The Burning of Moscow

by Alexander Mikaberidze

  The Battle of Tarutino (Vinkovo), 18 October

  The Russians would have had to be blind not to see the growing weakness of the enemy force in front of them. Murat’s position was so poor as to tempt even the most cautious enemy commander to attack and, after some vacillation, Kutuzov finally gave in to the energetic representations of his senior officers, in particular Colonel Karl Toll, who had spent several days carefully examining the enemy positions, which he found weak and exposed. The Allied left flank was anchored on a wood that was not sufficiently well protected or patrolled. The Allies seem to have been convinced that peace would soon be declared and security was thus lax. The front line stretched from the confluence of the Chernishnya river with the Nara to the hamlet of Teterinka, some 5 miles to the west, and about 4 miles south of Spas-Kuplya. Vinkovo, which lay south of the Chernishnya, was occupied by Claparede’s Poles, supported by the 3rd Cavalry Corps (under General St Germain) and a division of the 1st Corps. To the left rear of Vinkovo lay Dufour’s division, with the rest of Nansouty’s cavalry corps on its left. Even further to the south of the Chernishnya stood Poniatowski’s 5th Corps, with Sebastiani’s cavalry on the extreme left. Latour-Maubourg was observing the Nara on the right rear.

  Murat’s forces amounted to some 26,000 men, encumbered rather than supported by 187 horsed guns. The troops were in a wretched state. They were mostly camped out in the open fields, with no shelter to protect them from the wind, rain and cold. The autumn days were becoming colder and there were frosts at night. The shortage of forage and food had a ruinous effect on the troops, who could neither travel regularly to Moscow for provisions nor forage freely in the vicinity. The once resplendent cavalry thus comprised between 7,000 and 8,000 fatigued and malnourished horsemen. Visiting the 11th Hussars, Captain Biot, aide-de-camp to the wounded General Pajol, was stunned to see ‘men and horses dying of hunger. Literally. They never received any distributions.’64 Some squadrons were down to two dozen troopers, while some regiments had fewer than a hundred men. Lieutenant Mailly-Nesle, who had just joined his 2nd Carabiniers Regiment, was shocked to find that it had lost so many men that ‘we were no more than 100 men in the two carabinier regiments all told. We had left France 1,400 strong and several detachments had joined us later.’ Many units lacked basic essentials and had been eating only unground rye and horseflesh: Kutuzov’s sullen promise to make ‘the French eat horseflesh’ was now being fulfilled.65 Almost every day Colonel Griois and his companion Jumilhac had to fend off desperate soldiers who wanted to dismantle their timber cottage for firewood.66 The condition of the horses was even more dreadful. According to Lieutenant Henryk Dembinski, the horses were so malnourished that ‘even though we had folded blankets to the thickness of sixteen, their backs had rotted through completely, so much so that the rot had eaten through the saddlecloth, with the result that when a trooper dismounted, you could see the horse’s entrails’.67 Murat was aware of these difficulties and tried to inform Napoleon of the critical condition of the cavalry. ‘My position is atrocious. I have the whole enemy army in front of me. Our advanced guard is reduced to nothing. It is starving, and it is no longer possible to go foraging without the virtual certainty of capture. Not a day passes without me losing two hundred men in this way.’68 But the emperor, probably influenced by the splendid parades at the Kremlin, dismissed such warnings.69 ‘My army is finer than ever,’ he told Murat’s aide-de-camp. ‘A few days of rest have done it the greatest good.’70

  After examining the terrain, Toll proposed a way for the Russian army to score a decisive victory at Vinkovo: part of the army would make an attack against Murat’s extended front, while Bennigsen, with a force composed of the bulk of the army, turned his left flank. There was a bottleneck just 6 miles behind the Allied front line at Vinkovo, where the old Kaluga road ran through a narrow defile between two forests. The two-pronged attack would overwhelm the enemy, cut the only road along which Murat’s men could withdraw, and result in encirclement and a decisive victory. Most of the Russian generals agreed with Toll and emphatically supported his plan of attack, forcing Kutuzov to yield.

