NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812 - PART FIVE
NAPOLEON’S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812 – PART FIVE
Borodino itself was a village on the banks of the River Kalatsha, crossed by the Smolensk to Moscow road. Kutuzov put Barclay de Tolly’s First Army on his right, covering the bridge where the road crossed the river just east of Borodino with Bagration on his left, and constructed such earthworks as his men could dig in the time available. Having studied Napoleon’s methods Kutuzov was prepared for the French to attempt a wide flanking movement intended to envelop the Russian right flank and he stood by a cavalry force of Cossacks ready to counter that. Five years previously that is what Napoleon probably would have done, but the quality of his soldiers was not that of the men of Austerlitz or Jena, and in any case the banks of the river were very steep even for infantry. Davout was in favour of a sweep to the south, round the Russian left flank, but the emperor dismissed that too, and considered that the best he could do would be to attack frontally with dense columns of infantry. The attack was to begin on the morning of 7 September with a French artillery bombardment of 100 guns, and at 0700 they duly opened fire. Then it was discovered that far from pounding Bagration’s men, many of whom were not able to shelter behind the earthworks but were in the open, the cannon balls were falling short – the range was too great! Here was an example of how Napoleon’s powers had declined. He was suffering from a heavy cold and the stomach complaints that were to dog him for the rest of his life, but he was a gunner, an expert on the employment of artillery and he should never have allowed such a faulty deployment. Eventually the guns were moved forward until the twelve pounders were 1200 yards from the enemy, from where they opened fire.
Following the bombardment the French infantry columns advanced and at first they made good progress, but Kutuzov shifted men from watching the river on his right flank to reinforce his centre and by mid-morning the battle had degenerated into a struggle of attrition, with both sides taking heavy casualties. Napoleon now launched a three corps attack on Kutuzov’s centre, which came under fire from at least 100 Russian guns, against which there was no cover. The Russians gave ground slowly, but General Bagration was wounded and carried to the rear. The wounds became infected and he died two weeks later. On the French side Marshal Ney took three wounds, none serious, and Murat’s cavalry at last succeeded in taking the earthworks. Now was the time to finish the battle, but appeals to Napoleon to release the Imperial Guard, the last remaining French reserve, were refused. The battle now swung to and fro: attempts by both sides to turn the others flanks failed, and although by late afternoon the fighting had petered out with the French in possession of most of the Russian first position, Kutuzov had withdrawn to the next possible defence line, a ridge to the rear. Fresh Russian troops then appeared – they were in fact the militia from Moscow – and that dampened French ardour somewhat. During the night Kutuzov decided to withdraw, rather than continue the fight the next day, leaving the French in possession of the field. It was a victory for Napoleon, but a costly one. The French had around 33,000 casualties which included forty-seven generals, brigade and division commanders. Marshals Ney and Davout had been wounded while Junot had succumbed to another bout of madness. The French artillery had fired the astonishing total of 90,000 rounds which severely depleted their holdings and which could not be repeated. The Russians had perhaps 44,000 dead and wounded, but again the Russians could replace theirs, whereas increasingly Napoleon could not.
Napoleon’s loses and Murat’s depleted cavalry were such that no effective pursuit could be made, and Kutuzov managed to extricate 90,000 of his men, still with their equipment and capable of fighting, back to Moscow. The question now was: should the Russians fight to defend Moscow, or should they retreat further and wait for Russia’s old ally, General Winter, to come to their aid? Kutuzov persuaded the Tsar that they should withdraw further into the vast interior and gain time to build up their armies. On 14 September the order to abandon the city went out, leaving only a rearguard under the command of the forty-one year old Serbian, General Mikhail Andreyevich Miloradovitch. After Borodino Napoleon was 1,200 miles from France and 600 miles from friendly territory in Poland. Should he press on or should he withdraw to Smolensk for the winter? Some of his generals advised the latter, but Murat echoed the emperor’s own instincts when he pointed out that only a decisive battle could win the campaign, and that meant accepting all the undoubted risks of going forward. There were now only about 100,000 men fit for duty. Disease, mainly typhus, dysentery and heatstroke, battle casualties, the need to garrison the captured towns and to protect the tenuous lines of communication back to France, had done for the rest. But the advance must go on: once Moscow was captured the Russians would surely sue for peace.
As the main body of the Russian army went away to the southeast, Miloradovitch sent an officer under a white flag to make contact with the French general Sebastiani’s cavalry scouts and agreed to surrender the city without a fight provided the rearguard was allowed to withdraw unmolested. Uncharacteristically Napoleon agreed. At midnight on 14 September French cavalry led by Marshal Murat in his best uniform entered Moscow. There were few there to see him, for the governor had ordered the inhabitants, 30,000 of them, to leave. The following day Napoleon and his staff arrived, and based themselves in the Kremlin. Riding through the gate of the Kremlin Napoleon’s hat fell off, regarded by the Russians as a good omen for them and a bad one for the French. That night those Russians remaining in the city set fire to the wooden buildings in the market area and opened the prisons and the asylums, releasing a dangerous mix of criminals and lunatics onto the streets. Meanwhile the French soldiers looted the city and pitched their tents in the streets.
From Napoleon’s perspective the Russian army had been beaten at Borodino and had withdrawn from Moscow, and the burning of Moscow was done by Russians, not by him. The Emperor sent a despatch to the tsar at St Petersburg telling him so. It could only be a matter of time before a Russian with a white flag arrived, but time wore on and no such offer appeared. Now the news of Marshal Marmont’s defeat by Wellington at Salamanca arrived and it began to look as though the French army in Spain, depleted of its best units to join the Russian campaign, might be driven out of the peninsula altogether. Napoleon needed a swift conclusion to the Russian campaign and on 5 October a delegation was sent to Field Marshal Kutuzov’s headquarters to suggest an immediate armistice, accompanied by an envoy with a letter to the tsar suggesting an end to the campaign. The envoy, the forty-four year old General Jacques Lauriston, of Scottish descent and who had known Napoleon since they were officer cadets together during the Bourbon years, was refused permission by Kutuzov to go to St Petersburg. Kutuzov sent the letter on himself, accompanied by his strong recommendation that the tsar did not enter negotiations. The delegation was sent back to Moscow without their armistice, and the tsar ignored Napoleon’s letter. A further delegation on 14 October was similarly treated.
Napoleon, always the gambler and whom fortune had generally favoured, found it almost impossible to believed that the tsar really would not come to terms. The usually incisive emperor seemed to lose touch with reality. Winter had arrived and he airily ordered that each soldier should be issued with a fleece lined jacket and a warm cloak, despite his staff telling him that none were to be had. When he was informed that the artillery was short of horses to pull the guns he ordered that 20,000 should be purchased locally, oblivious to the fact that there was not a horse to be had within three days’ march in any direction. Hoping, and indeed believing, that the tsar must surely come to terms, Napoleon lingered on. He could have wintered in Moscow: although the wooden buildings in the market area had been destroyed, most of the rest of the city’s buildings were intact and could have housed the army, but this would have stretched the existing struggling supply system to breaking point, and in any case it would keep him away from the seat of power – Paris – for too long.
Meanwhile the Russians had been building up their armies and now outnumbered the French. Kutuzov could field over 100,000 in his main army whereas Napoleon could barely produce the same, even if he called in those left behind at Borodino. The numerical balance in outlying garrisons and flanking formations were equally favourable to the Russians, and the loyalty of some of Napoleon’s men, particularly that of the Prussians and some of the contingents from the other German states, was questionable. All along the lines of communication isolated garrisons, essential to keep the supply lines open, were under constant attack from Cossacks and even the local peasantry, while troops sent to relieve them were ambushed. At last, with the rebuff of the 14 October peace feelers, Napoleon finally came to a conclusion: he would take the army back to France, and on 18 October the orders went out to prepare for a withdrawal, originally to take place on 20 October but brought forward to 19th as a result of Kutuzov attacking Murat’s outlying cavalry and very nearly surrounding them. On the morning of 19th October Napoleon and his staff rode out of Moscow with just under 95,000 men, 500 guns and a huge trail of wagons carrying the accumulated loot of the army and such supplies that it still had. Ambulance wagons carried the wounded and there was the usual gaggle of camp followers, including a few Russian prostitutes. Left behind was the forty-four year old Marshal Edouard Mortier, with the Young Guard, the light infantry battalions of the Imperial Guard. The son of a merchant Mortier had joined the National Guard on the outbreak of the revolution, transferred to a volunteer battalion and rose rapidly, becoming a marshal in 1804. He was, incidentally, the only French marshal who spoke English. Mortier was ordered to remain in Moscow until 23 October as a rearguard, after which he was to blow up the Kremlin and re-join the main army.