by Philip Dwyer
Napoleon did the same thing the next day – that is, he marched at the head of his grenadiers, with shells bursting all around him, as they trudged on to Liady where, that afternoon, he slid into town on his bottom. The approach was so steep and so covered in ice that he and his Old Guard had no other choice. It was perhaps no coincidence that it was only then that Napoleon admitted the army was disintegrating before his eyes. At Dubrovna the next day (19 November), he addressed the Old Guard and told them just that, exhorting them to maintain a strict discipline in order to survive and even inciting them, according to one officer, to punish deserters themselves by stoning.36 Mind you, there were not many in the Old Guard who did desert or who would have considered it. Napoleon’s aura was so great for these men that they responded to his exhortations by raising their bearskins and caps on their bayonets and shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’37
Orsha was reached later that day. The city was reasonably well stocked and Napoleon was under the impression that with a few days’ rest here he would be able to rally the army. Also, Victor and Oudinot, in better shape no doubt than the men who had retreated from Moscow, were not far away. What’s more, on the evening of 21 November Ney, who was commanding the rearguard and who was thought lost, arrived at Orsha. He had managed to get through with just 900 men, plus four or five thousand stragglers and refugees.38 In the past week, Napoleon had lost a further 20,000 men, as well as thousands of civilians. At Orsha the order was given to get rid of any excess baggage – incredible to think that it had taken all this time for the order to be given – by burning the carriages and wagons, largely in order to recuperate the horses.
Vengeance
The cold was not the only problem facing the retreating troops. Russian peasants attacked anyone who came to their villages looking for food, or set upon convoys of the sick and wounded, killing anyone they could find.39 In part this was because they had been called upon to do so by leading generals – Barclay had appealed to all Russians in the occupied areas to ‘make sure that not a single enemy soldier can hide himself from our vengeance’40 – and in part it was simply a knee-jerk reaction to protect life, limb and property. Sir Robert Wilson, an English liaison officer with the Russian army, saw a group of peasants beating out the brains of a line of prisoners in time with a song.41 One witness is supposed to have seen a French prisoner sold to some Russian peasants for twenty roubles; he was ‘baptized’ with a cauldron of boiling water and then impaled alive with an iron pike. Prisoners and marauders were hacked to death by women with hatchets, or buried alive.42 These accounts of torture and atrocity might be considered exaggerated if they were not confirmed by Russian sources.43 The zeal with which the Russian peasantry took to massacring members of the Grande Armée surprised even hardened veterans of the Iberian Peninsula. In one account, after Russian peasants had harassed French troops marauding around Moscow, Napoleon ordered a large number of peasants to be rounded up and executed as a warning.44
Russian soldiers were known to exact their vengeance on prisoners as well.45 Somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000 prisoners were taken by the Russians. Of those, around 53,000 died in captivity, and 39,000 survived.46 Although the figures are impossible to verify, we know that the prisoners, made up of all nationalities, also included women (usually wives) and children. They were often stripped naked and killed or left to die, or were marched back to detention camps without being given any sustenance along the way. Stripping victims naked, regardless of their sex, and leaving them to wander in the snow was a common practice among the Cossacks.47 The Cossacks did so not only because the clothes their victims were wearing were valuable or badly needed, but also because it was a way of humiliating the invader. Often Cossacks sold prisoners, or simply handed them over to local peasants who then played with them at their leisure, inflicting the worst kinds of torture.48 Alexander’s brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, was personally seen executing a French prisoner. We do not know how many were killed in this way but it must have been in the thousands, and it is likely that no more than one in five soldiers captured by either marauding Cossacks or regular Russian troops survived the ordeal. There were also instances of humanity. A canteen lady who was pregnant and near term, and who had been captured by Cossacks and stripped naked while they searched her for money, was left in that condition in the snow. She was picked up by some peasants who took pity on her and welcomed her into their village where she gave birth.49 A poor midwife in Orel is supposed to have taken five prisoners of war into her home, and even when she had spent all her own money on food went begging on their behalf.50