  The attack was planned for 17 October but staff mismanagement forced a day’s postponement. At dawn on 18 October the Russians advanced in multiple columns, surprising the enemy and scoring a quick success.71 The Russian cavalry on the right swept away Sebastiani’s horsemen, captured most of the baggage and artillery, and pushed on towards Spas-Kuplya, where they cut Murat’s line of retreat. This development would have been critical had the Russian cavalry been supported by infantry. But poor staff work once again intervened. Only one Russian column advanced on time and, as the rest got delayed, the attack soon became disjointed. The second column, consisting of General Baggovut’s 2nd Corps, arrived late and suffered the misfortune of losing its commander in the very first minutes of the fight. Murat’s bold charge contained its advance, while the third and fourth Russian columns failed to advance with the necessary speed and acted indecisively. The result was that the entire Allied advanced guard, though in great disorder and suffering considerably from Russian artillery fire, succeeded in evading the Russian envelopment and effected a retreat through Spas-Kuplya, which the Russian cavalry was obliged to abandon. Murat retreated to Voronovo, where he rallied his shaken troops, while the Russian forces returned to Tarutino. The Allies lost some 2,800 men, of whom 1,150 were prisoners or missing; two generals were killed and two more wounded. The Russian losses amounted to 1,500 killed and wounded but they captured thirty-eight cannon, a standard and the bulk of the enemy baggage.72

  The Russian success at Vinkovo, incomplete as it was, none the less dealt a heavy blow to Murat’s advanced guard, further damaging the already shaken morale of the Grande Armée; it also had a significant effect on the strategic situation. This action was the last straw that forced Napoleon to finalize his plans. It was now clear that, niceties aside, there would be no peace with Russia and it was time to think of the future.

  The Departure From Moscow

  The news of the battle of Tarutino/Vinkovo startled Napoleon, who ‘without being frightened, was none the less very agitated’; he finished his review of the 3rd Corps, distributed promotions and awards and then returned to his rooms where he instantly began to issue a series of orders to prepare the Grande Armée for the resumption of hostilities. ‘He kept opening the door to the room where those on duty waited, calling now for one person, now for another, and he put so much urgency into all his ideas and plans that I believe that the fatal consequences of his long stay in Moscow were suddenly revealed to him on that day,’ wrote Bausset.73

  Napoleon needed this jolt – it made him rediscover ‘the fire of his earliest years’, as Ségur aptly observed. ‘A thousand general and detailed orders, all different, all concording, all necessary, gushed all of a sudden from his impetuous genius!’ Among the first to receive his orders were Marshals Davout, Ney and Lefebvre, who were instructed to start redeploying their forces to the Kaluga road at once and to be prepared to leave tomorrow at daybreak for ‘a hard day’s marching’.74 The insult to French arms had to be avenged75 and Napoleon decided to set out with the army in pursuit of the Russians, leaving Mortier with about 10,000 men76 to take up his quarters at the Kremlin and ‘remain in the city, and defend the Kremlin under all circumstances’.77 Mortier was to fortify and mine the Kremlin and ‘keep a strong force at the nearby monastery’ that had previously been occupied by Davout. Once the army departed, Napoleon wanted Mortier to ‘issue a proclamation, through the municipality, warning the inhabitants that the rumours of evacuation are false, that the army is advancing on Kaluga, Tula and Bryansk to take possession of these important places, and the arms factories they contain; and to engage the inhabitants to maintain public order and prevent anyone from trying to complete the destruction of the town’. Mortier was told ‘to keep up tight policing’ and to ‘shoot every Russian soldier found in the streets, and give orders to all those who are in the hospitals not to leave them’.
78 Napoleon urged the marshal to evacuate and save as many wounded and sick soldiers as possible.79

  That Napoleon did not intend to abandon Moscow completely is made plain by his instructions to Mortier, and in a letter to La Riboisière he acknowledged that ‘it is possible I may return to Moscow: therefore, nothing of value – such as gunpowder, musket and cannon cartridges, lead to make balls – must be destroyed’.80 However, just in case circumstances turned differently, Napoleon wanted a number of artillery officers to stay behind at the Kremlin and be ‘responsible for blowing up the Kremlin, when it will be time’.81 Deep in his heart, Napoleon must have known that returning to Moscow would be pointless. Now that the army was on the move, he needed to press on. He planned to move his forces to the western provinces of Russia, where supplies and magazines had already been prepared. ‘We are going to withdraw to the frontiers of Poland by the Kaluga road,’ he told his trusted aide Jean Rapp. ‘I shall take good winter quarters and hope that [Emperor] Alexander will make peace.’ For him, it was a strategic withdrawal, not a retreat – a point he tried to reinforce in his memoirs dictated at St Helena.82 The route from Moscow to Smolensk, via Gzhatsk, was still devastated after the Allied forces had fought their way along it to the Russian capital between July and September. Therefore Napoleon decided to advance by the Kaluga route, towards the intact southwestern regions, before veering north.

