Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion (Not)

I seem to have abandoned my Liveblog of Napoleon's Moscow campaign, and just at the time of crisis, as Napoleon sees his victory disappear in flames. I hadn't intended this; I had thought I would follow him all the way. Maybe I got distracted by all my foreign travels, or maybe it is just that this is the point where it stops being fun: from now on, it is just a long slog of suffering and disarray (except for the Great Man himself, of course, who succeeds in weaseling out of all the harm he has created, to make a nuisance of himself for another two and a half years). The first part was rather more like a Sophoclean tragedy where the audience knows how it will all end (even though the characters do not) but you can't take your eyes off the stage for all of it.

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Stendahl Observes Moscow Aflame

Henri Beyle, later to be known as Stendhal, confronts the fire that destroyed Moscow with a curious jauntiness:

The conflagration was rapidly approaching the huse we had quitted., Our carriasge remained on the boulevard for five or six hours. Bored by this inaction, I went to see the fire and spent an hour or two with Joinville. I admired the voluptuosity of his house's furnishings: we drank there with Gillet and Busche, consuming three bottles of wine, which gave us new life.

While I was there I read a few lines of an English translation of Virginie, which, amidst all the general coarseness of existence here, turned me back, to some slight extent, into a moral being.

I went with Louis to look at the conflagration. We saw one Savoye, a mounted artilleryman, drunk, flogging a Guards officer with the flat of his sword and hurling silly abuse at him. He was in the wrong, and finally had to apologise. One of his comrades in pillage plunged down a blazing street, where he was probably roasted.

--Beyle to Félix Faure, 4 October 1812

[Letter 64 in To the Happy Few: Selected Letters 140-145, 141 (1986)]

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: The Emperor Loses His Touch

Retreating, evading battle, and burning their own resources, the Russians have confronted Napoleon with a style of warfare he cannot comprehend and with which he does not know how to deal. His companions may or may not have understood, but a generation later, the greatest Russian novelist understood:

Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; there can be no doubt of the victory, since the battlefield remains with the French. the Russians retreat and surrender the capital. Moscow, filled with provisions, arms, ammunition, and incalculable riches, is in the hands of Napoleon. The Russian army, twice weaker than the French, does not make a single attempt to attack in the course of a month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. To fall upon the remainder of the Russian army with double its forces and exterminate it, to negotiate an advantageous peace or, in case of refusal, to make a threatening move on Petersburg, even to return to Smolensk or Vilno in case of failure, or to remain in Mosocow--in other words, to hold on to the brilliant position the French army was in at the time, would seem to require no special genius. For that one needed to do the simplest and easiest thing: to keep the army from looting, to provide a supply of winter clothing, of which there would be enough in Moscow for the whole army, of which (on the evidence of French historians) there were enough to Moscow for more than six months. Napoleon, that genius of geniuses and having the power of control over the army, as the historians affirm, did none of that.

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace Volume IV, Part Two, VIII 1001
(R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky trans. 2007)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Count Rostopchin Burns His Own House

By many (but not all) accounts, it was Count Rostopchin, mayor of Moscow and head of a distinguished old family, who ordered the burning of Moscow. Napoleon's chronicler believes that he really meant it:

The deviousa route that Kutuzov took, whether because of indecision or as a ruse, succeeded so well that Murat lost all trace of him for three days. The Russian took advantage of this respite to study the terrain and entrench himself. The head of his army was approaching Vorovno, one of Rostopchin's finest estates, when the governor of Moscow rode ahead of them. The soldiers believed that he wished to be alone to see his home for the last time; but suddenly the building disappeared in a cloud of smoke. They rushed to put the fire out; but it was Rostopchin himself who opposed them. They saw him in the midst of the fire he had set, smiling as the superb mansion crumbled around him, then in a firm hand tracing these words on the door of the chapel that was still standing--words which the French were to read with a shudder: "For eight years I have been improving this property, and have lived here happily with my family. The seventeen hundred tenants of my domain left their homes as you drew near, and I have set fire to my own house to save it from being defiled by your presence. Frenchmen, I abandoned to you my two homes in Moscow, with furnishings worth half a million rubles. Here you will find nothing but ashes!

