Russia Against Napoleon

56,000 men on the eve of the 1812 campaign. The Guards units which entered Russia nominally comprised 38,000 men and had 27,000 actually present in the ranks when they crossed the Neman. The Young Guard regiments which invaded Russia were almost wiped out but two Young Guard battalions had remained in Paris in 1812, and two more in Germany. Around them and the four full Young Guard regiments in Spain a formidable new force could be created.⁴¹

Within France there were the reserve battalions of the regiments serving in Spain and in the farther-flung areas of the empire. In his study of the Grande Armee in 1813, Camille Rousset mentions them but gives no figure for the men they sent to it. The Prussian general staff history of the campaign reckons perhaps 10,000. French and Prussian sources also differ as to how many men were withdrawn from Spain. The smallest figure is 20,000 but all sources agree that the men from Spain were the elite of the troops deployed there. On top of this there were 12,000 good soldiers of the naval artillery stationed in France’s ports and now incorporated into the new Grande Armee. Even the first wave of recruits, the 75,000 so- called cohorts, had already been under arms for nine months by the beginning of 1813. It was around this relatively large cadre that the true ‘Marie Louises’ were formed. These young men usually lacked neither courage nor loyalty: their great problem was endurance when faced by the gruelling demands of Napoleonic campaigning. Nevertheless, as it concentrated near the river Main Napoleon’s new army was an impressive force. Initially, its more than 200,000 men faced barely 110,000 allied soldiers. If the Russians and Prussians had considerably more veterans, the French had Napoleon to even this balance.⁴²

While Napoleon was mobilizing and concentrating his new armies Kutuzov was at headquarters in Kalicz, contemplating competing strategic options. Immediately after the signing of the Russo-Prussian alliance on 28 February Lieutenant-General Gerhard von Scharnhorst arrived at Russian headquarters in Kalicz to coordinate planning for the forthcoming campaign. There was no doubt, however, either that Russia was the senior partner in the alliance or that Kutuzov, field-marshal and commander-in-chief, would have the decisive say in strategy. Both at the time and subsequently Kutuzov was criticized from two diametrically opposed points of view.

One school of thought argued that the allied forces ought to have advanced decisively across Germany in March and early April 1813. Some of the Prussian generals and some later German historians took the lead here but Wittgenstein was also anxious to pursue Viceroy Eugene over the Elbe. Both those like Wittgenstein, who wished to attack Eugene at Magdeburg, and those who wanted to strike further south to disrupt Napoleon’s planned offensive, believed this would allow the allies to mobilize powerful support from the German peoples and perhaps German princes. The opposite school of thought, almost exclusively Russian, sometimes blamed Kutuzov for having advanced so far from his base in Russia, and opposed any plan to cross the Elbe into the Saxon heartland until Russian reinforcements arrived.⁴³

In an important letter written to his cousin, Admiral Login Golenishchev-Kutuzov, the commander-in-chief explained why the Russians had been forced to advance so deep into Germany.

Our movement away from our borders and so from our resources may seem ill-considered, particularly if you reckon the distance from the Neman to the Elbe and then the distance from the Elbe to the Rhine. Large enemy forces can reach us before we can be strengthened by reserves coming from Russia…But if you go into the circumstances of our activities in more detail, then you will see that we are operating beyond the Elbe only with light forces, of which (given the quality of our light forces) none will be lost. It was necessary to occupy Berlin and having taken Berlin how can you abandon Saxony, both because of its abundant resources and because it interdicts the enemy’s communications with Poland. Mecklenburg and the Hanseatic towns add to our resources. I agree that our removal far from our borders also distances us from our reinforcements but if we had remained behind the Vistula then we would have had to wage a war like in 1807. There would have been no alliance with Prussia and all of Germany, including Austria, with its people and all its resources, would have served Napoleon.⁴⁴

Kutuzov’s response to those who urged a rapid advance across Germany is contained in the many letters he wrote to his subordinate generals, Winzengerode and Wittgenstein. The commander-in-chief admitted the advantages in occupying as much as possible of Germany in order to mobilize its resources, raise German morale and pre-empt Napoleon’s plans. But the further the allies advanced the weaker their forces would become and the more vulnerable to a devastating counter-strike from the far larger army that Napoleon was building up in southwestern Germany. Defeat would have more than merely military consequences: ‘You must understand that any reverse will be a big blow to Russia’s prestige in Germany.’⁴⁵

