Russia Against Napoleon

Bagration in a second Austerlitz then Alexander would have little option but to make peace on French terms. The Russians had encouraged his hopes of an early decisive battle by ‘turning’ a key French agent in Lithuania and passing disinformation through him that they intended to fight for Vilna. Caulaincourt recalls that ‘Napoleon was amazed that they had yielded Vilna without a struggle, and had taken their decision in time to escape him. It was truly heartbreaking for him to have to give up all hope of a great battle before Vilna.’¹⁹

The Russian high command also learned quickly that Napoleon’s army was paying a heavy price for his determination to press the retreating enemy and force it to battle. Many of Napoleon’s men and, more importantly, his horses had been poorly fed in the weeks before the invasion. In all circumstances his huge army, concentrated in anticipation of an early decisive battle, would have found it impossible to feed itself adequately in impoverished Lithuania. Speeding forward in an attempt to force Barclay to battle across terrain eaten out and scorched by the Russians made matters worse. Torrential rain completed a picture of misery. After only two weeks of campaigning Napoleon wrote to his war minister in Paris that there was no point trying to raise new cavalry regiments since all the horses available in France and Germany would barely suffice to remount his existing cavalry and make up for the enormous losses he had already suffered in Russia. Deserters and prisoners of war informed the Russians of hunger and disease in the French ranks, and above all of the devastating loss of horses. So too did the military intelligence officers who were sent on supposedly diplomatic missions to French headquarters under flag of truce.²⁰

Much the best-known mission was General Balashev’s visit to Napoleon’s headquarters immediately after the war’s outbreak carrying a letter to the French emperor from Alexander. Balashev left Vilna on 26 June shortly before its evacuation by the Russians and found himself back in the city, now occupied by the French, four days later. On 31 June he met Napoleon in the very room where Alexander had given him his instructions only five days before. Part of this mission’s purpose was to put the French clearly in the wrong before European public opinion by showing Alexander’s commitment to peace despite Napoleon’s aggression. Less well known is that Balashev was accompanied by a young intelligence officer, Mikhail Orlov, who kept his eyes and ears open during the days he spent behind the French lines. When Orlov returned to Russian headquarters, Alexander spent an hour with him alone and was so pleased by the information he received about enemy movements and losses that he promoted Orlov and made him his own aide-de-camp on the spot. Few lieutenants, to put it mildly, could expect such attention from their sovereign, which illustrates the importance Alexander attached to the information Orlov provided.²¹

Paul Grabbe, formerly the Russian military attache in Munich, was dispatched on a similar mission, ostensibly in response to an enquiry by Marshal Berthier as to the whereabouts of General Lauriston, Napoleon’s ambassador to Alexander. Penetrating well behind the French front lines, Grabbe was able to confirm the ‘carelessness’ and ‘disorder’ which reigned amongst the French cavalry, reporting that the ‘exhausted’ horses were being left without any care. Partly from his own eyes and partly through conversations, he was also able to inform Barclay that the French had no intention of attacking the camp at Drissa and were in fact advancing well to its south.²²

The information provided by Grabbe confirmed all Barclay’s doubts about the strategic value of the camp at Drissa. Already on 7 July he had written to Alexander that the army was retreating towards Drissa with excessive and unnecessary speed. This was having a bad effect on the troops’ morale and was causing them to believe that the situation was much more dangerous than was actually the case. Two days later, when the first units of Barclay’s army were arriving at the camp, Barclay wrote to the emperor that Grabbe’s information provided clear evidence that Napoleon’s main forces were advancing well to the south of Drissa, splitting First and Second armies and pushing towards the Russian heartland: ‘It seems clear to me that the enemy will not attempt any attack against us in our camp at Drissa and we will have to go and find him.’²³

When Alexander and his senior generals arrived in Drissa the camp’s uselessness quickly became evident. If First Army sat in Drissa Napoleon could turn almost all his army against Bagration, perhaps annihilating him and certainly driving him far to the south and away from the key theatre of operations. The gateway to Moscow would then be wide open, with First Army far off to the north-west. Still worse, Napoleon might himself move northwards into the rear of Drissa, cutting the Russian communications, encircling the camp and virtually ending the war by forcing First Army’s surrender.

