The War of Wars (109 page)

If he remained at Vitebsk, he considered that he should have the displeasure, the whole expense and all the inconveniences and anxieties of a defensive position to bear; while at Moscow there would be peace, abundance, a reimbursement of the expenses of the war and immortal glory. He persuaded himself that boldness was the only prudential course; that it is the same with all hazardous undertakings, in which there is always risk at the beginning but frequently gain at the finish; that it was indispensable, therefore, to
terminate this operation; to push it to the utmost, astonish the universe, beat down Alexander by daring and carry off a prize which might compensate so many losses.

Thus it was, that the same danger which perhaps ought to have recalled him to the Niemen or kept him stationary on the Düna urged him towards Moscow! Such is the nature of false positions: everything in them is perilous. There is only a choice of errors.

He had still to convince his generals. Although it was Moscow that tempted him, he did so by pretending that his real object was Smolensk, only fifty miles away. It nevertheless proved a difficult task. Caulaincourt argued against him stubbornly. Duroc presciently told him that the Russians were no more likely to make peace at Smolensk or at Moscow than at Vitebsk. Daru argued with faultless logic: ‘It is not a national war. The introduction of some English merchandise into Russia and even the restoration of the Kingdom of Poland are not sufficient reasons for engaging in so distant a war; neither your troops nor ourselves understand its necessity or its objects and, to say the least, all things recommend the policy of stopping where we now are.’

Napoleon overruled them all: he ordered his army on to Smolensk, with a characteristically brilliant flourish: he crossed the Dnieper to the south, crossing the bridge at Orsha and erecting four pontoons as a feint that suggested he would bypass the city.

The Russians were not suffering the problem of a single domineering leader, as the French were, but were plagued instead by a bitterly squabbling collective. The humble Barclay de Tolly and the aristocratic Bagration were at daggers drawn over strategy for their now united army. Bagration accused Barclay of cowardice in so many words, and appealed over his head to the Tsar. Barclay, whose strategy was in fact the correct one, was ordered to launch a cautious advance towards the French: as soon as he encountered French forces on 8 August, the cautious Barclay decided to withdraw to Smolensk, in the nick of time to reinforce the city from the main French threat now approaching from the south east.

On 14 August Ney attacked and repulsed Barclay’s rearguard at Krasnoi, some thirty miles west of Smolensk. There, inexplicably, the French paused to celebrate Napoleon’s forty-third birthday with due pomp and ceremony, which included a 100-gun salute. Two days later Murat reached Smolensk, Russia’s third biggest city. This picturesque city, straddling the Dnieper, consisted of the medieval old town in the south, protected by a huge rampart, a wall ten feet thick and twenty feet high, boasting no fewer than thirty-two towers, well equipped with artillery. Around the walls were a huddle of wooden huts. To the north was the St Petersburg suburb consisting of more recent buildings. As Murat’s advance cavalry and Ney’s infantry reached the city, they did not hesitate to attack the well-manned defences, losing some 10,000 men in the process. Murat, who had bitterly opposed his brother-in-law’s decision to advance, seemed to be courting his own death in battle. The French attacks failed to make any impression on the thick walls of the city.

Napoleon’s decision to stage a frontal assault had been a fatal miscalculation: if he had advanced eastwards and then northwards he could have cut the road between Smolensk and Moscow and trapped the 125,000-strong Russian army. But Barclay, anticipating this, decided that discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew during the night of 17–18 August after a blazing row with Bagration who wanted to stay and fight.

Junot, remarkably, had managed to enter the city, but failed to press the attack, to Napoleon’s fury. (Junot, one of France’s finest marshals,
was so abashed that he turned suicidal and finally succeeded in throwing himself from a window less than a year later.) During the same night the French observed fires starting in different parts of the city, eventually erupting into a single vast conflagration which Napoleon likened to the eruption of Vesuvius: the Russians were burning down the city as they withdrew: it was an awesome display of grim, ruthless determination.