  The news of the impending departure caused an indescribable commotion in the city. As soldiers and officers began making last-minute preparations, many Muscovites were confronted with the dilemma of whether to leave or to stay. Some had compromised themselves ‘by their trust in Napoleon’s fortune’, in the words of Chevalier d’Ysarn, but many more, especially foreigners, were simply seized with panic and feared retribution once the Russians reclaimed the city. In these chaotic few hours they had little time for reflection and most simply rushed to grab as much as they could before departing. The city’s streets turned into bustling markets as small traders sought to profit from the confusion and snapped up anything the Allied troops could not carry off with them.

  After spending just over a month in Moscow, Napoleon finally departed from the city on 19 October 1812.83 The vanguard, commanded by Eugène, Ney’s 3rd Corps and Davout’s 1st Corps left at dawn and were followed by the Old and Young Guard and the remnants of the cavalry. Late in the day Napoleon himself left the city that he had entered in all its splendour – and now left a mass of smoking ruins. His forces amounted to about 115,000 men,84 who were overall in relatively good condition and many ‘marched along gaily, singing at the tops of their voices’.85 Observing the troops marching out of Moscow, Captain François Dumonceau was particularly impressed by the Italians, who had ‘a fine martial look. It was evident that they had recovered well from their previous exertions. The soldiers appeared to be joyous and ready for anything.’86 In contrast, the Allied cavalry had suffered great losses in horses and was just a shadow of its former self. Several thousand troopers, formed into a dismounted unit, were issued carbines and ordered to fight as infantry, a role they greatly disliked. ‘The worst infantry regiment is more effective than four regiments of dismounted cavalry,’ lamented Castellane. ‘They bleat like donkeys that they were not made for this work.’87 Unfortunately, neither Napoleon nor any of his marshals, not even the meticulous Davout, took measures to prepare the troops fully for the rigours of the Russian winter.88 They probably assumed that there was still enough time to reach their winter quarters before the onset of freezing temperatures. Smolensk, with its supply magazine, was only ten or twelve days’ march from Moscow, and the great depots at Vilna and Minsk were only another two weeks of marching from there. Bausset noted that on Napoleon’s orders ‘Russian almanacs for the past forty years had been reviewed’ to see temperature averages and ‘it was agreed that the coldest weather appeared around the first day of December’.89 This information probably led many into complacency, believing that the Grande Armée, departing on 19 October, had more than thirty days before the winter arrived. A few individual officers were clever enough to prepare themselves for the winter by buying winter clothing and obtaining sufficient supplies and horses, but the army remained woefully unprepared for the cold. This was especially true of the remaining cavalry and horse artillery. Accustomed to a northern climate, the Polish troops prepared for the march by setting up their forges and shoeing their horses. They urged their Allied comrades-in-arms to do likewise but few listened to them. ‘The stubbornness and arrogance of the French, who felt that having been through so many wars they knew better than everyone else and did not need their advice, did not allow them to sharp-shoe their horses,’ grumbled Jozef Grabowski.90