The reaction of the Russian peasant was largely in response to the exactions carried out by troops of the Grande Armée, who pillaged, raped and also massacred Russian prisoners, especially in the closing weeks of the retreat. The Russian peasants armed themselves with muskets taken from the dead and dying along the roads, or from marauders who had been captured and killed. For, in spite of the dangers and the exhaustion, men were forced to leave the main roads in the hope of finding food in villages that had been neither pillaged nor burnt on their way to Moscow.51 The further troops moved away from the main body, the less discipline ruled, the more likely they were to carry out excesses against the local populations, assuming of course they could be found. As a result, Russian peasants formed little bands of guerrillas and harassed the retreating army, creating one of the enduring myths of the war of 1812, namely, that it was a people’s war.52
The Berezina
On 22 November, Napoleon learnt that Minsk had been taken by Admiral Pavel Chichagov (in fact, it had fallen six days before). It meant that the supplies he had been counting on were lost (along with 5,000 wounded imperial troops), and that he would now have to push on to Vilnius, if not cross the Niemen. Knowing that, Napoleon focused on the town of Borisov, the only place on the Berezina River where there was a bridge that could be crossed. What was going to prove even more of a problem, and one which Napoleon was not yet aware of, was that Chichagov had moved on to the town of Borisov and that in the skirmish which ensued between the Russian forces and Oudinot’s advance corps, which managed to take the town, the Russians retreated to the western bank and burnt the wooden bridge across the river in the process. Chichagov then deployed his men along the western bank from opposite Studienka in the north to Usha in the south, waiting for Napoleon to arrive.
Napoleon heard of the skirmish two days later, on 24 November, and it created a change in the man. Rather than become discouraged, he at last found some of the energy that had characterized former campaigns.53 An officer by the name of Drujon de Beaulieu, guided by local peasants, found a better place to ford the river about twenty kilometres north of Borisov, near Studienka, where the river was only about two metres deep and eighty-seven metres wide.54 Drujon de Beaulieu convinced Napoleon to direct his attention there. Diversionary efforts made south of Borisov worked; Chichagov sent his whole force south, as a result of which an opportunity was lost to destroy the French army completely (something for which Chichagov would not be forgiven).55 As soon as the Russians had left Studienka, the sappers got to work. Mostly Dutch sappers under Captain Benthien worked on building a trestle bridge from eight o’clock on the evening of 25 November right through the night and throughout the next morning. The observatory at Vilnius recorded minus 20 degrees Celsius on 24 November, and minus 40 degrees on 26 and 27 November.56 Even though the sappers were not allowed in the icy waters for more than fifteen minutes at a time, every now and then one would succumb to hypothermia or lose his footing and be swept away. What motivated these men to risk their lives? They were offered a bonus of fifty francs per man, but that was hardly compensation and was not in any event what drove them on. It was unlikely that love of their Emperor motivated them – they were mostly Dutch after all – but rather a sense of duty, knowing that the fate of the army depended on them. There are conflicting reports about whether Napoleon retained the love of his men or whether he was now hated. Caulaincourt main
tained that even as soldiers were dying by the roadside, he never heard a single one grumble. Others reported that he was openly heckled.57
While the bridge was being built, Napoleon stood on the banks of the Berezina, surrounded by a few other generals such as Oudinot and Murat. Some observers tried to guess what was going on inside his head.58 He may have thought himself in an impossible situation, caught between two armies, and for that reason ordered the eagles to be burnt.59 According to one witness, he addressed the dozen or so officers that formed a circle around him and said something along the lines of ‘“It pains me to see my Old Guard remain behind; their comrades have to do them justice, and hit them.” He repeated again, “hit them” [les claquer]. “I am relying on my Old Guard; it has to count on me, on the success of my projects.” He repeated the same words several times, looking at us with a sad, broken-down face.’60
Francois Fournier-Sarloveze, Passage de la Bérésina par l’armée française, le 28 novembre 1812 (The crossing of the Berezina by the French army, 28 November 1812), drawn around 1812.
