Authors: Adam Zamoyski
Napoleon was made uneasy by the sight of the burning villages, but attempted to dispel his fears by heaping ridicule on the Russians and calling them cowards. ‘He sought to avoid the serious reflections which this terrible measure raised as to the consequences and duration of a war in which the enemy was prepared to make, from the very outset, sacrifices of this magnitude,’ explained Caulaincourt. On the evening of 28 August Napoleon was walking in the garden of a country house he had stopped at just outside Viazma. Murat was arguing with Davout, trying to convince him that they should go no further, and the argument grew heated, but the Emperor merely listened pensively and then went into the house without saying a word.
16
Uncertainty would be succeeded by bluster. Two days later, when
he and his entourage stopped for lunch by the roadside, Napoleon walked up and down in front of them, holding forth about the nature of greatness. ‘Real greatness has nothing to do with wearing the purple or a grey coat, it consists in being able to rise above one’s condition,’ he declaimed. ‘I, for instance, have a good position in life. I am Emperor, I could live surrounded by the delights of the great capital, and give myself over to the pleasures of life and to idleness. Instead of which I am making war, for the glory of France, for the future happiness of humanity; I am here with you, at a bivouac, in battle, where I can be struck, like any other, by a cannonball … I have risen above my condition …’
17
The following day he entered the pretty town of Viazma, which delighted the French with its low, brightly painted houses. The retreating Russians had set fire to it, but the fires were soon put out. The even prettier town of Gzhatsk, with its blue-painted wooden houses, was intact when they entered it on 1 September hot on the heels of the Russians, but by that evening it was on fire through the carelessness of the soldiers, who would light campfires in inappropriate places. At Gzhatsk they also found large stores of wheat and spirits, which helped the supply situation.
Davout wrote to his wife telling her they would be in Moscow in a matter of days. ‘This campaign will have been one of the Emperor’s most extraordinary, and not the least useful to our children, for it will protect them from the invasions of the hordes of the north.’ But on the following day an
estafette
from Paris brought Napoleon the unwelcome news that Marshal Marmont had been defeated by Wellington outside Salamanca on 22 July. ‘Anxiety was clearly visible on his usually serene brow,’ according to General Roguet of the Young Guard, who lunched with him that day.
18
The mood at Russian headquarters was hardly better, even though the general situation was changing rapidly in their favour. Clausewitz saw the fighting at Smolensk as a strategic victory for the Russians: they had lost a great many men, but French losses had been heavy, and
while the Russians would be able to make good their losses as they moved back to meet their reinforcements, the French would not.
But that was of little comfort to the Russian soldiers as they trudged through the heat and dust, with only slightly better provisioning than the French – General Konovnitsin’s rearguard sometimes went for two days without any food. And even when they did have food, they had to decamp before they could prepare or eat it, according to Lieutenant Uxküll, who had waxed so poetic about bivouac life. ‘We’re running away like hares,’ he noted in his diary outside Dorogobuzh on the night of 21 August. ‘Panic has seized everyone.’
19
The rearguard never managed to shake off the French pursuers, so the pace had quickened, and they were covering up to sixty-five kilometres a day. The retreat was a good deal less orderly than before, and they were now leaving behind them a trail of abandoned wagons and dead or dying men and horses. ‘We continue to retreat, without knowing why,’ Prince Vassilchikov wrote to a friend. ‘We lose men in rearguard actions, and we are losing our cavalry, which can hardly move any more … I believe that within a couple of weeks we shall have no cavalry left at all.’
20
‘All this retreating is incomprehensible for me and for the army, which has to leave its positions and flee, in the heat and at night,’ Bagration wrote to Rostopchin. ‘We are tiring our men and leading the enemy on behind us. I am afraid that Moscow may suffer the same fate as Smolensk.’ The junior officers and the other ranks were bewildered. ‘Gathering in small groups, officers talked of the impending destruction of the fatherland and wondered what fate awaited them,’ writes Lieutenant Radozhitsky of the artillery. ‘The arms which they had borne so bravely in the defence of their fatherland now seemed useless and cumbersome.’ Ensign Konshin felt ‘a heavy bleakness’ oppressing his soul. ‘Our courage is crushed,’ wrote Uxküll in his diary. ‘Our march looks like a funeral procession. My heart is heavy.’
