The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  The Campaign of 1812 was practically at an end, but the fortunes of the flanking forces of Napoleon’s army need mention. Marshal Macdonald received orders to retreat from the vicinity of Riga only on December 18, and the next day set out in two columns for Tilsit. The local Russian forces harassed this movement, and on the 25th, General Diebitch succeeded in isolating the second column, consisting of General Yorck, 17,000 Prussians and 60 guns. For five days negotiations went on while Russian and Prussian forces faced each other; then, on the 30th, Yorck agreed to the famous Convention of Tauroggen, whereby he and his men became neutrals. This was a very significant event, heralding the War of German Liberation which will form the subject of the next part of this book. Napoleon, of course, chose to regard Yorck’s desertion as the basest treachery, but there is little doubt that the Prussian general acted in the best long-term interests of his nation, and so Macdonald and the remnants of his corps wended their way without their Prussian comrades over the Polish frontier, reaching Konigsberg on January 3, 1813, where they joined up with part of the XIth Corps.

  On the opposite flank, General Schwarzenberg and the Austro-French forces abandoned the pursuit of the defeated Sacken on December 14 after chasing him as far as Slonim. Four days later they had regained Bialystock, and from there made their way practically unmolested onto Austrian territory while General Reynier moved with his command toward Saxony. A short time later, Schwarzenberg in his turn also concluded an armistice with the Russians.

  The Tsar’s generals resumed their advance on January 16. With rediscovered energy they drove toward Marienwerder, and proceeded to cut the French cantonments along the Vistula into two. Murat had no option but to order his men from their winter quarters for a further withdrawal toward Posen. However, the King of Naples had no intention of braving out the inclement season with the troops, and we soon find him handing over command to Eugène before heading for the sunshine of his Neapolitan kingdom. The Viceroy, acting on Napoleon’s orders, then executed a further withdrawal to the banks of the River Elbe, which were reached on March 6.

  To all intents and purposes the Russian Campaign came to an unmourned conclusion on that date. The limits of French hegemony had almost been returned to the boundaries of 1806; half a million men and six years of effort, achievement and sacrifice had been thrown away in the misfortunes of a single campaign. Worse was to follow; the approaching War of German Liberation would make further grave inroads into the French Empire. Napoleon’s star was now on the wane.

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  FAILURE OF A GIANT

  To conclude this study of 1812, it is necessary to summarize the main results of Napoleon’s great failure and draw appropriate conclusions concerning the reasons for it. The first result of the Russian Campaign was the irretrievable shattering of the legend of Napoleonic invincibility. Defeat in Russia, added to Britain’s unquestioned command of the seas and the progressive deterioration of the Peninsular War where the Emperor’s subordinates were soon vainly attempting to contain the new advance of Wellington’s army, did much to build a new confidence among the governments and peoples of the submerged powers of continental Europe. This was to lead to a new effort by Prussia and the other states of North Germany to throw off the conqueror’s yoke. In the course of a few months, Austria too would abandon the French alliance and throw in her lot with Russia and Prussia. Thus the immediate consequences of 1812 were the preparation of the War of German Liberation and the rapid diminution of the French sphere of influence in Europe.

  The disasters of 1812 also exercised a most detrimental influence on French military potential. Because of the magnitude of the losses sustained, Napoleon was to experience the greatest difficulty in reconstructing his armies to face the coming Russian and German challenge. The scale of his losses were formidable by any standards. No less than 655,000 troops crossed the Vistula during the summer months of 1812 (including second line forces and reinforcements), but this vast multitude was reduced to a mere 93,000 men by the new year of 1813. By far the greatest proportion of casualties was borne by the central army group, which in its heyday numbered 450,000 combatants; of this vast armament, only 25,000 bedraggled survivors re-crossed the Niemen. The flanking forces were rather more fortunate; between them, Schwarzenberg and Macdonald, Augereau and Reynier brought 68,000 combatants out of Russia, but a considerable proportion of the XIth Corps had never stirred out of Prussia or Poland. In round figures, therefore, Napoleon lost 570,000 soldiers. Of these, perhaps 370,000 died on the battlefield, of illness or exposure. The remaining 200,000, including 48 generals and 3,000 other officers, fell into Russian hands, but at least half of these unfortunates subsequently perished. Besides manpower, the Emperor had also lost over 200,000 trained horses (cavalry, artillery and transport services included). In some ways this was even more significant than the loss of his men, for although Napoleon would prove capable of filling most of the gaps in his ranks by arming pensioners and schoolboys in 1813, he was never to be able to reconstitute his cavalry arm effectively. This deficiency was to be gravely felt during his remaining campaigns. Furthermore, of the 1,300 cannon taken into Russia, only 250 remained in French hands at the end of the campaign (most of them belonging to the flanking corps). The Russians captured 929 of the remainder according to their records; the rest must have been destroyed or lost in rivers and swamps. However, the resources of the Empire were to prove capable of replacing much of this loss of metal before the next campaign; it was to be experienced men, and above all horses that presented the main problems, and French military strength never recovered from the losses incurred in Russia.

