Russians Close in on Napoleon

It was impossible for Napoleon to give his wearied soldiers rest, for new Russian armies were advancing from the north and the south to cut off their retreat.

Continuing Napoleon’s Russian Retreat,
with a selection from History of Modern Europe by Charles A. Fyffe published in 1890. This selection is presented in 2 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Napoleon’s Russian Retreat.

Time: 1812
Place: West of Moscow

Up to November 6th the weather had been sunny and dry. On the 6th the long-delayed terrors of Russian winter broke upon the pursuers and the pursued. Snow darkened the air and hid the last traces of vegetation from the starving cavalry trains. The temperature dropped at times to 40° of frost. Death came, sometimes in the unfelt release f1om misery, sometimes in horrible forms of mutilation and disease. Both armies were exposed to the same sufferings; but the Russians had at least such succor as their countrymen could give: where the French fell, they died. The order of war disappeared under conditions which made life itself the accident of a meal or of a place by the campfire. Though most of the French soldiery continued to carry their arms, the Guard alone kept its separate formation; the other regiments marched in confused masses. From November 9th to the 13th these starving bands arrived one after another at Smolensk, expecting that here their sufferings would end. But the organization for distributing the stores accumulated in Smolensk no longer existed. The perishing crowds were left to find shelter where they could; sacks of corn were thrown to them for food.

It was impossible for Napoleon to give his wearied soldiers rest, for new Russian armies were advancing from the north and the south to cut off their retreat. From the Danube and from the Baltic Sea troops were pressing forward to their meeting point upon the rear of the invader. Wittgenstein, moving southward at the head of the army of the Dwina, had overpowered the French corps stationed upon that river, and made himself master of Vitebsk. The army of Bucharest, which had been toiling northward ever since the beginning of August, had advanced to within a few days’ march of its meeting-point with the army of the Dwina upon the line of Napoleon’s communications. Before Napoleon reached Smolensk, he sent orders to Victor, who was at Smolensk with some reserves, to march against Wittgenstein and drive him back upon the Dwina. Victor set out on his mission.

During the short halt of Napoleon in Smolensk, Kutusoff pushed forward to the west of the French and took post at Krasnoi, thirty miles farther along the road by which Napoleon had to pass. The retreat of the French seemed to be actually cut off. Had the Russian General dared to face Napoleon and his Guards, he might have held the French in check until the arrival of the two auxiliary armies from the north and south enabled him to capture Napoleon and his entire force. Kutusoff, however, preferred a partial and certain victory to a struggle with Napoleon for life or death. He permitted Napoleon and the Guard to pass by unattacked and then fell upon the hinder divisions of the French army (November 17th).

These unfortunate troops were successively cut to pieces. Twenty-six thousand were made prisoners. Ney, with a part of the rear-guard, only escaped by crossing the Dnieper on the ice. Of the army that had quitted Moscow there now remained but ten thousand combatants and twenty thousand followers. Kutusoff himself was brought to such a state of exhaustion that he could carry the pursuit no further, and entered into quarters upon the Dnieper.

It was a few days after the battle at Krasnoi that the divisions of Victor, coming from the direction of the Dwina, suddenly encountered the remnant of Napoleon’s army. Though aware that Napoleon was in retreat, they knew nothing of the calamities that had befallen him, and were struck with amazement when, in the middle of a forest, they met with what seemed more like a miserable troop of captives than an army upon the march. Victor’s soldiers of a mere auxiliary corps found themselves more than double the effective strength of the whole army of Moscow. Their arrival again placed Napoleon at the head of thirty thousand disciplined troops and gave the French a gleam of victory in the last and seemingly most hopeless struggle in the campaign. Admiral Tchitchagoff, in command of the army marching from the Danube, had at length reached the line of Napoleon’s retreat, and established himself at Borisov, where the road through Poland crosses the river Beresina. The bridge was destroyed by the Russians, and Tchitchagoff opened communication with Wittgenstein’s army, which lay only a few miles to the north.

It appeared as if the retreat of the French was now finally intercepted, and the surrender of Napoleon inevitable. Yet even in this hopeless situation the military skill and daring of the French worked with something of its ancient power. The army reached the Beresina; Napoleon succeeded in withdrawing the enemy from the real point of passage; bridges were thrown across the river, and after desperate fighting a great part of the army made good its footing upon the western bank (November 28th). But the losses even among the effective troops were enormous. The fate of the miserable crowd that followed them, torn by the cannon-fire of the Russians, and precipitated into the river by the breaking of one of the bridges, has made the passage of the Beresina a synonym for the utmost degree of human woe.

This was the last engagement fought by the army. The Guards still preserved their order; Marshal Ney still found soldiers capable of turning upon the pursuer with his own steady and unflagging courage; but the bulk of the army struggled for ward in confused crowds, harassed by the Cossacks, and laying down their arms by thousands before the enemy. The frost, which had broken up on November 19th, returned on the 30th with even greater severity. Twenty thousand fresh troops which joined the army between the Beresina and Vilna scarcely arrested the process of dissolution. On December 3d Napoleon quitted the army. Vilna itself was abandoned with all its stores; and when at length the fugitives reached the Niemen, they numbered little more than twenty thousand. Here, six months earlier, three hundred eighty thousand men had crossed with Napoleon. A hundred thousand more had joined the army in the course of its retreat. Of all this host, not the twentieth part reached the Prussian frontier. A hundred seventy thousand remained prisoners in the hands of the Russians; a greater number had perished. Of the twenty thousand men who now be held the Niemen, probably not seven thousand had crossed with Napoleon.

In the presence of a catastrophe so overwhelming and so unparalleled the Russian generals might well be content with their own share in the work of destruction. Yet events proved that Kutusoff had done ill in failing to employ every effort to capture or annihilate his foe. Not only was Napoleon’s own escape the pledge of continued war, but the remnant that escaped with him possessed a military value out of all proportion to its insignificant numbers. The best of the army were the last to succumb. Out of those few thousands who endured to the end, a very large proportion were veteran officers, who immediately took their place at the head of Napoleon’s newly raised armies and gave to them a military efficiency soon to be bitterly proved by Europe on many a German battlefield.

Charles A. Fyffe begins here. Francois Guizot begins here.

More information here and here, and below.

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