--Philippe Paul, comte de Ségur, Defeat: Napoleon's s Russian Campaign 118

(NYRB Classics 2008)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Moscow

Ready to receive the surrender of Moscow, Napoleon faces an entirely unexpected shock:

At ten o'clock in the morning of the fourteenth the Emperor was on the heights overlooking Moscow, called the Sparrow Hills, when he received a note from the King of Naples informing him that the enemy had evacuated the city ... Shortly afterwards he ordered General Durosnel, whom he had appointed governor, to enter the city with as many picked gendarmes as he could muster, establish order there, and take possession of the public buildings. He urged him particularly to maintain order, to guard the Kremlin, and to keep him supplied with information. The general was especially enjoined to hasten the deputation of city authorities which the King of Naples was to collect. This, the Emperor said, would give the inhabitants of the town the best possible guarantee for their tranquility.

Not imagining for a moment that this deputation would fail to appear, or that he would receive no news--a natural omission, considering the distance to be covered--the Emperor reaxched the barrier of the moat at noon and dismounted there. He grew impatient. He sent out fresh officers every minute, and kept callilng for a deputation or some citizens of note. At last, one after the other, reports came from the King and General Durosnel. Far from having found any of the civic authorities, they had not discovered so much as a single prominent inhabitant. All had fled. Moscow was a deserted city, where one came across none but a few wretches of the lowest class.

--Armand de Caulaincourt, With Napoleon in Russia 110-111

(William Morrow, New York, 1935)

The "King of Naples" is Gioacchino Napoleone Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law.

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: The Russians Play Their Hole Card

There are many conflicting accounts about the "taking"--and the burning--of Moscow. Here is one:

[I]t was only from a distance that we ... contemplated that ancient capital which we had just conquered. Even so, we could admire its vast extent, its many colored domes, and the unbelievable variety of its many buildings. This day was a very happy one for us since it was to be the end of our labors, and since the victory on the Moskva and the taking of Moscow were to bring ab out peace. But at the very time an event unparalleled in the history of the world destroyed our fond hopes and showed how little we could count on a settlement with the Russians. Moscow, which they had been unable to defend, was put to the torch by their own hands. ... On the morning of the 14th, the governor assembled three or four thousand men from the dregs of the population, among them liberated criminals; they were given matches and flares, and the police were ordered to conduct them throughout the city. The fire pumps were broken, and the departure of the civil authorities, who followed the army, was to be the signal for the fire. ... [S]carcely had the Emperor established himself in the Kremlin when the Bazaar, an immense building housing some 10,000 shops, burst into flames. The next day and for several days thereafter, fires were set in all the quarters. A violent wind drove the flames, and it was impossible to stop them, since the pumps had been destroyed. Those who were caught setting fires were shot on the spot. They said they were carrying out the governor's orders, and met their deaths with resignation.

--M. de Fezensac, The Russian Campaign 1812, 40-41 (U Georgia 1970)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Mozhaysk

Kutusov has escaped total ruin at Borodino; Napoleon pushes on:

The ninth of September found Mozhkaysk still standing and open, with the Russian rear guard occupying the hills on the farther side where the whole army had been the evening before. Our troops entered the city, some to cross it in pursuit of the enemy, others bent on pillage or seeking lodgings. The latter found neither inhabitants nor , only the dead whom they had to throw out of the windows so they could take their places, and the dying, whom they brought together in one building. The wounded were everywhere, and in such numbers that the Russians had not dared to set fire to the dwellings. However, their humanity, which had not always been so scrupulous, gave way before the necessity of firing on the French troops they saw marching in. Using explosive shells, they set fire to the city,entirely built of wood, and roasted may of their own wounded.

