Authors: Adam Zamoyski
Each time the French were evicted from the
flèches
, they would reform and launch another assault. Their bearing and discipline were so magnificent that Bagration applauded, shouting ‘Bravo!’ as the columns advanced towards his positions for the fourth or fifth time. Ney, who complained bitterly about being made to ‘take the bull by the horns’, was in the forefront, clearly visible on his white horse. Davout, who had been wounded and carried off the field during the first attack, was back in the saddle, encouraging his men. Murat was everywhere, drawing eyes and bullets by his theatrical costume. The attacks and counterattacks succeeded each other like a tidal ebb and flow which left thousands strewn across the field at every turn. This dogged slogging-match over a line of earthworks and the carnage it involved were entirely novel elements in European warfare, in which outnumbered or outmanoeuvred units had hitherto tended to fall back rather than fight to the last drop of blood.
At about ten o’clock the French had once again captured all three
flèches
, but Bagration rallied his troops for one final effort and led them into the attack once more. It was successful, but at the moment of triumph Bagration was hit in the leg. He tried to carry on as though
nothing had happened, but he had no strength in his shattered leg and after a moment slid from his horse. He wanted to remain on the scene, but was carried away, still protesting. Barclay’s aide-de-camp Löwenstern spotted him and came over. ‘Tell the General that the fate of the army and its preservation is in his hands,’ Bagration said, in a belated, grudging admission of respect for Barclay’s competence. ‘So far all is going well, but let him look after my army, and may God help us all.’
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News quickly spread among the Russian troops that their beloved commander had been killed, and although Konovnitsin tried to steady them, they could not resist the next French assault, which finally cleared them from the
flèches
and pushed them back across the ravine of the Semeonovka all the way to the ruins of the village of Semeonovskoie, whose houses were collapsing ‘like theatrical stage-sets’ under the French artillery’s bombardment. ‘There are no words to describe the bitter despair with which our soldiers threw themselves into the fray,’ wrote Captain Lubenkov. ‘It was a fight between ferocious tigers, not men, and once both sides had determined to win or die where they stood, they did not stop fighting when their muskets broke, but carried on, using butts and swords in terrible hand-to-hand combat, and the killing went on for about half an hour.’
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Semeonovskoie was in French hands. Ney and Murat, who could see into the rear of the entire Russian army through the gap they had created, glimpsed victory lying within their grasp, but they could not forge ahead and seize it with the tattered units at their disposal. They sent urgent requests to Napoleon for reinforcements.
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But Napoleon did not respond. Although he had a good view of the whole battlefield, from where he sat he could not make out clearly what was really happening on the ground, and he did not, as usual, mount his horse to take a look. He sat very still most of the time, showing little emotion, even when listening to the reports of panting officers who, without dismounting, retailed news from the front line. He would dismiss them without a word, and then go back to surveying the battlefield through his telescope. He had a glass of punch at
ten o’clock, but brusquely refused all offers of food. He seemed very absorbed, but his concentration did not yield any results.
‘Previously it was above all on the battlefield that his talents had shone with the greatest
éclat
; it was there that he seemed to master fortune herself,’ wrote Georges de Chambray, who could not recognise in the tired old man of that day the god of war who had galloped about the field of so many battles, spotting the right moment and the weak point at which to launch the decisive attack.
Many observed that Napoleon was not his usual active self that day. ‘We did not have the pleasure of seeing him, as in the old days, go to electrify with his presence those points where a too vigorous resistance was prolonging the fighting and called success into question,’ Louis Lejeune, an officer on Berthier’s staff, noted in his diary that evening. ‘We were all surprised not to see the active man of Marengo, Austerlitz, etc. We did not know that Napoleon was ill, and that this state of discomfort rendered it impossible for him to take an active part in the great events taking place before him, exclusively for the sake of his glory.’ People from all over Europe and half of Asia were fighting under his gaze, the blood of 80,000 French and Russian troops was flowing in a struggle to affirm or destroy his power, and all he did was sit and watch calmly, Lejeune reflected. ‘We did not feel satisfied; our judgements were severe.’
