Russia Against Napoleon

menacingly nearby. Whatever the reasoning behind his move, the attempt to march on Kaluga had proved a disaster. The army had eaten nine days of its food supply and come nine days closer to winter without achieving anything or getting away from the Moscow region and back towards its base at Smolensk.²⁹

With the French retreat from Maloiaroslavets the second stage of the autumn campaign had begun. Kutuzov was happy to wear down the enemy with his Cossacks, relying on nature and French indiscipline to do its work. Quite rightly, he retained a healthy respect for French courage and elan on the battlefield. Despite pleas even from Konovnitsyn and Toll, his most devoted subordinates, he was unwilling to commit his infantry to pitched battles, at least until the enemy was further weakened.

Along with the good military reasons for this strategy, politics probably also played a role. Stung by Sir Robert Wilson’s complaints about his retreat after the battle of Maloiaroslavets, Kutuzov retorted:

I don’t care for your objections. I prefer giving my enemy a ‘pont d’or’ [golden bridge], as you call it, to receiving a ‘coup de collier’ [blow born of desperation]: besides, I will say again, as I have told you before, that I am by no means sure that the total destruction of the Emperor Napoleon and his army would be of such benefit to the world; his succession would not fall to Russia or any other continental power, but to that which commands the sea, and whose domination would then be intolerable.³⁰

Kutuzov was not personally close to Nikolai Rumiantsev but their views on foreign policy and Russian interests did to some extent overlap, as one might indeed expect of Russian aristocrats brought up in Catherine II’s reign and deeply involved in her expansion southwards against the Ottomans. Like Rumiantsev, he was no lover of England, once commenting to Bennigsen that it would not worry him if the English sank to the bottom of the sea. How much these views influenced Kutuzov’s strategy in the autumn and winter of 1812 it is difficult to say. The field-marshal was a shrewd and slippery politician who seldom exposed his innermost thoughts to anyone. He would certainly be slow to admit to any Russian that his strategy was driven by political motives, since this was to stray into a sphere which belonged to the emperor and not to any military commander. Probably the safest conclusion is that Kutuzov’s political views were an additional reason not to risk his army in an attempt to capture Napoleon or annihilate his army.³¹

Alexander was kept aware of Kutuzov’s unwillingness to confront the retreating enemy, not least by Wilson. The emperor had encouraged the Englishman to write to him, employing this foreigner as an additional, ‘unaffiliated’ source of information on his generals, while secretly intercepting and deciphering Wilson’s correspondence with the British government to make sure that his British ‘agent’ was not trying to pull the wool over his eyes. Wilson was one of a number of people who begged the emperor to return to headquarters and take over command himself. Another officer who did so was Colonel Michaud de Beauretour, who came to Petersburg on 27 October with news of the victory over Murat at Tarutino.³²

Alexander responded to Michaud that

all human beings are ambitious for fame (chestoliubivye) and I admit openly that I am no less ambitious than others. If I listened only to this feeling, then I would get into your carriage and set off for the army. Given the unfavourable position into which we have lured the enemy, our army’s excellent spirit, the empire’s inexhaustible resources, the large reserve forces which I have made ready, and the orders sent by me to the Army of Moldavia [i.e. Chichagov’s army] – I am very confident that we cannot be denied victory and that all that remains to us, as they say, is to put on the laurels. I know that if I was with the army, then I would gather all the glory and that I would take my place in history. But when I think how inexperienced I am in military matters in comparison to our enemy and that, for all my goodwill, I could make a mistake which would cost the precious blood of my children, then despite my ambition for fame I am very ready to sacrifice my glory for the good of the army.³³

To some extent, as usual, this was Alexander striking a pose. Other factors were also important in his decision to stay away from headquarters and leave Kutuzov in command. The field-marshal’s enormous popularity as the reality of victory sank in to Russian consciousness was one such factor. But there is good reason to believe Alexander’s lack of confidence in his own military abilities, a lack of confidence which had haunted this sensitive and proud man since the humiliation of Austerlitz. Though the emperor had more faith in Bennigsen’s ability and shared his views on strategy, he nevertheless allowed Kutuzov to remove the chief of staff from headquarters, recognizing that in present circumstances he had no alternative but to put his faith in his commander-in-chief and had no interest in allowing the army’s high command to be undermined by personal hatreds.³⁴