--Philippe Paul, comte de Ségur, Defeat: Napoleon's s Russian Campaign 83

(NYRB Classics 2008)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Borodino Ends in a Draw

The Battle of Borodino ended as a sort of a stalemate, with each side damaged and exhausted. For Napoleon, it was like nothing he had seen in his long career:

The dreadful sight of the battlefield covered with corpses and wounded, combined with a heaviness of the head, and with the awareness of the impotence of his once-strong arm, made an unexpected impression on Napoleon, who ordinarily liked to survey the dead and wounded, thereby testing his inner strength (as he thought). On that day the terrible sight of the battlefield overcame that inner strength, in which he placed his merit and greatness. He hastily left the battlefield and returned to the Shevardino barrow. Yellow, bloated, heavy, with dull eyes, a red nose, and a hoarse voice, he sat on a camp chair, involuntarily listening to the sounds of gunfire and not raising his eyes. With sick anguish he awaited the end of this action, of which he considered himself the cause, but which he was unable to stop. ...

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 814 (Pevear and Volokhonsky trans. 2008)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Borodino is Going Badly

Something unfamiliar is happening to the French Army at Borodino:

Napoleon's generals--Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were in proximity to the zone of fire and even occasionally rode into it--several ties led huge and orderly masses of troops into the zone of fire. But contrary to what had invariably happened in all previous battles, instead of the expected news of the enemy's flight, the orderly masses of troops came back from there as disorderly, frightened crowds. They restored them to order, but the men were becoming fewer. Halfway through the day, Murat sent his adjutant to Napoleon to ask for reinforcements.

Napoleon was sitting at the foot of the barrow and drinking punch when Murat's adjutant galloped up to him with assurances that the Russians would be crushed if his majesty gave them one more division.


Reinforcements?" said Napoleon, with stern astonishment, as if failing to understand his words and gazing at the handsome boy-adjutant with his long, curled black hair (the same way Murat did his hair), "Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon. "What sort of reinforcements can they ask for, when they've got half an army in their hands direcfted against a weak, unfortified Russian wing!

"Dites au roi de Naples," Napoleon said sternly, "qu'il n'est pas midi et que je ne vois pas encore clair sur mon échiquier. Allez ..."

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 753 (Pevear and Volokhonsky trans. 2008)

[i.e., "Tell the king of Naples that it's not yet midday, and that I still don't see my chessboard clearly. Go ..." Tolstoy published a good deal of the dialogue of this Russian novel in French. Pevear and Volokhonsky leave it in French.

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Borodino

On the twenty-fourth* there was a battle at the Shevardino redoubt, on the twenty-fifth not a single shot was fired on either side, on the twenty-sixth came the battle of Borodino.

Why and how was the battle offered and accepted at Shevardino and Borodino? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? Neither for the French nor for the Russians did it make the slightest sense. The most immediate result of it was and had to be--for the Russians, that we came nearer to the destruction of Moscow (which we feared more than anything in the world); and for the French, that they came nearer to the destruction of their whole army (which they also feared more than anything in the world). The result was perfectly obvious then, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov accepted this battle.

If the commanders had been guided by reasonable causes, it would seem it should hace been quite clear to Napoleon that, having gone thirteen hundred miles and accepting battle with the likely chance of losing a quarter of his army, he was marching to certain destructcion; and it should have been as clear to Kutuzov that, in accepting battle and also risking the loss of a quarter of his army, he would certainly lose Moscow.

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 753 (Pevear and Volokhonsky trans. 2008)
--
*Read: September 5, 6 and 7. Tolstoy is using Russian oldstayle.

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: The Eve of Borodino

Pierre, Tolstoy's fictional protagonist, foresees tomorrow's great battle:

The orders for tomorrow's battle had been given and received. He had nothing more to do. But the most simple, clear, and therefore dreadful thoughts would not leave him in peace. He knew tht tomorrow's tittle was to be the most dreadful of all he had taken part in, and the possibility of death presented itself to him, for the first time in his life, with no relation to the everyday, with no considerations of how it would affect others, but only in relation to himself, to his soul, vividly, almost with certainty, simply and terribly. And from the height of that picture, all that used to torment and preoccupy him was suddenly lit up by a cold, white light, without shadows, without perspective, without clear-cut outlines. The whole of life presented itself to him as a magic lantern, into which he had long been looking through a glass and in an artificial light. Now he suddenly saw these badly daubed pictures without a glass. ...

