The TWC's Napoleonic Wars Encyclopedia

This thread is to become an encyclopedia on the Napoleonic Wars. This is where member can share there knowlegde in their own words and suppling a link or bibliography of where the information has come from whether a book or site. This is to help members who wish to learn about the Napoleonic wars before the release of Napoleon Total War. Only information is to be posted here. Please give each article you write a title on what it is about and please do not repeat what someone else has written. Everything is welcome, Napoleonic way of life, uniforms, the storys of the wars themselves, stories of battles and sieges, governments, profiles of Napoleonic commanders, etc...

This is a great place to earn some reputation from fellow members!

Thank-you

Marshal Beale

My post is a bit off-topic, I know, but this should be stickied somewhere in the Historic Research Center.

Yes, I forgot, a moderator should move it. Ok, back to topic, information only!

The Reforms and Strategy of Napoleon
(Not the best article but I was bored one night)


Preface

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Napoleon studying a map. Napoleon was notorious for
analyzing maps and geographical features for hours
to draw an accurate picture of how entire campaigns
would play out

To say that Napoleon Bonaparte was an exceptional general, tactician, and strategist is an enormous understatement. Napoleon was, by almost all measurements, one of the greatest military minds ever to exist.
What makes Napoleon almost entirely unique amongst the great military strategists and generals of all time, however, is the method in which he attained victory. Napoleon did not, by any means, bring about any new form of warfare, and he did not develop any new radical strategies that had not already been employed. Instead, Napoleon took pre-existing strategies and theories, refined them slightly to his advantage, reoganized armies to better suit the realities of the battlefield, and executed battles in a calculated but adaptable method.
Through this article, I will analyze three major components of Napoleon's art of warfare that caused him to be great, and while there are many more countless reasons, I will primarily stay to these three topics and will give a general overview of each. I will outline the strategy, tactics, and reforms implemented by Napoleon that led to the success and ultimate downfall during his army during his time in power. Although for the sake of simplicity, strategy and tactics will be lumped into one section, as describing the tactics of Napoleon could warrant an entire article on its' own.
In this article I will outline the major points of Napoleon's strategy, tactics, and reforms by citing various battles which I will only begin to scratch the surface on. I will provide sources for further research on battles if you the reader are interested in such readings, and they will be included in the last section Sources. I will only begin to scratch the surface on the broad and major points that distinguished Napoleon from earlier and contemporary commanders (of Napoleon's time) and will not go into Napoleon's extreme micromanagement of his armies or into detail of the various intelligence agencies that contributed so much, rather I will only state how these agencies allowed Napoleon to develop and execute his strategies.
This article is intended to show how Napoleon did not think of a new form of warfare, nor did he command under a changing time in military thinking or technology that would have given him a major advantage in being ahead of his contemporaries, but rather that he only altered the military thinking of the time and refined the organization and method of making war.

Introduction

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Frederick the Great, a man whom
Napoleon looked up to as a military
theorist and general.

Prior Thinking


The Battle of Vellinghausen during the Seven Years War. Notice the almost perfect line setpiece formation
of the armies. This would change drastically in many battles in the Napoleonic Wars.

Luck has always played an almost equal role as genius when it comes to the outcome in warfare, and Napoleon was without question a great beneficiary of luck, even before his birth. Nearly half a century before Napoleon was born, one of the reasons for Napoleon's success was already taking shape, and oddly enough it came in the shape of a philosphical movement that would alter Europe forever: The Enlightenment. Napoleon benefitted, from almost no action of his own, from the good and the bad of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment taught, among other things, that all things can be reduced to a set of scientific methods and principles and war was no exception. By this thinking, warfare could be broken down in to a methocial set of rules that, if followed, would ensure victory. From this thinking, many "guidelines" to warfare were created.
For example, the Enlightenment had great influence upon the conduct of warfare in the Seven Years War, which influenced many of Napoleon's enemies in later years. During the Seven Years War, smaller professional armies dominated the landscape. These armies were viewed as highly valuable, and so the risk of losing one was seen as near irreplaceable. Therefore, armies were supplied by extensively long supply trains to ensure they were always in good fighting condition, but also to reduce the civilian casualties (this dates back to the Thirty Years War when looting and civilian casualties were rampant, something Enlightenment generals wanted to avoid as most they could). Also, rather than seeking to decisively engage and defeat enemy armies, armies would instead seek an advantage over the enemy to force them into an unfavorable position, at which time the enemy army would usually retreat.
This indecisiveness and slow cumbersome movement of armies was widely accepted even after the conclusion of the Seven Years War and even continued well into the Napoleonic Wars some fourty years later. However, the size of armies would increase amongst foreign nations over the years, but the attempt to supply armies by long and ever increasingly large supply trains remained the norm, as did the indecisiveness amongst generals.


French Changes


The Revolutionary French Army, an army driven as much by nationalism as its' need to keep from starving

As time progressed little changed in the execution of European warfare until the start of The War of the First Coalition in 1793. The political landscape in Europe by this time had changed drastically, and following the political and social change in France, the army naturally changed as well. Napoleon would, in the end, be almost nothing but a product of the Revolutionary armies and a change in military thinking which had already begun before Napoleon arose as the dominant force in Europe.
As France entered The War of the First Coalition, it faced numerous enemies and even more problems militarily. The first major problem was the shortage in France of officers. Before the Revolution, almost all of the officers in the French Army (at least those of any importance) were of nobility, and since the Revolution most of the nobility in France had either been executed or fled the country. This left very little military experience in the officer corps of the French military, and the need to fill this led to the opportunity to rise quickly through the ranks and the most experienced officers naturally rose to the top. Napoleon would climb through the ranks in the manner, and it almost exclusively through this that Napoleon was able to reach the height he was, and especially how he was able to attain such high commands at such a young age. The policy of giving commands to the most fit was oddly a revolutionary idea in Europe at the time, at least the idea of letting non-nobility rise through the ranks if they were fit to lead. Napoleon benefitted greatly from this not only in that he himself rose through the ranks in this way, but also in that he inherited one of the most experienced officer corps in Europe that allowed him to implement and successfully carry out his battle plans. This also continued to help him as he continued to raise more successful officers to higher ranks based on merit, not social status.
A more important change brought about by the Revolution to the army was mass conscription and the rise of nationalism in the army. The French Republic and later the Directory was in desperate need of hundreds of thousands of soldiers to combat the numerous nations it was at war with constantly, and to do so it had little other option than to put into effect mass conscription. In order to ensure that desertion was not exceedingly high, France instilled nationalism in their soldiers in an attempt to keep desertion low. With the conscription of such large numbers of soldiers, one drastically important step was taken out of necessity of France that would influence Napoleon's method of warfare greatly in the future.
With France strapped for money and needing to commit thousands of troops to the front, they had little to spare on supplies for the troops. Due to the lack of funds and the vast number of soldiers France was fielding, it could not afford to supply their armies in the long convoy train manner in which other nations had done in the past and were continuing to do. In order to keep their armies from starving, they implemented a system of a self sustained army, that would get its' needed food and supplies from looting foriegn lands it was marching on. In this way, France could ensure both that it would be able to actually field its' armies, and it would inspire troops to march forward rather that desert or retreat, as the latter two options meant going over already looted ground and raising the armies' chance of starvation. Another affect this had on the army was that it was more inspired to defeat the enemy army. Many armies at the time contained soldiers who merely fought to survive the battle, and therefore survive the war. But to a French soldiers, surviving a battle that resulted in a loss could very well mean starving to death, as they would be forced to march across lands already looted and food would be limited. But if the French won, it would ensure plentiful loot for the army, not only in food but also in personal items that could be sent back home to enrich the soldier and officer alike.
These changes during Revolutionary France would slowly give way to a bold and brilliant general, one by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, who would lead Europe to nearly constant warfare for 16 years. His changes and new ideas would drastically alter warfare, and would set the standard for the conduct of warfare through the beginning years of the American Civil War and arguably longer in other parts of the world.

Reforms

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

An example of Napoleonic military employed horse-drawn artillery. Usually there would be more than two
horses and certainly more crew involved. This horse-drawn artillery would greatly affect Napoleon's ability to
wage war.

Artillery


Massed French artillery at Borodino in 1812. Such artillery would give Napoleon
an advantage in many battles in breaking an enemy line.

Being an artillery officer himself, if it not odd to see that Napoleon made drastic changes to the artillery corps during his time as Emperor of France. In the early stages of warare, artillery was seen almost exclusively as a siege weapon used to knock down enemy walls and occasionally when permitted to scare troops on the battlefield.
This changed slightly during the Seven Years War, when field artillery became more prevelant, but artillery was still mostly used to combat enemy artillery. Because of this, artillery was not a majorly important factor on the battlefield, or so it was seen at the time. Like cavalry, artillery was viewed as being in a support role for infantry, which was the real deciding factor in a battle. This made sense logically according to Enlightenment thinking, after all was it not infantry that engaged infantry and the route of infantry that caused the opposing army to lose a battle, and therefore infantry was the priority to cracking the enemy lines with artillery and cavalry as support roles only.
Napoleon would change this thinking, firstly he understood well from the beginning of his career that artillery, infantry, and cavalry all supported one another and only through well coordinated and timed use of each could a decisive victory be achieved and at the lowest cost of human life. Therefore, Napoleon knew that for him to have an edge over his enemies he must get out of the siege warfare mentality that plagued the 18th century military doctrine.
First, Napoleon wanted and needed more mobile artillery, and the availability of such was nothing more than good timing and luck that he was alive when artillery was undergoing a shrinking in the size of round used and standardization in rounds used and issued. In this area, Napoleon would actually piggyback and take most credit from earlier generals, who had devoted their lives to standardization of rounds, enlargement of wheels for easier transport, and the shrinking of calibre for more lightweight and mobile pieces (advances in science and metallurgy prior to Napoleon also greatly affected this as well). However, it is worth nothing that few generals prior to Napoleon realized or put to use the effectiveness of the recent advances in artillery, and it would take a military genius to realize and put to use its' full potential.
Early in Napoleon's career he faced one major hurdle before he could put to use his full intentions for the artillery, and that is the way in which the pieces were transported. For years, artillery was pulled by a team of civilian contracted horses and men but manned by army regulars. The civilian contractors were tasked with transporting the artillery pieces by attaching them to wooden frames pulled by horses on the march, and unloading them before battle and (ideally) repositioning them as needed during the battle. However, the problem came with the repositioning of artillery pieces while the battle was going on. Since the teams were civilian contractors, they cared little about the artillery piece, which was army property, and more about their horses, which were their property, and their own lives; which led them to faithfully transport artillery but then once to the battlefield simply unload it and get as far away from the field as possible. This meant that the artillery crews were forced to either push the artillery by hand during the battle or simply not move it, something that would be unacceptable in Napoleon's strategy. Napoleon therefore reformed the artillery corps, further standardizing rounds, but more importantly getting rid of civilian contractor teams for pulling the pieces and instead making it artillerymen specially trained to limber, unlimber, and transport artillery during the midst of a battle under enemy fire.
All of this lead to the Napoleonic tactical use of artillery in battle, which will be discussed in further detail later, but touched on here. Basically, a battle would being with the artillery placed at strategic positions firing roundshot onto the enemy. Then, it would be rushed forward at a critical moment, many times ahead of the infantry, and fire canister or roundshot onto a particular spot in the enemy line. This would be followed up by infantry and cavalry charges, and ideally the line would then break where the massed artillery caused confusion amongst the enemy lines.

The Corps System


The general organization of a single Corps. Within the Corps levels of organization were added to make marching
and battle orders flow more easily through the ranks. Note that above the Marshall would be only Napoleon and
his staff.