Aleksandr Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, who was serving at the time on Kutuzov’s staff, recalled that there was constant tension between headquarters and Wittgenstein in March and April 1813, as Kutuzov tried to draw his subordinate’s attention southwards to where Napoleon’s main army was concentrating, and in particular to the line from Erfurt through Leipzig to Dresden along which the enemy was expected to advance. On the contrary, Wittgenstein was above all concerned to protect Berlin and the Prussian heartland which his corps had liberated and on whose borders it was mostly deployed in March 1813. Kutuzov and his chief of staff, Petr Volkonsky, were extremely concerned that unless Wittgenstein advanced to the south-west into Saxony there was every chance that Napoleon’s advance would drive a wedge between him and the main allied forces and thereby enable the enemy to isolate and overwhelm first one allied army and then the other.⁴⁶

In the circumstances Kutuzov and Volkonsky were basically correct. Given their acute shortage of troops, the allies had to concentrate their forces in the Dresden–Leipzig area in order to stop Napoleon driving eastwards along the Austrian border towards Poland. But the worries of Wittgenstein and his chief of staff d’Auvray about defending Berlin and Brandenburg were also legitimate and were shared by most senior Prussian commanders. If Napoleon reconquered these areas, Prussian mobilization of men and materiel would suffer a big setback. The basic problem of the allies in the spring of 1813 was that they needed to defend both the Prussian heartland around Berlin and southern Saxony. Unfortunately they lacked the resources to do this. The tension caused by conflicting strategic priorities and inadequate manpower to defend them continued throughout the spring campaign.

Clausewitz provides a realistic view on the allied situation which goes a long way towards justifying the strategy ultimately agreed by Kutuzov and Scharnhorst, and ratified by the Russian and Prussian monarchs. In his view Wittgenstein’s wish to attack Eugene at Magdeburg made no sense: the viceroy would merely retreat if faced by superior numbers and would draw the allies away from the crucial Leipzig–Dresden operational line on which their links to Austria and to the Russian supplies and reinforcements in Poland depended. Mounting a pre-emptive strike into Thuringia, as some Prussian generals were urging, also made no sense. The advancing allied troops would face far superior numbers close to Napoleon’s bases by April.

Unfortunately, however, the purely defensive strategy based on defence of the Elbe which some Russians advocated was also unlikely to work, given Napoleon’s superiority in numbers and the fact that he held almost all the fortified crossing points over the river. By standing on the Elbe rather than further west, the allies would merely gift Napoleon extra time which they dearly needed to win over the Austrians and bring up Russian reinforcements. Though Clausewitz therefore approved of the allied strategy of advancing over the Elbe and seeking to delay Napoleon by offering battle near Leipzig, he was clear-eyed about the allied chances in this battle, given the French advantage in numbers. Surprise, added to the superiority of the allied veteran troops and of their cavalry, gave them some hope of victory but no more than that.⁴⁷

On 16 March 1813 Blucher’s Prussian corps crossed the Silesian border into Saxony. The next day Prussia declared war on France. Blucher was followed by the advance guard of Kutuzov’s army, commanded by Winzengerode, who was subordinated to the Prussian general’s command. Dresden, the Saxon capital, fell to Winzengerode on 27 March, after which the Russian and Prussian troops fanned out across Saxony towards Leipzig. Apart from the strategic reasons for occupying western Saxony, logistics also came into play. Silesia and the Lausitz (i.e. eastern Saxony) were largely manufacturing areas which depended even in normal circumstances on imported Polish grain. These provinces could sustain troops crossing them but the long-term deployment of the allied armies east of the Elbe was bound to be difficult and to impede efforts to mobilize resources in Silesia for the Prussian war effort.

The ever-aggressive Blucher dreamed of heading into Thuringia and Franconia to attack Napoleon’s main army before it was ready. He knew that he could not do this on his own but his attempts to persuade Wittgenstein to join the offensive were unavailing. In fact even Blucher began to have his doubts about the wisdom of such a move. Like all the allied leaders, Blucher had his eyes on Austria, and in particular on Francis II. Like them too, memories of 1805 were burned into his consciousness: in that year probable Prussian intervention in the war had