The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  Murat’s leading patrols were in contact with the Russian outposts from dawn on the 16th, and by 10:00

  A.M. all the cavalry and Ney’s IIIrd Corps were within range of the defenses. Murat placed his troopers around the eastern side of the Old City, while Ney deployed opposite the Krasnoe suburb. Ney, with only 18,000 infantry, did not feel disposed to attempt an immediate assault, but decided to await the arrival of Napoleon and the main body. The Emperor, however, spent most of the morning west of Smolensk, waiting for news that the bridge at Katan (which might have been used by Barclay to outflank the Grande Armée before Smolensk) had been destroyed. Once he was satisfied on this point, he rode on to the city, arriving shortly after 1:00

  P.M.

  All afternoon the forces of the two contending powers massed around the city, divided by the Dnieper. The hours did not pass without excitement, however, for at one stage Raevski’s cavalry were forced back beneath the walls, and the French 46th Regiment all but succeeded in capturing the Royal Citadel when the garrison was rushed off to meet a supposed thrust toward the vital bridge. No major attack was ordered by the Emperor, however, and when darkness fell the French gains were very limited. By dusk, however, Davout and Poniatowski had arrived to take up positions on Ney’s right, thus completing a semicircle around the Old City. Meanwhile, General Doctorov had arrived to take over the positions held by the Russian VIIth Corps, Raevski recrossing the bridge to the north bank in order to rejoin Bagration’s army, which was massing to the east of the New Town while Barclay’s corps were fast appearing on the western heights. For the present, then, Smolensk was safe from a French coup de main.

  The 17th saw a great deal of confused fighting in the suburbs, as the three French Corps attempted to storm into the city, but for all their gallantry the French proved incapable of penetrating the main defenses, although their guns were pounding the houses of the Old City into rubble or blazing ruins. Doctorov clung grimly to his main positions, and when dusk fell the French had little to show for their pains apart from 10,000 casualties. The Russians lost between 12-14,000 men during the two days’ fighting.

  It is uncertain why Napoleon ordered an assault at all, for he would have been far better advised to mask the city and move his men on to cross the Dnieper and create a threat to the important Smolensk-Moscow highway; this would have been a far surer way of forcing a Russian evacuation of the city followed by a major battle. Indeed, the threat of such a move filled the minds of both Barclay and Bagration throughout the day, and it accounts for the former’s decision to evacuate Smolensk during the night of the 17th-18th. This order caused a storm of recrimination at Russian headquarters, the Grand Duke Constantine (the Tsar’s brother) and General Bennigsen accusing the minister of war of cowardice. Barclay, however, refused to rescind his order, and accordingly Doctorov’s four divisions abandoned their positions and retired to the northern bank, burning the bridge behind them. At two in the morning, Ney discovered that there were no Russians facing his troops. The men of the 1st and IIIrd Corps rushed into the blazing town, and one party even succeeded in wading through the river at the broken bridge where the water was only four feet deep because of the rubble, and stormed the Russian position beyond. It took the entire rear guard of Bagration’s army, namely 10 regiments, to contain the jubilant Württem-bergers and Portuguese who performed this feat.

  The Battle of Smolensk, August 17, 1812. Note the cordon of mounted guards protecting the Emperor’s security. This was a standard precaution practiced by the escort squadrons in attendance.

  Throughout the 18th very little activity took place, clear evidence of Napoleon’s lack of drive, but by the end of the day most of Ney’s men were over the newly repaired bridge, Junot’s corps had arrived outside the city, and the leading units of the IVth Corps were close by. On the Russian side, the day saw the final breakdown of cooperation between Barclay and Bagration. The latter, on his own authority, set out with his men for Solovievo, leaving only four regiments of Cossacks to hold the vital crossroads at Lubino, 18 miles east of Smolensk. It was only in the late evening that Barclay’s army began to follow their comrades. All day, therefore, Napoleon missed a fine opportunity of placing part of his army between the two Russian forces. A single corps would have sufficed for the task. This inaction is partly explained by his uncertainty as to whether the foe were heading north or east, but Napoleon’s abilities seem to have been in temporary eclipse.

