Russia Against Napoleon (43 page)

In the last week of October Chichagov set off for Belorussia, leaving almost half his army – 27,000 men under Fabian von der Osten-Sacken – to hold off Schwarzenberg and Reynier. Since together the Austrians and Saxons numbered 38,000 men and were expecting reinforcements this was to ask a great deal of Sacken. In fact, however, the Russian general fulfilled his mission to perfection, though he complained – in this case correctly – that his army’s achievements were forgotten since he could not hope for brilliant victories against so superior an enemy and in any case all Russian eyes were turned on the fate of Napoleon and his army.

When Schwarzenberg set off in pursuit of Chichagov in accordance with Napoleon’s instructions, Sacken’s surprise attack on Reynier’s Saxons forced him to turn back to their rescue. Subsequently, Sacken succeeded in slipping away from Schwarzenberg’s attempts to catch him, and in pinning down the Austrian and Saxon corps for the rest of the campaign. Sacken preserved his own little army amidst a flurry of manoeuvres and rearguard actions, and it provided some of the best and freshest regiments for the 1813 campaign. Above all, by drawing both Schwarzenberg and Reynier well away from Minsk and the Berezina he made it possible for Chichagov to advance into central Belorussia and threaten the survival of Napoleon and his army.
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Chichagov moved swiftly. His advance guard was commanded by yet another French émigré, Count Charles de Lambert, who had joined the Russian army in 1793. Lambert’s force comprised some 8,000 men, mostly cavalry, its four jaeger regiments being commanded by Prince Vasili Viazemsky, whose diary as we have seen breathed such distrust for the foreigners and parvenus who were wrecking Russia. The main uncertainty for the Russian commanders was the whereabouts of Marshal Victor’s corps. Vasili Viazemsky, one of nature’s pessimists, was convinced that the Russian advance could not succeed since the enemy had at least as many men in central Belorussia as Chichagov. In fact Napoleon had ordered Victor to send one of his divisions to reinforce the garrison of Minsk but by the time the order arrived Victor’s whole corps had already moved northwards to stop Wittgenstein. With Victor deflected northwards and the Austrians and Saxons far off to the west, the defence of the southern approaches to Belorussia was left to General Jan Dombrowski and no more than 6,000 combat-worthy soldiers.

Dombrowski could not have stopped Lambert but he might well have slowed him down. Instead he and his fellow Polish generals made a number of crucial mistakes. The force sent to guard the key crossing over the river Neman allowed itself to be surrounded and captured south of the river, leaving the bridge to fall intact into Lambert’s hands. So too did the immense stores of food and fodder in Minsk, which had been designed to sustain the
Grande Armée
for a month. From Minsk, Lambert raced for Borisov and the vital bridge over the river Berezina. In what was probably the outstanding achievement of Russian light infantry in 1812, Viazemsky’s four jaeger regiments covered the last 55 kilometres to Borisov in twenty-four hours, and then stormed the fortifications protecting the bridge at dawn on 21 November before the 5,500 enemy troops in the neighbourhood of Borisov could concentrate to defend the river crossing. At least half of Lambert’s 3,200 jaegers were killed or wounded, including Vasili Viazemsky. After the war a gallery was constructed in the Winter Palace in which were hung the portraits of all Russia’s generals in 1812–14. Viazemsky was one of the few names missing. No doubt he would have considered this the final trick played by the Petersburg courtiers in death as in life on a general from Chichagov’s ‘Forgotten Army’ who had no ‘protectors’.
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Lambert’s capture of the bridge at Borisov was for the Russians the high point of the winter 1812 campaign. Hopes soared and Alexander’s dream of capturing Napoleon at the Berezina looked as if it might become reality. In a move he was later to regret, Chichagov issued the following proclamation to his troops:

Napoleon’s army is in flight. The person who is the cause of all Europe’s miseries is in its ranks. We are across his line of retreat. It may easily be that it will please the Almighty to end his punishment of the human race by delivering him to us. For that reason I want this man’s features to be known to everyone: he is small in height, stocky, pale, with a short and fat neck, a big head and black hair. To avoid any uncertainty, catch and deliver to me all undersized prisoners. I say nothing about rewards for this particular prisoner. The well-known generosity of our monarch guarantees them.
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At just the moment that Russian hopes were at their highest, Chichagov’s prospects began to unravel. Kutuzov’s estimate was that the admiral could bring 45,000 troops to the Berezina, but this depended on Lieutenant-General Oertel, who commanded the garrison at Mozyr, obeying his orders to march his 15,000 men to Borisov. Oertel, however, was a tidy and meticulous administrator, much of whose career had been spent as head of first the Moscow and then the Petersburg police. Training the recruits who formed part of the Mozyr garrison and securing the neighbourhood against Polish insurgents was well within his competence but his imagination quailed at the thought of abandoning his local responsibilities and marching against Napoleon. Oertel found every possible excuse for delay, citing broken bridges, the dangers of local rebellion if he departed, the need to protect his magazines and even cattle plague. By the time Chichagov could replace him it was too late to get his troops to the Berezina. As the admiral reported to Alexander, this left him with just 32,000 men. Half of these soldiers were cavalry, who would be of little use in the defence of a river crossing or in fighting in the woods and swamps on the west bank of the Berezina.
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If Chichagov was to stop Napoleon, therefore, he would need help, and its likeliest source was Peter Wittgenstein. Before the autumn campaign Wittgenstein’s corps had been reinforced up to a strength of 40,000 men, though 9,000 of these were militia. Marching southwards to join Wittgenstein from Riga were also 10,000 regulars under Count Steinhel. Together on 16–18 October Wittgenstein and Steinhel defeated Marshal Saint-Cyr and recaptured the town of Polotsk and its bridge over the river Dvina. The victory owed much more to superior numbers and the courage of the Russian soldiers than to skilful leadership. Steinhel and Wittgenstein were advancing on opposite sides of the Dvina and coordination was poor. If Wittgenstein had possessed a pontoon train he could have crossed the Dvina beyond Saint-Cyr’s right flank and driven him off to the west, in other words away from Napoleon’s line of retreat. This was the goal set out in Alexander’s plan for the autumn campaign. Instead, however, the Russian commander was forced into a more pedestrian and costly direct assault on Polotsk.

Even so, victory at Polotsk brought important results. General Wrede, who commanded Saint-Cyr’s Bavarian troops, did retreat due west towards Lithuania and effectively removed his men from any further participation in the war, though Wittgenstein could never be quite sure that Wrede would not re-emerge at some point to endanger his right flank. In his report to Alexander on the battle, Wittgenstein claimed correctly that he had weakened the corps of both Oudinot and Saint-Cyr to such an extent that they were no longer capable of serious resistance unless reinforced. Marshal Victor had therefore been forced to abandon Smolensk and march his entire corps to their assistance at top speed. Wittgenstein had every reason to take pride in this achievement. Three French corps, each of them initially as strong as his own, had by now been drawn away from the crucial theatre of operation in central Belorussia thanks to his efforts.
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Wittgenstein advanced south from Polotsk and defeated marshals Saint-Cyr and Victor at the battle of Chashniki on the river Ulla on 31 October. According to Saint-Cyr, the Russians owed their victory to their superior artillery and to Marshal Victor’s failure to concentrate much of his corps on the battlefield. As usual, in Napoleon’s absence his marshals fought each other and Oudinot’s return from convalescence did nothing to improve coordinated leadership in the small army facing Wittgenstein. An angry Napoleon then gave Victor categorical orders to attack Wittgenstein and drive him right back over the river Dvina and away from the
Grande Armée
’s line of retreat, to which he was becoming dangerously close. Victor attacked towards Smoliany further east on the Ulla on 13–14 November but failed to dislodge Wittgenstein’s men from their position, despite bitter fighting.
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For the first three weeks of November 1812 Wittgenstein was content to hold the line of the river Ulla and beat off any French attacks. Prince Petr Shakhovskoy, the governor of Pskov, mobilized thousands of carts and formed six mobile magazines to provide supplies for Wittgenstein’s men. Thanks to him, the Russians were far better fed than their enemies. They were also much warmer, since Wittgenstein’s corps had been sent 30,000 fur jackets in September from the provinces in his rear. With every day they stood still, the relative strength of the two armies shifted in Wittgenstein’s favour. Though only one and a half day’s march from the main Orsha–Borisov highway, Wittgenstein made no attempt to advance any further across Napoleon’s lines of communication. His caution was justified. In the first half of November he had no information about either the position of the other Russian forces or the state of Napoleon’s army. Not only Wittgenstein but also the emperor and Kutuzov feared for the safety of his corps if it found itself under attack from both Napoleon and Victor, with neither Chichagov’s nor Kutuzov’s army in the neighbourhood to help. Only when Victor retreated on 22 November did Wittgenstein move forward in his wake. He would therefore be in a position to interfere with the French crossing of the Berezina, but unlike Chichagov he would not be directly in their path.
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He would nevertheless be much closer than Kutuzov’s main army. After the ‘battle’ of Krasnyi Kutuzov’s main concern was to rest and feed his troops. For that reason he marched south-west from Krasnyi to the small town of Kopys, the next crossing over the river Dnieper south of Orsha. There he rested his main body and succeeded in requisitioning a significant amount of food from the neighbouring districts to his south. He also parked many of his batteries, since it was obviously no longer necessary to drag along all these guns. Kutuzov did send forward an advance guard of two infantry and one cavalry corps under Miloradovich but unless Chichagov could block Napoleon on the Berezina for four days or more there was no chance of Miloradovich’s men arriving in time to dispute the crossing. As they struggled across the Dnieper and into Belorussia Miloradovich’s troops suffered badly. The historian of the 5th Jaeger Regiment wrote that ‘from Kopys on we found no civilians anywhere: the villages were empty, there weren’t even the proverbial cats or dogs. The barns and stores were also empty: there was no grain, no groats and not even a scrap of straw.’
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Ahead of Miloradovich were Platov’s Cossacks and Aleksei Ermolov’s so-called ‘flying column’, made up of two cuirassier and three infantry regiments of the line, some Cossacks, and the two light infantry regiments of the Guards, in other words the Guards Jaegers and the Finland Guards. The flying column set off for Orsha on 19 November but was delayed for a day and a half because Napoleon had burned the bridge over the Dnieper. Ermolov’s Cossacks swam the river but his heavy cavalry horses had to be tied down on rafts to make the crossing. Only the exhaustion of the regular light cavalry could explain using Russian cuirassiers in such a role. All the baggage had to be left behind on the east bank of the Dnieper. Kutuzov ordered Ermolov not to exhaust his men and to wait for Miloradovich at Tolochin before pressing on in pursuit of Napoleon. But Ermolov knew that speed was of the essence if Napoleon was to be stopped on the Berezina, and he ignored both orders.
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By dint of heroic efforts Ermolov arrived at Borisov on 27 November, the very day that Napoleon and his Guards had crossed the Berezina 18 kilometres to the north near the village of Studenka. The Russian troops paid a high price for this speed. The Cossacks could usually forage off the road and turn up something to eat and the artillery carried some emergency rations in their caissons but life for the infantry was very hard. The Guards Jaegers had slept with a roof over their heads for one night in the last month. In their week-long march from the Dnieper to the Berezina they only twice received any biscuit. At every bivouac the men rootled for potatoes. Even they were hard to find and amidst the rush and exhaustion were often eaten raw.
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As for the Finland Guards, they did still have a little groats in their knapsacks but their kettles were with the regimental baggage and raw groats were inedible. The men survived by cutting the bark off the trees and turning it into impromptu cooking vessels. After stuffing the groats into the bark and heating this concoction up over a spluttering fire coaxed from damp wood, the Guardsmen wolfed down the whole ‘meal’, bark and all. Their reward for all these efforts was to arrive at the Berezina one day too late. The next morning the two Guards regiments crossed the river and were deployed in reserve behind Chichagov’s army, which was fighting Napoleon in the forests near the village of Brili. They spent the next two days up to their knees in snow and with no food at all. Not surprisingly, men fell ill in droves. Nevertheless the troops’ morale remained high. These Guardsmen were fine soldiers. Their spirits were buoyed by the fact that they were advancing and were clearly winning the war. Ermolov himself was an inspiring leader on the battlefield, just the man to get the last ounce of effort from Russian soldiers in an emergency.
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When he first arrived near Borisov on 22 November Chichagov had moved his headquarters and all his baggage across the river and into the town, which was on the east bank of the Berezina. Count Lambert had been wounded in the capture of the bridge, so Chichagov appointed Count Paul von der Pahlen to replace him. The next day Pahlen was sent forward down the main road. With Napoleon’s main body now linking up with Oudinot and Victor, and heading for Borisov, this was a dangerous move. Neither Chichagov nor Pahlen showed proper caution. Pahlen’s men were overwhelmed by Napoleon’s advance guard and fled back into Borisov. Chichagov and his staff decamped at speed back over the Berezina, leaving much of the army’s baggage behind. Subsequently this debacle was used by Chichagov’s enemies as a stick to beat him, but it was not actually very significant. Though much of Pahlen’s advance guard was cut off, almost all of it succeeded in making its way back across the Berezina by finding fords. Four days later Borisov and most of Chichagov’s baggage was recaptured by Wittgenstein. Above all, the Russians succeeded in burning the crucial bridge at Borisov so the river was still an obstacle for Napoleon.