war which he now contemplated was really beyond even the Emperor’s phenomenal capacity. As usual Napoleon also insisted on being his own chief of staff, using Berthier as a mere chief clerk, and the impossible scale of this double task caused many points of detail to be neglected. Moreover, many subordinate echelons of the command structure left a great deal to be desired. The task of finding sufficient regimental officers for this huge army undoubtedly overtaxed the Empire’s resources, and consequently many of the lower commissioned ranks were filled with improvised leaders of little caliber. As regards the rank and file, even in the French corps a larger proportion than ever before consisted of green conscripts with no experience of military life other than that of the dépôt, and this was especially true of the infantry formations. As for the cavalry, they remained as good as ever on the battlefield, and as inefficient as previously everywhere else. The Russian campaign with its great variations of climate would particularly show up any deficiencies in horse care. By the time Napoleon abandoned Moscow it is estimated that only 15,000 cavalry horses out of an original total of 80,000 mounts were still alive. In the case of the artillery, which disposed of some 1,422 cannon, the bad condition of the Russian roads would soon seriously restrict both its efficiency and mobility, ruining the horse teams. All things considered, the quality of the army in 1812 was not wholly satisfactory, and far below the standards of 1805 or 1806.

  On the other hand, there is no disguising the fact that on this unique occasion huge efforts were made by Napoleon and his staff to provide an adequate supply system. From the very beginning it was appreciated that there would be no chance of living off the countryside as in previous campaigns. The Emperor knew that the empty p
lains and dense forests of Holy Russia would not be able to support even a fifth of his army; he also feared that the Russians might have recourse to a “scorched earth” policy after the Peninsular pattern. He therefore determined that his army should be as self-sufficient as possible, even though this meant a reversion to the pre-1789 reliance on convoys and magazines. Writing to Davout on May 26, 1812, Napoleon stated: “The aim of all my moves will be to concentrate 400,000 men at a single point. We can hope for nothing from the countryside and accordingly must take everything with us.”8 Five months earlier (December 30, 1811) he had warned Eugène that “the war in Poland will hardly resemble that in Austria; without adequate transportation, everything will be useless.”9 Consequently, provision had to be made for the movement of vast quantities of fodder, biscuit, rice, vegetables and brandy, and the myriad other articles and stores that the vast army would need over a considerable period. Twenty-six transport battalions were formed accordingly, four consisting of 600 light carts (each with a capacity of 600 kilos), another four of 600 heavy wagons (1,000 kilos apiece), the rest being equipped with 252 four-animal wagons (loading 1,500 kilos apiece); the larger vehicles were to prove very hard to move on the poor roads of Russia. For meat rations, vast herds of cattle and oxen were collected, ready to accompany the army eastwards, and several transport companies were allotted draught oxen in lieu of horses. The theory was that as the army ate through its rations the space requirement would be reduced, and the surplus draught oxen could then be slaughtered to provide fresh—if somewhat stringy—supplies of meat “on the hoof.”

  In round numbers, the Grande Armée was accompanied by no less than 200,000 animals (to include the 30,000 horses of the artillery and the 80,000 of the cavalry), besides a total of some 25,000 vehicles, including the supply wagons, ammunition caissons, ambulances and other forms of conveyance. The problem of feeding so many animals would obviously be acute, and there is small wonder that the Emperor delayed the invasion date until that time of year when the Russian plains would be holding their lushest crops of grass. He also placed great reliance on restocking his convoys and forward magazines by means of the great rivers of western Russia, and accordingly two naval squadrons, each of 100 river boats, were held in readiness to convey stores from Tilsit to Kovno, by way of the River Niemen. General Mathieu Dumas, Intendant-General, bore onerous responsibility for all these arrangements.

  The overall intention was to provide twenty-four days’ rations for every soldier before the onset of active operations. “I am counting on the Prince of Eckmühl being able to leave Elbing, Marienburg, Marienwerder and Thorn on 1st May,” wrote the Emperor to the general staff, “with twenty days’ rations in carts and four more days’ worth in their knapsacks. Until he reaches the Niemen, however, the Prince will make his men live off the countryside, for no rations are to be used until after the crossing has been made….”10

  The effectiveness of Napoleon’s directives varied from corps to corps depending on the character of the commander, and, in the case of allied units, on the resources of their homelands. Besides being the largest formation in the army, Marshal Davout’s 1st Corps was also the model as regards administration and discipline. Davout was convinced that no detail should be overlooked. His men’s knapsacks were scientifically packed to hold as many necessaries as possible; each regiment was deliberately made self-sufficient, containing (in the words of de Ségur) “masons, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, gunsmiths; in short, workmen of every class. They carried everything they required with them; his army was like a colony; handmills followed. He had anticipated every want; all means of supplying them were ready.”11

  Other branches of the service were less well equipped, however. The hospital trains set out short of even the most basic medical stores, consequently dooming many devoted surgeons and physicians to frustration, and many sick and wounded soldiers to unnecessary deaths. Right from the beginning ill-health was to beset the mighty army. Diphtheria, dysentery and typhus, soon aggravated by malnutrition and semistarvation, would take a heavy toll. To cite one instance, the Bavarian Corps lost half its strength from sickness before it ever made contact with the enemy. Another grave oversight, which in due course affected the whole army, was the failure to provide supplies of warm clothing against the possibility of a winter campaign. Thus the efforts made to equip the army satisfactorily were in fact neither comprehensive nor wholly adequate. In 1812, as on several other occasions, the defeat of the French forces was to stem as much from administrative weakness as from any other single factor. Napoleon boasted that “with such resources we shall devour all distances”; before the year was out, however, those distances would have consumed both his resources and his men, reducing the imposing Grande Armée de la Russie to the merest shadow of its original grandeur and power.

