Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace

by Dominic Lieven

  Correctly, Alexander dismissed this proposal, which would have given Napoleon a golden opportunity to surround and destroy Second Army and which even in the most optimistic scenario would have resulted in Bagration’s force moving far to the south and away from the decisive theatre. Instead the emperor urged on Bagration his own strategy: while First Army retreated in the face of superior numbers, Second Army and Platov’s Cossacks must harass Napoleon’s flanks and rear.

  In pressing this strategy Alexander was sticking to the basic principles which had guided Barclay’s thinking from early 1810 and which in the end were to bring victory in 1812. Whichever Russian army was threatened by Napoleon’s main body must withdraw and refuse battle, while the other Russian armies must strike into the ever-lengthening enemy flanks and rear. But this strategy was only fully realizable by the autumn of 1812 when Napoleon’s armies had been hugely depleted and their immensely long flanks were vulnerable to the Russian armies brought in from Finland and the Balkans. Launching Bagration into the flank of Napoleon’s main body in June 1812 was almost as sure a recipe for disaster as allowing him to mount a diversion into the Duchy of Warsaw.

  In time sense prevailed and Bagration was ordered to retreat and to attempt to join up with First Army. By then, however, precious time had been wasted and Davout’s advancing columns were cutting across Bagration’s route to join Barclay. In these first weeks of the war Barclay’s First Army executed a planned and for most units safe withdrawal to Drissa. By contrast, the movements of Bagration’s Second Army had to be improvised and were more dangerous. For the next six weeks the Russians’ main aim was to unite their two main armies. Napoleon’s key goal was to stop them from doing so, to force Bagration southwards and, if possible, to crush Second Army between Davout’s corps to the north and Jérôme Bonaparte’s forces advancing from the west.

  In the end the Russians won this competition. Jérôme’s troops, mostly Westphalians, had been held back well behind Napoleon’s first echelon, partly in the hope that Bagration would advance to attack them and thrust his head into a sack. Even after Bagration wasted a number of days before retreating, Jérôme still had ground to make up if he was to catch them. The Russians were on the whole superior troops and quicker on the march than Jérôme’s Westphalians. They were marching towards their own supply magazines and across still unravaged countryside. By contrast, Jérôme’s soldiers were advancing away from their supplies and into a region which the Russians had already stripped.

  In addition, Jérôme was up against the formidable cavalry of Bagration’s rearguard. When Napoleon’s advance forced Platov to escape to the south-east he joined up with Second Army. On three successive days between 8 and 10 July near the village of Mir Platov ambushed and routed Jérôme’s advancing cavalry. The biggest victory came on the last day, when six regiments of Polish lancers were destroyed by a combination of Platov’s Cossacks and Major-General Ilarion Vasilchikov’s regular cavalry. This was the first time in the war that the French had encountered the full force of combined Russian regular and irregular light cavalry. It was also the first time they met Vasilchikov, one of the best Russian light cavalry generals. The superiority of the Russian light cavalry, established at the start of the 1812 campaign, was to grow ever more pronounced over the next two years of war. The Russian victory at Mir ensured that henceforth Jérôme’s advance guard kept a healthy distance behind Bagration.

  Davout’s corps proved a tougher nut. They blocked Bagration’s efforts to push his way through to First Army via Minsk, forcing him to make a big detour to the south-east. At Saltanovka on 23 July Davout’s men defeated another attempt by Bagration to link up with Barclay, this time via Mogilev. Only on 3 August, having crossed the Dnieper, did Second Army finally join First Army near Smolensk. For the whole of July both Barclay and Bagration had been attempting to bring their two armies together. Each blamed the other for their failure to do so. In retrospect, however, it is possible to see that not merely was the failure to unite neither general’s fault, it also worked out to the Russians’ advantage.

  This was partly because the attempt to cut off Bagration exhausted and depleted Napoleon’s army much more than the retreating Russians. Even by the time Davout reached Mogilev the result of hastening forward to catch Bagration through a ravaged countryside had cost him 30,000 of the 100,000 men with whom he had crossed the Neman. After Mogilev he gave up his attempt to pursue Second Army for fear of wrecking his corps. In addition, the fact that the Russian armies were split provided Barclay with a perfect reason to retreat and not to risk facing Napoleon in a pitched battle. Had the two armies been joined and the charismatic and very popular Bagration been on hand to lead the call to battle this would have been far more difficult. If the two Russian armies had fought Napoleon in early July the odds would have been worse than two to one. By early August they were closer to three to two. In that sense the strategy planned by Barclay and Alexander to wear down Napoleon had proved a triumphant success. But there was an element of good fortune in their ability to pursue this strategy as long as they did.

  After abandoning Drissa and bidding farewell to Alexander, Barclay de Tolly was in fact planning to make a stand in front of Vitebsk. Partly this was to sustain his troops’ morale. When the army had reached Drissa the soldiers had been served up a bombastic proclamation promising that the time for retreating was over and that Russian courage would bury Napoleon and his army on the banks of the Dvina. When a few days later the retreat was renewed there was inevitable muttering. Ivan Radozhitsky, a young artillery officer in Fourth Corps, overheard grumbling among his gunners at the ‘unheard-of’ retreat of Russian troops and the abandonment of huge swaths of the empire without a fight. ‘Obviously the villain [i.e. Napoleon] must be very strong: just look at how much we are giving him for free, almost the whole of old Poland.’28

  Barclay’s main reason for risking a battle at Vitebsk, however, was to distract Napoleon’s attention and allow Bagration to advance through Mogilev and unite with First Army. Barclay’s troops arrived at Vitebsk on 23 July. To gain time for them to gather their breath and for Bagration to arrive he detached Count Aleksandr Ostermann-Tolstoy’s Fourth Corps down the main road leading into Vitebsk from the west in order to slow down Napoleon’s advancing columns. On 25 July at Ostrovno, roughly 20 kilometres from Vitebsk, there occurred the first major clash between Napoleon’s forces and First Army.

  Aleksandr Ostermann-Tolstoy was immensely wealthy and had some of the eccentricities worthy of a Russian magnate of this era. Despite his name, he was a purely Russian type: adding the prefix ‘Ostermann’ to his own proud surname of Tolstoy had been an unwilling concession to rich bachelor uncles who had left him their great fortunes. Ostermann-Tolstoy was a handsome man, thin-faced and with an eagle’s nose. He looked the pensive, Romantic hero. On his estate in Kaluga province Tolstoy lived with a pet bear decked out in fantastic dress. More modest when on campaign, he nevertheless liked when possible to be accompanied by his pet eagle and his white crow. In some ways Ostermann-Tolstoy was an admirable man. He was a great patriot, who had loathed what he saw as Russia’s humiliation at Tilsit. Well educated, fluent in French and German and a lover of Russian literature, he was enormously and inspiringly brave, even by the very high standard of the Russian army. He was also careful of his men’s food, health and welfare. He shared their love for buckwheat kasha and was physically as tough as the toughest of his veteran grenadiers. Ostermann-Tolstoy was in fact an inspiring colonel of a regiment and an acceptable commander of a division so long as he was operating under the noses of more senior generals. But he was not a man one could safely trust with a larger detached force.29

  Fourth Corps fought the battle at Ostrovno in a manner that rather reflected Ostermann-Tolstoy’s character, though to be fair it also reflected the inexperience of many of his units and the Russian soldiers’ longing finally to get to grips with the enemy. Barclay sent forward his aide-de-camp, Vladimir Löwenstern, to keep an ey
e on Ostermann-Tolstoy. Subsequently Löwenstern recalled that the corps commander showed exceptional courage but also exposed his troops to unnecessary losses. The same point was made by Gavril Meshetich, a young artillery officer serving in the Second Heavy Battery of Fourth Corps.

  According to Meshetich, Ostermann-Tolstoy failed to take proper precautions despite the fact that he had been warned that the French were nearby. As a result his advance guard was ambushed and lost six guns. Subsequently he did not use the cover available on either side of the main road to shelter his infantry from enemy artillery fire. He also attempted to drive back enemy skirmishers with a massed bayonet charge, a tactic much used by the Russians in 1805 and which generally proved both costly and ineffective. Ostermann-Tolstoy could not, however, be blamed for the small-scale debacle which occurred on his left flank where the Ingermanland Dragoon Regiment had been posted in a wood to keep an eye on the French. At last given the opportunity to have a go at the enemy, the Russian dragoons stormed out of the forest, smashed through the nearest enemy cavalry and were then overwhelmed by superior French numbers, losing 30 per cent of their men. One result of these losses was that the regiment was kept out of the front line and relegated to military police duties for much of the rest of 1812. To fill the shoes of the officers lost at Ostrovno, five non-noble NCOs were promoted, one of the earliest examples of what was to become a common occurrence in 1812–14.30

  It would be wrong just to dwell on Russian failings at Ostrovno, however. Fourth Corps fulfilled its task by delaying the French and inflicting heavy casualties despite facing increasingly superior numbers. Though not very skilful, Ostermann-Tolstoy was nevertheless an inspiring commander. Ostrovno was young Ivan Radozhitsky’s first battle, as was true for very many of Fourth Corps’s soldiers. He recalled scenes of growing desolation and potential panic as enemy pressure mounted and men’s bodies were eviscerated and torn limb from limb by French cannon balls. In the thick of the fire Ostermann-Tolstoy sat unmoved on his horse, sniffing his tobacco. To messengers of doom requesting permission to retreat or warning that more and more Russian guns were being put out of action, Ostermann-Tolstoy responded by his own example of calm and by orders to ‘stand and die’. Radozhitsky commented that ‘this unshakeable strength of our commander at a time when everyone around him was being struck down was truly part of the character of a Russian infuriated by the sufferings being inflicted on his country. Looking at him, we ourselves grew strong and went to our posts to die.’31

  That evening Fourth Corps retired 7 kilometres towards Kakuviachino where responsibility for delaying the French was handed over to Lieutenant-General Petr Konovnitsyn, the commander of 3rd Infantry Division. Konovnitsyn was as courageous as Ostermann-Tolstoy but a much more skilful rearguard commander. His men kept the French at bay for most of 26 July. That night, however, Bagration’s aide-de-camp, Prince Aleksandr Menshikov, arrived at Barclay’s headquarters with news that transformed the situation. At Saltanovka on 23 July Davout had blocked Bagration’s attempts to march northwards via Mogilev to join up with Barclay. As a result, Second Army was being forced to march still further eastwards and there was no chance of any link-up between the two Russian armies in the immediate future.

  Even after receiving this news Barclay still wanted to fight at Vitebsk but he was dissuaded by Ermolov and the other senior generals. As Barclay later acknowledged, Ermolov’s advice was correct. The position at Vitebsk had its weaknesses and the Russians would have been outnumbered by more than two to one. Moreover, even if they had beaten off Napoleon’s attacks for a day this would have served no purpose. In fact it would merely have widened the distance between First and Second armies and allowed Napoleon to push between them and take Smolensk. Orders therefore went out for First Army to retreat. With Napoleon’s entire army deployed under the Russians’ noses, slipping away unscathed would be no easy matter, however.32

  First Army’s retreat began at four in the afternoon of 27 July. All that day the Russian rearguard commanded by Peter Pahlen kept the French at bay, manoeuvring with skill and calmly giving ground when necessary but mounting a number of sharp counter-attacks to deter any attempt to press too hard. Barclay de Tolly was not at all inclined to excessive praise of subordinates but in his reports to Alexander he stressed Pahlen’s great achievement in disengaging First Army from Napoleon and covering its tracks during the retreat from Vitebsk to Smolensk. French sources are more inclined to argue that Napoleon missed a great opportunity on 27 July by taking it for granted that the Russians would stand and fight on the following day and not pressing Pahlen very hard. That night the Cossacks kept all the bonfires burning in the Russian bivouacs, which convinced the French that Barclay was still in position and awaiting battle. When they woke the next morning to discover that the Russians had gone there was much dismay, increased by the fact that Pahlen covered Barclay’s tracks with such skill that for a time Napoleon had no idea in which direction his enemy had retreated.33

  The Duc de Fezensac, who was serving as aide-de-camp to Marshal Berthier, recalls in his memoirs that the wiser and more experienced French officers began to feel uneasy at Vitebsk: ‘They were struck by the admirable order in which the Russian army had made its retreat, always covered by its numerous Cossacks, and without abandoning a single cannon, cart or sick man.’ The Count de Segur was on Napoleon’s staff and recalls an inspection of Barclay’s camp on the day after the Russians had departed: ‘nothing left behind, not one weapon, nor a single valuable; no trace, nothing in short, in this sudden nocturnal march, which could demonstrate, beyond the bounds of the camp, the route which the Russians had taken; there appeared more order in their defeat than in our victory!’34

  After abandoning Vitebsk Barclay’s army headed for Smolensk. Initially there were fears that the French might get there first and Preradovich’s detachment of Guards cavalry and jaegers covered 80 kilometres in thirty-eight hours in order to forestall them. In fact this was something of a false alarm since Napoleon’s troops were exhausted and needed a rest. On 2 August Barclay and Bagration met in Smolensk and the two main Russian armies were united at last.

  Both generals did their best to put past grievances behind them and act in a united fashion. Barclay went to meet Bagration outside his headquarters in full uniform, hat in hand. He took Bagration round the regiments of First Army, showing him to the soldiers and making great show of the two commanders’ unity and friendship. Meanwhile Bagration conceded the overall command to Barclay. Since he was marginally senior, came from the ancient royal family of Georgia and had married into the heart of the Russian aristocracy, by the standards of the time this represented great self-sacrifice. But unity and subordination were always conditional. In the end, as Barclay well understood, Bagration would only go along with his plans if he chose to do so.

  In reality, despite goodwill on both sides, unity could not last. The fiery Georgian and the cool and cerebral ‘German’ were simply too different in temperament and this fed directly into contrasting views on what strategy to adopt. Bagration, supported by almost all the leading generals, was for an immediate, decisive offensive. Quite apart from all the military reasons which inspired them to support this strategy, it is clear from many officers’ memoirs that once they reached Smolensk the army became acutely aware that they were now defending Russian national soil.

  Luka Simansky, for example, was a lieutenant in the Izmailovsky Guards. In the first weeks of the war his diary shows little emotion and is largely a record of everyday conversations and minor pleasures and frustrations. Only when Simansky gets to the Russian city of Smolensk, views the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God and writes of its saving grace in earlier times of national emergency do strong emotions emerge. For Ivan Paskevich, the commander of the 26th Division in Bagration’s army, nature rather than anything man-made provided the first great reminder that this was a ‘national’ war: ‘now we were fighting in old Russia, as every birch-tree standing by the side of the road reminded
us’.35

  In many ways the most cogent justification for Bagration’s line was set out in a letter from Ermolov to Alexander. He argued that the armies would find it hard to remain united and static at Smolensk for long. Since it had never been envisaged that they would concentrate here, few supplies had been gathered and they would be hard pressed to feed themselves. Smolensk was in any case not a strong defensive position. The slightest threat to the army’s communications back to Moscow would force a further retreat. Now was the time to strike while Napoleon’s army was dispersed. The enemy’s inactivity must be caused by weakness, having had to make many detachments to fend off threats from Wittgenstein and Tormasov on the northern and southern flanks.

  Ermolov stated that the main obstacle to an offensive was Barclay: ‘The commander-in-chief…as far as possible will avoid a major battle and will not agree to one unless it is absolutely and unavoidably necessary.’ Alexander by now knew from many sources how deeply unpopular Barclay’s strategy was among the generals and soldiers alike. An expert at avoiding responsibility for unpopular policies, the emperor cannot have been pleased to read Ermolov’s comment that Barclay ‘did not hide from me Your Majesty’s will in this matter’.36

  In fact, by the time the two armies had united at Smolensk Alexander’s position had changed radically and he himself was putting Barclay under heavy pressure to advance against Napoleon. Probably the emperor was sincere in stating that he had never expected retreat to reach Smolensk before risking a battle but he will also have been aware of the political risks if Barclay continued to retreat without fighting. On 9 August he wrote to the commander-in-chief that ‘I now hope that with the help of the Supreme Being you will be able to take the offensive and thereby stop the invasion of our provinces. I have placed the safety of Russia in your hands, general, and I like to hope that you will justify all my confidence in you.’ Two days later Alexander repeated his calls for an attack, adding without any apparent sense of irony that ‘you are free to act without any impediment or interference’. Under great pressure to attack from his own generals and Bagration, Barclay was in no position to ignore his master also. In any case he was the captive of his own earlier promise to Alexander that he would attack once the armies joined.37