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There was, as Davout complained to one staff officer, no unified superior direction to the operations. While Ney and Davout were engaged in their battle over the
flèches
, Napoleon had launched further attacks against the Russian centre in the Raevsky redoubt. The first, by two of Eugène’s infantry divisions, was repulsed, but a second, by Morand’s division, would prove more successful. It was a fine display of French military prowess.
Captain François of the 30th of the Line was leading his company straight at the redoubt while salvoes from the Russian guns raked the attackers. ‘Nothing could stop us,’ he remembered. ‘We hopped over the roundshot as it bounded through the grass. Whole files and half-platoons fell, leaving great gaps. General Bonamy, who was at the
head of the 30th, made us halt in a hail of canister shot in order to rally us, and we then went forward at the
pas de charge
. A line of Russian troops tried to halt us, but we delivered a regimental volley at thirty paces and walked over them. We then hurled ourselves at the redoubt and climbed in by the embrasures; I myself got in through an embrasure just after its cannon had fired. The Russian gunners tried to beat us back with ramrods and levering spikes. We fought hand-to-hand with them, and they were formidable adversaries.’
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Raevsky, who had been wounded in the leg in an accident a few days before, just managed to hobble away, but the remainder of the redoubt’s defenders were cut down, including General Kutaisov, the able and popular commander of the whole Russian artillery. The French infantry then spilled out into the area behind the redoubt. As Raevsky himself pointed out, if Morand had been properly supported, that would have been the end of the Russian centre, and the battle would have been over by ten o’clock in the morning.
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That it was not owed nothing to the Russian command.
Kutuzov had realised as early as seven o’clock that he must reinforce his left wing, and had begun a progressive transfer of units from his reserves and his idle right wing to the southern sector. A couple of divisions under Baggovut had been sent to reinforce Tuchkov, who was the only thing standing between Poniatowski and the Russian rear. Baggovut took over from Tuchkov, who had been mortally wounded, and stabilised the situation by forcing Poniatowski to fall back a small distance. A number of reinforcements had also been despatched to plug the holes in Bagration’s defences as the French knocked more and more of his units out at the
flèches
.
None of this was part of a coherent strategy – Kutuzov was simply reacting to appeals for help and alarming reports. A staff officer would gallop up with some unit commander’s request or suggestion, and Kutuzov would wave his hand and say: ‘
C’est bon, faites-le!
’ Sometimes he would turn to Toll and ask him what he thought, adding: ‘Karl, whatever you say I will do.’ According to Clausewitz, the old General contributed nothing to the proceedings. ‘He appeared
destitute of inward activity, of any clear view of surrounding occurrences, of any liveliness of perception, or independence of action,’ he wrote. It never occurred to Kutuzov that, Kutaisov having been killed, someone should take over directing the artillery, and as a result the reserve park stood idle all day and the Russian superiority in this arm was never brought into play.
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On hearing of Bagration’s wound, Kutuzov sent Prince Eugene of Württemberg to the
fléches
. The Prince tried to stabilise the situation around Semeonovskoie by pulling back a short distance, but Kutuzov would not accept this and heaped insults on him. Yet when Dokhturov, whom he sent to take over, asked for reinforcements, the request was denied, only to be granted later. Kutuzov did at one stage mount his white horse and ride out to have a look at what was going on, but soon returned to Gorki. Later, he seems to have taken up a position even further back, where according to one staff officer he did justice to a fine picnic, assisted by his entourage of elegant officers from the best families. Luckily for him, Bennigsen and Toll kept visiting the battlefield, and a number of his subordinates showed remarkable initiative. At the same time everyone was acting on his own, and there was a great deal of mistrust. When Bagration sent an officer to Konovnitsin with an order, the latter kept the officer as a hostage, suspecting a trick on Bagration’s part.
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In the final analysis what saved Kutuzov’s reputation that day was the stoicism of the Russian soldier, who fought and died – often pointlessly – where he had been ordered to.
