Authors: Adam Zamoyski
The entire Russian army, numbering at least 90,000 men, was by now in position behind the town, commanding the area before it with over five hundred guns. Napoleon could not muster 65,000 (Mortier was between Moscow and Mozhaisk, Junot was at Mozhaisk, Poniatowski at Vereia). If he wanted to carry through his plan of taking Kaluga or even of just getting back to Smolensk through
Medyn and Yelnia, he would have to defeat the Russians in a pitched battle. His instinct told him to do just that, and he was supported by Murat, but most of his entourage were against such a course.
That night at his headquarters, a squalid cabin in the village of Gorodnia whose single room was divided in two by a dirty canvas sheet, Napoleon asked his marshals for their opinion. He listened in silence, staring at the maps spread before him. While some were for going ahead, or at least crossing the Luzha elsewhere and making for Smolensk through Medyn, the majority favoured what they felt was the more prudent course of rejoining the main Smolensk – Moscow road and retreating along that. ‘Thank, you, gentlemen, I will make my own decision,’ he said as he broke up the meeting and retired for the night.
31
Before dawn on the following morning, Napoleon mounted up and set off to reconnoitre the situation. He had only ridden a short way when a swarm of cossacks assailed his little party. The Chasseurs and Chevau-Légers of his escort, along with some of his staff officers and entourage, chased them off while he rode to a place of safety. But it had been a narrow escape. He then rode across the battlefield and through Maloyaroslavets to assess the Russian positions. The ruins of the little town presented a gruesome sight. ‘The streets were strewn with corpses, many of them hideously mutilated by the wheels of guns and
caissons
,’ recalled Colonel Lubin Griois. ‘What added to the horror of the scene was the large number of those who had fallen victim to the fire, and who were more or less blackened and foreshortened, depending on whether they had just been slightly burned or completely calcinated.’ According to Baron Fain, Napoleon was very much affected by the sight.
32
What he saw beyond the battlefield left him undecided. In the early hours Kutuzov had fallen back a couple of kilometres and deployed in a strong defensive position. This suggested to Napoleon that he had a chance of defeating Kutuzov decisively, which would not only avenge Vinkovo but transform the march back to Smolensk into a victorious
progress. But the strength of the Russian positions meant that a victory would be costly, and he would have to leave behind the heavily wounded.
In falling back, Kutuzov had actually opened the road to Medyn, leaving Napoleon free to pursue his retreat to Smolensk that way, but the retreating French would then have had the entire Russian army on their heels. Napoleon discussed the situation further with various members of his entourage without reaching a decision.
While Kutuzov lost no time in proclaiming Maloyaroslavets a Russian victory, he was far from confident. His forces were so overwhelmingly made up of raw recruits and inexperienced officers that although they were not lacking in spirit, they had made a poor showing in the fighting.
33
How they would behave in the context of a pitched battle was anybody’s guess. Conversely, the fight put up by the French had demonstrated that their stay in Moscow had not affected their morale enough to diminish their fighting fitness. So while Kutuzov’s forces comfortably outnumbered and decidedly outgunned those facing him, Napoleon would have had an enormous advantage in terms of quality.
‘Very strange things were taking place at Russian headquarters that night,’ according to Colonel von Toll. Bennigsen, Konovnitsin, Wilson and Toll himself tried to goad Kutuzov into action, asserting that victory was well within their grasp. But Kutuzov was not about to stake everything even on such odds. If he were defeated now, the army would not be capable of reconstituting itself as it did after Borodino, and his whole argument, that he had given up Moscow in order to preserve the army which would chase Napoleon from Russia, would be made to look very hollow. As the French were not moving away but evidently reconnoitring the terrain, Kutuzov can only have assumed that they were preparing to give battle on the following day. And when he received intelligence that French units had been spotted making for crossings over the Luzha further west and for Medyn, he became alarmed that he might be cut off from Kaluga. He therefore
decided to avoid battle, and ordered a retreat for that night. ‘The extent of his poltroonery exceeds the measure permitted even to a coward,’ Bennigsen fumed in a letter to his wife.