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 753 (Pevear and Volokhonsky trans. 2008)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Stendhal Finds it All Vulgar

Henri Beyle, not yet the world-famous novelist known as Stendhal, accompanied the forces of Napoleon all the way to Moscow and back. On August 24, 1812, writing from Smolensk, he gives his general view of matters:

My own happiness at being here is not great, How a man changes! My old thirst for new sights has been entirely quenched. Ever since I saw Milan and Italy, everything I see repels me with its crudity. Would you believe it that, without any vexation that affects me more than anybody else, and without any personal sorrow, I am sometimes on the point of bursting into tears? In this ocean of barbarity there is not a sound that finds an echo in my soul! Everything is coarse, dirty, both physically and morally sinking. I have found some small pleasure only in having a little music played to me on an untuned piano by an individual whose feeling for music is on a level with my feeling for mass. Ambition no longer has any influence over me: the most handsome ribbon would seem to me no compensation for the mire in which I am sunk. I imagine the heights that my soul inhabits--that soul which composes works, listens to Cimarosa and is in love with Angela, amidst a beautiful climate--I imagine the heights as delicious hills. Far from these hills, down in the plain, are fetid marshes--and here I am plunged, and nothing in the world except the sight of a map can remind me of my hills.

--Beyle to Félix Faure, 24 August 1812
[Letter 64 in To the Happy Few: Selected Letters 138-40, 139 (1986)]

Faure was sometimes First President of the Royal Court at Grenoble. Beyle addresses a number of letters to Faure, although he elsewhere (in Vie de Henri Brulard) he desribes Faure as sometimes "about the dullest of my friends."

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Napoleon Makes a Fateful Choice

Perplexed that the Russians have eluded him and immobilized in the summer heat, Napoleon makes a fateful choice:

The Emperor was not the least of the sufferers from the heat, but when he had been refreshed by rest and still did not see any deputation arrive from Alexander, and when all his first orders had been carried out, he became impatient. We noticed that he was restless either because as with all men of his nature, inaction lay heavy upon him and he preferred danger to the poredom of waiting; or because he was excited by the hope of gain which, in most men, is stronger than the plesure of keeping or the fear of losing.

It was then that thee image of a defeated, subjugated Moscow began to obsess him. There lay the end of his fears, the fulfillment of his hopes. Possessing it, he would have everything. From that moment, it could be predicted that this fiery, restless genius, accustomed to short cuts, would not wait eight months when the final destruction was in his grasp, so close that it could be reached in only twenty days. ... It was very important to him that his decision should not displease his staff. But every one of tthe men opposed him in some way, each according to his character ...

On rhe thirteenth of August, he left Vitebsk.

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: The Hessians Requisition a Horse

Captain Roeder's Hessians, with Napoleon on the Duna, requisition a horse:

About three hours away from here they came upon a number of very fine ponies, one of which was already in their hands when more than twenty peasants came rushing upon them all together and furiously resisted its removal. In order to save their lives, especially that of Gottfried, who had already been flung down, the soldiers were compelled to open fire. However, they only shot at the feet in order that no one might be mortally wounded, and as far a they knew only one man, who would not abandon the pursuit, had been shot in the ankle. In the course of this affray Gottfried lost a very fine cap, which fell to he lot of the fellow who threw him down.

Later, Captain Roeder furtively undertakes a bit of maintenance:

Today in the strictest incognito I washed a handkerchief for myself! I also exercised myself in the noble art of darning.