  Passing on to describe the French and Russian plans for the forthcoming campaign, the general characteristics of the war area merit some study. In the simplest terms, it can be stated that the theater of operations was divided into two fronts, the northern and the southern, with the difficult area of the Pripet Marshes in between. Although the River Pripet itself hardly constituted a formidable obstacle, varying in width from 30 to 100 yards, there spread out on both sides of the waterway a vast region of swamps and marshland, extending in the form of a vast crescent from the vicinity of Brest-Litovsk in the west to Kiev in the east. Any army operating in this region was restricted for movement to the handful of causeways traversing the marshes; between Pinsk and Mozyr—separated by a distance of 200 kilometers in the very midst of this forbidding area—there ran only three roads, all of them in very bad condition. To all intents and purposes, therefore, the Pripet Marshes formed a region of no-man’s land, separating the two areas of western Russia which were militarily practicable. To the north lay the semibarren area of vast swampy forests, lakes and marshes stretching from Poland to Smolensk. Beyond that city, the terrain became more open, undulating and fertile, though in 1812 the population of the whole area from the frontier to Moscow and St. Petersburg was very sparsely spread. Another important geographical feature of the region was the series of great intersecting rivers. Moving eastward from the great Vistula (Napoleon’s concentration area), the rivers Niemen, Vilia, Berezina and Dvina would be encountered in turn, and still further eastward lay the upper reaches of the Dnieper and finally the headwaters of the River Moskva. Not all these rivers represented formidable obstacles to an invader from the west. In the case of both the Niemen and the Dnieper, the right bank is commanded by the left, and thus constitute generally unsatisfactory defense lines. However, the reverse is true of the Dvina and Berezina, and, as we shall see, the Russians went to considerable pains to fortify the main crossings over these waterways. Of the front lying to the south of the Pripet Marshes, rather less need be said. It was also a low-lying region with considerable areas of difficult marshland and forest, but the general level of productivity, especially around Kiev, was high. However, the rivers Styr, Gorin and Upper Dnieper constituted good defense lines for the Russians.

  As far as roads were concerned, these were numerous both to the north and the south of the Pripet Marshes. In terms of condition and load capacity, however, the greater number of these highways were decidedly unsatisfactory, and this was to be a point of no little importance for the formations of the Grande Armée, encumbered as they were with lumbering convoys of supplies and munitions. In practical terms, as Dodge points out, “there were but three roads leading across Russia’s frontier—at Kovno, Grodno and Brest-Litovsk.”12 Napoleon could therefore choose between three major avenues of approach leading to Moscow. Crossing the Niemen at Kovno, he could make his way through Vilna, Vitebsk and Smolensk towards the spiritual capital of Holy Russia; or, secondly, he could move through Grodno toward Minsk and then join the former route at Vitebsk; thirdly, he could move on Kiev to the south of the Pripet Marshes before swinging northeastward toward Smolensk.

  In making his choice of the major line of o
perations many other considerations had to be taken into account besides the availability of roads. There was the matter of Russian climate and weather, notoriously changeable and prone to great extremes of heat and cold; there was the question of adequate fodder for feeding the army’s animals; there was also the problem of securing the lines of communication, which would inevitably become ever more extended as the advance progressed. After considerable meditation and calculation of the odds, the Emperor chose the northern sector for his main offensive effort. The advantages of this area were the following.

  First, his lines of communication would be running back to the safe and reliable Grand Duchy of Warsaw, his logistical base for the campaign. Although the Prussian Government and people were far from well-disposed toward the French, Napoleon felt he had less reason to fear for his communications in the northern than on the southern front, where there was always the danger that his even less trusted Austrian ally would resort to treachery and change sides in midcampaign. In the second place, as he advanced on the Niemen in the initial stage of the campaign, his army would be passing through areas predominantly populated with Poles, who, all being well, would hail the French as “liberators” from the Russian yoke and assist their journey eastward. This, Napoleon felt, would be more valuable than a march routed through the more fertile areas of western Russia lying to the south of the Pripet where the local population would indubitably be sullen and uncooperative. Lastly, once he was master of Vilna beyond the Niemen, Napoleon would be able to choose between two alternative courses of action: a continued advance on Moscow, or an offensive toward St. Petersburg, the administrative metropolis of the Tsar’s domains. Thus, when all the factors had been considered, an advance on the northern front appeared to offer the French greater strategical safety, freedom and flexibility.