Of all Napoleon's reforms to the military, the Corps System was undoubtedly the single most important and influential to modern military thinking. Before Napoleon, armies generally acted as a single body, with little organization above the regimental unit. This allowed for the methodical movement that was typical of the Enlightenment era, meaning that armies would move as a whole, fight as a whole, and be allowed to disengage or engage the enemy (also as a whole) at their so choosing. Rarely were subdivisions of an army allowed to stray too far from the main force, as doing so would put to great a strain on the convoy system that the Enlightenment armies employed. But breaking off subdivisions of an army was risky, as not only would they be cut off from supplies, but the enemy army that was moving as a whole body could easily engage them and destroy them without their enemy having any knowledge of what took place. Therefore, armies before Napoleon were stuck in a dogmatic style of fighting in which armies would move at each other as a whole, engage as a whole, and were given great option as rather to engage or disengage (this is what caused the tactical manuevring into better positions that made much of the fighting before Revolutionary France into long and drawn out stalemates of move, retreat, move, advance, etc.).
To combat this style of fighting, Napoleon created the Corps D'armee system. The Corps was not by any means a new concept, it had been thought up by numerous military thinkers but none had managed (to a large extent) to put it into action in the manner that Napoleon did. A Corps was made up of 25,000 - 30,000 soldiers with its own artillery, cavalry, and support units. This meant that a Corps could fight on its own and be expected to hold out against an entire enemy army for a couple of hours at the least while the other corps manuevred in on the enemy army. Corps would march on their own, but within a supporting march distance from each other, and thus upon one corps being attacked all others would rush to its' aid.
This system gave Napoleon almost unlimited flexibility over his enemies. Whereas his enemies had to move as one large massive army, Napoleon could divide his army up and march them over large distances knowing fully well that his army was safe from no matter what direction it was attacked from. Then, as the enemy army approached, Napoleon could being to funnel in his army closer and closer together until it met the enemy army, at which time one or more corps could easily outflank the enemy army.
This corps system was echoed recently when the US Army reoganized into the Combat Brigade benig the main focus of combat rather than the division. It has been suggested that this move was taken directly out of Napoleon's playbook, as the division had long since become to large and cumbersome to act quickly to threats independently, but the much smaller combat brigade could easily respond to a threat and deal with it independently with much greater ease. Similarly, Napoleon's reorganization gave him the edge of speed, as well as having many lines of marching for his corps.
In all the corps system was one of the most revolutionary changes put in to effect by Napoleon, but the system was not without faults. It took extreme planning and care to make sure that the corps did not become to far separated, and it took a military genius like Napoleon to handle all the complications that accompanied the corps system. Later, the other armies of Europe would eventually catch on and copy Napoleon's system and in some areas improve on it greatly, and so ironically by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon was fighting nothing more than a copycat army of his own with minor differences.

Strategy

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

An ironic Battle of Leipzig map in which Napoleon's enemies
use Napoleon's strategy against him to decisively defeat him.

Strategic Penetration


A very simplified map of the Battle of Austerlitz, in which Napoleon employed the Strategic
Penetration to its maximum use by splitting the the Russian and Austrian forces by attacking
the Pratzen Heights.

There in general were three main strategic moves employed by Napoleon throughout his time as Emperor. While these strategies will be discussed separately, it is important to note that all three can be mixed and use in accordance with one another at any one time.
The first of these three strategic moves was known as the Strategic Penetration. This strategy was used against a long and spread out defensive line of the enemies when direct action is too risky on a broad front. In this strategy the corps system is temporarily weakened into a large mass army, whence the army punches through the enemy line at any one given point and drives deep into enemy territory, ignoring threats to their flank and risk of encirclement to the rear.
This strategy relies on the hope that the enemy, seeing that their own communications and supply line can be at risk will retreat and converge their army at once point. Usually the Strategic Penetration will drive towards a large city, where the army can reorganize and establish communication and supply lines to continue onwards.
This strategy is used not to directly confront an enemy, but to hopefully attain two outcomes from it. The first is that the enemy army will retreat, and the second is that with his own army in the middle of their lines, the two wings of the army would ideally be unable to converge and Napoleon could deal with each smaller army in turn at his own choosing.
Thus, the Strategic Penetration was not a way to directly confront an enemy, but more or less to force the enemy into possibly fighting on Napoleon's own terms in the future and forcing them away from their own ideal fighting positions.
Of course, this strategy could prove disastrous at the same time. If the army did not retreat, Napoleon could easily at any give time have his own supply lines and communication lines cut off, but to Napoleon this was not as great a risk because of his corps system which allowed his armies to "live off the land" moreso than his enemies. Also, the enemy could retreat faster than Napoleon could advance, however unlikely this may have been, then Napoleon would face an enemy army in front of him that could dictate where the battle would be fought.
However, this strategy was mostly an opening phase to a campaign used to break up the enemy army and force a way into enemy territory without spreading his forces too thin and therefore yielding all the advantages given to him by the corps system. After the Strategic Penetration was employed, one of two strategies would usually ensue depending on the given situation that lay before Napoleon.

Central Position


The Central Position Strategy, note the pinning force on the right
(one corps) while two corps (plus one reserve) are attacking the
force on the left. After the army is routed, the two corps then use
a sweeping motion to attack the remaining enemy army.


Napoleon many times found himself faced with two or more converging armies in front of his own army that were ready to converge and attack him using overwhelming numbers. When faced with this situation, he would employ the Central Position strategy.
In this strategy, Napoleon would rush his army ahead to the location in which he believed the two or more armies would converge and he would securely occupy that ground. By doing this, Napoleon was preventing the armies from meeting up and gaining the advantage of superior numbers in one location (which would jeapordize his tactical portion of the battle, which will be discussed at a later time). Once Napoleon occupied the middle ground, he would then turn his attention to pinning one army, while attacking the other with as much force as possible. If all went according to plan, one army would be held in place and prevented from aiding the other, while the other force would be routed by the French. Once this had happened, the French would pursue the fleeing army with a small force, and then turn its entire sight on the remaining army.
It may seem that Napoleon placing himself between two armies (or with two armies at least separated 45 degrees facing him) would put him at a great disadvantage of being sorrounded, on must keep in mind that while Napoleon only has to move troops a short distance to support each other, the enemy must move troops in a semicircle around Napoleon's lines (assuming the two armies actually managed to link up at all). For proof of this, one must look no further than the Battle of Gettysburg, when the Union forces were placed in a convex semicircle defensive ring with Confederate forces in a similar convex semicircle around the Union forces. At their furthest extent, Union forces only had to move 3 miles to send reinforcements from one end of their lines to the other, while the Confederates had to move their men 7 miles from one end to the other, not to mention the Confederates were much more spread out than the Union forces.
While this strategy was extremely effective at defeating a separated force and gave the usually outnumbered French a numerical superiority in one sector of the battle, it many times robbed Napoleon of decisive victories. Since the attacking corps must immediately be turned to aid the pinning corps after the routing of one army, few men can be devoted to pursuing the first routed army. Furthermore, by the time the second army was routed, many of the corps were simply too tired from the extraordinary distance marched that they could not pursue the second retreating army for too long. This meant that Napoleon would many times have to fight the same army several times before finally defeating them, whereas traditional line battles that were less "fluid" in their action usually resulted in a more decisive conclusion (but occasionaly ended in a stalemate, as was the case at Borodino).
As with any strategy, the Central Position Strategy involved extreme risk. The strategy worked, with a great amount of luck, well at Morengo and Jena-Auerstadt but it failed miserably at Waterloo. The main difference was the failure of the pinning force (there were many other contributions, but in relation to the overall strategy, this was the main strategical fault) to hold Blucher combined with too long of a delay due to rain that gave Blucher several extra hours to break through the French pinning force. Success mutually relied on both the pinning force and the attacking force, and if either one failed, the battle was surely to turn sour. Such was the case at Waterloo, when both the pinning force and the attacking force failed, and thus the conclusion was a major French defeat. In essence, Wellington and Blucher actually succeeded in reversing the strategy on Napoleon and using it against him, except in their case it ended quite conclusively due to the Prussian ability to pursue the fleeing French army.
While risky, the Central Position Strategy was quite a novel idea that few commanders can successfully plan and follow through the the strategy, especially given the lacking communication of the times. This strategy was usually only used when necessary, and was usually not of Napoleon's choosing, although sometimes the Central Position between the two armies was a strategic location picked by the other army, which Napoleon would then occupy and hold the advantage. However, this also can work the opposite way, for example at a place like Waterloo in which the Central Position was at a great disadvantage. This strategy was the option used when the next strategy could not be employed, which was Napoleon's specialty strategy.

Indirect Approach


A classic example of the Indirect Approach. Serurier's forces act as the Covering Force, the Po River as the Curtain of Manuevre, Massena's forces as the Strategic Barrage, and Bonaparte's men acting as the Central Reserve.

The preferred method of battle by Napoleon was without question the Indirect Approach. This was a complicated manuevre that certainly owed its success again to the Corps D'armee system, which without would have certainly yielded complete and utter confusion on the battlefield without. In its' simplest form, the Indirect Approach was nothing more than a strategic wide swinging flanking manuevre. This strategy was composed of four separate components, three being manpower based and one composed of terrain. The four components were the Covering Force, Central Reserve, Curtain of Manuevre, and Strategic Barrage.
The first part of the strategy would open with the Covering Force, which would usually be no more than one or two corps in strength depending on the size of the overall army in use. This force would pretend to be the main force of Napoleon, and would engage the enemy army frontally. With this in place, the enemy army was now pinned, and this bought at least a few hours to as much as one day for Napoleon move his other force in for the kill.
The next part of the strategy was the Central Reserve, which was located between the Covering Force and Strategic Barrage, and could offer support to whichever force was in peril or on the verge of breaking the enemy lines. This force would usually be kept either behind the Covering Force or in between the two other forces, as needed.
Third, the Strategic Barrage would move and outflank the enemy army, using what was called the Curtain of Manuevre, or natural terrain that kept the Strategic Barrage out of sight. The Strategic Barrage would then ideally move on the complete rear of the enemy army, or at the least the left or right flank of it.
The enemy army would then realize that its' line of communication and supply was in peril, and would be faced with two poor options. Either it could press on the attack frontally, breaking the Covering Force, but still puting their supplies and communication and rear forces at risk. Or, they could turn around and try to fight the Strategic Barrage, but this would risk the Covering Force charging and routing the army. With either decision, the army was trapped, and very rarely could armies get out of this predicament without having to engage at least one of the two forces and being hit in the rear or flank by the other.
With such a strategy, Napoleon could easily force an enemy to fight on his terms and place them in a bad situation with little good options to choose from. Of course, as with all of Napoleon's strategies, it was risky and could easily be reversed. Like with the Central Position Strategy, each force relied on the other. The Covering Force relied on the Strategic Barrage to relieve the pressure from the frontal attack of the enemy, the Strategic Barrage relied on the Curtain of Manuevre (usually) to cover their advance, and the Strategic Barrage relied on the Covering Force to pin the enemy army, all the while both forces needed the Central Reserve to provide the additional forces required to break the enemy lines at the critical moment. Without any one component of the strategy going correctly, the force could quite easily fall apart and become an easy target for an enemy army.

Works Cited

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Primary Sources
Esposito, Vincent. A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars.
Chandler, David. The Campaigns of Napoleon.
Duggan, William. Napoleon's Glance: The Secret of Strategy.
Zamoyski, Adam. Moscow 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March.


Pictures (in order)
http://www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/img/napoleon_map.jpg
http://www.easy-strategy.com/images/Frederick-the-Great.jpg
http://www.britishbattles.com/seven-years/vellinghausen/map.gif
http://shichitenhakki.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/zpage412.jpg
http://www.napoleon-series.org/images/military/organization/France/Guard/Artillerytrain/artytrain6.JPG
http://www.napoleon-series.org/images/research/biographies/doro1.jpg
http://napoleon.thepodcastnetwork.com/feed/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/6-0/chap3.htm
http://www.napolun.com/mirror/web2.airmail.net/napoleon/care2.gif

Napoleon's First Invasion of Italy


Preface

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

One of the six variations of the infamous
painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps by
Jacques-Louis David. This painting was
actually about the 1800 campaign in Italy
by Napoleon.

Napoleon's invasion (or more appropriately, his campaign) in Italy in 1796 is one that is often overshadowed by his more splendid campaigns later in his career or the more scenic campaign in Egypt, or is often confused with his 1800 campaign in Italy, in which Jacques-Louis David famously and innacurately painted the infamous painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps on horseback through the Great St. Bernard Pass. While the Italian campaign was relatively small compared to the increasing size of campaigns in Napoleon's later career, it forshadowed Napoleon's ability as a leader, the effect the Revolutionary Army was having on the changing face of warfare, and it gave rise to Napoleon as a potentially powerful and dangerous political figure.
Although this article on Napoleon's invasion of Italy will mostly focus on the military aspects of the campaign, I will have to go in to a fair amount of the political background to the campaign as well as Napoleon's background (which could easily have an entire article devoted all to itself), so as to give the reader a sense of why Napoleon conducted the campaign in the manner in which he did. Once I begin the on the actual campaign, I will keep the political aspect of the war to as bare minimum as possible.
Since the Italian campaign was Napoleon's first real command position in a major war, I will note many parallels between his actions in Italy and how it affected the way he commanded his armies throughout the rest of his career. As Napoleon himself claimed, "I have fought sixty battles and have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning". I will not attempt to answer the question of rather this statement is true or not, as I feel my answer would be far to bias towards one side, but I will present the facts so as to let you, the reader, decide if his strategies in Italy truly were carried out in the same manner as they were in his later career. While it most certainly had an impact on his later strategy, the question over rather or not his method of carrying out war changed is an open debate.
For those of you who have read part of, or even looked at my article on Napoleon's Invasion of Russia, you know that I am extremely long winded and like to make things almost needlessly long. I will attempt to not do this on this article, as the material is, in my opinion, neither as fascinating by itself or as detailed in history in general as that of the infamous Russian campaign.

Part I Introduction

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A map showing the general campaigin in Italy in 1796-1797.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A map showing the overall strategic situation in 1796 (Note the map is mislabeled as 1812, but it is indeed of 1796)

Napoleon di Buonaparte


A young Napoleon di Buonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte was born Napoleon di Buonaparte on 15 August 1769 in French controlled Ajaccio, Corsica into an Italian family who had recently been relocated to Corsica and settled amongst the upper class. Napoleon was the second surviving son of eight children (five died in childbirth), five of whom where male. At the age of nine, through a family connection with General de Marboeuf, Napoleon was admitted and enrolled in the Royal School of Brienne in 1779.
Napoleon could be described as somewhat of an outcast at Brienne. Most students enrolled in the school were of French nobility, or at the least had many connections to the French and spoke fluent French. The young di Buonaparte, on the other hand, struggled with his French, and carried a heavy Corsican accent, which was commonly the cause of many fight Napoleon go into at his days in Brienne. This loneliness may have actually been the root of his success later in life, however, as Napoleon spent most of his days reading countless books alone. Di Buonaparte was a staunch Corsican nationalist in his younger days, and idolized Pasquale Paoli, the famous Corsican rebel.
Napoleon did show exceptional leadership ability from a young age, as one may expect. As time went on at Brienne and students lessened their attacks on Napoleon, he gained popularity amongst the students from the mockery the instructors gave him. Napoleon's leadership was famously shown in a supposed snowball fight he lead, in which he conducted the fight like a war and defeating the older students.
In 1783, Napoleon graduated from Brienne, and interestingly his instructor wrote that di Buonaparte would make a great sailor once entering the outside world. It is interesting to think how good or bad of a sailor Napoleon may have been had he pursued his instructors recommendation. Instead, however, Napoleon chose to go into the artillery. His mathematical ability and the fact that it was easier for those of lower social status to rise through the rank was most likely the reasoning for Napoleon's choice.
At the age of just 15, Napoleon left for Paris in 1784 to attend the Ecole Militaire, to earn his officer rank. In the spring of 1785, Napoleon's father died, and Napoleon from then on had to live in a state of poverty, supposedly eating only once a day and constantly being tired. Napoleon graduated 42nd (hardly a spectacular position) in his class in August 1785, and was commissioned and arrived with his unit in November.
While the early years of Napoleon's career are long and detailed, I will just give an overview, as it is not terribly important to the Italian campaign. Napoleon took his position as second lieutenant, but he constantly requested leave with full pay, and spent much of his time back in Corsica rather than with the Army. Napoleon was discharged from the army in 1792, after he lost favor with the French government. In July 1793, Napoleon wrote the Le Souper de Beaucaire, which gained him favor in the French government again, and he was appointed to be the commander of artillery at the Siege of Toulon. French Royalists had turned the city over the Britain, and Napoleon formulated a plan to capture strategic hills that gave the artillery a crossfire over the harbor at Toulon. Once Napoleon's plan was set into action and carried out, the British force left Toulon, and Napoleon was promoted to Brigadier General.
Napoleon was assigned to the Army of Italy, and there he formulated a plan of using the Army of Italy as a distraction from the real theatre of war, being along the Rhine and in Germany, and winning victories in Italy to draw Austrian troops off of the Rhine. This plan was the same one carried out in 1796, when Napoleon was in command of the Army of Italy. His strategic plan for Italy was also nearly the same as it would be later in 1796, that is Napoleon called for immediate action against he Piedmontese to knock them out of the war quickly, and then setting the Army of Italy on the more fertile Po River Valley. This would have the effect of forcing Austria to draw more troops from the Rhine into Italy to replace the lost Piedmontese forces. Napoleon's plan was put into action, but then was stopped by the Minister of War who felt that an attack in Italy should and could not be carried out while an offensive was about to occur along the Rhine. Napoleon personally went on a spying mission to Genoa, but after a shift of power in France, this was used as an excuse for charges of treason, and Napoleon was arrested.
On 5 October 1795, after being arrested for a brief period of time and again resigning from the French army, Napoleon was called upon by Paul Barras to quell a revolt that was occuring in Paris against the Directory. Napoleon, being an artillery commander, ordered one Joachim Murat to use grapeshot to stop to mob, killing about 200 civilians and wounding 500. The death count may have been high, but Napoleon had saved the Directory, and that was all that mattered.
Napoleon was hailed by the Directory, and was quickly promoted to second in command of the Army of Interior, only to be withdrawn from that position to be made a general of division, only to quickly be withdrawn from that position to be placed in the even higher position of Commander in Chief. Commander in Chief was one of the most influential positions in the French Army in relation to overall strategy. This gave Napoleon an opportunity to try to convince the Ministry of War to carry out his strategy for Italy. Napoleon indirectly sent General Scherer, then in command of the Army of Italy, numerous and increasingly annoying letters of criticism through other ministers, but Scherer knew who was truly composing the letters. Scherer consistently refused the Ministries orders and instead wrote back with less risky and aggressive strategies, and asked if he could not get his way that he be relieved of his command. The Directory by February of 1796 was tired of Napoleon as well, and on March 2 Scherer was relieved of his command and it was announced that di Buonaparte would be his replacement. Napoleon set out for Italy, and began preparations to set his plans into action.

Revolutionary France


The revolt of 13 Vendemiaire (5 October 1795)

The history of the French Revolution is a long and complicated one, and I will only attempt to focus on the military aspects of that prior to 1796 and stay away from political aspects as much as possible. To oversimplify, in 1792 the War of the First Coalition began due to the imprisonment of King Louis XVI and the overagressive policy of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (known as Francis I from 1804-1835 as the Austrian king). Francis II predecessor, Leopald II, was threatening as a substitute for war, such as the Declaration of Pilnitz, which threatened war if anything happened to the French monarchs, but stated the Holy Roman Empire (I will from here on refer to it as Austria) would not declare war unless all of the other signers of the Declaration also declared war on France. But when Leopald died on 1 March 1792 and Francis took power, threatening became a prelude to war.
Also adding to the deteriorating situation between France and Austria was the issue over Alsace. Alsace had been given to France as part of the Treaty of Westphalia which (partially) ended the Thirty Years War. Under the Treaty, France was to control all of the territory, but taxes were to be paid to the Hapsburg princes. This Treaty had been upheld almost constantly from 1648 until the French Revolution. The problem arose with the Revolutionary government, which needed money badly, and so they assumed since Aslace was French land before it should still be French land, but that the French government had right to the taxes, not the Hapsburgs.
France declared war on Austria on 20 April 1792, and essentially after some initial setbacks France eventually carried the war on to the offensive. The more idealistic in the French government saw this as France exporting the Revolution, and freeing the rest of Europe from tyrannical monarchs. Most saw it as it really was, however, an attempt by the French government to gain land, money, and carry out a war so as to keep the French population more loyal to the existing government.
The war was France pitted against Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, Naples and Sicily, the Dutch Republic, and other numerous smaller states. While this may seem daunting, it is important to note that even after war had broken out, many of the countries were still focused elsewhere. For example, Austria was mostly focused on Poland for the time being, and had little interest in fighting a costly war with France.

Army of Italy


Typical French infantry during the Napoleonic Era. It is important
to note the Army of Italy probably looked nothing like the typical
French infantry, as many were without boots or proper clothing.

As time progressed and 1796 drew nearer, the situation was this: Spain was out of the war, and two main theatres now existed. The Rhine was the primary theatre of operations between France and Austria, with Italy being the secondary. As previously stated Napoleon's suggestion of using Italy to draw Austrian forces from the Rhine theatre was widely accepted. France's strategy for 1796 was for Napoleon to defeat Piedmont, draw further reinforcements from the Rhine, at which time General Moreau could advance across the Rhine at advance on Tyrol. Napoleon would then pacify Northern Italy, and preferably march on the Papal States, and then join Moreau in Tyrol for the final assualt on Vienna. Meanwhile Napoleon would be backed by two armies in Italy separate of his own, one under Kellermann on the western Alps, and the other along the Var River, both to protect his lines of communication and in particular any flanking manouvres by Piedmontese forces in the early stages of the campaign.
While the campaign seemed like a sound strategy, it had numerous flaws. First of all, success relied on both armies being able to do what they had not been able to in the past, and that was advance far inland into enemy territory. Both armies were not within supporting distance of one another, so if one was in trouble the Army of Italy could not aid the Army of the Rhine. Also, the Army of the Rhine was under the command of two separate and suspicious generals, neither of whom were really willing to cooperate with one another. In a similar problem, if one army was defeated by Austrian forces, then Austria could shift their forces to the other theatre, and win on both fronts. No one single general was in command of the operations, and so the three generals acted independently of one another.
The Army of Italy also posed a risk to the Italian campaign.
When it was originally sent into Italy in 1792, the Army of Italy had a very large force hovering around 100,000 men. But as time went on and little advances were made, the Army of Italy dwindled in numbers, from disease, battle, desertion, and even starvation. The Army of Italy was stuck in the western hills of Northern Italy, usually a little east of Savoy. While the Po River Valley could have sustained a force of this size, the land where the Army of Italy had been stationed for the past four years was agriculturaly insufficient to supply the Army. Revolutionary France's policy of armies fending for themselves when it came to food and living off the land as opposed to having supply trains meant that the Army of Italy had little food, clothes, and sometimes shelter.
By the time Napoleon took command in 1796, the Army of Italy had dwindled to around 60,000 men, with only about 37,000 soldiers who were battle capable. It is important to note that in this time period it was not uncommon for about half or more of an army to not be in a fighting position, far behind the front lines and would not hear about any fighting occuring ahead for a long period of time. Napoleon, who was an artillery commander by nature, only had 60 artillery pieces with his army, and any hope of attaining more was a fantasy.
On the flip side, the Coalition forces far outnumbered that which was under Napoleon's command. The Austrian commander of Austrian Italian forces was General Beauleiu, a 72 year old veteran. In all reality this actually played to Napoleon's advantage, as Beaulieu was not as accustom to the changing face of war that was occuring and was still fighting in the old style of fighting more prevalant in the Seven Years War than the Napoleonic Wars. There were three main armies under Beaulieu, some 20,000 soldiers under his direct control, with half of these soldiers being spread out over a considerable distance, all located around Alessandria. The second army of some 12,000 men under General Argenteau, located are Acqui, all outstretched in a defensive line. The third army of around 20,000 Piedmontese forces under General Provera held a thin line from Cuneo to Ceva, watching the western passes to stop any attempt by the French to attack Piedmont, which was in a northerly direction of the French position along the Italian coast in western Italy. Another Piedmontese force of around 20,000 was far north-west of Napoleon's position near Turin, keeping Kellerman's forces in check (which were guarding the western Alpine passes into France. Excluding the second Piedmontese army, and Kellerman's forces, Napoleon was initially facing an Austo-Italian force of around 52,000 men against Napoleon's 37,000 men.
On 27 March 1796, Napoleon rode into headquarters in Nice. From there, he would launch his invasion of Italy, which would eventually bring all of northern Italy under French control and lead to the end of the War of the First Coalition. Napoleon Bonaparte (by now using the French spelling of his name, feeling little connection to Corsica) set the date for his operations to begin on April 15.

Part II Napoleon's First Battle

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Map of the Battles of Montenotte and Mondovi

Napoleon's Preparations


Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier

Soldiers! You are hungry and naked; the government owes you much but can give you nothing. The patience and courage which you have displayed among these rocks are admirable; but they bring you no glory...I will lead you into the most fertile plain on Earth...Soldiers of Italy! Will you be lacking in courage or endurance?
This, Napoleon's speech, upon his arrival to the Army of Italy in Nice on 27 March was mostly a propaganda tool used to inspire his troops in his daring and risky venture he was about to take them on. But behind the propaganda, it does give us some insight as to Napoleon's reasoning for going about the invasion in the manner in which he did.
The land which France currently had control over in Italy, which included what used to be Savoy, parts of the northwestern Alps, and some of the coastal areas west of Genoa, were very infertile lands and could not support the Army of Italy for very long. For example, when the Army first arrived in Italy years earlier, it had around some 100,000 troops, but now the Army only had some 60,000 with only 37,000 effectives. Napoleon knew that mutiny amongst his army or starvation could ruin the Army of Italy if it stayed in the same location for another year.
He therefore deduced that he had to move west, into the more fertile Po River Valley and Lombardy. There he would find plentiful supplies for his Army, the most important being food for the soldiers and horses. With good food supply and rivers (including the west to east running Po and the north to south running rivers descending from the Alps) Napoleon would never have to worry about his water supply either.
Napoleon made immediate preparations upon arriving in Italy to supply his troops more adequately. But calls for more artillery or weapons (many soldiers had long thrown away their muskets) were usually ignored by the Directory due to the fact that they had little supplies to spare for what they considered a sideshow, and sending supplies over the Alps was a very difficult task which could usually not be completed in the month that Napoleon was asking it to be. Napoleon used personal money to pay his army, which had received little pay for some time, in order to put down mutinous talks. He also sold a captured ship and bought clothing and other supplies with it.
Despite his setbacks, Napoleon did have many advantages. The first being the Army itself, which was a hardened group of veterans, of which all of the weak had either died off or deserted years prior. The Army was now made up of ragtag underclothed and underfed soldiers, who fought like lions on the battlefield.
In addition, Napoleon had one of the best officer corps anyone could ask for at that time. Napoleon had under his command three talented generals who would each take a control of a division of the army. The first was the fifty five year old General Surier. Surier was a product of the Old Regime, born of nobility he did not hesitate to act aristocratic, even in these Revolutionary times. He had little military distinction, but was talented enough to survive the Revolution this long as a noble in the army, so he was most definitely a talented individual.
The second was the thirty eight year old General Augereau, the polar opposite of Surier. While Surier was a product of the Old Regime, Augereau was a product of the Revolution. He was the son of a poor stonemason, and he had fought in numerous foreign armies before finally returning to France in 1792, where he rose to a generals position in less than a year. Augereau was a man of the people, and was well respected by his men, certainly moreso than Surier.
The third was General (Andre) Massena, the thirty eight year old man already familiar with Napoleon. He served with Napoleon at Toulon, he was born in Nice, so he had an understanding of northern Italy as well. He was experience and battle tested, and every time stood up to the test. Also worth noting, with Napoleon was General Berthier, an engineer, Joachim Murat, the infamous cavalry commander, Jean-Andoche Junot, another future marshal of Napoleon's, and Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte.
Napoleon was not alone in Italy, as he did not command the entire Army. Instead, he more or less controlled a little more than half, with Kellerman being in command of some 20,000 effectives just west of Turin, in the Alpine passes. Napoleon was to be the strike force, attacking Austrian and Piedmontese forces in Northwestern Italy while Kellerman protected his vital and vulnerable flank, and also being there as a reserve in case insurrection occured behind Napoleon's lines. The two armies were not very cooperative in all manners, but they did not have to be. Napoleon's army was to attack while Kellerman protected his flank and rear, but there was also a huge importance to Kellerman's position.
Napoleon, who was stationed at Nice, was to the south of the Austrian and Piedmontese forces, and also south of Turin. Therefore, while Napoleon was to attack northward at Piedmont, driving closer to Turin, Kellerman could threaten Turin from the west, as well as force the Piedmontese to commit troops to defend west of Turn, making Napoleon's task easier.
The Austrian forces, under General Beaulieu, were much more numerous but also at a great disadvantage. Beaulieu's forces were effectively split into three forces. The first division of some 19,000 men was under his direct command in Alessandria. However many were still in winter quarters or spread out over a great distance. The second was under the command of General Argenteau, with some 11,500 men based around the town of Acqui, but scattered along the hills north of the coast. The third was under General Colli, who commanded some 20,000 Piedmontese forces was on the western flank of the Austrian forces, located around Ceva and Mondovi, in order to prevent Napoleon from attacking northward directly in Piedmont. Also another 20,000 Piedmontese were stationed west of Turin, but as this equalled Kellerman's forces and engagements were limited there, I shall negate both from the overall numbers. In total, Napoleon had some 37,000 French soldiers, up against Beaulieu's 57,000 Austro-Piedmontese forces.
Napoleon set the day for action for April 15 as the invasion date. He moved his forces eastward, along the coastal towns until he was directly south of the Austro-Piedmontese forces. But the invasion would begin early, as it would be Beaulieu who would make the first move.

The Battle of Montenotte


General Andre Massena

Like Napoleon, General Beaulieu was relatively new to the Italian theatre. Upon arrival, he had been given a general order by the Austrian government to drive the Army of Italy back from its current position south of his forces in French territory at Savoy. His orders gave no indication of how many troops he was allowed to allocate to this operation, if the Piedmontese should be involved in it, or where and how to conduct the operation. Beaulieu responded in a poor fashion.
Beaulieu's plan was this: he would attack from the hills north of Savona and descent upon General Massena's forces there on the French right flank, then turn west and move towards Savona, while General Argenteau would attack through Montenotte and attack southward, and cut off Massena from the rest of the Army at Savona, and the turn west and attack Napoleon's main force.
On 10 April, some of Beaulieu's forces descended upon a French defensive position at Voltri, taking Napoleon completely by surprise. The attack did not gain much momentum, and the French retreated in good order to the south. This attack was actually a great benefit to Napoleon, since he now knew exactly where Beauleiu's main force was at, and could not act accordingly.
Meanwhile, Argenteau received his orders a day late, and so his attack on Savona could not begin until the 11 April. Argenteau's attack near Montenotte ground to a standstill when it commenced on the 11 April, and so he decided to stop and settle in at Montenotte so he could call for reinforcements and extra artillery. When Beaulieu realized his mistake and the lack of cohesion in his attacks, he altogether halted his southern advancement, leaving his troops in a long line along the hills north of Savona. Napoleon used this to his advantage, and called in Massena's troops to move west and concentrate all his force on attacking Argenteau.
On the morning of 12 April, Massena launched a frontal assault on Argenteau at Montenotte, while other forces worked their way to the Austrian right flank. By the time Argenteau realized his mistake, it was too late, and as he tried to retreat his men, Massena ordered a frontal assault and routed the Austrian forces under Argenteau. So terrible was the route that by 13 April, Argenteau had only 700 men under his direct command.
Upon their advancement, many of the men who, as noted earlier, were without muskets too them from the Austrian dead, only strengthening the French army further. The French only took 800 casualties while the Austrians lost 2,500 men, and 12 cannons were captured by the French during the battle.
Napoleon had done what would become his trademark strategy during his first battle at Montenotte, and that is concentrating his forces upon one, usually the most vulnerable, spot of the enemy and attacking it with all force possible. Ignoring Beaulieu, Napoleon risked being flanked, but his lines there held and Napoleon realized that Beauleiu had halted his attack for a reason, and judged that the time was ripe for attacking the lesser and more exposed force at Montenotte.
Napoleon may have won, but he did not defeat the Austrian forces. Beaulieu's forces were not routed, and they maintained their position for the most part. Argenteau had merely retreated northward. The Piedmontese force of 20,000 still loomed to the northeast around Ceva, Cuneo, and Mondovi. Napoleon now found himself exactly where he wanted to be, smack dab in the middle between the Piedmontese forces and the Austrian forces, and a northern attack into Dego would exploit this advantage and completely split the two apart. Napoleon would now turn his focus to defeating the Piedmontese under Michelangelo Colli in the northwest.

Battle of Mondovi


An artists rendition of the Battle of Mondovi

Although Napoleon had now defeated Argenteau at Montenotte, he was unsure if that was Argenteau's main force, or that it was a smaller force and that Napoleon's flank would be at risk when he turned west towards the Piedmontese. However, Napoleon gambled that it had indeed been Argenteau's main force and he decided to continue with his plan of attacking Colli's forces, but that he would need to keep reserves to defend his flank.
Napoleon ordered Massena to take half of his force, and advance upon Dego, occupy it and then hold the line there. Dego was naturally located between two hills, and made for an exceptional bottleneck in which to hold the Austrians. Napoleon then ordered Augereau and the rest of Massena's men to attack General Colli at Ceva on 13 April.
However, all of his plans would go different than expected on the 13. Despite some success early in the morning, Augereau's force came to a halt before Ceva near a small castle at Cosseria that was occupied by some 900 Austrian grenadiers. Attacks on the castle ended in disaster, with some 900 casualties and as a result Augereau ordered his men to retreat to their positions on the previous day. When Napoleon learned of Augereau's misfortune, he ordered Massena to hold his attack on Dego and wait for further orders. All the while a terrible storm was taking place, making all movement of men and supplies a difficult task in and of its own.
By the end of 13 April, Napoleon occupied the same territory he did the day prior, and precious time to gain momentum over the Piedmontese had been lost.
The 14 April would turn out to be a much better day. Early in the morning Massena launched his attack on Dego, and quickly captured it, taking some 5,000 Austrian men prisoner, along with gaining 19 Austrian guns. In another turn of events, the Austrians at Cosseria finally gave in and surrendered due to low supplies.
If 14 of April was a blessing to Napoleon, the 15 was another disaster. Massena's men at Dego, expecting no major attacks that day, went foraging for food and supplies throughout Dego and the countryside sorrounding the town. Meanwhile, on the Austrian side, General Wukassovitch carried out his orders he received on the 14 (which were actually issued on the 13) to "attack the next day". The misinterpretation by Wukassovitch would play to the Austrians advantage, since if they had attacked on the 14 as ordered, Massena's force would have been ready and waiting for them. Instead, Wukassovitch quickly routed Massena's spread out forces at Dego on the 15, and again Napoleon's flank was in jeopardy.
Sensing the danger of being flanked, Napoleon ordered a halt to Augereau's forces which were moving to attack the Piedmontese at Ceva. Although Wukassovitch's force was not really large enough to seriously threaten Napoleon, he was not sure if it was just the advance guard of a much larger force, perhaps under the direct command of Beaulieu. Napoleon recalled General La Harpe and had him lead an attack on Dego that evening, costing the French another 1,000 casualties.
Napoleon spent the 16 April worrying about the Austrian forces. He sent out small patrols and scouting parties to try to once and for all paint a clear picture of what the Austrians were doing. After realizing the full extent of the massive casualties inflicted upon Beaulieu's forces, Napoleon decided that he had been hurt too much and needed time to lick his wounds before attacking again. Napoleon moved all of La Harpe's men to Dego to defend against an Austrian attack, and moved Massena's men north of Dego to swoop down and flank any enemy force threatening Dego. Napoleon then ordered Augereau to take Ceva, but after a hastily assembled assault, the French were repulsed.
During the 17 April, little action took place as the French amassed their forces for an attack upon Ceva. On the night of 17 April, however, the Piedmontese fell back from their position from Ceva to a more fortified position near the Tanaro and Corsaglia Rivers. A furious Napoleon ordered on 18 April a hasty attack, which was soon repulsed.
On 19 April the French right flank was relieved when a French attack from Savona hit the Austrians in the flank, and now lessened the pressure on Dego. This action caused the Austrians to retreat far to the north to Acqui. Dego was now strategically unimportant, and Napoleon ordered all but one battalion from La Harpe to move and link up with Massena's force to attack General Colli at St. Michele.
A grand assault was ordered for the 21, but again Colli left during the night of the 20 and escaped. This time he fell back on the town of Mondovi, and took up a defensive position. General Serurier, the fifty three year old veteran, led a daring frontal attack on Mondovi. The attack worked through a series of foolish but effective frontal charges. By the end of the day the French had routed the Piedmontese, taken possession of their arsenal stockpiles, and finally reached the more fertile area of Piedmont.
Although the battle was over, Napoleon did not linger in Mondovi any longer than his men needed to get food and supplies, and on 23 April he started his march towards Turin. Napoleon divided his force into three, him commanding the central one, and with La Harpe and Serurier on the flank and all within a days march of each other to support the other armies. On the evening of the 23, General Colli asked for an armistice, but it only encouraged Napoleon to double his march and advance on Turin even faster.
On the 25 April, Napoleon entered in negotiations with the Piedmontese and a treaty was soon worked out. French armies would be able to use Piedmont for passage into the rest of Italy, and several fortresses and towns were to contain French garrisons as a precautionary measure. The treaty was formally approved by King Victor Amadeus III on 28 April. Joachim Murat delivered the treaty personally to the Directory for approval.
In just some ten days of offensive campaigning, Napoleon had defeated Piedmont and brought it under the will of the French. He had secured a foothold in the fertile region of Italy, and now was en route to attacking the main Austrian forces. Most importantly to the overall strategy of the war, Austria would now be forced to bring in reinforcements from Germany into Italy. Napoleon concluded this offensive with the following speech:
Soldiers! In fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken 21 colors and 55 pieces of artillery, seized several fortresses and conquered the richest parts of Piedmont. You have captured 15,000 prisoners and killed and wounded more than 10,000...." Although the Austrian army in Italy was hurt, it was certainly far from beaten.

Part III The Battle of Lodi and The First Siege of Mantua

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Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A map showing the maneuvers immediately following the Battle of Mondovi to the First Siege of Mantua.

The Battle of Lodi


The Battle of Lodi.

After the Battle of Mondovi, Napoleon gave his troops time to reorganize and rest before the forthcoming operation against Beaulieu, whom had now retreated across the far side of the Po River. There were three viable places to cross the Po that Napoleon was agreeable to, at Valenza, just south of Pavia, and Piacenza. The first, and closest, was at Valenza but served many problems. The first was that Beaulieu's main force was located just across the river, and being attacked while crossing the river would prove disastrous for Napoleon. The second reason for not choosing Valenza was that it was still too close to Piedmont, whom could at any time turn on Napoleon and hit him from the rear.
The second option, south of Pavia, still posed many threats as well. While crossing here would have put Napoleon just behind Beaulieu's main force and threatened him to either retreat or give battle, it had the downside of being just within plausible striking distance if Beaulieu learned of Napoleon's move. This would undoubtedly lead to the destruction of the Army of Italy if he was caught half way across when Beaulieu attacked.
Therefore, the most beneficial and realistic crossing option was at Piacenza. Piacenza was some 50 miles west of Valenza, and would place Napoleon safely behind Beaulieu, and the shortest distance away from Milan of all the potential crossing areas. Beaulieu would either be forced to retreat and give Milan to Napoleon, or to defend Pavia with his supplies and reinforcements cut off. Therefore, Napoleon chose Piacenza as his plan of attack to capture Milan.
In order to keep Beaulieu sitting on his hands, Napoleon decided to have Serurier plan a fake attack on Valenza while a lead force under Dallemagne would cross at Piacenza, followed closely by La Harpe and Augereau. Dallemagne, after two days of marching, crossed the Po on the 7 May, and engaged in a small skirmish with Austrian forces. By this time Beaulieu, who had been focusing on Valenza for the past two days, now realized his folly and ordered all forces to converge on Piacenza. By the end of the 7 May, all Austrian forces, spread out over a distance of some 50 miles, were now heading directly for Napoleon's crossing.
On 8 May, Dallemagne fought a stalemate battle with Austrian forces under General Liptay until Liptay gave the order to fall back on to Fombio. La Harpe and Liptay together stormed Fombio and captured the city, pursuing the Austrians for two hours. As 8 May drew to an end, La Harpe and Dallemagne were safely across and in secure positions, while Augereau was in the process of crossing, and Serurier and Massena were nearing Piacenza. However, as night fell Beaulieu's army converged on Codogno and were met by French forces under La Harpe. During the fighting, La Harpe was shot and killed, and only a brave charge from Berthier saved the French from defeat. Eventually the Austrians pulled back, and Beaulieu feared his secure position was lost.
Fearing having his supply lines cut, Beaulieu retreated westward across the Adda River, which ran north-south perpendicular to the Po River. This allowed Napoleon to join his scattered forces on the north side of the Po on 9 May. Although the crossing of the Po had been a success by all means, in careful planning, careful execution, and impressive speed of execution, Napoleon was hardly satisfied. Beaulieu had escaped, and worse yet he was safely across yet another river. Although Milan would now surely be in French hands, Napoleon wanted Beaulieu defeated before he could retreat as far west as the fortress at Mantua, as this would pose a huge risk to Napoleon's operations.
While Napoleon was unsatisfied with the operation, he pushed on. By 10 May, lead French forces were in sight of Lodi, situated on the Adda River, which was defended by an Austrian force of some 10,000 men and 12 cannon under General Sebottendorf. Although this force was nothing but a covering force while Beaulieu retreated further west, it still posed a considerable threat to Napoleon, who needed to cross the river as fast as possible.
The lead French forces quickly cleared the east side of Lodi of any Austrian forces, but came to a halt upon reaching the bridge. The Austrians had situated all 12 of their cannons along the bank of the river and angled towards the bridge, creating a deadly crossfire for any infantry attempting to use the bridge. General Massena set up 24 guns along the east bank of the river to combat the Austrians, and after organizing his grenadiers led a personal charge across the bridge.
The first charge made it halfway across the bridge before being halted by Austrian small arms and cannon fire, no doubt causing considerable havoc among the French. It was not until Massena, Dallemagne, Cervoni, and Berthier went to the front of the line and personally led a charge that the French columb broke through. French soldiers jumped into the shallow water on the west bank of the river and established enfilading fire on the Austrian cannons, while the main column continued their charge across the bridge. An Austrian counterattack retook the bridge, but another French counterattack, this time led by Augereau and Massena, succeeded in breaking through the Austrian center and a French cavalry force flanked the Austrian lines that they finally broke.
The Battle of Lodi cost the French only some 350 casualties, quite low compared to how high such a risky undertaking could have cost them. No prisoners were reported to have been taken by the Austrians, but certainly there were probably some. The Austrians lost 150 men, but more importantly 1,700 were taken prisoner along with 16 guns being captured (while 12 guns were set up on the bank of the river, there were more cannon in the area still catching up to the main retreating Austrian force). The Battle of Lodi and maneuver preceeding it showed Napoleon's grasp of speed more than anything else, and as a result Milan was now safely assured to be in French hands and Beaulieu was again on the retreat, but had not been defeated or sorrounded nor had it even been drawn into a major battle.

Bad News, Milan, and Rebellion


Napoleon enters Milan.

The evening following the Battle of Lodi, Napoleon received a discouraging correspondence from Paris. In a letter from the Directory, Napoleon was told that command of the Army of Italy would be split between him and Kellerman. Kellerman would then take part of Napoleon's army and head south to attack the Papal States and secure as much loot and wealth as possible to help pay for the enourmous debt the Directory found itself in. Meanwhile, Napoleon was to hold his current position and go on no offensive, only to hold the Po River Valley as a covering force for Kellerman.
Napoleon's response was bold and daring, he replied "Kellermann will command the army as well as I, for no one is more convinced than I am that the victories are due to the courage and audacity of the men; but I believe that to unite Kellermann and myself in Italy is to lose all. I cannot serve willingly with a man who believes himself to be the first general in Europe; and, besides, I believe that one bad general is better than two good ones. War, like government, is a matter of tact."
The Directory found itself in an awkward position, since it was in no environment to demote or to altogether sack the only general that had been bringing them continuous victories. The Directory therefore sent the reply, "Immortal glory to the conqueror of Lodi, your plan is the only one to follow..." Furthermore, Napoleon was given 10,000 reinforcements at Kellermann's expense, and Kellermann even sent his own son to serve on Napoleon's staff.
Meanwhile, as correspondence was being sent, Napoleon arrived in Milan only five days after the Battle of Lodi. The people of Milan welcomed Napoleon and the Army of Italy as liberators from Austrian control, but it would be short-lived. Beaulieu had retreated for Mantua, leaving behind a small force in the Citadel in Milan.
While Napoleon tried to maintain order amongst his troops in Milan, looting and pillaging could not be stopped from the underfed, underclothed soldiers. Soldiers as high as the rank of Divisional commanders took part in the looting, and in all took about 2 million livres worth of money from Milanese citizens. This did allow Napoleon to finally pay his soldiers in real money (they were supplied worthless paper money prior to this) it made the Milanese goodwill wear thin.
The looting came to an end on 21 May when news arrived that a permanent peace had finally been secured with Piedmont, and so Napoleon's rear was now safe from any Piedmontese betrayal. The next day, Napoleon marched out Milan with 30,000 soldiers, leaving some 5,000 behind to siege the Citadel.
Beaulieu was in position defending the area south of Lake Garda to Mantua in the south. He had made the mistake of speading himself thin again, and was vulnerable to attack by Napoleon. But before Napoleon could act, bad news came from Milan and Pavia of rebellion.
Bitter from the French looting, the citizenry of Milan had taken to arms and forced the French garrison in the city to surrender, although the French garrison probably could have held out. Within two days, Napoleon reached Milan and took back the city. Upon reaching Pavia, Napoleon gave the troops several hours to sack and loot the city without restraint for several hours, as a lesson to all Italian cities who rebelled against the Army of Italy. Napoleon ordered the French officer who surrendered Milan to be publicly executed and several small villages had all buildings burnt and all men were shot.
While Napoleon dealt with the rebellions, Berthier continued westward, and on 28 May Napoleon and Berthier met up at Brescia. Two days later the bridge at Borghetto was captured by French forces, compelling Beaulieu to retreat even further. The success at Borghetto forced Beaulieu to retreat up the shores of Lake Garda, essentially driving a wedge between Beaulieu and Mantua in the south. Beaulieu was forced to retreat to Trent, and now the First Siege of Mantua had begun.

The First Siege of Mantua

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The defenses at Mantua. For now ignore the troops positions, as they are irrelevant to the First Siege of Mantua.

The French now found themselves in a good and bad situation. On one hand, they had driven a wedge between Beaulieu and Mantua, and if Mantua was taken then they would have almost complete control over Northern Italy and could proceed on to Venice and then to Vienna. However, on the other hand, Napoleon had inflicted enough damage upon Austrian forces and Austrian successes in Germany meant that a reinforcing army was certain to materialize soon. Napoleon therefore would be forced to break the Siege of Mantua at any time if a serious threat developed to his north, where Beaulieu currently lingered. For the first time since Napoleon arrived, the invasion of Italy had now turned in to a defensive campaign for Napoleon.
While preparations for sieging Mantua were underway, Napoleon personally led more attacks on Italian towns in French territory to serve as a reminder for rebellious areas. Mantua, however, was the primary focus at the point in the operation.
Mantua was a fortress city sorrounded by three lakes to its north and east, and by a marsh to its south and west. It was occupied by some 12,000 Austrian soldiers and 300 some artillery pieces. After a failed attempt at taking the city, Mantua was fully besieged on 3 June by Serurier, Augereau, Dallemagne, Lannes, and Kilmaine. The same day as the siege began, grenadiers capture St. Georges suburbs, and it appeared that the siege would quickly be over. However, a series of diversions from Mantua would cause it to not be taken for another 8 months.
While after Lodi the Directory had been willing to cancel its planned attack on the Papal States, it now ordered Napoleon to attack the Pope and secure a sizeable treasure for the Directory. Napoleon was forced to take away Augereau's divisions, leaving Serurier with the impossible task of taking Mantua alone. After a long series of attacks in Tuscany and the Papal States, Pope Pius VI called for an armistice with France and paid a huge indemnity to the Directory. The Papal States also turned over a massive number of cannons it had at Fort Urban to Napoleon. Satisfied, Napoleon withdrew north to Mantua and began sieging the city with the bulk of his army and the newly acquired cannons.
Things started looking even better, when on 29 June the Austrian garrison in the Citadel in Milan finally surrendered. However, these good fortunes were short-lived when French reports indicated that an Austrian offensive was developing to the north around Tyrol. In addition, a rare change in water levels on 17 July threw off a French attempt at storming Mantua. Just as the French began preparing for a traditional siege of reducing Mantua to rubble, Napoleon called the siege off. On 31 of July, Serurier's divisions were the last to leave, spiking some of their cannons, but the majority of the 179 left behind fell in to Austrian hands.
The threat that Napoleon feared of an Austrian offensive from the north was quite real. Wurmser, recently arriving from Germany with 25,000 men now brought the Austrian force to his north up to a number of some 50,000 men. Wurmser could have caught Napoleon off guard much sooner than he did, but he was forced to spent a considerable amount of time in Trent restoring order to Beaulieu's army, which was disorganized and in almost no condition to fight.
As Wurmser moved south, he split his army into three corps, each moving southward toward Napoleon. Meanwhile, Napoleon was scrambling to organize his scattered force from all over Northern Italy to Lake Garda, where he was determined to meet Wurmser. As Serurier left Mantua on 31 July, The First Siege of Mantua had ended, as did any French hopes to quickly take the city and gain control of Northern Italy in the near future. The battle that would follow would indeed be the most clear example of a precursor to Napoleonic warfare.

Part IV Wurmer's Breakthrough to Arcola

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Wurmser breaks through the Mantua

Battle of Castiglione and the Beginning of the Second Siege of Mantua


The Battle of Castiglione

With Wurmser moving his forces South towards Mantua by way of Lake Garda in three separate divisions, Napoleon realized the necessity to engage each wing separately and in turn defeat them with superior numbers and firepower before each wing could come to support the other. Wurmser's plan for the relief of Mantua relied on his ability to join his three divisions once he had made it south of Lake Garda, and he was well aware that his vulnerability would be when his army was separated and moving without possible support of each other. Although Wurmser realized his weakness, he was too fixated on relieving Mantua to properly coordinate the movement of his and Quasdanovitch's divisions, which were central to his plan of linking up south of Garda and moving further south to relieve Mantua. So, in essence, the Austrian forces were moving entirely independent of one another, without much if any communication between the wings, and Wurmser was only making matters worse by focusing almost solely on Mantua instead of the most immediate threat, which was the Army of Italy which stood between him and Mantua.
Napoleon decided to attack Quasdanovitch's division first, and on 3 August Massena fought of Quasdanovitch's men in the Battle of First Lonato. While this action was taking place, Augereau was occupied defending against Wurmer near Castiglione. In all reality, however, Wurmser could have safely taken Castiglione three days prior and now been attacking Massena's rear, but he had waited for three days to make sure Mantua had indeed not fallen and therefore gave Augereau time to move in to position to defend the southern flank of Massena's line.
Napoleon's Army was now virtually sorrounded, with Quasdanovitch attacking southward from the western bank of Lake Garda, and Wurmser attacking north from Goito and Valeggio against the southern rear of the Army of Italy. With the simultaneous engagements going on in the northern flank at First Lonato and the southern flank at Castiglione, Napoleon's army was stretched thin. Augereau would become the hero of the battle when his men held and completely destroyed and entire division under Quasdanovitch during an Austrian attack.
Once Augereau had successfully forced Quasdanovitch back, Napoleon ordered him to swing south and west to fall upon Wurmser's left flank, while Serurier, who had now marched north from Mantua, would attack Wurmer's rear from the south. On 5 August, Wurmser halted his men just south of Castiglione to wait for Quasdanovitch, unaware than Quasdanovitch's forces were in retreat and heading northward again. Napoleon used the opportunity to attack the forces he had moved the previous day, and Massena committed and frontal assualt while Augereau attacked Wurmer's left flank and Serurier attack his rear from the south.
The attack worked exactly as intended, and Wurmser was force to pull all of his forces back east across the Mincio River near Valeggio. However, the French Army was too tired from the previous two days of fighting and therefore could not pursue Wurmer's retreating army. Serurier himself became so sick during the battle that he had to return to France for medical treatment.
With Wurmser now in full retreat northward back into the Alps, most of the Lombard Plain was now securly in French hands, all except of course Mantua. The French began another formal siege of Mantua upon driving Wurmser out of the Lombard Plain. In all the repulsion of Wurmser's force from the Lake Garda vicinity cost the French 6,000 killed and wounded and an additional 4,000 prisoners. The Austrians, however, suffered an astonishing 16,700 casualties in the same battle. Napoleon may have defeated Wurmser, but Wurmser was most definitely not defeated and had in many ways succeeded in his operation. Wurmer's main goal was to not let Mantua fall, as the fall of Mantua would spell the end of Austrian threat in Northern Italy, and in that aspect Wurmser had succeeded greatly. He forced Napoleon to lift the siege and relieved pressure, and allowed the garrison there to stockpile more food for later operations in the area.

Wurmser's Relief of Mantua


Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser

By late August things were going extraordinarily well for France. In Italy, Napoleon had forced Wurmser back and was besieging Mantua yet again, and on the Rhine the French offensives under Moreau and Canot finally opened, with considerable success in the opening stages. This, however, would be quite short-lived as Napoleon would be dealt a considerable defeat by Wurmser, which would ironically turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
By late August, Wurmser's force of 20,000 men was again ready to begin a new offensive down to attempt another relief of Mantua. This time, the main force was to use the River Brenta, which ran from Trent, where Wurmser's main force was currently located, to the Adriatic Sea. Fearing that he would be trapped between Bonaparte in Italy and Moreau, who was now driving eastward and could soon threaten Wurmser's northern flank, Wurmser calculated that he must make a daring move to relieve the force at Mantua or risk being completely sorrounded and cut off. Wurmser decided to leave General Davidovitch with 25,000 men to guard Trent and the Tyrol, while Wurmser moved his army effectively east, then south, and then finally southwest into Mantua, all the while using the Brenta River as he marched south.
Simultaneously, French forces were moving north along Lake Garda to attack Trent, now occupied only by Davidovitch's force. Vaubois and Massena defeated Davidovitch at Roveredo on 4 September, and entered Trent on the next day. When the French Army entered Trent, Napoleon learned of Wurmser's army moving south along the Brenta River southward toward Mantua. Napoleon ordered 10,000 troops to stay in Trent while the remaining 21,000 troops moved in pursuit of Wurmser, putting Napoleon and Wurmser's armies at about equal strength. This move was extremely bold on Napoleon's part, as the army would be almost entirely cut off from major supply routes. Napoleon's best hope was to march parallel to Wurmser's army south along the Brenta, and ideally force him to retreat eastward instead of trying to make a dash for Mantua.
The French marched parallel to Wurmser's force until 8 September, when Napoleon attacked the Austrian forces near Bassano. The French forces broke through Austrian lines, and a bold cavalry charge by Murat effectively split Wurmser's army into two, all the while taking 4,000 prisoners and causing Wurmser himself to be only left with 3,500 effectives. Only reinforcements from Meszaros would bring Wurmser's force back up to around 16,000, still not a high number when taking into account that Wurmser was trying to break through Napoleon's lines.
Oddly enough, Wurmser remained steadfast in his advance towards Mantua instead of retreating, and the French Army was forced to try to catch up to the now westward moving Austrian Army to try to block the road and prevent Wurmser from reaching Mantua. Wurmser reached Mantua and entered the fortress nearly unopposed on 12 September. On 15 September, Wurmser attempted to retake several sorrounding areas of Mantua, but as French forces had now converged on Mantua, Wurmser's attack failed and he retreated back into the fortress of Mantua.
Wurmser's second attempt to relieve Mantua was a success, in a way. While he had reached the fortress and bulked its' defenses with an additional 16,000 men, he had also again failed to gain any strategic victory, other than making Mantua more difficult to take by the French. In fact, he actually made a prolonged siege by the French more appealing and victory easier, as the Austrian defenses were now shorter on food due to the extra manpower trapped inside the fortress. As supplies dwindled over the next months, as many as 150 men were dying per day from malnutrition and disease. Austrian soldiers were reduced to eating horse meat, and of the 100 or so officers, nearly 60 were sick.
Although the battle was tactically a defeat for Napoleon, it turned out to actually be a strategic victory. Napoleon had now entraped Wurmser's army within Mantua, although a more appealing option would have been to have defeated it, but nonetheless Napoleon would now be afforded some time to strengthen his defenses and continue the siege of Mantua. Bad news reached Napoleon in mid September, however, when he learned that Moreau had retreated back across the Danube and Napoleon's hopes of linking up with Moreau's force were now dwindling. Also, with recent successes in the Rhine Theatre, Austria was likely to send yet another army in to drive back Napoleon from Northern Italy. With Wurmser now in Mantua, the siege of the fortress resumed for the third time.

Part V Arcola, Rivoli, and Victory

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Battle of Caldiero

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Battle of Arcola

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Battle of Rivoli

The Battle of Caldiero


Napoleon leading his men at the Battle of Arcola

As September progressed into early October, news from the Rhine Front only got worse. On 2 October, Moreau had been effectively pushed back across to the west bank of the Rhine. With the Rhine front now less straining, the Austrian government decided to send another army into Italy.
Napoleon's Army in October was not much better off than Moreau's men, as Napoleon only numbered around 40,000 soldiers, 10,000 of whom where completely committed to the siege of Mantua. Napoleon was still sorrounded, with 20,000 men inside Mantua and another Austrian army surely assembling somewhere in Northern Italy, Napoleon realized he had to, for the time being, remain on the defensive. During the lull in fighting, Napoleon tried to distribute his forces to guard all possible entry points into the Lombard Plain. He placed 10,000 men under Vaubois to guard the Lake Garda approaches, Massena was sent to Bassano, and Kilmaine (the replacement for Serurier) was in command of the forces at Mantua. Napoleon remained in a central position between the triangular shaped forces, so as to relieve whichever came under a direct threat.
While there was a lull in fighting throughout most of October, Napoleon had to deal with numerous political problems. Without going into much detail, several of these problems stemmed from the Pope, who was trying to raise an army of 30,000 men to attack Napoleon's forces. Almost all the of the Northern Italian states were conspiring with the Pope and when Napoleon attempted to unite much of Northern Italy into the North Italian Republic, he came under immense pressure and scrutiny, and so much hostility was stirred up that he was forced to abandon his plan.
All of these problems would become a sidenote, when Napoleon learned of a new Austrian Army under the command of d'Alvintzi (and partial command of Davidovitch) of some 45,000 men being raised and almost ready to take the field.
The Austrian plan was to take Bassano and Trent, so as to secure the northern flank. d'Alvintzi would attack with 28,000 men on a broader front while Davidovitch would drive to Trent with 18,000 men and throw the French forces into confusion. The offensive began on 1 November, and immediately threw French forces into disarray. Napoleon ordered Vaubois and Massena to fall back to his central position, as the line at Trent and Brenta Valley could no longer be held. Napoleon disgraced several regiments under Vaubois for their poor performance, as Napoleon felt a small force could have held the same position they failed to hold.
By 9 of November the situation was this: Davidovitch had driven French forces out of Trent, but had stopped before the Rivoli River, which was now reinforced by Augereau's troops, and d'Alvintzi was driving fast eastward towards Caldiero. d'Alvintzi decided to drive his main force towards Caldiero, meanwhile sending a smaller force of 4,000 men south to Arcola to protect his southern flank against an attempt to cut off his supply and communications lines. Napoleon reinforced Massena to a strength of 13,000 troops and ordered them to attack the main Austrian force at Caldiero.
The attack went poorly, and the French attack was soon repulsed at a total loss of around 2,000 French soldiers and two pieces of artillery. With this action, Napoleon had no choice but to pull back to Verona with his main force, and seek alternatives to fighting d'Alvintzi. Napoleon was now being beaten by two forces, one from the north under Davidovitch and one from the east under d'Alvintzi, and was being sandwiched in the middle of the two near Verona. Napoleon weighed lifting the siege at Mantua, but the though of around 20,000 Austrian forces at his rear being unchecked was too dangerous, and so he chose against that option.
Napoleon knew that he would probably not emerge victorious from his current predicament. While his speech to his soldiers was rousing as usual, his comments to his generals and staff were defeatist in the utmost. He began talking of his death, and wrote to the Directory complaining that he was abandoned in the depths of Italy fighting for his very survival. Napoleon had one last gamble on the table, and it was his only hope for keeping the Army of Italy intact and preventing France from losing what it had gained in the last year.
Napoleon calculated his best bet to be using Augereau and Massena's combined force of 18,000 against the vastly numerically superior Austrian force under d'Alvintzi of 23,000 and driving him from the Caldiero, Villanova, and Arcola area. No forces could be drawn away from Vaubois in the north of Mantua in the South, so Napoleon planned to use the southward flowing Adige River to cover his advance of Augereau and Massena's forces to travel southeast and then cross south of Villanova, moving through Arcola and up the Alpone River to Villanova, hopefully driving d'Alvintzi into retreat.

The Battle of Arcola


Infamous painting of Napoleon leading his men across the bridge at
Arcola

In order to attack Villanova, which was by now far behind d'Alvintzi's main force, Napoleon needed to prevent the Austrians from entering Verona, or realizing the Napoleon had abandoned Verona before he himself could reach Villanova. Napoleon gambled that a force of 3,000 men would be enough to guard Verona, and he set the rest of his force off on 14 November, and by the next morning and pontoon bridge had already been built to cross the Adige River south of Villanova.
The battle of Arcola, a three day long battle, opened on 15 November when Augereau's troops crossed the bridge that morning. Messana crossed next, and successfully secured the French western (left) flank by seizing a series of small towns from Austrian hands. Augereau, on the other hand, met with less luck. Augereau's objective was the town of Arcola, which was just east of the Alpone River and guarded by some 4,000 Austrians sent there days earlier.
Augereau's men refused to cross the river and bridge in Arcola under the sweeping artillery fire that the Austrians had set up there. Any attempt to cross was a dangerous ordeal, and most men took cover behind barriers and dykes instead of attacking when told. Without Arcola, Napoleon knew that a drive on Villanova and d'Alvintzi's was impossible. With every hour that passed, d'Alvintzi had more time to react and send reinforcements to defend against the French attack. Napoleon himself led an attack on Arcola, but after an odd series of events was almost drowned and captured by Austrian forces in the dyke outside the town. By this point, any attack on Arcola was given up for the day, and the next day would be needed to attempt to capture the town. Although the first day had been a failure, d'Alvintzi was now in full retreat from Verona, and was heading away from the city and back towards Villanova.
During the night, Austrian forces had reoccupied Porcile on the left flank, and Arcola on the right; and so much of the previous days' work was for nothing. However, Massena quickly led another successful attack against Porcile and capture it, but Arcola would not be so easy. The battle near Arcola quickly turned into a slugfest between French and Austrian forces, with ground be occupied, lost, and reoccupied time and time again. The Austrians tried to drive Augereau's men away from Arcola, but after a seesaw battle, the French drove the Austrians back into the town. That night, Napoleon withdrew his forces to the east bank of the Adige River to prepare for any emergency action, and again the Austrians reoccupied all the ground they had lost on the second day.
The third day Napoleon realized he had gained a vast advantage the previous day. Napoleon's men had successfully driven a wedge between the Austrian forces, which were now in two unconnected wings. On the right, Arcola was still held by Austrian forces but another attack would likely break their will, especially against a numerically superior French force. On the left, General Provera was holding the line near Porcile again with a small force of 3,000, which General Hohenzollern was holding east of Villanova with another force of 3,000. Hohenzollern believe Napoleon to be just east of Villanova, and so these troops were placed there to defend, but in all reality it was a worthless position to hold. Similarly, only 3,000 Austrians were in Arcola, and 4,000 were south of Arcola to defend against a flanking maneuvre. All the while, d'Alvintzi was holding west of Villanova with 7,000 men. With the Austrians so spread out, Napoleon would easily be able to use Massena as a diversionary attack on the left near Porcile, while Augereau swung into Arcola, and 3,000 new troops arriving from Mantua (as it had been decided Wurmser was not going to make any move outside the fortress) would be brought up to flank Arcola from the east bank of the River, and a two pronged attack on Arcola would surely drive the Austrians back and a swinging manuevre on Villanova would force d'Alvintzi into retreat.
The attack opened with marginal success, but soon turned to near disaster when the pontoon bridge Augereau used to cross into Arcola collapsed. The bridge was soon repaired by engineers, but the time used hurt the French considerably. Meanwhile, Massena carried out a highly successful ambush that allowed part of his force to move into Arcola (Massena's force was split, part in the left flank and part in the right) and capture part of the town. After a clever diversion, the Austrian's low morale finally showed as a French attack caught them by surprise in the rear near Arcola, and the Austrian force finally gave way. Augereau's men linked up with Massena's, and together they began marching north. Sensing the he was being sorrounded, d'Alvintzi ordered a general retreat late in the day, and continued during the night. The next morning the French found nearly all of d'Alvintzi's men gone, far from the ideal strategy of cutting them off and trapping them, but a major victory nonetheless.
The Battle of Arcola, which lasted three entire days, cost the French some 3,500 dead and about 1,000 additional wounded. Meanwhile, the Austrians lost about 7,000 casualties in all. With the battle won, Napoleon quickly turned his eye to Davidovitch, who on 17 November finally launched his long delayed attack. With d'Alvintzi in full retreat, Napoleon swiftly rushed to Vaubois assistance and on 21 November, near Dolce, Davidovitch retreated back towards Trent. Upon hearing of this, d'Alvintzi gave up all hope of reaching Mantua for the time being, and withdrew his men to a safe distance.
The Battle of Arcola marked the third relief attempt by an Austrian army to get to Mantua. It showed the Austrian fascination with relieving Mantua and their belief that the relief would bring total victory in Northern Italy. However, victory was still not in the hands of Napoleon, as he had narrowly escaped total annihilation and d'Alvintzi was beaten but not yet defeated.

The Battle of Rivoli


Highly dramatized painting of Napoleon at Rivoli

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Detailed map of Rivoli

As November came to a close, peace negotiations opened and failed between the French and Austrians, and so it was apparent that the war would continue on into the next year. Meanwhile, Napoleon was busy preparing for the next attack by d'Alvintzi, whose army had been reinforced and was now up to around 45,000 men again. Napoleon dug field fortifications at La Corona, Rivoli, and along the Lower Adige in an attempt to block all possible entry routes (of the three feasible ones there were) that d'Alvintzi would take.
There was another lull in fighting in December, and Napoleon took the time to prepare an ambitious attack on the Pope. However, this all came to an abrupt end when fighting was reported by Augereau reported an attack on Legnano, just south of Villanova. Napoleon rushed back to his headquarters upon hearing of this, and he witnessed first hand that Massena was under attack in Verona. However, this led Napoleon to conclude that these were probably diversionary attacks, and that d'Alvintzi was probably stirring up an attack on another location. He wrote to Joubert telling him to write him immediatedly if a force of over 9,000 is spotted, as this would surely give him confirmation that the attacks on Augereau and Massena were diversionary attacks, and that the main force would come from the north and attack southward.
Confirmation came the later that day when Joubert reported he was pushed out of La Corona by a large force of Austrians, which indicated it had to be their main attacking force. Napoleon was now confident that the attack was coming from the north, from a force of 28,000 under d'Alvintzi's command, while 6,000 attacked Verona, and 9,000 attacked Legnano, mostly as diversions but also as hopeful breakthrough points to reach Mantua and therefore attack Napoleon from both the north and south.
Napoleon ordered Joubert to move all his men to the fortifications at Rivoli, which would give Napoleon huge advantages in terrain. The terrain of Rivoli was this: to the east was the river Adige, making any flanking attempt there risky and unlikely to succeed, a large ridgeline ran north of Rivoli, of which San Marco sat just behind and offered ideal ground for giving battle. Just east of the ridgeline was Monte Magnont, a steep a narros north-south running hill that prevented any force from flanking San Marco, except by a narrow path that existed between Monte Magnont and the Adige River. Just north of Rivoli was the Plateau of Rivoli, offereing good ground for giving battle should the French need to fall back from the ridge. South of Rivoli was Monte Piolo, a large hill that protected the rear of Rivoli. To the west of Rivoli was the Tasso River, a narrow but formidable river that would prevent any easy flanking by the Austrians.
On 14 January, Napoleon arrived at 2 in the morning, and began inspecting the positions with Joubert. Joubert's men were to hold the eastern part of the ridgeline (also known as the Trombalore Heights)including San Marco, and just south of San Marco at the Osteria Gorge. Massena was ordered to hold the western Trombalore Heights and keep the rest of his men in Rivoli as reserve to be drawn up as needed. These were the positions of the French forces on the morning of 14 January.
The battle broke at daylight as Joubert advanced with Massena to drive back three Austrian columns totaling around 12,000 men. Spots in the French line, which had previously been notorious for cowardice, began to break and Napoleon ordered up Massena's force from Rivoli for reinforcements. In a comical and lucky event, Massena himself accidentally rode up to Austrians troops, who attempted to take him prisoner. In as calm a fashion as imaginable, Massena simply turned his horse around and rode away while whistling, all the while being under fire from the Austrians. But Massena's reinforcements did not turn the tide of the battle, and as the morning wore on the situation only became worse.
The Austrians by late morning had set up batteries on the eastern bank of the Adige and were pounding the Heights. To make matters worse, the Austrians were advancing fast down the Osteria Gorge, and San Marco's flank was being put under extreme pressure.
By noon the Austrians had taken the Osteria Gorge, and since the frontal attack on the Heights had slowed, Napoleon repositioned Joubert's troops to meet the flanking threat. A lucky shot by French artillery exploded two Austrian ammunition wagons, which caused panic in the Austrians lines. The French infantry charged, and the Austrians were soon drive out of the Gorge and the troops were repositioned on the Heights.
Meanwhile, Lusignan led a flanking move against the French and attacked Rivoli from the rear. But as Massena's men were no longer tied up at the Gorge, Massena devoted his full effort to defending Rivoli from the south. Reinforcements from General Rey soon came from the south, and the two French forces under Rey and Massena trapped Lusignan's men in between them at Rivoli.
While things north of Rivoli quieted somewhat, to the south a new threat emerged. News reached Napoleon that Austrian general Provera was crossing the Adige to the south and heading for Mantua. Napoleon handed over command and took Massena's men south to meet the new threat, while Joubert was entrusted with finishing the battle in the north.
The next day, 15 November, Joubert pursued d'Alvintzi's men, still numbering around 20,000 up to La Corona. A well timed flanking move by Murat led to the capture of thousands of Austrians forces in the Osteria Gorge. Joubert effectively split up the Austrian force on 15 November, and by the end of the day the total Austrian losses for the two day battle was at 14,000 men killed and 11,000 prisoners. This effectively ended d'Alvintzi's army to a mere 13,000 man mob.
To the south the situation was still risky. Provera marched his men towards Mantua, ignoring repeated attacks from Augereau which cost Provera 2,000 men. Provera came within sight of Mantua on 15 November, but found his only place of entrance blocked by Serurier who held La Favorita and St. George's Fort. On 16 November, Wurmser launched a bold attack out of Mantua, but was held back by Serurier, while Napoleon and Massena came up on Provera's rear later in the day. Provera surrendered his men, realizing a relief of Mantua was by now a lost cause.
The Battle of Rivoli was the last attempt by the Austrians to relieve Mantua, and was the last great battle of Napoleon's first invasion of Italy. It effectively destroyed d'Alvintzi's army, left the force under Wurmser at Mantua completely cut off and walled in, and gave Napoleon a clear opening through which to attack deep into Austria. With little choice left, Wurmser surrendered Mantua on 2 February with little more than half of his original garrison still living. The battle of Rivoli sealed the fate on Mantua, and the fall of Mantua sealed the fate on the Italian Campaign. After Mantua, there was no doubt that Napoleon was the master of Northern Italy. With little threat from the Austrians, Napoleon once again attacked the Pope, winning a quick victory, and securing nearly 30 million francs for the Directory from the Pope. While the Italian Campaign had been won, the war had not, and Napoleon's job therefore was not yet finished.

Victory


Napoleon's entry into Venice

After the fall of Mantua, Napoleon could not yet hope to push on to Vienna, as he had little over 50,000 men under his command. But after securing 30 million francs from the Pope, the Directory sent him reinforcements so that his numbers totalled some 80,000 troops, and the Italian front was now considered the primary front in the war. Yet again, the Austrians had amassed another large army, of about 50,000, under the command of Archduke Charles to attack Napoleon and prevent him from driving into Austria. Napoleon split his force into two, a covering force under Joubert would hold the area around Tyrol, while Napoleon led 60,000 troops through Frioul and on to Vienna. The two advancing forces would be able to aid the other if one came under attack, but ideally the two would advance parallel to each other until they would link up and drive on Vienna.
The operation began in late February, with the first shots fired on 1 March. Napoleon and Joubert succeeded in engaging small detatchments of Charles' forces, and on numerous occasions took hundreds or thousands of Austrian prisoners. No major threat came to the French until they closed in on Vienna and communications and supply lines became overstretched. To solve this, Napoleon called for a five day long ceasefire on 7 April. On 13 April, Napoleon called for an succeeded in getting an extension of the ceasefire for five more days. On 16 April, Napoleon proposed that formal negotiations begin, and the Austrian nerve broke when they realized Moreau and Hoche were on the verge of crossing the Rhine again. Peace negotiations were established, and Napoleon, without the formal approval of the Directory, worked out a peace negotiation with Austria. This negotiation was modified slightly by the Treaty of Campo Formio, which was signed on 17 October 1797 and officially ended the war. But in all, most of the agreements that Napoleon suggested were adopted into the treaty. The treaty essentially recognized France's land in the Netherlands, land occupied near the Rhine, the Ionian Islands, and the Cisalpine Republic. It gave back some land to Austria, which was obvious even at the time would lead to another war in the near future. With the signing of the Treaty, Napoleon's campaign in Italy came to a very successful close. He had in twelve months defeated numerous armies, fought with little break, and marched across Northern Italy and pacified it in the process.

Conclusion


Napoleon during the 18 Brumaire coup d'etat. Some argue without the
Italian Campaign, such coup would have been inconceivable.