21
Like the French, the Russians were disturbed at the turn the campaign had taken. ‘The war had gone beyond the bounds of humanity, becoming desperate, implacable, exterminatory; its conclusion could
only lie in the destruction of one or other of the warring sides,’ noted Radozhitsky. For the Russians, a new and unfamiliar factor had come into play.
22
‘The destruction of Smolensk acquainted me with a feeling I had never experienced before, which wars carried on outside one’s own frontiers do not contain,’ wrote Yermolov. ‘I had not seen my own land laid waste, I had not seen the cities of my fatherland in flames.’ Lieutenant Luka Simansky of the Izmailovsky Life Guards had also experienced strong sensations as he watched Smolensk burn and the civilians streaming out of it. ‘I was vividly reminded of my own family, which I had left behind,’ he wrote, adding that while he was still prepared to die for his country, he had now understood what this would mean to them, and he began praying to his guardian angel for protection. He had suddenly become aware of the real cost of war. The fifteen-year-old D.V. Dushenkievich, who had fought so heroically with his Simbirsk regiment in defence of Smolensk, was overwhelmed by sorrow, but also felt a growing anger.
23
This anger was echoed in the feelings of many officers, particularly at staff level, where the customary restraints of deference and even discipline were fast breaking down. The muttering about ‘foreigners’ had grown louder, and everyone was on the lookout for traitors. ‘[Napoleon] knows our movements better than we do,’ Bagration wrote to Rostopchin after the Rudnia fiasco, ‘and it looks to me as though we advance and retreat at his orders.’
24
The conspiracy theorists were soon crowing over what seemed like a piece of real evidence.
Among the papers that fell into Russian hands when Platov’s cavalry had overrun Sebastiani’s camp at Rudnia was a letter from Murat informing Sebastiani that he had received intelligence of an impending Russian attack. When this came to be known at Russian headquarters, there was a general outcry and demands that the ‘spies’ should be rooted out. Suspicion hovered over all foreign officers, but fell most heavily on Ludwig von Wolzogen and Waldemar von Löwenstern, who were known to have spent time in France. What was
significant about the fact that these two were picked on was that both always spoke German with Barclay – in other words, by naming them, their accusers were pointing the finger at him.
Yermolov was demanding that Löwenstern be sent to Siberia, but Platov suggested a more reliable expedient. ‘This is how to deal with the matter, brother,’ he said to Yermolov. ‘Get him ordered to go and make a reconnaissance of the French positions and send him off in my direction. I’ll make it my business to separate the German from everyone else. I’ll give him guides who will show him the French in such a way that he’ll never see them again.’
25
There had in fact been no treachery, and it was later discovered that Murat had gleaned his intelligence from an intercepted letter written by a Polish staff officer to his mother, whose estate lay in the path of the offensive, warning her to remove herself. But the anti-German party was in full hue and cry, and Barclay did not have enough authority to oppose it. He had Löwenstern sent to Moscow under guard, and the staffs were purged of other foreigners, such as officers of Polish descent. Löwenstern’s brother Eduard, himself serving in Pahlen’s corps, was outraged. ‘The army and the nation wanted to believe that Russia had been sold and betrayed from the start,’ he wrote. ‘One had to let these people clutch at this idea, as one leaves a naughty child with its toy, to stop it crying any more.’
26
This did not reduce the pressure on Barclay, who, far from running away, was now desperately looking for a favourable position in which to give battle. Toll located one at Usviate which was suitable, according to Clausewitz, but Bagration criticised it. When Toll attempted to defend his choice and point out its virtues, Bagration flew into ‘a violent passion’, accused him of insolence and insubordination, and threatened to have him demoted to the ranks. Rather than stick up for his quartermaster, Barclay agreed to fall back further. He found another favourable position before Dorogobuzh, but Bagration objected to this one too, and another damaging quarrel ensued.