Napoleon’s army entered into the desolation of a city levelled by fire, with mounds of charred and slaughtered corpses alongside the still smoking shells of wooden buildings. ‘You should remember the saying of one of the Roman Emperors, the corpse of an enemy always smells good,’ he remarked grimly. He rode across the city to gaze across the Dnieper at the St Petersburg suburb, only to see that the Russians had already evacuated that too. The French made a half-hearted attempt to pursue them. But Napoleon was content to remain a week in the smouldering ruins of Smolensk, a city which now could offer no shelter or sustenance and only a handful of intact buildings for use as hospitals.

Napoleon was again faced with a fateful choice: to call a halt to his advance or to press on; once more the Russians had escaped more or less intact and a decisive victory had eluded the Emperor. It seems that Napoleon was more determined at Smolensk than at Vitebsk, although he was later to say that the decision to press on from Smolensk was the greatest mistake in his life. Moscow was some 200 miles away and offered an irresistible target: the Russians, Napoleon believed, were sure to fight to save their capital. Napoleon was also afraid that the Russians would be able to recruit new forces if he delayed, and that even the Austrians and the Prussians might join in on the Russian side if he failed to inflict a decisive defeat upon them.

Virtually all of Napoleon’s top commanders disagreed: while the
Grande Armée
had been reduced to 125,000 infantry, 32,000 cavalry and under 600 guns, the French risked further extending their supply lines in order to fight a difficult battle before Moscow. Napoleon brushed aside their fears: ‘We have gone too far to turn back. Peace is in front of us; we are but ten days’ march from it; so near the goal, there is
nothing more to consider. Let us march on Moscow!’ In fact there was logic to Napoleon’s position, given the distance he had already travelled into the Russian heartland: what were a couple of hundred miles more?

Yet it was the same logic that had precipitated the whole disastrous Russian adventure: the need to maintain the myth of French invincibility, of Napoleon’s ability to vanquish any foe on which Europe’s subjugation depended. Napoleon had become the prisoner of his own mythology. If he had wintered in Smolensk – although he might have had trouble securing the necessary supplies to do so safely and would have had to build proper shelters – he might have avoided the terrible debacle that was to follow. If he had stayed in Vitebsk, he would certainly have done so. But he now believed the only chance of success was to inflict a decisive defeat on Moscow.

On 25 August 1812, under a burning sun in searing heat and choking dust, with supplies already so scarce that the men were forced to drink their horses’ urine, the
Grande Armée
marched forward to its doom. They reached the small town of Viasma a hundred miles further on: its 15,000 men had been driven out and the town burnt down by the retreating Russians: there was nothing to be had there.

They marched on forty miles to find the same desolate scene of flames and ruin at Gzhatsk. From there the French plodded onwards, haemorrhaging men at the appalling rate of 6,000 a day to disease, desertion and suicide in the torrid summer heat: indeed the
Grande Armée
lost more men on the advance to Moscow than it was to lose on the much more famous retreat: Napoleon himself, in a luxury carriage jolting along in the stifling heat, was suffering from a host of minor ailments and had lost his usual vigour.

On the Russian side, the constant sniping against the defensive and cautious policies of Barclay de Tolly finally made their mark. Alexander was forced to bow to the pressure of his senior officers to replace the dour, solitary general. But his rival Bagration was not the beneficiary: instead the job went to the failed Russian commander at Austerlitz. General Mikhail Kutuzov, now sixty-seven, was fat, pleasure-seeking, a noted philanderer with an idle streak, impatient with bureaucracy and
prone to fall asleep at staff meetings. Kutuzov had enjoyed a remarkable rollercoaster career. He was nevertheless enormously shrewd. His greatest asset was that, being Russian and a disciple of the famous Suvorov, [who had rolled back Napoleon’s conquests in Italy after the latter’s departure for Egypt in 1797,] he was acceptable both to the Russian people and to senior officers.

He shared Barclay de Tolly’s sensible reluctance to do open battle. However, he had been given clear instructions to stand and fight – which would give Napoleon his chance at last. Kutuzov decided to make the stand which might determine the fate of Mother Russia at the small village of Borodino on the banks of the river Moskva just seventy-five miles west of Moscow. Inexplicably, he sent a force across the river to secure the Shevardino Redoubt in the face of the advancing French, believing it could be defended. This was promptly taken by the French at a cost of some 4,000 casualities and some 6,000 Russian losses.

