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.62
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
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.64
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.’65
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.66
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.67
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.68
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.
Back on the west bank of the Berezina, Chichagov faced a difficult dilemma. It was impossible to coordinate operations even with Wittgenstein on the other side of the river, let alone with Kutuzov, who was still far away near the Dnieper. The defence of the Berezina line therefore rested in the admiral’s hands alone. Chichagov had, at most, 32,000 men, of whom only half were infantry. If he could be sure that Napoleon was heading north-west for Vilna, all Chichagov needed to cover was the 20 kilometres between Borisov and the ford at Veselovo, opposite the village of Zembin. The problem was that Napoleon might cross the river south of Borisov and head westwards for Minsk, or even march via Igumen for Bobruisk, well to the south. These possibilities hugely extended the river front which Chichagov had to cover, up to 100 kilometres or more. Napoleon pretended to be making preparations to head for Minsk by building a bridge at Ukholoda, 12 kilometres south of Borisov. In fact, however, he crossed at Studenka, 18 kilometres north of Borisov, and headed for Vilna.69
As often happens in war, amidst all the strains and the conflicting intelligence Chichagov believed the evidence that best fitted his own assumptions and fears. The admiral’s greatest worry was that Napoleon was heading for Minsk to recapture the huge store there on which Chichagov’s own army now depended. At Minsk he could link up with Schwarzenberg, whom Chichagov believed to be advancing towards the Berezina into the rear of the Russian forces. To do Chichagov justice, most of the other senior Russian commanders believed both that Napoleon would head for Minsk or Bobruisk, and that this would be the most dangerous move from the Russian perspective. On 22 November, for instance, Kutuzov had written to Chichagov warning him that if Napoleon could not cross the Berezina he might well head south. Clausewitz, now at Wittgenstein’s headquarters, recalls that ‘every man was possessed with the idea, that the enemy would take the direction of Bobruisk’.70
Perhaps the most striking evidence comes from Ermolov’s memoirs. When he finally reached Chichagov’s headquarters on 29 November, the admiral was still trying to send Platov’s Cossacks around Napoleon’s flank and into his rear in order to destroy the bridges and causeways that crossed the swamps at Zembin and opened the way to Vilna. Ermolov responded that this was unwise: ‘If Napoleon found it impossible to pass through Zembin, his