In addition to these strategic dangers, the camp was also shown to have many tactical weaknesses. Above all, it could easily be surrounded or even taken from the rear. Alexander, Barclay and even Pfuhl were seeing Drissa for the first time. Even Wolzogen, who chose the spot, had only spent thirty-six hours in Drissa. As the Russian engineering corps was quick to point out, none of their officers had played any part either in choosing the camp or in planning and building its fortifications. They had been too overstretched trying to get the fortresses of Riga, Dunaburg, Bobruisk and Kiev ready for war.²⁴

Faced with a storm of objections from almost all his chief military advisers, Alexander agreed that the army must abandon Drissa and retreat eastwards to reach Vitebsk before Napoleon. There is no record of the emperor’s innermost thoughts when he made this decision. Whatever may have been his doubts about the camp, he was undoubtedly very unhappy that the whole line of defence along the river Dvina was being abandoned within three weeks of the war’s start, threatening all efforts to organize reserve armies or a second line of defence in the rear in good time.²⁵

On 17 July First Army abandoned Drissa and retreated towards Vitebsk, hoping to reach this city before Napoleon. Two days later Alexander departed for Moscow. The emperor had been urged to take this step in a joint letter signed by three of his most senior advisers, Aleksei Arakcheev, Aleksandr Balashev and Aleksandr Shishkov. Above all, they argued that Alexander’s presence in the two capitals was essential in order to inspire Russian society and mobilize all its resources for war. Before leaving the army the emperor had a one-hour conversation with Barclay. His last words to his commander before he departed were overheard by Vladimir Lowenstern, Barclay’s aide-de-camp: ‘I entrust my army to you. Don’t forget that it is the only army I have. Keep this thought always in mind.’ Two days earlier Alexander had written in similar fashion to Bagration:

Don’t forget that we are still opposed by superior numbers at every point and for this reason we need to be cautious and not deprive ourselves of the means to carry on an effective campaign by risking all on one day. Our entire goal must be directed towards gaining time and drawing out the war as long as possible. Only by this means can we have the chance of defeating so strong an enemy who has mobilised the military resources of all Europe.²⁶

Bagration was much more in need of such advice than Barclay. His system of war is well summed up in a number of his letters and circulars from the summer of 1812. ‘Russians ought not to run away,’ he wrote; ‘we are becoming worse than the Prussians.’ He urged his officers ‘to instil into our soldiers that the enemy’s troops are nothing more than scum drawn from every corner of the earth, whereas we are Russians and Christian believers (edinovernye). They don’t know how to fight bravely and above all they fear our bayonets. So we must attack them.’ To be sure, this was propaganda designed to raise morale, but even in private Bagration stressed aggression, moral superiority and offensive spirit. At the beginning of the war he urged Alexander to allow him to launch his army on a diversionary raid towards Warsaw, which in Bagration’s view would be the most effective way of drawing French troops away from First Army. He conceded that in the end superior enemy forces would concentrate against him and force him to withdraw, and planned then to move southwards to link up with Tormasov’s Third Army and defend the approaches to Volhynia.²⁷

Correctly, Alexander dismissed this proposal, which would have given Napoleon a golden opportunity to surround and destroy Second Army and which even in the most optimistic scenario would have resulted in Bagration’s force moving far to the south and away from the decisive theatre. Instead the emperor urged on Bagration his own strategy: while First Army retreated in the face of superior numbers, Second Army and Platov’s Cossacks must harass Napoleon’s flanks and rear.

In pressing this strategy Alexander was sticking to the basic principles which had guided Barclay’s thinking from early 1810 and which in the end were to bring victory in 1812. Whichever Russian army was threatened by Napoleon’s main body must withdraw and refuse battle, while the other Russian armies must strike into the ever- lengthening enemy flanks and rear. But this strategy was only fully realizable by the autumn of 1812 when Napoleon’s armies had been hugely depleted and their immensely long flanks were vulnerable to the Russian armies brought in from Finland and the Balkans. Launching Bagration into the flank of Napoleon’s main body in June 1812 was almost as sure a recipe for disaster as allowing him to mount a diversion into the Duchy of Warsaw.

In time sense prevailed and Bagration was ordered to retreat and to attempt to join up with First Army. By