At one hundred metres long and four metres wide, the bridge was a remarkable achievement, even if it was not the sturdiest of constructions.61 A second bridge was built fifty metres downstream, for the artillery and the luggage. A third was planned, but not enough materials, most of which were taken from the dismantled village of Studienka, could be found. Oudinot crossed first to consolidate the bridgehead on the other bank, then the Guard, then Napoleon. Gendarmes guarded the approaches to the bridges, allowing only active units to cross. Any stragglers and even the wounded being transported in carriages, not to mention the civilians, were pushed to one side, cluttering up the approaches. At one point, panic set in when part of the larger bridge collapsed and plunged into the river where many of the men it took with it would have drowned.62 Thinking that the narrower bridge would not last long, there was a stampede. Order, however, was slowly restored. Every now and then sections of the bridge would collapse or the trestles would subside into the muddy riverbed, obliging the sappers to wade back into the waters to repair them. In places the bridge sank so that the men’s feet were in water.
Victor’s corps, holding off the Russian commander General Ludwig Adolf von Wittgenstein, remained on the eastern bank. When most of the army had got across in relative order – despite fights breaking out now and then and the problems caused by dying horses blocking the way – others were allowed to cross. But by this time it was nightfall and most, seeing that they were being defended by Victor whose men had taken up position around the bridge, felt secure enough to remain on the eastern bank for the night. General Jean Baptiste Eblé did his best to try and persuade them to cross but with little success (Eblé survived the retreat only to die at Königsberg).
Battles ensued with Oudinot’s troops having to fend off Chichagov on the western bank – he had finally realized that he had been trumped – and Victor’s troops fighting off Wittgenstein’s 30,000 troops coming from the east. On the second day, after Oudinot had been wounded and forced to retire, Ney stepped into the breach and narrowly avoided a rout. Napoleon ordered what was left of his heavy cavalry into the fray and managed to inflict such serious losses (around 2,000 men) that Chichagov decided to disengage, at least for the day. Things were not going so well for Victor though. Wittgenstein succeeded in an outflanking manoeuvre so that he was able to place his artillery within firing range of the bridges. When he started bombarding the stragglers – thousands of people forming a mass 400 metres wide and a kilometre in length – panic set in and people made a mad rush for the bridges.63 A few were able to pass in time but others were less fortunate. There are numerous accounts of the crossing, all telling of the harrowing, traumatic circumstances of thousands pushing towards the single bridge that would allow them to safety. They often tell of men trampling on those who had lost their footing, of women and children crushed, of the exhaustion of having to fight for two or three hours even to get to the bridge let alone to cross it, of the terror of that mass of humanity afraid for its life, as though on the banks of the River Styx waiting for that fatal barque to take them across.64 A few managed to get across on their horses. Some tried to cross the ice but it had not yet set and they fell through it, victims to the cold of the river, although one veteran asserts that in one place a narrow stretch of ice allowed them to cross that way.65
Napoleon was able to restore some order only when he managed to get a battery of guns to fire on the Russian positions. By that time, though, the advance guard of Kutuzov’s army, under General Miloradovich, had finally caught up and joined Wittgenstein so that the Russians now held numerical superiority of about five to one. Victor nevertheless managed to hold off till nightfall. He was finally given the order to cross to the western bank, under cover of darkness, around 9 p.m., a move that was completed at about one o’clock the next morning. Once again, it appears that those stragglers left on the eastern bank, despite the best efforts of General Eblé, preferred to remain huddled around their camp fires rather than cross during the night. As soon as daylight broke, however, Eblé had no choice but to torch the bridges to prevent the approaching Russians from crossing, leaving thousands on the other side.66 The sight of the burning bridges, however, did not prevent a final fatal panic. Many of the starving, freezing survivors grew crazed and ran on to the bridges. Other are supposed to have thrown themselves into the river, including women with children, in order to avoid capture by the Russians.67 Those that were not incinerated, drowned or trampled, faced capture and death.