34
*
The French had also left behind a large number of Russian women who had come out from Moscow to comfort them.
10
H
ad Napoleon known what was going on in Kutuzov’s mind, he could have advanced boldly and made for Medyn, where he would have found victuals and forage, and from there to Yelnia, where he had a division under General Baraguay d’Hilliers waiting to meet him, and on to Smolensk, which he would have reached in fairly good shape on 3 or 4 November. But taking into account the strong positions the Russians had taken up, he decided otherwise. That evening, he ordered the retreat, through Borovsk and Vereia to Mozhaisk, and from there along the main road to Smolensk. In one of the more bizarre episodes in military history, the two armies were now moving away from each other.
Two days later, as he reached Mozhaisk, Napoleon met Mortier coming from Moscow with the Young Guard. He also had with him two prisoners, General Ferdinand von Wintzingerode and his aide-de-camp Prince Lev Naryshkin, who had unwisely ridden into Moscow to verify reports that the French had left, only to be captured by a patrol. On seeing Wintzingerode, a native of Württemberg in Russian service who seemed at that moment to epitomise the
internationale
that was forming against him, Napoleon erupted into a violent rage, the like of which none of his entourage had ever witnessed. ‘It is you and a few dozen rogues who have sold themselves to England who are whipping up Europe against me,’ he ranted. ‘I don’t
know why I don’t have you shot; you were captured as a spy.’ He took out all his frustration and mortification on the unfortunate General, accusing him of being a renegade. ‘You are my personal enemy: you have borne arms against me everywhere – in Austria, in Prussia, in Russia. I shall have you court martialled.’
1
Even this tirade did not succeed in venting all his pent-up anger, and on seeing a pretty country house that had somehow escaped destruction, Napoleon ordered it to be torched, along with every village they passed through. ‘Since
Messieurs les Barbares
are so keen on burning their own towns, we must help them,’ he raged. He soon countermanded the order, but that hardly made much difference.
2
As they stopped for the night the troops would dismantle houses to feed their campfires or crowd into them for warmth. They would light fires inside or overheat the mud stoves, which often led to them catching fire, and in villages or small towns in which every building was of wood, this usually led to a general conflagration.
The order to retreat had a depressing effect on the army, which instinctively felt that something had gone wrong with the infallible Emperor’s calculations. But, ironically, it was when they began to feel threatened that the troops rallied to him and took comfort in his perceived greatness. On the day the retreat began, General Dedem de Gelder reported to the Emperor for orders. ‘Napoleon was warming his hands behind his back at a small bivouac fire which had been laid for him on the edge of a village one league beyond Borovsk on the road to Vereia,’ he recalled. The General disliked Napoleon, partly because of the way he had treated his native Holland, but he could not help being impressed by him now. ‘I have to do justice to this man hitherto so spoilt by fortune, who had never yet known serious setbacks; he was calm, without anger, but without resignation; I believed he would be great in adversity, and that idea reconciled me to him … I saw then the man who contemplates disaster and recognises all the difficulties of his position, but whose soul is in no way crushed and who says to himself: "This is a failure, I have to quit, but I shall be back.”’
3
The spirits of the army were further lowered when, shortly after rejoining the Moscow – Smolensk road at Mozhaisk on 28 October, they found themselves marching across the battlefield of Borodino. It had never been cleared, and the dead had been left where they lay, to be pecked at and chewed by carrion crows, wolves, feral dogs and other creatures. The corpses were nevertheless surprisingly well preserved, presumably by the nightly frosts. ‘Many of them had kept what one might call a
physiognomy
,’ recorded Adrien de Mailly. ‘Almost all of them had large open staring eyes, their beards seemed to have grown, and the brick-red and Prussian blue which marbled their cheeks made them look as though they had been horribly sullied or luridly daubed, which made one wonder if this were not some grotesque travesty making fun of misery and death – it was odious!’
4
The stink was indescribable, and the sight cast a pall over the passing troops.