Kutuzov’s retreat after Maloiaroslavets had left his main body three days’ march behind the enemy as it headed for Mozhaisk and the Moscow–Smolensk highway. Aleksei Ermolov reported on 28 October that Napoleon was retreating at such speed that it was impossible for Russian regular troops to keep up without exhausting themselves. Other reports confirmed this, while adding that this speed was destroying the French army. Two days later Matvei Platov, in command of the Cossacks swarming around the enemy’s column, wrote that ‘the enemy army is fleeing like no other army has ever retreated in history. It is abandoning its baggage, its sick and its wounded. It leaves behind horrible sights in its wake: at every step one sees the dying or the dead.’ Platov added that the Cossacks were stopping the enemy from foraging and Napoleon’s troops were running very short of food and fodder. Nor could the enemy rearguards hold for any length of time against the light cavalry which moved around their flanks and the concentrated fire of the Russian horse artillery.³⁵

By 29 October Napoleon’s headquarters were at Gzhatsk, back on the highway and 230 kilometres from Smolensk. After rejoining the Moscow–Smolensk road at Mozhaisk, his army passed the battlefield of Borodino and the Kolotskoe monastery, which had been turned into a hospital. Many hundreds of wounded men remained there, who should have been evacuated well before the army’s arrival. Instead Napoleon now tried to load them onto the carts of his baggage train, many of whose drivers took the first opportunity to tip them off into the ditches beside the road.³⁶

The battlefield itself was a terrible sight. None of the bodies had been buried. Scores of thousands of corpses lay out in the fields or in great mounds around the Raevsky battery and other points where the fighting had been most fierce.

For fifty-two days they had lain as victims of the elements and the changing weather. Few still had a human look. Well before the frosts had arrived, maggots and putrefaction had made their mark. Other enemies had also appeared. Packs of wolves had come from every corner of Smolensk province. Birds of prey had flown from the nearby fields. Often the beasts of the forest and those of the air fought over the right to tear apart the corpses. The birds picked out the eyes, the wolves cleaned the bones of their flesh.³⁷

As Napoleon’s army turned towards Smolensk along the highway, the closest Russian forces remained Matvei Platov’s Cossacks. Their orders were to harass the enemy day and night, allowing him little sleep and no chance to forage. By 1 November Miloradovich’s advance guard of Kutuzov’s army was also approaching. It was made up of two infantry corps and 3,500 regular cavalry. Kutuzov’s main body was still some way to the south, marching along country roads parallel to the highway. This line of march made clear Kutuzov’s intention not to fight a pitched battle with Napoleon. Food supply was also an incentive to keep well away from the highway and march through districts untouched by war.

Once Kutuzov’s army began to pursue Napoleon, problems of supply were inevitable. The army was moving away from its bases and into an impoverished war zone. Even in Smolensk province, let alone Belorussia and Lithuania, there was every likelihood that food would be impossible to find and that the army would have to feed itself from its own wagons. It required 850 carts to carry a day’s food and forage for an army of 120,000 men and 40,000 horses. To sustain itself for a long period would therefore require many thousands of carts. Even if they could be found, this would not necessarily solve the problem. The horses and drivers of the supply train had to feed themselves as well. In a vicious circle very familiar to pre-modern generals the army’s supply train could end up by eating all the food it was attempting to deliver. The longer it spent on the march, the likelier this was to happen. Moving thousands of carts along side roads in a Russian autumn was bound to be a very slow business, especially if they were travelling in the rear of a huge artillery train. These realities go a long way to explaining Kutuzov’s predicament in the autumn and winter of 1812.³⁸

When the campaign began the men carried three days’ rations, and seven more days of ‘biscuit’ – in other words the dried black bread which was the staple of Russian regiments on the march – were in the regimental carts. This was what the regulations required and Kutuzov insisted that they were fully complied with. Large extra supplies were in the army’s wagon train to the rear of the marching columns. On 17 October the army’s chief victualling officer reported that he had sufficient biscuit to feed 120,000 men for twenty days – in other words until