--Helen Roeder, The Ordeal of Captain Roeder 108 (1960)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Captain Roeder Spends A Miserable Night

Pressing on towards Vitebsk, Captain Roeder and his Hessians fall under the command of a French officer who doesn't seem to know how to take care of his force. On August 3, they bivouack beyond Kamen:

The night was black as pitch. We were soaked to the skin and unable to see whether we were lying in a clean place or in the filth left by our predecessors, and there had been many of them. I myself first lay down in the proximity of a dead horse, and when it was revealed by the light of the camp fires and by its stench, which was all pervading, I had to wander about to find another place. Most of our wagons had been unable to reach the march station, and only arrived about midnight. The soldiers were so weary and dispirited by their march today and yesterday without cooked food that they flung themselves down and tried to sleep.

--Helen Roeder, The Ordeal of Captain Roeder 108 (1960)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion:A Soldier Is Left to Die

July of 1812 for Napoleon meant two great missed opportunities: at Vilna and and Vitebsk, from both of which the Russians slipped away without a fight. Not everyone was so lucky. Captain Franz Roeder, an officer with the First Battalion of Hessian Lifeguards, records a chilling encounter on he the march:

[W]e came upon one of he harrowing sights of the war. About half way we found a soldier of the Young Guard lying by the road in a little copse. For three days he had been left there ill or exhausted without food, and now he was like to die from hunger or thirst. Two regiments of the Young Guard had already passed before us, but the most that a sympathiser had been able to do had been to give him a drop from his water flask, for the Colonel, preferring his chaise and horses to the life of a man, had forbidden them to take him up and carry him with them. If this had been done and they could have given him some soup at the bivouac he might have been saved. We would willingly have helped him, but we only had bread, which he could no longer swallow. If only I had known at the time I might have given him a moment's assistance with some goat's milk, which I had by me in a schnapps flask, but I did not hear what had occurred until too late. If they had had a stretcher our soldiers might perhaps have carried him, but they shuddered to think that no such provision had been made and that he might not otherwise be saved. In his fate they saw their own. And does it never occur to these ego-drunk officers that their manifest indifference to this scene, of which more will follow, has a most demoralizing effect upon their soldiers, especially those who have not yet become hardened to such sights by many campaigns? They will be disposed to desert whenever possible, and if they cannot manage to escape, their already failing physical stamina will collapse form having no moral counterbalance to sustain it.

--Quoted in Helen Roeder, The Ordeal of Captain Roeder 102 (London 1960)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Again the Russians Slip Away

Raimond-Emery-Philippe-Josephe de Montesquiou, Duke of Fezensac, born in 1784 into a distinguished French noble family, entered the army in 1807 and participated in all of Napoleon's major campaigns. He continued in service after the Restoration and died in 1867, a lieutenant general. He published his journal in 1849. Here he remembers the July days after Napoleon has failed to achieve a confrontation with the Russians at Vilna:

[In] three brilliant engagements ... Osrtrovno had been seized and the Russian army driven from one position after another up to the walls of Vitebsk. I crossed the battlefields which were still covered with the debris of these three battles and arrived at headquarters on the evening of the 26th ...

Thr army was camped in order of battle opposite the Russian army, separated from it by a stream called the Luchosa; the Emperor's tents were pitched on a height near the center. I spent the evening recounting my mission and listening in turn to an account of the engagements that just been fought. I was pleased to hear that several aides-de-camp of the Price Neuchâtel had distinguished themselves, and that the fine conduct of the troops promised even greater successes when the occasion presented itself. We were expecting a general engagement the next morning: great was our surprise when we saw at daybreak that the enemy had withdrawn.

--M. de Fezensac, The Russian Campaign 1812, 16 (U Georgia 1970)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Napoleon's Dismay at Vilna

According to his companion-in-arms General Armand de Caulaincourt, Napoleon was more than a little displeased with the unwillingness of the Russians to accept battle at Vilna:

The Emperor had definite information of the retreating movement of the enemy. He ws amazed that they had yielded Wilna without a struggle, and had taken their decision in time to escape him.