*
At Mozhaisk and at Kolotskoie they saw thousands of emaciated wounded, barely surviving in dreadful conditions. Colonel de Fezensac went into the Kolotsky monastery to see if there were any men from his regiment. ‘They had left the men there without medicines, without rations, without any form of succour,’ he wrote. ‘I was barely able to get in, so encumbered were the stairs, corridors and the middle of the rooms with ordure of every kind.’
6
Napoleon was annoyed to find so many wounded still there, and grandly determined that they should all be taken along. Against the advice of Larrey and other doctors, who had left medical teams to care for them, he gave instructions for them to be placed in carriages,
on
fourgons
, on the wagons of the
cantinières
, gun carriages and every other possible conveyance. The result was predictable. ‘The healthiest people would not have stood up to such a method of transport, or been able to remain for long on the vehicles, given the way they had been loaded on,’ wrote Caulaincourt. ‘One can therefore judge the state these unfortunates were in after a few leagues. The jolting, the exertion and the cold all assailed them at the same time. I have never seen a more heart-rending sight.’ The owners of the carriages in question were far from happy to have extra weight laid on vehicles which their horses could barely draw as it was, and faced with trepidation the prospect of having to feed their new charges. Realising that they were unlikely to survive anyway, they mostly decided to precipitate the inevitable. ‘I still shudder as I relate that I saw drivers purposely drive their horses across the roughest ground in order to rid themselves of the unfortunates with whom they had been saddled and smile, as one would at a piece of luck, when a jolt would rid them of one of these unfortunates, whom they knew would be crushed under a wheel if a horse did not step on him first.’
7
After giving the orders for the evacuation of the wounded on the afternoon of 28 October, Napoleon rode on to Uspenskoie, where he stopped for the night in a devastated country house. But he could not sleep. At two o’clock in the morning he called Caulaincourt to his bedside and asked him what he thought of the situation. Caulaincourt replied that it was much graver than Napoleon thought, and that it was unlikely that he would be able to take up winter quarters at Smolensk, Vitebsk or Orsha, as he still hoped. Napoleon then said that it might be necessary for him to leave the army and go to Paris, and asked him what he thought of such a plan and what he thought the army would make of it. Caulaincourt replied that going back to Paris was the best course of action, though he would have to choose his moment well, and that what the army thought was of no consequence.
8
Napoleon’s position was indeed very bad. Ten days after leaving Moscow, he was only three days’ march down the Smolensk road.
This not only represented a dangerous delay, it also meant that his army had used up ten days’ rations. At the rate it was now moving, Smolensk was still over ten days’ march away, and the only sustenance to be found before that was a small magazine at Viazma. And, with no intelligence and not enough cavalry to send out scouting parties, Napoleon had no idea of what the Russians were up to.
When Volkonsky had reached St Petersburg and handed Alexander the letter Napoleon had sent through Lauriston, the Tsar had hardly bothered to read it. ‘Peace?’ he said. ‘But as yet we have not made war. My campaign is only just beginning.’
9
In fact it would be some time before it began.
It was only after a couple of days’ hurried retreat that Kutuzov turned about and began gingerly to follow the retiring French. He sent Miloradovich on ahead, and himself followed at a more leisurely pace. Having marched north to Mozhaisk, the French were now marching west along the Moscow road in a wide arc that curved southwards. Kutuzov was therefore excellently placed to cut across their line of retreat. But while he could not resist writing to his wife that he was the first general who had ever made Napoleon run, he made no attempt to intercept him.
The only enemy the French saw were cossacks, who followed them at a respectful distance, like hyenas stalking a wounded animal. The regular cossack regiments they had met hitherto were now outnumbered by irregulars from the Don and the Kuban. ‘Dressed and hatted in a variety of styles, without any appearance of uniformity, dirty-looking and scruffy, mounted on mean raw-boned little horses with unkempt manes which kept their necks stuck out and hung their heads, harnessed with no more than a simple snaffle, armed with a crude long pole with a sort of nail at its point, milling around in apparent disorder, these cossacks made me think of teeming vermin,’ remembered François Dumonceau.
10
The cossacks were supplemented by bands of Bashkir horsemen armed with bows, who amazed the French by firing arrows at them.