  Russian losses over the same period were also far from light; it is estimated that at least 150,000 perished from all causes, and at least twice as many more must have been crippled by wounds or frostbite. An incalculable number of Russian civilians must also have suffered during the seven months of bitter fighting. However, by the end of the year, the Tsar’s forces enjoyed the great advantage of a strategical victory over Napoleon with which to boost their morale—the soil of Holy Russia was clear of the invader. The French forces and people had no such compensation. If it were possible, France’s allies had even less reason for comfort or complacency.

  The reasons for Napoleon’s cataclysm have often been analyzed and enumerated, and it may be useful to list the most important of them together with general remarks concerning his conduct of operations under the main headings of national policy, strategy and grand tactics. In this way it will be possible to build up a picture of French and Russian strengths and weaknesses which between them account for this tremendous reversal in Napoleon’s fortunes.

  From the very outset, the Emperor made grave errors of policy and suffered the consequences of several unfavorable diplomatic developments before even a single soldier placed foot on the Russian bank of the River Niemen. It can be argued that his cause was doomed from the moment the executive order was issued to invade Russian soil. If the threat posed by over half a million men massed along his frontiers was insufficient to persuade the Tsar to seek an accommodation, it was unlikely that Alexander would be brought to terms by battle or occupation of ground once war had been joined; for military reverses only seemed to steel Russian determination, while the huge extent of the Tsar’s possessions made effective conquest virtually impossible. However remote, Napoleon’s chances of ultimate success might have been on account of the very nature of the people and the land which he set out to overthrow, there were even more telling grand strategical reasons that doomed him to probable failure from the very outset. First, there was the mistake of trying to wage war on two widely separated fronts at one and the same time. Napoleon should have taken steps to bring the Peninsular War to some form of conclusion before undertaking his even greater Russian project; to try to mount and maintain two such massive campaigns at once proved the height of folly. Not only did the continuation of the Spanish war tie down 200,000 veteran French soldiers and place an impossible strain on French resou
rces, it also forced the Emperor to bully unwilling allies into producing large contingents for the war with Russia. This, in itself, was a potent cause of weakness. The Prussian and Austrian courts bitterly resented Napoleon’s inflexible decision to involve them in a French war designed to enforce the economic sanctions of the Continental System which were as inconvenient to Berlin and Vienna as to St. Petersburg. Their cooperation, therefore, was at best unwilling, and this atmosphere of resentment and distrust inevitably percolated to the generals and even the rank and file. On a purely practical level, the multiplicity of languages and types of military equipment included in the Grande Armée of 1812 made the maintenance of discipline, passing of orders and logistical support even more problematical.

  Nor was allied cooperation assisted by the fact that Austrian and Prussian forces were called to serve alongside Poles and Lithuanians. The Polish question formed another source of severe friction between Berlin, Vienna and Paris. In consequence, Napoleon fell between two stools. For the sake of allied solidarity, he dared not reconstitute the ancient Kingdom of Poland despite the entreaties of Poniatowski and other accredited Polish leaders; as a result he never received complete Polish or Lithuanian support, while Austrian and Prussian suspicions of his ultimate intentions remained as sharp as ever. Thus Napoleon’s alliances were riddled with inconsistencies and damaging, unsolved dilemmas; despite his army’s magnificent outward appearance in June 1812, the giant had feet of clay.

  If Napoleon’s diplomatic preparations for the campaign were weak, those of his rival the Tsar were unexpectedly successful. The Emperor could expect the development of an Anglo-Russian entente, but he considered that this would have little practical influence on the campaign apart from possible naval intervention in the Baltic. However, he never anticipated that the Tsar would prove able to make peace with his inveterate Turkish enemy, or invoke the assistance (or at least friendly neutrality) of an ex-Prince and Marshal of the Empire, Bernadotte of Sweden. These two Russian diplomatic coups had a decided bearing on the course of military events in 1812. Not only were Napoleon’s calculations that large Russian forces would be tied down in Moldavia and Finland proved utterly erroneous, but large numbers of troops were abruptly made available for active operations against the French; both Admiral Tshitshagov and General Steinheil made notable contributions to the French defeat by mounting telling attacks on Napoleon’s overextended flanks. At the level of grand strategy, therefore, Napoleon was consistently outmaneuvered or hoodwinked by his opponents.

  It is on the strategical level, however, that we find most reasons for the French catastrophe of 1812. Without a doubt the greatest single reason for Napoleon’s defeat was the unsurmountable logistical problem. In the simplest terms, the task of feeding and equipping 600,000 troops in a hostile land proved too much for the administrative devices of the period. As we have seen in a previous chapter, the Emperor made unprecedented efforts to provide his forces with adequate logistical support for the Russian venture, but these proved hopelessly insufficient. In the first place, his staff made gross miscalculations regarding the traffic capacity of the atrocious Polish and Russian roads, and this meant that every convoy was weeks and even months late in reaching its specified destination. Similarly, the local grain and fodder resources of Russia were overestimated, and the speed at which the vast herds of cattle accompanying the army could move was incorrectly assessed. All these problems, present from the outset of operations, steadily grew in severity as the campaign progressed, and in the end the overstrained French transport services broke down completely. The depots were sited too far away to the rear, the Russian scorched-earth policy deprived the army of even rudimentary local supplies, and the mud roads could not take the necessary volume of traffic. The main weakness lay in the inadequate arrangements for supplying the forward units; it is of significance that the retreating relics of Napoleon’s army found huge quantities of supplies of every description at Smolensk, Vilna and Kovno, and that the Russians captured further well-supplied depots at Minsk and Vitebsk. It was not so much shortage of supplies, therefore, as the inability to move and distribute them to the forward areas that doomed the Grande Armée to virtual elimination. Napoleon’s well-known maxim that “an army marches on its stomach” was never better illustrated than during his own Russian campaign.