When the French occupied the Raevsky redoubt, the situation was saved by a combination of lucky flukes. Barclay had gone to Gorki, but General Löwenstern took the situation in at once, galloped up to a battalion of infantry standing by, and swept it up into a counterattack. At the same time Yermolov, who happened to be riding by with reinforcements for the southern sector, also saw the peril, and on his own initiative deployed them against the French in the redoubt. General Bonamy and his 30th Regiment were thus caught in a counterattack from two quarters, while the troops holding the line on
either side of the breach also began to close in. The French infantry retreated into the redoubt and brought a few guns to bear, but without support from their side they could not hold it, and the Russians swarmed in, taking Bonamy prisoner. Only eleven officers and 257 other ranks of the 30th of the Line, which had numbered 4100 men that morning, managed to scurry down the hill to the safety of their own lines.
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It was shortly after the unfortunate Bonamy, weakened by his fifteen wounds, had been brought to Kutuzov that Toll came up to the commander with a request from General Platov. Platov with his 5500 cossacks and Uvarov with 2500 regular horse had been sitting idly on the right wing, and they requested to be allowed to cross the Kolocha and make a raid into the French rear. Kutuzov gave his assent to the suggestion without seemingly giving it much thought, and soon the eight thousand riders with their thirty-six guns were fording the Kolocha. They wreaked predictable havoc in the rear of Prince Eugène’s corps, panicking the Delzons division into flight. But they were soon stopped in their tracks when the French infantry formed squares and fired off a few salvoes of grapeshot in their direction. The cossacks darted out of range, while the regular cavalry fled in disorder, pursued by French dragoons. Platov and Uvarov were given a cool greeting by Kutuzov on their return. As several Russian officers pointed out, the raid had been devoid of any tactical sense, as it could have yielded little but exposed the cavalry to serious loss.
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But it did have some unexpected consequences.
Between eleven and twelve o’clock the French attacks had ground to a standstill, in spite of a number of local victories. In the centre, the Raevsky redoubt was back in Russian hands; further along, the Bagration
fléches
and then the village of Semeonovskoie had been taken; but new Russian lines of defence sprang up every time, and on the extreme right wing Poniatowski’s attack had been halted. None of the forces engaged in these actions was strong enough to push the advantage home, and that was why Ney, Murat and Davout repeatedly called for reinforcements.
This would have meant sending in the Imperial Guard. Napoleon was loath to commit this, as it constituted his last and surest reserve, not something he wanted to gamble with so far from home. But he was, apparently, prepared to commit part of it. He sent the artillery of the Guard forward to bombard the Russian positions around Semeonovskoie, and ordered the Young Guard, under General Roguet, to move forward.
But at the very moment when he was preparing to throw this force into the scales, Platov and Uvarov appeared on his left flank, and he halted everything while he reassessed the situation.
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Thus at the most critical moment, when the Russian defences had been breached, Napoleon virtually called a halt. Over the next two hours the French armies did not move, and this gave the Russians valuable time to patch their defences and bring up reserves.
But while the fighting subsided, the cannonade did not, and since most of the troops were massed within range of the enemy’s guns the carnage continued. The most vulnerable were the massed ranks of Murat’s cavalry, which had been positioned in the centre, under the guns of the Raevsky redoubt.
Roth von Schreckenstein of the Saxon cavalry pointed out that to be made to stand still under fire ‘must be one of the most unpleasant things cavalry can be called on to do … There can have been scarcely a man in those ranks and files whose neighbour did not crash to earth with his horse, or die from terrible wounds while screaming for help.’ Jean Bréaut des Marlots, a captain of cuirassiers, rode down the line of his squadron to keep his men steady under the withering fire. He congratulated one of his subalterns, by the name of Grammont, on his bearing. ‘Just as he was telling me that he lacked for nothing, except perhaps a glass of water, a cannonball tore him in two,’ wrote the Captain. ‘I turned to another officer to tell him how sorry I was to have lost this M. de Grammont. But before he could answer me, his horse was hit by a cannonball which killed him. And a hundred other incidents of this sort. I gave my horse to a trooper to hold for half a minute, and the man was promptly killed.’ The inaction was unbearable,
and the young Captain could only stop himself from running away, as he explained in a letter to his sister Manette, by telling himself: ‘It’s a lottery, and if you do survive it you will still have to die; and would it be better to live dishonoured or to die with honour?’
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