  It was in the early hours of August 19 that the French pursuit got under way. Ney began to drive eastward out of Smolensk, pushing before him Barclay’s rear guard, while Murat, after fording the river at a weir near the confluence of the Dnieper and the Stragan Brook, set off down the Moscow road. Once it became clear that the enemy was heading for Moscow and not St. Petersburg, Napoleon ordered General Junot to take his fresh corps forward as quickly as possible through Prudichevo, over the Niemen and on to Lubino in an attempt to block Barclay’s line of retreat. However, neither the man nor the time was right for the task. It took Junot all day to find a way over the Dnieper at Prudichevo, and even when his men were safely over he refused to attack despite the repeated entreaties of his colleagues and the specific orders of the Emperor. Meantime, Ney and Murat were engaged in heavy fighting against Generals Eugen (Barclay’s rear guard commander) and Tutchkov around the defile of Valutino. Gallant General Gudin was fatally wounded when he lost both legs during the fierce fighting, but the French proved incapable of driving back the tenacious Russians, while Junot’s refusal to attack the Russian flank proved fatal to any hopes of trapping the main enemy army. All day, Barclay’s columns streamed off eastward in the wake of Bagration’s formations. “Junot has let the Russians escape,” the Emperor bitterly complained. “He is losing the campaign for me.”34 The enemy’s escape was not wholly Junot’s fault, however. It is revealing that Napoleon left the front and retired to Smolensk at 5:00

  P.M. to rest; this was no longer the brilliant general of boundless energy of former campaigns.

  Thus Napoleon’s third attempt to trap the Russians into a decisive battle ended in as resounding a failure as its predecessors. In view of the unfavorable outcome of the Maneuver of Smolensk, Clausewitz and other commentators have asserted that Napoleon would have been wiser to make a straightforward advance from Vitebsk instead of the brilliantly conceived but poorly executed strategic envelopment. Some argue that he should have undertaken a tactical envelopment of the Russian right; others that he should have waited longer at Vitebsk, letting the enemy come to him. However, it is more important to summarize the reasons for his failure in the course he chose than to speculate about alternative courses of action.

  A combination of factors deprived Napoleon of the great battle he so ardently desired. First, Bagration’s prompt reaction in sending his VIIth Corps to garrison the city ensured that an adequate force was present to face Murat and Ney. Secondly, the old-fashioned fortifications of Smolensk proved stronger than they appeared, and this enabled Raevski to hold off the French until help could arrive. Thirdly, the French sacrificed all chance of surprising the enemy by their inexplicable waste of August 15, which was spent in operational idleness. Fourthly, Napoleon was undoubtedly guilty of failing to press his advantage to the full. He delayed the final advance on Smolensk, then indulged in useless and piecemeal assaults on the city instead of pressing on to cut the Moscow road, selected the wrong commander for this task when at last he ordered it, and, throughout, displayed a general lack of the energy and drive which might have inspired his subordinates to success, heedless of all difficulties. This is a heavy indictment of Napoleon as a general, but politically there may have been some justification for his decision to concentrate the army’s efforts against Smolensk, militarily only a secondary objective. Perhaps he hoped that a resoundingly successful storm of one of the most important and venerated cities of Holy Russia would suffice to bring the Tsar to terms. If this is what he thought, he was of course totally mistaken. The determination of
Alexander and the Russian people to withstand the invader was rapidly attaining a near-mystical pitch; Napoleon was to learn that the will of the Russians was as unbreakable as that of the Spanish populace.

  70

  BORODINO

  With the capture of Smolensk, Napoleon had reached the critical moment of the Russian Campaign. For six days, the corps of the Grande Armée* rested around the city while their master communed with his spirit and sought to make up his mind about a future course of action. Hitherto he had always hoped that the campaign would be brought to a rapid conclusion by a single mighty battle. Now he had to accept the fact that three successive attempts to achieve this had failed. Was he to press on for Moscow without delay, or would he be better advised to halt his advance, winter at Smolensk and resume the campaign the following spring? It was not an easy matter to decide, for many considerations had to be taken into account, both military and political, and the fact that priorities frequently clashed made a solution no easier to reach.