The remaining army of Kutuzov was drawn up in a strong defensive position along hills straddling the Moscow–Smolensk road. The most heavily entrenched Russian force followed the line of the river Kalatsha, a tributary of the Moskva; the centre was based on Borodino; and the more weakly defended left was around the village of Semiovskaya. In the centre the Great Redoubt, a hill bristling with several hundred of the 640 Russian guns at the battle made a formidable defensive position. Further south were three entrenched defensive earthworks – the Bagration Flèches (arrows). Perhaps because of the strength of these, and also because Kutuzov believed Napoleon would attack in the centre along the road, he kept the bulk of his forces on the right and centre.

Napoleon, always contrary, chose to march his forces to his right flank and attack the centre and the south, forcing Kutuzov hastily to transfer troops from the north. After this, however, Napoleon’s strategy was an unimaginative frontal assault. He refused Davout’s request to stage a flanking movement further around the Russian left with 40,000 men. Napoleon was fearful this would take time and permit the Russians to escape as they had so often done before; and the terrain Devout’s forces would have to cross was broken and uneven.

Napoleon’s choice of a frontal attack seems to have been dictated by his near certainty that the Russians had inferior forces compared to his own: again he was a prisoner of his own propaganda. The armies were, in fact, evenly matched, with some 120,000 Russian men against 130,000 French and about 600 guns on the French side to the Russians’ 640. Napoleon badly underestimated the fighting spirit of the Russians, believing that a direct assault would quickly break them. Throughout the night preceding the battle – that of 6 September – he repeatedly awoke to check that the Russians had not slipped away as they had on so many previous occasions. Here at last was his chance to inflict a decisive defeat, which would threaten Moscow and bring the recalcitrant Tsar to the negotiating table.

The following morning Napoleon issued his proclamation as he at last joined battle with his elusive foe:

Soldiers, here at last is the battle that you have so long expected! Victory now depends on your efforts, and is essential. It will give us abundance, good winter quarters, and a speedy return to our country. Do what you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Vitebsk, at Smolensk, and let posterity point with pride to your conduct on this day: let people say of you: ‘He was at that great battle fought under the walls of Moscow!’ The battle of Borodino is the most glorious, most difficult, and most creditable operation of war carried out by the Gauls, of which either ancient or modern history makes mention. Dauntless heroes, – Murat, Ney, Poniatowski, – it is to you the glory is due! What great, what splendid deeds History might place on record! How our intrepid cuirassiers charged and sabred the gunners on their guns; the heroic devotion of Montbrun, who found death in the midst of their glory; our gunners, in the open and without cover, firing against a heavier artillery protected by earthworks; and our brave infantry, at the most critical moment, not in need of their general’s steadying voice, but calling out to him: ‘It’s all right! Your soldiers have sworn they will conquer, and they will!’

Borodino has, in fact, entered history as an unimaginative slugfest of two almost evenly matched armies confronting each other frontally
and inflicting huge casualties upon one another. Both Kutuzov, and more surprisingly Napoleon, remained a mile behind their respective lines at the village of Gorky and in the captured Shevardino Redoubt respectively. Certainly Napoleon’s old spark appeared to be missing. Yet it was much more decisive than it appeared: although the Russians are said to have lost, in fact they won. Napoleon’s objective was to inflict a colossal and shattering defeat on the Russians of the kind he had craved ever since he had entered that forbidding country; the stakes were thus much higher for him. The Russian objective was simply to deny him that victory.

At dawn on 7 September a hundred French guns initiated the battle with a tremendous barrage against the Russian centre. After this softening up, Ney’s infantry were ordered into action against the Bagration Flèches and Eugène de Beauharnais against the Russian centre. At first the ferocity of the French assault carried all before it: De Beauharnais took Borodino after fierce fighting, while Ney, supported by Murat and Davout, captured the Flèches but then was pushed back. At around 10 a.m., Poniatoski’s Polish cavalry attacked the centre, threatening a breakthrough that would cut the Russian line in two. The Great Redoubt was also captured in a brave and unsupported attack by General Morand; the Russians counter-attacked and retook it, but only after major casualties. Bagration himself was mortally wounded, and it seemed that the French were about to secure the decisive victory they had craved.