Estimates of the losses over that three-day period vary enormously, but most historians agree that about 15,000–20,000 troops, as many as a third to one-half of whom were killed in action, and as many as 10,000–30,000 civilians were killed. Russian losses were around 15,000.68 After the crossing, Napoleon was left with no more than 40,000 soldiers and, once again remarkably under the circumstances, 200 guns. The huge crowd of civilians had been reduced to about 10,000–15,000 people. Some 10,000 people – stragglers, camp followers, refugees – were left behind on the other side of the river.69 Of those who managed to escape, more than half were to die over the next few weeks.70
Despite the losses, the crossing was a remarkable tactical achievement. The Russians had missed an opportunity to annihilate the invading army. Alexander laid the blame for this squarely at Kutuzov’s feet. Kutuzov did not reach his objective until two days after Napoleon’s army had already crossed, giving the impression that the advance of the bulk of the Russian army was sluggish if not incompetent.71 The criticism is perhaps harsh, for while the Russians were operating in more favourable circumstances – better clothed, better fed and probably more used to the weather – they had still suffered considerable losses along the way from Moscow. Indeed, in the month or so that the Russians had been tailing Napoleon since Maloyaroslavets, about one-third of their army had succumbed to battle, desertion and fatigue so that by the time it reached Tarutino in October it had been reduced to about 28,000 men.72 It is possible of course that Kutuzov, unlike the Tsar, had a better sense of the full import of the struggle, and wanted not to destroy Napoleon but merely to drive him from Russian soil. To destroy Napoleon would be of no benefit to Russia, but only to Russia’s traditional enemies, Britain and Austria. It was a view shared by others in the army and at court, and would cause some debate over the next year or so as the allies attempted to agree on some sort of strategy for dealing with France and Napoleon.
‘A Vast and Lugubrious Taciturnity’
If things had been bad for the Grande Armée up to now, they were, if at all possible, about to get worse. The passage from the Berezina to Vilnius, which took about twelve days to complete, was the period in which the army suffered most.73 Although the men who had survived the crossing basked in their feat and believed, or wanted to believe, that everything would get better, a cold snap hit the retreating troops on 3 December. Unless one has experienced what it is to live outdoors in extremely cold temperatures, i
t is difficult to imagine just how horrendous it must have been. The only sound that could be heard was that of snow being crunched underfoot as the men trudged along. The worst thing the men could have done in these circumstances was to huddle close to fires at night. If they did not burn themselves or fall asleep around a fire that went out overnight, the contrast between the heat and the cold could often be fatal.74 Even those who had more or less kept discipline until then were transformed during this period into men indifferent to everyone and everything except their own survival.75
As the ‘procession’ – the name that the survivors gave to the retreating army passing along the main road76 – continued, acts of brutality and egoism increased as discipline declined. Men who lay down on the road were stripped bare or searched for valuables before they had even expired.77 One veteran remarked that the route and the places where they bivouacked looked like the aftermath of a field of battle, with bodies, horses and equipment strewn everywhere.78 Reports of cannibalism are more difficult to verify.79 They usually involve Russian prisoners who had to resort to this extreme because they were given nothing to eat, and sometimes to behaviour among non-French survivors of the Grande Armée.80 There are no references to French survivors resorting to cannibalism, which does not mean that French troops did not practise it, but that they did not admit to it, preferring to portray themselves as a little more civilized than the mass of humanity that made up the residue of the Grande Armée. There were reports, even more difficult to verify, of autophagy or self-mutilation in order to eat.81
Convoys of food and mail reached the retreating army on 3 and 4 December, but although this was no doubt of some help, it could not prevent the continued disintegration. Fights broke out and murder was committed over food and shelter.82 The men were essentially left to fend for themselves. A few lucky infantry regiments followed either cavalry or artillery regiments as best they could in order to feed off the dead and dying horses they left behind each morning. Stragglers formed into groups that attempted to stay ahead of the main army in order better to plunder the few standing villages along the way or to steal horses and valuables from encampments during the night.83 Stealing in order to survive was not all that uncommon.84 After a while, one could tell exactly when a man was going to fall and die: he would begin to totter, then walk as though drunk, then fall. A few drops of blood might trickle from the nose, and then the limbs would go stiff.85 ‘I noticed three men around a dead horse,’ remembered Sergeant Bourgogne:
