12 failures of Napoleon Bonaparte. On the eve of the decisive battle with Napoleon, Russia gave the deceptive impression of a power that was not at all willing and, by and large, not ready for war. At the same time, it is simply amazing how the usually secretive Alexander described in detail to the future enemy how he was going to fight.
In May 1811, the tsar reported to the French ambassador Caulaincourt:
“If the Emperor Napoleon starts a war against me, then it is possible and even likely that he will beat us if we accept the battle, but this will not give him peace. … For us - an immense space, and we will keep a well-organized army. … If the lot of arms decides the case against me, then I would rather retreat to Kamchatka than surrender my provinces and sign treaties in my capital, which are just a respite. The Frenchman is brave, but long hardships and a bad climate tire and discourage him. Our climate and our winter will fight for us”.
Obviously, Alexander was not believed in Paris, taking his words for ostentatious bravado. But in this case, he spoke with the utmost sincerity. The characteristic statement of Kutuzov in relation to Napoleon is well known: "I will not undertake to win, I will try to outwit." It is unlikely that Alexander did not agree on this with the one whom he soon appointed commander-in-chief.
So, long before the outbreak of hostilities, St. including through sabotage and partisan raids.
The climatic factor was also taken into account. Obviously, even then the possibility of surrendering one of the capitals was not excluded. It is possible that it was for this reason that Alexander took the abandonment of Moscow quite calmly. In a letter to the same Bernadotte, he rightly remarked: "This is a cruel loss, but more in terms of moral and political than military."
It remains to add that thanks to the brilliant work of Russian intelligence under the leadership of Colonel Muravyov, St. Petersburg was informed in detail about the state of Napoleon's troops. And by the beginning of the war, Alexander and his Minister of War knew perfectly well what they needed to do, what the enemy was going to do and what he was capable of.
The development of an immediate plan of action for the Russian army is associated with the name of the Prussian general Karl Ful. Fuhl and his plan were not scolded except by a lazy one, starting with his former subordinate and namesake Clausewitz and ending with modern historians, both domestic and foreign. But this option itself did not play, and it should not have played a decisive role.
As you know, in accordance with it, the Russian troops were divided into three armies. A similar division was present in all pre-war developments, which, of course, was not an accident, much less a miscalculation. The division excluded the possibility of a near-border general battle and significantly reduced the risk of a complete defeat of the army, creating the preconditions for further retreat.
Napoleon had to redistribute his forces in accordance with the behavior of the enemy. And what such a division is fraught with for the French commander was clearly shown by the example of Waterloo. The consequences during the Russian campaign, of course, were not so dramatic, but they were.
Coordination of actions was disrupted, conditions arose for various inconsistencies, misunderstandings and even conflicts between military leaders, similar to "showdowns" between Jerome Bonaparte and Marshal Davout. All this directly affected the effectiveness of the operations of the Grand Army. It is difficult to say whether the analysts of the Russian military department took into account this factor, which, nevertheless, played into our hands.
As for Ful's idea with the Drissa fortified camp, which was supposed to play an important role in the confrontation with the French and did not play it, it is hardly worth exaggerating this secondary circumstance, which did not critically affect the course of hostilities.
Patience Brings Victory
The 1st Army, under the command of Barclay, stayed in the Drissa camp for only five days. On July 1, the emperor arrived here, on the same day a military council was held, where it was decided to leave the camp, the 1st army to retreat to Vitebsk the next day and further to join up with the 2nd Western army of Bagration. That is, the original plan did not fundamentally change, but was only adjusted taking into account the operational situation.
However, the most thoughtful plan still needs to be implemented. But to whom? Alexander left the army without appointing a commander-in-chief. The emperor could not help but understand that such a strange decision greatly complicates the control of the troops, prevents them from fulfilling their tasks and puts the commanders in an ambiguous position. But he had his own reasons for doing so.
The unfolding "Scythian war" came into sharp conflict with the patriotic upsurge in the country. Alexander, whose grandfather and father lost their lives and power as a result of a conspiracy of disgruntled nobles, could not ignore public opinion. Nor could he give up the strategy of retreating into the depths of the country - the only one capable of bringing success.
A paradoxical situation developed. On the one hand, the authorities in every possible way encouraged the growth of anti-French sentiments and called for a deadly struggle against the invaders, and on the other, they consistently implemented a plan for waging war, which involved avoiding decisive clashes with the enemy.
The way out of this situation could not be optimal. Actually, it did not exist. Alexander considered it best to distance himself from the leadership of the army, which means - as far as possible in principle, to absolve himself of responsibility for what was happening.
The formal anarchy in the troops allowed the emperor, as it were, to observe the confrontation between the "patriot" Bagration, who was rushing into battle, and the "traitor" Barclay, waiting for it to end. It was an extremely risky game, but the king felt that other options were fraught with even greater threats.
Alexander's subjects, passionately longing for the victory of Russian weapons, stubbornly rejected the only opportunity to win this victory. The main "culprit" of the retreat, Barclay de Tolly, his closest assistants Wolzogen and Levenstern, and along with all other generals with "wrong" surnames, turned out to be a convenient target for defamation.
The "Russian Party" fiercely attacked the "German defeatists", accusing them of cowardice, indifference to the fate of the Fatherland, and even outright treason. However, here it is difficult to separate the offended feeling of national pride and sincere delusions from selfish motives: the desire to amuse wounded ambition and on the sly to improve one's career.
Of course, the arrows aimed at the Minister of War also hurt the emperor. And the further, the more. However, Alexander waited as far as possible, and removed Barclay from the army only after the united armies left Smolensk. "The Moor did his job": the pre-war plan was implemented in general terms - the enemy was lured into the interior of the country, endangering his communications and preserving an efficient army.
However, further retreat under the leadership of a military leader with the reputation of Barclay was fraught with an explosion. An urgent need for a commander-in-chief, whose appointment seemed to cancel out a prolonged period of imaginary failures and opened a new stage in the campaign. It required a person capable of inspiring the army and the people.
Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov with his surname and public relations, as already written in Voennoye Obozreniye, was all right. The army left "talk, and nothing more", and "Kutuzov came to beat the French."
The Most Serene Prince was the most experienced and gifted general, but at that moment other qualities came to the fore. Kutuzov was popular, and in addition, he was distinguished by the cunning of Odysseus and the ability to slip between Scylla and Charybdis or crawl through the eye of a needle.
You can't retreat to fight
The new commander had to solve the following puzzle: "you must not retreat to fight." And Kutuzov began to place points in the right place: first he retreated, then he gave battle. He retreated, because the operational situation demanded it, and gave battle, because Russia would not have taken a different decision.
Although Kutuzov had retreated without a fight, the French, oddly enough, would have found themselves in an even more difficult situation in Moscow. Indeed, without the losses incurred near Borodino, they needed more food and forage, more efforts to manage and maintain discipline. But Kutuzov or any other commander in his place could not do otherwise: the moral factor at that moment played a key role.
In the Battle of Borodino, Kutuzov was faced with the task of at least preventing a crushing defeat of the Russian army, and it was successfully solved. The final phase of the campaign followed. All conditions for its successful completion have been created. It is also noteworthy that the main food bases for the army were located in Novgorod, Tver, Trubchevsk - a hundred versts south of Bryansk, and in Sosnitsy in the Chernigov region, exactly on the periphery of the theater of military operations.
Their location corresponded as well as possible to the alignment of forces that arose after the loss of Moscow and the Tarutino maneuver, when Russian troops reliably covered the northwestern and southwestern directions.
Taking into account the fact that the production of weapons and their storage was concentrated in Tula, as well as Petersburg and its environs, the Russian troops (including the Wittgenstein corps, which successfully operated near Polotsk, and the 3rd Army in Volyn) firmly relied on the rear, capable of providing them in the right amount with everything you need. And the rear of Napoleon was almost his complete absence, constantly interrupted by a thin line of a thousand kilometers of communication.
I would not like to represent Napoleon as such a naive simpleton, which he was not. So Bonaparte correctly assessed the appointment of Kutuzov as Alexander's concession to the nobility, correctly assumed that the new Russian commander would give a general battle, which would then turn into the surrender of Moscow.
But guessing the intentions of the enemy, Bonaparte did not derive any practical benefit from this. This feature of Napoleon's behavior was characteristic of him throughout the campaign: the Corsican seemed to have a realistic assessment of the situation and the impending risks, but this almost did not affect his actions.
There is no secret here. From the very first to the last minute of his stay in Russia, Bonaparte played by the rules imposed by the enemy. Alexander had his own script, which he followed, as far as the situation allowed him.
After Napoleon's plan to give a big border battle turned out to be unrealistic, the Grand Army did not have a new strategic plan. Climbing deeper and deeper into Russia, the French continued to wage their "Central European War", as if not noticing that they were acting under the dictation of the Russians, steadily approaching death.
It cannot be said that Napoleon did not anticipate a fatal outcome. Even before the campaign in Russia, he declared to the Austrian Chancellor Metternich: “The triumph will be the lot of the more patient. I will open the campaign by crossing the Neman. I will finish it in Smolensk and Minsk. I will stop there."
However, he did not stop. Three times - in Vilna, Vitebsk and Smolensk - the emperor seriously thought about the expediency of further progress. Moreover, even such desperate heads as Ney and Murat advised him to stop in Smolensk.
With perseverance worthy of better use, Napoleon did not want to take the example of patience from the enemy, but continued to climb into the trap he had set. The emperor clearly realized that stopping, let alone retreating from Russia without concrete results, would be perceived by Europe as an obvious sign of weakness, and the allies, who today loyally look into his eyes, will grab his throat tomorrow.
"My empire will collapse as soon as I cease to be scary … Both inside and outside I reign because of the fear inspired by me … This is my position and what are the motives of my behavior!"
- Napoleon confessed in a conversation with his entourage long before the invasion of Russia. The fear of ceasing to be terrible drove the emperor forward in the hope of his lucky star, which was inexorably leaning towards sunset.