It was truly heart-breaking for him to have to give up all hope of a great battle before Wilna. . . . His first question to any officer coming to headquarters from the various army corps was, "How many prisoners have been taken?" He was anxious for trophies, so as to encourage the Poles. And no one sent him any. . . . .

The Emperor decided to summon M. Balachof to Wilna. ... The Emperor Napoleon said:

"My brother Alexander [i.e., the Tsar], who showed himself so haughty with Narbonne, already wants a settlement. He is afraid. My maneuvers have disconcerted the Russians; before a month is over they will be on their knees to me."

M. Balachof brought a letter from the Tsar Alexander, and also instructions in keeping with its contents, to demand the reasons for the invasion in peacetime and without any declaration of war. He was also to propose, in the absence of any known grievance caused by misunderstanding between the two States, to exchange explanations and to avoid war if the Emperor Napoleon would retire to his positions behind the Niemen, pending negotiations. ... [I]n the presence of the Prince of Neuchatel, the Duke of Istria, myself, and I think, Duroc, the Emperor Napoleon said in a loud voice:

"Alexander is laughing at me. Does he imagine tht I have come to Wilna to discuss trade treaties. I have come to finish off, once and for all, the Collosus of Northern Barbarism. The sword is drawn. They must be thrust back into their snow and ice, so that for a quarter of a century at least they will not be able to interfere with civilized Europe."

--Armand de Caulaincourt, With Napoleon in Russia 50-52

(William Morrow, New York, 1935)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: Advancing on Vilna

Napoleon's Army presses its advance on Vilna, with high hopes of a major engagement. Napoleon discovers to his dismay that the Russian army is surprisingly hard to catch:

A few enemy patrols we encountered on our way made off speedily without risking an engagement. On the evening of [June] 26th there were many more of them but they, too, melted away when we prepared to attack them. On the 27th the whole army regrouped for a battle with the Russian main force at Vilna, but the Russians merely set fire to the city's warehouses, destroyed the bridge across the Vilna river and allowed the Grand Army to enter the place practically unopposed on the 29th. The Grand Army now pressed on with all possible speed along two roads to catch up with the elusive Russians, who were retiring towards Dunsberg. ....every day the enemy's light horse seemed on the point of making a stand and did, in fact, engage us in occasional skirmishes. Losses on both sides were negligible, but the Russians achieved their aim of slowing our advance.

--Lt. H.A. Vossler, With Napoleon in Russia 1812, 46 (Folio ed. 1998)

Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion:Napoleon Masses His Troops

On this day in 1812: Napoleon masses his troops for the invasion of Russia:

Meanwhile the army was advancing from the Vistula to the Niemen and was now not far from the Russian frontier. From the right, to left, or from south to north, the army was drawn up along the Niemen. At the extreme right, coming from Galicia, Prince Schwartzenberg with thirty-four thousand Austrians; on their left, coming from Warsaw and moving toward Bialystock and Grodno, the King of Westphalia at the head of seventy-nine thousand two hundred Westphalians, Saxons and Poles; farther to the left, the Viceroy of Italy who had effected the junction of his seventy-nine thousand five hundred Bavarians, Italians, and French near Marienpol; next, the Emperor with two hundred thousand men commanded by Murat, the Prince of Eckmuel, and the Dukes of Danzig, Istria, Reggio, and Elchingen. These troops had marched from Thorn, Marienwerder, and Ebling; and on June 23 were gathered in one compact body near Nogarisky, about a league above Kovno.

Everything was ready. From the Guadalquiver and the shores of Calabria to the banks of the Vistula, six hundred and seventeen thousand men (of whom four hundred and eighty thousand were already present), six companies of engineers, one siege train, several thousand wagons of provisions, innumerable droves of cattle, one thousand three hundred and seventy-two pieces of cannon, and thousands of artillery and hospital wagons, had been mustered and were now stationed a short distance from the Russian river.

--Philippe Paul, comte de Ségur, Defeat: Napoleon's s Russian Campaign 4-5

(NYRB Classics 2008)