  We know that Napoleon had originally considered the possibility of spending the winter around Smolensk, and, according to Caulaincourt, usually a reliable source, he reverted to this idea shortly before the battle of Lubino. “By abandoning Smolensk, which is one of their Holy Cities, the Russian generals are dishonoring their arms in the eyes of their own people. That will put me in a strong position. We will drive them a little further back for our own comfort. I will dig myself in. We will rest the troops; the country will shape up around this pivot—and we’ll see how Alexander likes that. I shall turn my attention to the corps on the Dvina, which are doing nothing; my army will be more formidable and my position more menacing to the Russians than if I had won two battles. I will establish my headquarters at Vitebsk. I will raise Poland in arms, and later on I will choose, if necessary, between Moscow and St. Petersburg.”35

  What were the advantages such a course could offer? Although most of them were negative rather than positive, they were nevertheless important and tempting. On the positive side, if the army consolidated its position around Smolensk, the autumn and winter could be employed in bringing the troops to a peak of battle-readiness. Many of the new drafts reaching the front were practically untrained youngsters, who might prove a liability in any action; a strategic pause would enable them to be brought up to the desired standards of fitness and efficiency. Similarly, the overstrained and inadequate convoy and supply departments would be given a chance to recover and reorganize. If Napoleon agreed to the formation of a new Kingdom of Poland, and he was under constant pressure to do so, he might even find a new, large army of grateful Poles placed at his disposal by the spring of 1813. On the negative side, a halt at Smolensk would also avert a number of dangers. More than 280 miles lay between the city and Moscow, and it would take all the rest of the late summer and early autumn to cover the distance. Even if the Grande Armée succeeded in traversing this area, which was badly mapped and would certainly be devastated by the retiring Russian armies, there was no guarantee that the Tsar’s generals would accept battle, and even if Moscow was occupied, Alexander might still not be prepared to sue for peace. In that event, the French might find themselves involved in a costly and frighteningly difficult winter campaign, for which they were in no way equipped, at the extreme end of a critically extended series of communications with even huger flanks to protect. The strategic consumption of manpower in maintaining their position around Smolensk was already immense, and a further advance into the unknown without due preparation might well place an impossible strain on the already depleted French resources. There would be little food for the army to find en route for Moscow; the bad harvest of 1811 and the war-ravaged one of 1812 made that certain, while the deliberate Russian scorched-earth policy was fast removing what little there remained.

  On the basis of these mainly military considerations, it would seem that Napoleon would have been well advised to stay at Smolensk, but there were other factors—both military and political—to consider. In the first place, if Russia was to be forced back into the Continental System with a minimum of delay, it was vital that a decisive battle should be fought as soon as possible. A six-month respite would give the Tsar time to redeploy his recently released Moldavian and Finnish armies, mobilize and train new forces in the interior, and draw more practical assistance from his British ally. This would improve the Russian military position and make a French victory even harder to achieve. Furthermore, the Tsar might be persuaded to launch a massive counteroffensive in the New Year against the extended French positions, stretching from Riga on the Baltic to Smolensk and then southwest to the Pripet Marshes. Memories of early 1807 made this hardly an alluring prospect. It was also going to prove almost as difficult to feed and maintain the army in its present location as it would around Moscow. Next, it was necessary to consider the political repercussions of any stay in the offensive. The British and Russian governments would immediately represent this pause as a strategic defeat for the “Corsican Ogre,” and, indeed, on the previous form of 1805, 1806 or even 1809, it would amount to a serious setback. Any such check might give those dubious allies, Prussia and Austria, occasion for second thoughts and even lead to serious defections. Then again, tempting though it might be to create an independent Polish kingdom and thus secure the services of a new army of enthusiastic allies, such a course of action was also politically hazardous. It would certainly serve to harden the Tsar’s resolve to resist to the uttermost, make a negotiated settlement extremely unlikely, and would hardly be welcomed by the Houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg. Again, if the Emperor was detained in the east until, say, the late spring or summer of 1813, he would have been more than a year absent from Paris, and by August 1812 there were already signs of developing conspiracies. The news from Spain was also bad. How much longer, therefore, could Napoleon afford to remain in Russia?

  In the end it was the instincts of Napoleon the soldier and opportunist that overcame the convictions of Napoleon the statesman. All his previous experience of war had taught him that victory could only be assured by the ruthless pursuit of a single aim, the hunting-down and destruction of the enemy’s army. He felt confident that Alexander would be compelled to make a major effort to save Moscow, the religious focal point of his realm, and that a heavy defeat and the subsequent occupation of the Kremlin would inevitably bring him to his knees. It also seemed sound military policy to pursue relentlessly a foe already reeling back in considerable disarray, and who had indeed been doing so since the very opening of the campaign. Only in Moscow, therefore, could Napoleon hope to find peace. If for logistical reasons it was dangerous to linger at Smolensk, it was even more risky to head for Moscow, but only by such a bold course could there by any possibility of a reasonably rapid conclusion to the campaign. The historian Jomini put into Napoleon’s mouth a summary of the case: “To force the Russians to a battle, and to dictate peace … such was the only means of safety that now remained. My marshals were divided in opinion. Murat, who had at first accused the Russians of pusillanimity, now trembled at the danger of penetrating so far into the interior. Others contended that we could hope for no repose till we had gained one decisive battle. I was also of this opinion. But how were we to obtain this battle? Certainly not by remaining at Smolensk, without provisions or other resources. There was no third choice—we must march upon Moscow or retreat upon the Niemen…. The experiences of ten campaigns had taught me what was the most decisive point; and I did not doubt that a blow struck at the heart of the Russian Empire would instantly destroy the accessory resistance of isolated corps.”36 Accordingly the decision was taken. Napoleon communicated the outcome to a despairing Caulaincourt. “Before a month is out,” he said, “we shall be in Moscow; in six weeks we shall have peace.”37

  Meantime the Tsar and his advisors were also hard at work reviewing their strategy. After being persuaded by his experts to abandon his Fabian strategy, Alexander visited Moscow on July 24 and made a public, emotional appeal for the assistance
of every Russian citizen capable of bearing arms. His plea did not go unheeded; the principality of Moscow promised 80,000 militia as its contribution, and the other regions of Russia gave similar undertakings in proportion to their resources. The mood of Russian resistance was rapidly assuming the overtones of a religious crusade. The Metropolitan Archbishop offered the Tsar the venerated Ikon of St. Sergius, and Alexander entrusted it to the Moscow militia as their guerdon. The even more famous Black Virgin of Smolensk, which reputedly had miraculous curative properties, was also delivered into the care of the Russian army. The simple peasant soldiers of Muscovy were doubly inspired by this combined patriotic and religious appeal. They marched to battle chanting “’Tis the Will of God.”

  In association with this growing sense of mystical inspiration, and to some extent in answer to the growing clamor of the Russian nobility, Alexander decided to supersede Barclay de Tolly and place the aged veteran Kutusov in supreme command of the Russian forces. Opinion was adamant that the time for retreat was over; at least one all-out attempt should be made to defend Moscow from the invader, and no man appeared better qualified to lead the troops on such an occasion of national crisis and dedication. The choice was not ideal in every way; in the words of von Clausewitz, “Kutusov was approaching seventy years of age and no longer possessed either the activity of mind or body which one sometimes finds in soldiers of that age. However, he knew the Russians, and how to handle them…. He could flatter the self-esteem of both populace and army, and sought by proclamation and religious observances to work on the public mind.”38 In many ways his military abilities were inferior to those of Barclay, but the fact that Kutusov was a native-born Russian while de Tolly was of alien extraction made him a more suitable choice in the hour of national need when all foreigners were suspect. In the words of de Ségur, Kutusov’s “valor was incontestable, but he was charged with regulating its vehemence according to his private interest; for he calculated everything. His genius was slow, vindictive, and above all, crafty—the true Tartar character!—knowing the art of preparing an implacable war with a fawning, supple and patient policy.”39 Prince Kutusov assumed his new responsibilities at Tsarevo on August 29, and at once set out to procure a defensive battle in a position of his own choosing.