  The Allied army was, however, burdened with an enormous transport train, which, depending on sources, is estimated to have included between 15,000 and 40,000 wagons.’The first big mistake [of the retreat] was made as early as the gates of Moscow,’ lamented one Dutch officer. ‘It had been generally accepted that people could bring along all that had been plundered.’91 Yet during their month’s sojourn in Moscow soldiers and officers had accumulated booty, which they hoped would make their fortune back home. Philippe de Ségur likened the departing Grande Armée to ‘a Tartar horde after a felicitous invasion’, while Dominique Larrey suggested that the treasures carried off from Moscow by the Allied troops outdid all that the Persians seized in ancient Babylon. ‘Many generals who until then had contented themselves with only one carriage,’ explained Chambray, ‘now left with several, while a large number of officers who had not had any on reaching Moscow had procured some for themselves.’92 These were transports of all shapes and forms: ‘Charabancs, drozhkies wurts, calèches, kibitkas, contending with each other in elegance and speed, covered the road, overflowed everywhere and inundated the plain,’ described an eyewitness.93 In every battalion and regiment soldiers and officers sought to protect themselves against the rigours of a winter campaign by procuring furs or woollen clothing and amassing as much wine and strong liquor as possible. The officers, having helped themselves to any carriages they could find, naturally had more space to transport provisions and loot. The newly promoted Major Pion des Loches explained, ‘As a captain I had had one wagon for myself and my lieutenant, half filled with my troops’ effects. Now that I was a major I had a wagon to myself, smaller it is true, but sufficient for my victuals for a retreat of three to four months: a hundred cakes of biscuit a foot in diameter, a sack holding a quintal of flour, more than 300 bottles of wine, 20–30 bottles of rum and brandy, more than 10 pounds of tea, and as much again of coffee, 50–60 pounds of sugar, 3–4 pounds of chocolate, some pounds of candles.’ In addition, Pion des Loches also had a stack of books and a few furs.94 Even the less well-off Captain Louis Bro of the Guard Chasseurs à Cheval was able to procure two horses to carry his possessions. ‘I bought two little Cossack horses used to surviving off straw and the branches of pine trees,’ Bro wrote. ‘They carried my personal effects and 100 kilograms of reserve victuals, principally chocolate and eau-de-vie … I also furnished myself with a fur-lined cloak, a fox fur, a fur-lined cap, felt boots and resin bricks that would allow me to light a fire at any moment.’95 The Imperial Guard was no better than the rest of the army, and many followed the example of Sergeant Bourgogne of the Young Guard, whose knapsack contained several pounds of sugar, rice and dry biscuits, as well as half a bottle of liquor, a Chinese silk embroidered dress, two silver-framed paintings, several medallions, a diamond-studded decoration, a lady’s riding coat and his dress uniform. He carried additional silver and porcelain items in a large bag slung over his shoulder.96 Soldiers groaned under their heavy knapsacks but refused to part with their precious possessions, preferring rather to throw out parts of their uniform, cartridges and musket-cleaning equipment instead. In some cases, soldiers even impressed unfortunate Russian peasants to carry their loot for them or to push barrows piled with booty. ‘Anyone who did not see the French army leave Moscow,’ observed Pierre-Armand
Barrau, lamenting the state of the army, ‘can only have a very weak impression of what the armies of Greece and Rome must have looked like when they marched back from Troy and Carthage.’97

  Aside from the personal possessions of officers and soldiers, there were also hundreds of wagons belonging to non-combatants and hundreds of cannon and caissons. Napoleon, fearful that the Russians would treat any abandoned ordnance (even spiked guns) as trophies, insisted on withdrawing all artillery pieces (over 600 in total) with hundreds of caissons.98 In addition, the emperor did his best to evacuate the remaining wounded and sick soldiers from Moscow. He told Mortier that he could not stress enough how important it was ‘to place the men who remain in the hospitals, on the wagons of the Young Guard, on those of the dismounted cavalry, and upon all he can find. For as the Romans gave civic crowns to those who saved their fellow citizens, [Mortier] will merit one if he shall save soldiers.’ Mortier was instructed to mount the wounded and sick upon his own horses, and those of all his officers – ‘It was thus the emperor acted at St Jean d’Acre [in 1799] and [Mortier] ought to adopt this measure as well.’99

  Traffic on this scale not only slowed the army’s movements but also distracted the troops, many of whom were more concerned about securing their portion of booty than maintaining discipline and battle readiness. As Colonel Griois summed up: ‘This mass of men, of horses and of vehicles resembled rather the migration of a people on the move than an organized army.’100 This ‘was no longer the Grande Armée of Napoleon’, thought one cavalry officer, but rather that of Darius returning from a far-flung expedition, more lucrative than glorious’.101 Sergeant Bourgogne has left us a vivid description of this chaotic departure from Moscow: