After thirteen days in Dresden, where he had achieved little more than blind himself with his own display of power, Napoleon bade an affectionate farewell to the King of Saxony and a tearful one to Marie-Louise, and climbed into his travelling carriage. Two days later he was in Posen, which he entered under an arch inscribed with the words Heroi Invincibili, greeted deliriously by its Polish citizens, who had illuminated the city and festooned it with flags and garlands. But after a conference with Daru, who was overseeing the provisioning, he had to face up to the fact that his preparations had proved ineffective, and as he continued his journey he could see for himself the dire supply situation. There was a shortage of draught horses, which meant that supplies could not be brought forward fast enough, and men and horses were dying in large numbers. The situation was growing worse with every passing day; the ground was burning under his army’s feet, and Napoleon had to move fast before it starved.21
The Russian forces were divided into three armies, positioned so as to be able to either defend Vilna or move out and attack. The First, deployed in advance of the city under General Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay de Tolly, numbered about 160,000 men. The Second, under General Piotr Ivanovich Bagration, consisted of just over 60,000. It was poised to either support an advance by the First by outflanking the enemy, or to assist its defence by threatening the enemy’s flank. A Third Army consisting of nearly 60,000 men under General Tormasov was positioned south of the Pripet Marshes, guarding the approaches to the Ukraine.22
Napoleon proposed to attack Barclay’s First Army while Eugène’s and St Cyr’s corps drove a wedge between that and Bagration, and further south, Jérôme took him on with three other army corps. The attack was to be spearheaded by Murat with a huge body of cavalry, a great battering-ram of four divisions. In the north, Marshal Macdonald with the Prussian contingent was to advance on Riga with Oudinot in support. South of the Pripet, Schwarzenberg’s Austrians were to mark Tormasov. ‘The wings of our army were thus entrusted to the two nations which had the greatest interest in seeing our enterprise fail,’ remarked an officer on Berthier’s staff.23
It is impossible to determine the real strength of the Grande Armée. In theory, it consisted of 590,687 men and 157,878 horses, with another 90,000 or so men in various parts of Poland and Germany. On 14 June Napoleon issued a circular insisting that the commanders of every corps provide honest figures on the able-bodied, the sick, deserters, as well as the dead and the wounded. ‘It has to be made clear to the individual corps that they must regard it as a duty towards the Emperor to provide him with the simple truth,’ ran the order. But Napoleon reacted angrily when provided with dwindling figures, particularly if these could not be explained by battle casualties, so unit commanders concealed losses from him. ‘He was led astray in the most outrageous way,’ wrote General Berthezène. ‘From the marshal to the captain, it was as if everyone had come together to hide the truth from him, and, although it was tacit, this conspiracy really did exist; for it was bound together by self-interest.’ According to him, the true strength of the Grande Armée was no greater than 235,000 when it crossed the Niemen. That was still a considerable force, and this added urgency to the need for a quick victory; every day increased the difficulty of feeding it.24
In two Bulletins, on 20 and 22 June, Napoleon explained how, since Tilsit, he had bent over backwards to accommodate Russia, but she had been taken over by ‘the English spirit’ and begun arming against him and the whole of Europe. ‘The vanquished have adopted the tone of the conquerors,’ he concluded. ‘They are tempting fate; let destiny take its course.’25
37
The Rubicon
Omens of destiny were not in short supply. Having reached the furthest outposts, in the early hours of 23 June Napoleon borrowed a Polish lancer’s cap and cloak and rode out, with his staff similarly disguised as a regular patrol, to scout the river Niemen for a good crossing point. A hare started from under his horse’s hooves and he was thrown. Instead of cursing and blaming the horse as he usually did, he remained tight-lipped and remounted without a word. Berthier and Caulaincourt, who were in attendance, took it as a bad omen, and said they should not cross the river.1
Napoleon spent the rest of the day working in his tent, in sombre mood. This contrasted sharply with the elation he normally displayed at the start of a campaign, and his entourage noted it with apprehension. He issued a proclamation to the army which announced the commencement of ‘The Second Polish War’, assuring his men that as well as being ‘glorious for French arms’, it would bring about a lasting peace and ‘put an end to that arrogant influence which Russia has been exerting on the affairs of Europe over the past fifty years’.2
At three on the morning of 24 June he was in the saddle once more, mounting a horse named Friedland, and as the sun came up he could see three pontoon bridges which had been thrown across the river, and one division taking up defensive positions on the other side. He took his place on a knoll overlooking the scene and watched, a telescope in his right hand and his left behind his back. The huge army, dressed as for a parade, was crossing the river, the morning sunshine glinting on the helmets and breastplates of cuirassiers and dragoons, and on every polished cap badge and belt buckle, and lighting up the blue, white, yellow, green, red and brown uniforms of the various allied contingents. He seemed in a good mood, and hummed military marches as he contemplated what one witness described as ‘the most extraordinary, the most grandiose, the most imposing spectacle one could imagine, a sight capable of intoxicating a conqueror’.3
‘Vive l’Empereur! The Rubicon has been crossed,’ noted a captain of grenadiers of the Guard in his diary at a bivouac outside Kowno (Kaunas) on 26 June, adding that some ‘fine pages’ would be added to the annals of the French nation. Four days later Napoleon entered Vilna, which had just been evacuated by the Russians. He was greeted by a municipal delegation, but the inhabitants had not had time to prepare the usual trappings, and his entry into the city was anything but triumphal. And as he bedded down for the night in the former archbishop’s palace, where Alexander had slept the night before, a primeval storm burst on the area to the south and west of the city.4
Men and horses exhausted by lack of food and fodder, as well as by the intense heat of the past weeks, were suddenly drenched by a downpour of cold rain which lasted through the night. The morning sun revealed a landscape littered with dead or dying horses and men, of wagons, guns and gun carriages mired in mud, and those still alive struggling to get free. Some artillery units lost a quarter of their horses, and the cavalry did not fare much better, but it was the supply services which suffered the most; at a conservative estimate the French army lost around 50,000 horses that night.5
The psychological damage was hardly less significant. As the men trudged on through the quagmire that had replaced the dusty roads, they could see dead and dying men and beasts by the roadside, and rumours of grenadiers having been struck by lightning passed from rank to rank. Had they been Greeks or Romans in ancient times they would undoubtedly have turned about and gone home after such an augury, quipped one of Napoleon’s aides.6
Napoleon was baffled by the behaviour of the Russians, who had shown every sign of meaning to defend Vilna, yet decamped at his approach, leaving behind stores accumulated over months. It made no sense, and he instructed his commanders to proceed with caution, expecting a counter-attack. He need not have bothered. Barclay was a fine general, but although he was also minister of war, Alexander had not given him overall command, and hovered at his side limiting his freedom of action. In the absence of any fixed plan, he thought it best to fall back.
On 1 July Napoleon received an envoy from Alexander, General Balashov, who brought a letter proposing negotiations conditional on a French withdrawal. ‘Alexander is making fun of me,’ Napoleon retorted: he had not come all this way in order to negotiate, and since Alexander had refused to do so before, it was time to deal once and for all with the barbarians of the north. ‘T
hey must be thrown back into their icy wastes, so that they do not come and meddle in the affairs of civilised Europe for the next twenty-five years at least.’7
Balashov could hardly get a word in as Napoleon paced the room, venting his frustration in a monologue which veered from whining complaints to squalls of anger. He professed his esteem and love for Alexander, and reproached him for surrounding himself with ‘adventurers’. He could not understand why they were fighting, instead of talking as they had at Tilsit and Erfurt. ‘I am already in Wilna, and I still don’t know what we are fighting over,’ he said. He shouted, stamped his foot and, when a small window which he had just closed blew open again, tore it off its hinges and hurled it into the courtyard below. But in the reply to Alexander which he handed to Balashov he professed continuing friendship, peaceful intentions, and a desire to talk, without accepting the precondition of a withdrawal behind the Niemen.8
‘He has rushed into this war which will be his undoing, either because he has been badly advised, or because he is driven by his destiny,’ he declared after Balashov had gone. ‘But I am not angry with him over this war. One more war is one more triumph for me.’ On 11 July he issued a mendacious Bulletin announcing great military successes, achieved at the cost of no more than 130 French casualties.9
On the same day as Napoleon’s interview with Balashov, the Polish patriots of Vilna had held a Te Deum in the cathedral, followed by a ceremony of reunification of Lithuania with Poland. Napoleon had hoped that he would be able to defeat the Russians and reach an agreement with Alexander before he had to confront the Polish question, since that would probably have been part of the deal. But now he was being pressed to commit himself. In an attempt to duck the issue, on 3 July he set up a government for Lithuania, to administer the country, gather supplies and raise troops, and instructed his foreign minister Maret, whom he had brought to Vilna, to string them along.
On 11 July, eight delegates from the national confederation which he had called for in Warsaw arrived in Vilna. The emperor kept them waiting three days, then listened impatiently to their request that he announce the restoration of the kingdom of Poland. ‘In my position, I have many different interests to reconcile,’ he told them, but added that if the Polish nation arose and fought valiantly, Providence might reward it with independence. With this speech, he cooled the ardour of the Poles and robbed himself of what would have been a powerful weapon; the investigation conducted by the Russians after the war revealed that the population of the area in which he was operating was on his side, yet he would not engage its support or even sanction popular initiatives to act behind enemy lines lest it hinder chances of a reconciliation with Alexander.10
In his proclamation launching his ‘Second Polish War’, he had written that he was taking the war into Russia, giving his troops the impression that from the moment they crossed the Niemen they were in enemy territory, and therefore licensed to behave as they liked. ‘All around the city and in the countryside there were extraordinary excesses,’ noted a young noblewoman of Vilna. ‘Churches were plundered, sacred chalices were sullied; even cemeteries were not respected, and women were violated.’ With no fighting to do and no palpable purpose to the campaign, tens of thousands of men had deserted and were roaming the countryside in gangs, attacking manor houses and villages, raping and killing, sometimes in collusion with mutinous peasants. ‘The path of Attila in the age of barbarism cannot have been strewn with more horrible testimonies,’ in the words of one Polish officer. In view of their numbers there was no way of enforcing the law, and those rounded up deserted again at the first opportunity. Officials were not safe, and estafettes were attacked.11
Apart from cooling the ardour of the local patriots, this complicated what was already a challenge. Napoleon was operating with huge army corps at distances that would have presented a problem in well-mapped areas with good roads. Couriers and staff officers struggled to find their way down sandy tracks, through boggy wildernesses and interminable forests. It was difficult for them to locate the commanders they were seeking, as these were themselves on the move, and many of the troops encountered along the way were not familiar enough with the marshals and generals to recognise them, while many could not speak French. Napoleon could not act or react as fast as he was wont to, which frustrated his plans.
He had managed to drive a wedge between Barclay’s First Army and Bagration’s Second, and had sent Davout with two divisions and Grouchy’s cavalry corps to cut Bagration’s line of retreat and crush him against Jérôme’s advancing corps. But Jérôme had got off to a slow start, and failed to pin down Bagration, who was able to swerve south and get clear before the French pincers closed. Napoleon berated him, reprimanded Eugène and insulted Poniatowski, both of whom were under his orders.12
The failure to destroy Bagration was his own fault; it had been his idea to give Jérôme such an important role. He had quickly come into conflict with his corps commanders and his own chief of staff. Napoleon had instructed Davout to oversee the combined operation but had failed to notify Jérôme, so Davout and Jérôme also fell out. Jérôme decided to go home, and, taking with him his royal guards and his only trophy of war, a Polish mistress, on 16 July began his march back to Kassel. ‘You have made me miss the fruit of my cleverest calculations, and the best opportunity that will have presented itself in this war,’ wrote a furious Napoleon. For good measure, he reproved Davout for his handling of the situation.13
‘I am very well,’ Napoleon wrote to Marie-Louise that day. ‘Kiss the little one for me. Love me, and never doubt my feelings for you. My affairs are going well.’ They were not. Having himself wasted two weeks at Vilna, he had allowed the Russians to retreat in good order to a previously fortified camp at Drissa. When he got news of this, he decided to sweep round into their rear and trap them in it. But by the time he set off they had changed their plan and abandoned the camp, robbing him of his chance of a battle. On 21 July he nevertheless wrote a triumphant letter to Cambacérès announcing the capture of the camp.14
He resumed his pursuit, and took heart when Murat engaged the Russian rearguard at Ostrovno. ‘We are on the eve of great events,’ he wrote to Maret on 25 July, and sent off a note to Marie-Louise brimming with optimism. Two days later he caught up with Barclay, who was preparing to give battle before Vitebsk. It was midday, and he could have engaged him immediately. Instead he decided to wait for all his troops to catch up, and postponed the attack to the following morning. That evening Barclay received news that Bagration, whom he had been expecting, could not make it, so he decided to strike camp silently in the night and resume his retreat. The French rose early and prepared for battle only to find the Russians had vanished.15
Napoleon was baffled, and spent a day scouting the surrounding area before deciding to pause and give his army a rest. The men had marched under scorching sun, in temperatures recognised only by the veterans of the Egyptian campaign, along dusty roads through swarms of mosquitoes and horseflies, suffering agonies of thirst, since wells were few and far between. Many had wandered off in search of victuals and never been seen again, some had died of heatstroke or dehydration, others had fallen ill from drinking from brackish puddles or even horses’ urine. The cavalry had been concentrated in a great body under Murat, which meant that even when they did find water, the tens of thousands of horses could not all be watered, and as there was no forage, they were lucky to find some old thatch to eat off a cottage roof. Some units were down by a third, and Napoleon had lost as many as 35,000 men without a battle since leaving Vilna.16
He took up quarters in the governor’s residence at Vitebsk, where he spent the next two weeks, undecided as to what to do next. He contemplated stopping there and turning Vitebsk into a fortified outpost. He wrote to his librarian in Paris requesting ‘a selection of amusing books’. It was still extremely hot, and while his troops bathed in the river Dvina he sweated as he worked at tidying up his army. He issued confident-sounding Bulletins, wrote to M
aret in Vilna instructing him to publicise non-existent successes, and blustered in front of the men, but in the privacy of his own quarters he was irritable, shouting at people and insulting them. He received news of the treaty between Russia and Turkey, and details of that between Russia and Sweden signed in March. What he did not know was that Russia had also signed a treaty of alliance with Britain on 18 July. But he was cheered by the news of the outbreak of war between Britain and the United States of America.17
He had been greeted in Vitebsk by local Polish patriots, and evaded their questions as to his intentions by heaping abuse on Poniatowski and the alleged cowardice of the Polish troops, which, he claimed, was largely responsible for the failure to catch Bagration. ‘Your prince is nothing but a c—,’ he snapped at one Polish officer. To Maret in Vilna he sent contradictory instructions regarding the Polish question. Many argued that this was the moment to send Poniatowski south into Volhynia. This would have raised an insurrection in what had been Polish Ukraine, which would have yielded men and horses as well as supplies. More important, it would have tied down the Russian forces in the south, under Chichagov and Tormasov. But, as he admitted to Caulaincourt, he was more interested in using Poland as a pawn than in restoring it.18
Unusually for him, Napoleon consulted a number of generals on what to do next. Berthier, Caulaincourt, Duroc and others felt it was time to call a halt. They cited losses, provisioning difficulties and the length of the lines of communication, and expressed the fear that even a victory would cost them dear, on account of the lack of hospitals and medical resources in the area. But Napoleon hankered after a battle to show for his pains, and hoped that now they were on the borders of Russia proper, Barclay would have to fight. ‘He believed in a battle because he wanted one, and he believed that he would win it because that was what he needed to do,’ wrote Caulaincourt. ‘He did not for a moment doubt that Alexander would be forced by his nobility to sue for peace, because that was the whole basis of his calculations.’ Leaping out of his bath at two o’clock one morning he suddenly announced that they must advance at once, only to spend the next two days poring over maps and papers. ‘The very danger of our situation impels us towards Moscow,’ he said to Narbonne. ‘I have exhausted all the objections of the wise. The die is cast.’19
Napoleon Page 61