  The logistical problem underlies the second grave strategical error on the part of Napoleon which compromised his chances of success. His decision to press on from Smolensk to Moscow proved the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” as far as his supply services were concerned; it also revealed the complete failure of his original plan of campaign. Before he set foot in Russia, Napoleon had no expectation of marching to Moscow. His avowed aim was to force the Tsar’s armies to accept major battle at the earliest possible moment, ideally in scattered detachments, if necessary united together. The rather unusual means to this end was to be an all-out French offensive from the very start; no geographical target was specifically laid down, nor was the enemy to be encouraged to make the first move—as Napoleon usually preferred. This he proved incapable of achieving. In the first three months of the campaign we have studied four successive attempts to trap the Russians into battle, but each failed in turn. Barclay de Tolly and Bagration successfully eluded the traps laid for them separately or collectively in the maneuvers of Vilna, Vitebsk, Drissa and Smolensk. These failures led Napoleon ever further into the depths of Russia, and when at length he reached Smolensk without finding his big battle he took his final gamble and decided to press on immediately for Moscow. All subsequent difficulties stemmed from this decision. The experts mostly agree that the French should have spent the winter of 1812-13 around Smolensk, building up their strength and supplies, preparatory to resuming the campaign the following spring. We have already studied the reasons that led Napoleon to press on regardless. During this further advance he certainly found his big battle, useless though it proved (owing to inadequate numbers of troops being available to harass and destroy Kutusov’s retreating columns), and also occupied his adversary’s religious capital, but these successes did nothing to win the campaign or end the war; they only made the probability of ultimate French defeat still stronger. Impatience and a refusal to accept the realities of the strategic position lured Napoleon and his army onward to their doom.

  As the Emperor hounded his army eastward by ever longer forced marches, destroying the cohesion of his exhausted cavalry and dislocating his administrative arrangements, a third strategic factor came noticeably into play, that of strategic consumption. Every mile that Napoleon advanced implied a further decrease in his battle power, until the point was reached on September 7 when he no longer had enough men in hand to win his decisive victory. As the lines of communication inexorably grew and the length of his protective flanks extended, more and more first-line troops had to be diverted to perform secondary roles—the protection of depots, staging posts, the mounting of road patrols and internal security guards, the provision of city garrisons and escorts for couriers and convoys. Increasing suspicion of Prussian intentions also deprived the army of the greater part of Augereau’s XIth Corps. This steady drain of manpower explains the relative failure experienced on the field of Borodino; the Russians received rude handling, but Napoleon did not possess the resources to convert victory into triumph. Once he had shot his bolt he found it impossible to retain the vast area of territory technically under his control. His resources were overextended, and thus hopelessly exposed to the danger of Russian counterattack.

  The decision to spend a full month in operational inactivity around Moscow is a further indictment of Napoleon’s strategy. Periods of frantic forward movement inevitably alternated with phases of deadening inactivity throughout the first half of the campaign. The lull at Vilna enabled Barclay and Bagration to make good their escape towards Smolensk; the pause at Moscow enabled the Tsar to rally his forces and await the approach of “General Winter.” If Napoleon really hoped that t
he Tsar might be inclined to make peace in September, he would have been better advised to mount some form of further operations against Kutusov to back up his proposed terms. Instead, his inaction revealed the real extent of his weakness, and wasted four vital weeks of good weather into the bargain. In any case, he was misguided in believing that possession of Moscow would, of itself, lead to peace. French occupation of Vienna in 1805 and 1809 had not per se induced the Austrian Emperor to come to terms, nor had the fall of Berlin in 1806 brought the hapless Frederick William to his knees. Why then should Moscow in 1812, especially as the Tsar possessed a second capital of almost equal standing in St. Petersburg?

  The ultimate strategical error committed by Napoleon occurred a week after quitting Moscow. His decision to march south from the Russian capital towards the fertile and unspoiled areas of Kaluga province was sound enough, but this wise and well-considered move was summarily abandoned when the army ran into resistance at Malojaroslavets, even though the outcome of that action was a French success. It is very doubtful whether Kutusov, mindful of Borodino, would have accepted another major action in defense of Kaluga; according to General Wilson, he had already determined on retreat if Napoleon pushed on. However, a fit of over-caution also infected Napoleon, and he threw away his best opportunity of survival, and certainly of ultimate victory, by falling back along the ravaged northern route to Smolensk. From that moment the issue of the campaign was never in doubt.