Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

by Alan Schom

  The hectic pace of Napoleon’s new war preparations could not conceal the deep malaise within the French imperial establishment itself. Fouché, in his quest for peace, had been exiled beyond French frontiers, and Talleyrand was persona non grata at the Tuileries for the same reason. And of course the presence of ex-Ambassador Armand de Caulaincourt scarcely lessened tensions.

  Upon his return to Paris in 1811, Caulaincourt, although remaining grand equerry of the imperial court, found himself snubbed and excluded from major public functions. Indeed, he was summoned again to the Tuileries only twice in the spring of 1812, to discuss the disagreeable subject of the forthcoming war with Russia, which Caulaincourt continued to oppose. He bluntly pointed out that if by crushing Russia, Napoleon would strike a real blow against England, nevertheless it would also be a calamity to the rest of the world. “I have to tell you quite frankly that everyone — in Europe and in France — sees in the war against Poland and Russia for which you are preparing, only an excuse, a pretext for further expansion.” To which Napoleon angrily snapped, “I have not asked for your opinion!” “Do you want me to tell you the truth about the situation, about our future?” one minister had confided to Marshal Marmont about Spain back in 1809. “The Emperor is crazy, stark staring mad, and we are all going to pay for it, all will end up a colossal catastrophe for us.” This applied doubly to the Russian campaign of 1812.

  Curiously Napoleon summoned Caulaincourt one more time that spring of 1812, just before setting out for Poland.

  I spoke to him of the reproaches he would continue to suffer for running so many risks, for putting up for lottery such fine and great destinies, when instead he could exercise such a great, such a powerful influence through his government in the cause of peace. I spoke to him about the effect of his risking the lives of the youth of France would have on the people...I represented to him the reproaches already made against him about this loss of life in the war in Spain, and added how dangerous it would be by now starting yet another distant campaign [in Russia] before the Spanish campaign was brought to a successful conclusion...I also reminded him of the great privations and discomfort his troops had suffered during the last campaign in Poland [at Eylau and Friedland]...It was therefore also a matter of conscience and moral conviction. “Your Majesty is being led astray by false councils. He is closing his ears to the truth and instead believing illusions. He believes he is marching toward a great political objective, and I believe he is wrong.”

  Unaccustomed to such plain speaking, Napoleon lashed back, claiming, in Caulaincourt’s words, that “I had become Russified and that these matters were really quite beyond my humble understanding, closing in a heated manner telling me that it was in fact the Emperor of Russia who wanted to make war now, not he...” Napoleon capped this with the final irony of all by ordering Caulaincourt to accompany him on this very Russian campaign against which he had so valiantly argued against.

  Napoleon’s departure from Paris on May 9, 1812, for the new theater of war, astounded everyone who knew him. For the first and final time in his career he left in broad daylight, in a magnificent regal procession of carriages, with Empress Marie-Louise at his side and a major retinue of imperial officials, as well as his special confidant General Duroc, Secretary Méneval, and the unfortunate Caulaincourt. The imperial carriages were preceded and followed by hundreds of mounted elite Imperial Guardsmen in all their splendor. Here was a very confident man indeed: Napoleon Bonaparte would show the world. He had summoned all the princes, kings, and emperors within his imperial fold to meet him at Dresden, where he would hold a prestigious confab on the most ambitious campaign of his career. Napoleon had already secured his diplomatic flanks by concluding a series of defense pacts and commitments to provide troops, including one with King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia on February 24, 1812, and another with his own father-in-law, Emperor Franz I of Austria, on March 14, 1812. Unfortunately, he had let a similar engagement with Sweden slip through his fingers, throwing Stockholm into the arms of St. Petersburg.

  The regal procession reached the Saxon capital of Dresden on May 16, welcomed by a torchlit parade and blaring trumpets (an event to be imitated there nearly 150 years later by another conqueror). The kings and princes were there in all their splendor, Napoleon and Marie-Louise the center of this carefully prepared rally, as the king and queen of Saxony personally led them to their quarters in the castle. Friedrich Wilhelm, who so loathed this Bonaparte, was there with a forced smile, joined by the kings and queens of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Westphalia. Amid the clutter of minor new royalty, the emperor and empress of Austria, Marie-Louise’s parents, arrived two days late. Balls were given night after night, and long, unpleasant talks were held behind closed doors during the day, as military commanders received their marching orders and attempted to coordinate their efforts. As for Alexander I of Russia, he refused to have anything to do with this, merely passing on a message informing Napoleon that he, Alexander, would “not draw the first sword. I have no intention of being held responsible in the eyes of Europe for the blood this war will cause to be shed. You have been threatening me for eighteen months now. French troops...line my frontiers. But I remain in my capital, arming and fortifying us.”

  Bidding adieu to Empress Marie-Louise, whom he would not see again for seven months, Napoleon set out from Dresden on May 29, the magnificent state carriages replaced by caissons and cannon, and tens of thousands of troops, traveling via Glogau and Posen, reaching Thorn on June 2, where he spent four days before going on to Danzig where he arrived on 7 June to inspect the largest French military depot in that region.

  Danzig proved to be more than a mere stopover. Here it was that he finally confronted his brother-in-law, King Joachim of Naples. Still embittered over the tiff he had over Murat’s attempt at independence, Napoleon had forbidden that monarch from joining the major convocation of rulers and commanders just held at Dresden. Instead a smarting Murat had been ordered to the isolated Baltic fastness of Danzig.

  Relations between the emperor and the king of Naples were “more than merely chilly,” eyewitness Caulaincourt reported. Bonaparte complained that Murat no longer considered himself a Frenchman and had forgotten to whom he owed everything he had. “‘When he sees me, he belongs to me,’ Napoleon commented, ‘but as soon as I am out of sight, he acts like all other people without real character. Out of sight, out of mind.’...In public the emperor received the king well enough, but alone he began to harangue him fiercely.”

  Meanwhile Murat was complaining to anyone who would listen that in reality Napoleon had made him only a viceroy, not a real king, a mere pawn through whom Napoleon could enforce his will. “He wants to be king of the whole of Italy,” Napoleon snapped on learning of Murat’s words. “It’s that dream alone that prevents him from asking for the crown of Poland!” He then continued to vent his spleen by attacking his brothers. “Jérôme is only interested in a lot of glitter, women, pomp, and feasts. None of my brothers supports me. I have to govern for them all. Without me, they would ruin their poor subjects...My brothers think of no one but themselves. But I at least provide a good example for them.”

  After raising Murat’s hackles and inspecting the fortress and impressive supply depot there, Napoleon set out from Danzig on June 10, with Murat heading his cavalry, continuing via Marienburg, to Königsberg where he spent four days preparing that stronghold, and “on the 23rd [of June] we camped along the Niemen.”

  The man wearing a Polish soldier’s hat and overcoat rode along the banks of the Niemen that morning, studying the slopes and river level, then scanning the opposite shore, the Russian frontier, with his telescope. He could see little movement, nary a sign of the enemy army. The man in the costume of a Polish light cavalryman was of course Napoleon, and the man at his side was General Haxo, chief of his engineers. Their aim was to find the best point at which to throw across the pontoon bridges. Time was of the essence. Surprising everyone, Napoleon had reached Marshal Davo
ut’s I Corps at the village of Alexota only a few hours earlier. He had to hurry. But while returning across a wheatfield, Napoleon, “who invariably rode badly,” was thrown heavily to the ground by his mount. Badly dazed, he complained to Caulaincourt later that everything still seemed very dark. The word quickly spread through the ranks of the superstitious guard and troops. The last time Napoleon had been thrown from his horse, at the Schönbrunn Palace during the Wagram campaign, it had been followed immediately by an attempt on his life by a German student. “It would be best not to cross the Niemen,” an equally superstitious Berthier insisted. “This fall is a bad sign,” he argued, and a large number of previously hesitant senior commanders agreed. What is more, “The Prince of Eckmühl [Davout] and the general staff all complained about the total lack of solid intelligence reports” regarding the Russian army.

  Napoleon ignored all such objections, and the Niemen was successfully bridged the next day, Napoleon himself among the first to cross with General Morand’s leading division, as he continued to remain with the advance guard, “pressing the pace of the entire army” and outstripping his already lagging supply trains, in spite of the warnings of the wary Berthier.

  Advancing via Kovno, Napoleon entered the freshly evacuated major Russian citadel of Vilna, Lithuania, on the twenty-eighth. He felt angry and cheated. The Russians had refused to fight. Despite the speed of his advance, they had evaded him, if by just a few hours. What was happening? Caulaincourt explained that the czar had plenty of territory and was deliberately withdrawing to weaken further Napoleon’s fragile supply and communication lines, to isolate the French in hostile country. The truth of his grand equerry’s assessment was not lost on Napoleon, only four days after crossing the Russian frontier. “This rapid movement without supply depots exhausted and destroyed all the resources of the local inhabitants unfortunate enough to find themselves along Napoleon’s invasion route.” Nor was the Grande Armée spared by Napoleon’s precipitous advance and poor planning. “The advance guard of the French army lived well enough off the land, consuming everything in sight,” Caulaincourt recalled, “while the remainder of the army as it advanced in its wake found itself without even elementary food supplies for the troops or horses, both literally dying of hunger...Exhaustion, added to the very cold rainy nights, resulted in the loss of 10,000 horses, and even of many men of the Young Imperial Guard just during the first few days.” And yet this was only the beginning; the enemy had not even been sighted. It did not bode well, but Napoleon persisted, as he always did.

  As for Vilna, “It was quite mournful.” Napoleon complained about the hostility of the local population, “all the Lithuanians praising Emperor Alexander,” instead of their French “liberators.” After just four days in Vilna, without enough supplies even for Napoleon’s headquarters staff, they had to move on.

  Then a courier arrived with a special letter from the czar. Napoleon smiled knowingly. Alexander was already asking for terms; he was capitulating. Napoleon had won. “My brother Alexander...already wants to surrender. He is afraid. My armies have sent his flying. Before the month is out, the Russians will be on their knees before me.” After crossing the Niemen, he had exclaimed: “Alors, now Poland is mine!” and this had come true without firing a single shot.

  Alas, the note from the czar immediately dispelled all Napoleon’s premature bombast. Alexander had the audacity “to demand the reasons for the invasion of his country, and in a time of peace, without even a declaration of war.” He ordered Napoleon to withdraw immediately behind the Niemen, after which he would be willing to open negotiations with the French. “Alexander is poking fun at me!” an astounded Bonaparte exclaimed. “Does he really believe I have come all this way just to negotiate some minor commercial treaty with him? I have to finish once and for all with the colossus of the barbarians of the North. I have drawn my sword!”

  The fact is that the czar’s unexpected evacuation of his frontier, including the major stronghold of Vilna, had deprived Napoleon of the great, initial sweeping victorious battle he had predicted, which could end the campaign quickly and decisively — another Austerlitz. He was more than upset, he was bewildered.

  Napoleon’s mighty force was phenomenal in size and strength as it continued its advance. They were marching by the thousands, the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands. It was incredible, it was fascinating, it was awe-inspiring but above all, it was terrifying. All Europe was trembling at the very thought of this massive Gallic-led horde, the likes of which had not been seen since the eighth-century invasion of Europe by the Arabs and Berbers, and before that by Attila the Hun. Bavarians, Württembergers, troops from Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Nassau-Aremberg, Isenburg, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Würzburg, Saxony, Anhalt-Berburg, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Waldeck, Schaumburg-Lippe, Westphalia, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, occupied Denmark, occupied Prussia, occupied Spain and Portugal, occupied Holland, occupied Switzerland, northern Italy, the occupied Papal States, Danzig and Illyria, tiny San Marino and the miniature principality of Liechtenstein, to Marseilles, Lyons, and Paris — they marched hundreds of miles, some ultimately two thousand miles, because once more Napoleon Bonaparte had refused peace, because — obsessed beyond any definition of rational thought — he demanded war and further conquest. He clenched his little fists and denounced the British, the Russians, his ministers and generals, all the subdued people of Europe immediately under his yoke, and the whole of Europe, with psycopathic persistence and perversity. Seven engineer battalions, twenty-two army train battalions, military police, hundreds of bakers’ ovens, thousands of horse handlers and smiths, and even so Napoleon had had to leave behind 275,000 troops in France and Italy in 1812 to quell his own angry people.[762]

  And thus they continued to converge on eastern Poland, 265 French infantry battalions, 291 foreign battalions, 219 French cavalry squadrons, 261 foreign squadrons, all told, 513,500 infantry and foot artillery, and 98,400 cavalry and horse artillery, for a grand total of 611,900 men, exclusive of well over 25,000 civilians, officials, servants, and whores and camp followers. Nor was Napoleon neglecting the backbone of his army, including 130 heavy siege guns and 1,242 field artillery pieces of every caliber. More than six thousand wagons were required just to carry the daily food provisions, and altogether 32,700 official army wagons, carts, and caissons streamed across every major road leading to Warsaw and the Baltic, hauled by 183,911 army horses. But even these wagons did not suffice, and more had been sequestered once French troops had crossed the Rhine and entered the German states, where, among other things, an additional 150,000 draft horses were stripped from every farm and village they passed...333,911 horses all told! The average division of 10,000 heavily laden men could trudge at best fifteen miles per day, and each division occupied a solid stream three to four miles long. The French army, along with the allied contingents forced to join them, formed the largest traffic jam in European history, which backed up hundreds of miles over the next several weeks. Nothing quite like it had ever been seen before.

  The largest army ever assembled by any one force in European history was an unwieldy multilingual organization divided among three levels of command. The first line of 450,000 men, directed by Napoleon himself, was divided into three armies. The first of these, approximately 250,000 strong, commanded by Bonaparte in person, included Murat’s two cavalry corps, the Imperial Guard, and Davout’s three infantry corps (he was Napoleon’s finest field commander), while Oudinot’s II Corps and Ney’s III Corps were accordingly smaller. Oudinot and Ney were hardly of the caliber of Lannes, who was now so badly missed, nor were they equal to Masséna or Suchet, whom Napoleon was forced to keep in Spain in this multifront conflagration. The Imperial Guard was now beefed up to include the Young Guard, under Mortier; the Old Guard, under Lefebvre, while the Guards Cavalry as usual remained under Bessières.

  In addition Napoleon created two auxiliary armies to support the “first line,” one comprising 70,000 Westphalians
, Saxons, Hessians, and Poles, under King Jérôme (for the moment), and to be known as VIII Corps, and the other, IV Corps, under the titular command of Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, including 80,000 Italians and Bavarians. There were two more semiautonomous corps: Macdonald’s reliable X Corps guarding Napoleon’s extreme left flank along the Baltic, and Prince von Schwarzenberg’s Austrian corps protecting the Grande Armée’s extreme right, or southern flank. (Additional changes of command would include Poniatowski’s Polish V Corps, St.-Cyr’s Bavarian VI Corps, and Reynier’s Saxon VII Corps.)

  Napoleon’s second line was in effect really a massive reserve force of 165,000 men intended to provide replacements for the three principal armies of the first line, including Marshal Victor’s multinational IX Corps (33,000). The third portion of the Grande Armée included the final, fallback reserve of 60,000 men, the XI Corps commanded by Marshal Augereau, comprising garrisons left at Danzig and along the Vistula. Napoleon’s principal army and second line included some 302,000 “Frenchmen”; the Swiss, German states, Austrians, and Prussians provided another 190,000; the Poles and Lithuanians some 90,000; and the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Illyrians another 32,000 or so.[763]

  Russia was not without its own substantial resources, reinforced after the signing of the Peace of Bucharest with Turkey in May 1812, releasing tens of thousands of troops for the northern campaign, and a treaty of alliance between Russia and Great Britain that was being drafted even as Napoleon crossed the Niemen and would be signed and made operative as of July. And of course the Swedes had also joined Russia in the diplomatic and military campaign. Since the humiliating defeat at Austerlitz, Czar Alexander had more or less reorganized and enlarged his army, including thirty-six new training centers across the country for recruits. The Russian cavalry was considered to be the best in Europe, supported handsomely by the Cossacks (literally, “freebooters”). The czar put much more emphasis on heavy artillery now, including forty-four batteries of eighteen-pound howitzers and twelve-pound cannon alone. Still, the Russian army totaled only some 409,000, 211,000 of them available first-line troops supported by a small reserve force of 45,000. Another 153,000 troops were scattered in garrisons separated by immense distances. Napoleon had numerical superiority, easily doubling the Russian front-line force. A major Russian weakness lay in its incoherent, untrained, amateurish administrative general staff, further weakened and divided by the inevitable petty loyalties among various senior commanders and gentlemen of influence. Baron Barclay de Tolly, the fifty-one-year-old Livonian general, was commander in chief of the First Army until he was superseded in August by the one-eyed, sixty-seven-year-old Russian prince Mikhail Kutuzov. The arrogant Hanoverian general, Baron Levin Bennigsen, who had faced Napoleon at Eylau and Friedland, though currently out of favor in St. Petersburg, would soon be called on again. The Prussian General Phull was largely responsible for preparing the Russian strategic plan — if such it may be called — of 1812, while the ablest Gen. Matvi Ivanovich Platov commanded the formidable Don Cossacks. Other generals in the field included Bagration, Wittgenstein, Miloradovich, as well as Ostermann.