27
Yermolov urged Bagration to write to the Tsar demanding
Barclay’s removal from command, and if Bagration did not quite dare to do that, he was writing to Arakcheev, Rostopchin, Chichagov and others. He accused Barclay of being a ‘fool’ and a ‘coward’, he petulantly declared that he was ashamed to wear the same uniform as him, and repeatedly bragged that if he had been in command, he would have ‘pulverised’ Napoleon. He even threatened to take his army off and do the deed on his own. He was not the only one making trouble. Generals and influential officers throughout the army were writing to friends in high places demanding the removal of Barclay, and in some cases even his execution as a traitor.
28
All this was having a detrimental effect on the army and Barclay’s authority. ‘Senior officers accused [Barclay] of indecision, junior officers of cowardice, while the soldiers murmured that he was a German who had been bribed by Bonaparte and was selling Russia,’ recorded one of Yermolov’s aides-de-camp. ‘The army began to complain that the commander-in-chief, a German, does not attend religious services, does not give battle, and there were those who called the conscientious and brave Barclay a bogeyman,’ according to Nikolai Sukhanin. The rank and file started referring to the commander by the disparaging wordplay on his name ‘
boltai da i tolko
’, which roughly translates as ‘all bark and no bite’. As he rode past marching columns of troops, the unfortunate commander could hear shouts of: ‘Look, look, there goes the traitor!’
29
Had it not been for the essentially passive attitude of the Russian conscript and the framework of iron discipline within which he functioned, the army would have been in trouble. If he felt let down by authority, the ‘foreign traitor’ excuse allowed him to continue to trust in the regimental structure and in his immediate superiors. There was thus no threat of mutiny. But desertion was becoming rife. More importantly, things had come to such a pass that, according to Yermolov’s aide-de-camp Grabbe, if they had given battle now, everyone would have suspected treason at the slightest setback and consequently not obeyed orders they did not clearly see the point of, resulting in a free-for-all.
30
Yet a battle was what Barclay was hoping for. He identified a strong position outside Viazma, and on 26 August, as his men began to dig in, he wrote to the Tsar that ‘the moment has come for our advance to begin’. He needed two full days to prepare the positions and tidy up his army, but he was not to get them, as Konovnitsin’s rearguard failed to hold back the advancing French, and he was obliged to fall back once again, ‘like one who has lost his balance and cannot stop himself’, in the words of Clausewitz. For once, Bagration had approved of the position chosen by Barclay, so now he could wax indignant about the other’s order to continue the retreat. ‘I say forward, he says back!’ he wrote to Chichagov the next day. ‘In this manner we shall soon find ourselves in Moscow!’ But Barclay was now determined to make a stand, whatever the consequences, and began to dig in at Tsarevo-Zaimishche, just 160 kilometres – three to four days’ march – short of Moscow.
31
This was too close for comfort. News of the fall of Smolensk had had a devastating effect around the country, spreading panic in its wake. Many thought that all was lost. People began to pack up and flee, even when they were nowhere near the front. Kursk filled up with refugees from Kaluga. In Kharkov, a merchant found that none of his regular clients would sell on credit. Even in faraway cities, people were calling in debts, selling at discounts, and going liquid.
32
Moscow had hitherto been calm, and it was still basking in the patriotic glow produced by Alexander’s visit. Its military governor, Count Rostopchin, was determined that it should remain so. He was a fine-looking man of fifty with polished manners, a broad education and a jaunty wit. In his privy he had installed a fine bronze bust of Napoleon, suitably adapted to serve the lowest function. He was a prized raconteur, and made an impression on Madame de Staël, who passed through Moscow accompanied by the poet August Wilhelm Schlegel just before the middle of August, and whom he entertained to dinner and showed around the city. For all his liberal French education, Rostopchin was a xenophobe and a reactionary. Over the years
he had talked himself into believing in a vast conspiracy of Freemasons, Jacobins, democrats, Martinists and other freethinkers aimed at destroying Russia, and was convinced that the French invasion could be the catalyst for this, by sparking off popular rebellion.