The Italian Campaign shaped Napoleon in every way possible, militarily, politically, and personally. It was his first major command, one that he took with very little prior experience of actual leadership other than theory, and he showed exceptional command skills and genius understanding of tactics and war. While it can be argued that Napoleon faced second rate commanders in Italy, it must be remembered that his army was on the brink of starvation, and resembled nothing of what one pictures an army to have looked like. He received little help from the Directory, and was on his own to face his enemies.
The campaign marked the end of the old style warfare, and gave birth to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic style of warfare. Napoleon's ideas on war prior to Italy had only been in theory, but in Italy he was able to put his theory to practice, and as an obvious result overcame his opponents despite serious challenges and setbacks.
The campaign was not just important in the rise of Napoleon's practise of war, but also his political future. The success of the campaign made Napoleon, ironically, an enemy of the Directory which he had defended and achieved victory for. Many within the Directory began to fear such a successful general, and it was their primary reasoning for sending Napoleon to Egypt. This strain in relations would eventually lead to Napoleon's successful coup d'etat against he Directory on 18 Brumaire in 1799 and the establishment of the Consulate.
In conclusion, the Invasion of Italy was Napoleon's baptism by fire. It was the first time he led an army, and he did so with passion, excellence, and most of support from his troops. Rather he realized it or not (which he almost certainly did not) at the time, Napoleon was changing the way warfare was waged when he invaded Italy.

NOTE: Most maps are from the History Department of the United States Military Academy at West Point, which can be found here

Napoleon's Invasion of Russia: The Invasion


Part 1 Pre-Invasion

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A simplified map of Europe in 1812, almost all states in Brown,
Green, or Purple supplied troops for the Grand Army


The Treaty of Tilsit



Napoleon and Alexander discuss the future of Europe after the Treaty of Tilsit

With the Treaties of Tilsit in 1807 between France, Prussia, and Russia following Napoleon's victory at Freidland, peace and cooperation between East and West seemed hopeful. With the signing of the Treaty, Russia withdrew her forces from Central Europe, and signed a military alliance with France. With the signing of the treaty, Russia was also required to declare war on Britain and adhere by the Continental System.
Ironically, although Tilsit was supposed to secure a relatively lasting peace between France and Russia, it would be Napoleon's undoing in the end. The Treaty did succeed in securing good relations between France and Russia, but these were short-lived. The treaty added insult to injury for the Russians to the point of uncooperation with France.
The most immediate insult of the treaty was Napoleon's action of establishing The Duchy of Warsaw, a state which was essentially a Polish puppet state, but with a name so as not to suggest the full re-establishment of Poland. Russia was distrustful of the new state for two reasons: Napoleon could now garrison troops along the immediate border with Russia, and Napoleon could re-establish Poland and use her against Russia.
France's new border with Russia led to suspicion and uncertainty on the Russian side not only militarily, but also politically. When the Duchy of Warsaw was established the Napoleonic Code was implemented there. Russia, whose population was about 95 percent serfs, feared the idea of social reforms implemented with the Code spreading from Poland into Russia. Russian leaders were also fearful that this would lead to an increase in peasant uprisings.
Another grievance of Tilsit, one which was much slower to be realized the full effect of, was the enforcement of the Continental System. The Continental System would wreak havoc on the Russian economy, who imported many basic supplies from nations like Britain because of a lack of industry.
The problems caused at Tilsit to Russia were not enough to make her even consider jumping back into war. They were, however, insulting enough to cause ill will that would eventually snowball into war between France and Russia five years after the signing of the Treaty.

Testing Tilsit


Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France

The first real test to the strength of the alliance created at Tilsit would come in 1809 when Austria declared war on France. While Napoleon was busy campaigning in Spain to combat the deteriorating situation there, Austria seized the opportunity to "liberate" Germany, as they believed Napoleon to be too bogged down in Spain to fully engage them in Germany.
Russia, who was militarily allied to France, was obligated to attack Austrian forced. Russia did send an army, but unenthusiastically and at as slow a pace as possible. In the end, Russia never engaged in an open battle with Austrian forces. Russia's reluctance to aid France showed its true colors towards Napoleon and foreshadowed the break to come.
After the failure of Austria to liberate Germany, and Prussia's refusal to fight, European liberals gave up on the hope of Austria or Prussia being able to save them from Napoleonic French rule. After the peace was signed, many liberals and anti-Napoleonic military leaders fled to Russia, hoping Tsar Alexander I to be their only last hope at destroying Napoleon's grip on Europe. It is important to note that many military leaders fled from Prussia and Germany into France and would later fight against France in 1812.
Following the war, Napoleon was looking for a way to cement the alliance between France and Russia, which he strongly believed could still be held. The answer came in marriage, Empress Josephine was no longer of childbearing age and Napoleon still did not have n heir to the throne. Although Napoleon did indeed love Josephine dearly, he claimed that divorce was in the interest of France, and therefore his interest.
In November of 1809, Napoleon instructed Caulaincourt to request Alexander's sister's hand in marriage. Alexander responded enthusiastically, but he did not give an answer. When asked again, Alexander said he required two weeks to ask for his mother's approval. After two weeks passed, he asked for another week, then ten days, and so on until in February of 1810, he told Napoleon his sister was too young for marriage.
Napoleon, irritated and suspicious that Alexander would never give his sister's hand in marriage, began talks with Austria and married Marie-Louise. When Alexander heard the news, he assumed that Napoleon had been in talks with Russia and Austria simultaneously. Marriage, which had the original intent of cementing France and Russia's relationship, only moved Napoleon and Alexander farther apart.
Also adding to distrust was Alexander's belief that he could make the Duchy of Warsaw into a state of his own. Alexander believed that Poland was willing to join Russia against France, and he sent agents to Poland to incite anti-Napoleonic and pro-Russian propaganda.

Continental Issues


Tsar Alexander I of Russia (Rein 1801-1825)

1810 saw a dramatic decline in relations between the two powers. While the issue of marriage was a moderate personal insult, the Continental System would cause major political discontent in 1810.
Sensing that Britain was near economic collapse, Napoleon decided to take a more aggressive approach to the Continental System to bring her to the table much sooner. This further hurt Russia economically, but to add insult to injury Napoleon began giving permission to smugglers to import goods from Britain into France, at which point the goods would be transported across Europe on land, including to Russia, and sold at inflated prices.
Alexander felt that these actions left him few choices but to abandon the Continental System, which he did on December 31, 1810. Alexander opened ports to American vessels and put a heavy tax on French goods. Napoleon responded by annexing the Hanseatic ports and the Duchy of Oldenburg (whose ruler was related to Alexander), and offered German lands as compensation. However, the damage was already done.

The Buildup of Forces


Barclay de Tolly, Russian Minister
of War at the time of Napoleon's
invasion

By 1811, Russia felt war was nearly inevitable; while France felt while it was plausible it was certainly avoidable. Alexander thought Napoleon was trying to instigate a war in which Russia would be the aggressor, so as to not turn any of his allies and client states against him. Alexander swore by a defensive war, unless his impossible dream of turning Poland to his side could work, in which case he felt Prussia would also join him and he would be in Germany without having fired a shot.
While hoping for the latter, Alexander was planning for the former. He ordered a front line of 106,500 troops to be garrisoned along the east bank of the Niemen, supported by 134,000 behind it and a force of 44,000 to the south all to be reinforced by an additional 80,000 men to be trained an sent to aid when their training completed.
However, the number of men and positions changed just prior to the invasion. Prior to the invasion estimates put Russian numbers anywhere from 356,000 to as high as 716,000 with about 180,000 to 251,000 men in the immediate front line. However, the actual fighting force was probably closer to the lower estimates in both cases. The position of the forces was as follows: Barclay de Tolly in the north concentrated around Vilna, the second army under Bagration South and somewhat East of Grodno in order to either prevent a flanking move by Napoleon or be used as a strike force, and a third smaller army under Tormasov south of the Pripet Marshes. This force was backed up by two reserve corps under Ertel and Zakomelsky totaling a number slightly less than 100,000 men.
Mikhail Barclay de Tolly was the Russian Minister of War and was in charge of the forces until Alexander unexplainably decided to take control of the forces in 1811 and set up his headquarters in Vilna. Alexander's presence could have brought cohesion and order to the situation and it would have been logical that he would have been the ultimate decider of the Russian strategy. However, Alexander was a poor military leader, and while he heard out all his commander's propositions, he never decided on a course of action and therefore left his commanders uncertain as to what to do when war broke out. Alexander's presence also impeded the order of the military, as balls and parties were frequent in Vilna and this let many commander neglect what the situation of their troops was. Alexander would eventually leave Vilna prior to the invasion but his presence nonetheless had an overall negative impact on the army.
While Alexander was preparing for a possible defensive war, it appeared to Napoleon, who was tracking troop movements, that Russia could be preparing for an offensive war. All this led to a more dangerous buildup of suspicion and troops increases.
It is important before moving on, to digress a bit and stress that France did not want war, and Russia felt it was being forced into war by France. Up to the point of the Grand Armies' invasion, Napoleon saw Russia as a necessary ally on his war against Britain and that peace was nearly impossible without an alliance with Russia. Napoleon's belief would play a major part in his overall strategy of the campaign and would be one of the reasons for his defeat.

Preparation of The Grand Army


Joachim Murat, in charge of four French cavalry
divisions totaling 40,000

By late 1811 war was inevitable, it would have taken the complete backdown by Napoleon or Alexander to stop the conflict from happening. Late that year, Napoleon undertook military preparations and somewhat reorganized the Grand Army for the conflict to come.
With the great scale of troops that would be needed, many raw recruits would be entering the ranks. To minimize the negative effect that this would have on the army, Napoleon added a fifth and sixth battalion to each existing regiment and shuffled veterans and recruits throughout all six battalions.
Napoleon paid attention to every detail of the Army, from bridging equipment to supply routes to calibre of weapons and even things as insignificant as the lettering on soldiers badges. He neglected, however, to pay attention to his soldiers outfitting pertaining to the climate and the bad condition of French weaponry, from poorly made muskets to uselessly small calibre artillery pieces.
Contrary to what most believe, Napoleon did have adequate supplies for his Army at the outset of the invasion. He had amassed fifty days rations for 400,000 men and 50,000 horses. The real problem with supplies would arrive after the Army had advanced some distance into Russia, for a number of reasons. It is important to note that Eastern Prussia and Poland, which were under the Continental System, had less food to supply to the Army due because they could no longer export food and therefore had not planted on many fields they had in previous years. This combined with a drought meant that the Grand Army would have to forage for more food, spreading the Army out more and more in search of supplies.
The size and makeup of the Grand Army was daunting to say the least. The theoretical paper strength of the Grand Army was 678,000 men and 157,878 horses, with soldiers from France, Prussia, Austria, Wurttemburg, Illyria, The Papal States, Spain, The Duchy of Warsaw, etc.
It is important to remember that the Army did not move as one force or singular blob, for that would cause inconceivable supply problems. The Army was spread out over a large distance and this would only increase as the war went on, as soldiers were left behind and skeleton forces for garrisoning, keeping supply lines protected, guarding communications, and so on.
While the theoretical strength of the Grand Army was 678,000, this was actually the number of men in Poland and Germany. Out of the original number, 590,687 in theoretical were to be a part of the actual invasion but it is generally accepted that only 450,000 was the strength when it invaded. Of the 450,000 it is likely that no more than three fourths and possibly as low as two thirds crossed the Niemen River into Russia. Disease, desertion, and unfit troops were all a cause of this, and it was difficult if not almost impossible for a soldier to catch up to his unit once he had falled behind a substantial length.
The size of the force had many problems, the greatest and most obvious being supplies (I will discuss this in greater depth when I get to the actual invasion, if I ever get there). Another problem, however, was the quality of troops that had to be recruited to fill the quota. Many soldiers were too young or too old, and in general unfit to march such great distances. Many soldiers recruited into he cavalry had never ridden a horse before and improper riding gave the horses sores that hampered their speed and eventually would kill them. As the invasion went on, Darwinism took effect and these soldiers were the first to die along the roadside.
Also important is the relatively small and poor quality of horses in the Grand Army. Horses in this time period cannot be underestimated as they carried supplies, artillery pieces, ammo, and served as the eyes and ears of the army through cavalry. Also, Napoleon organized all his cavalry into one force of 40,000 to be used for scouting, which while good for its purpose had the negative effect of leaving many armies with too few cavalry units to adequately charge on the battlefield. Indeed past the first few stages of the war, the cavalry would have served better if integrated back into their respective corps, instead of acting as their own corps.
The multinational makeup of the army (less than half the soldiers were French) would impede progress and cohesion. Language barriers were always an inconvenience to commanders on the battlefield and issuing orders was many times a slower process than need be because of language. But probably more important was the low sense of pride from some nations as a result of them fighting under another nation's flag. Oddly enough, this had the opposite effect on some soldiers. One Italian soldier described himself as feeling like a Roman Legionnaire, fighting side by side with a man of another nationality all under one single nation.
One factor that would almost never change during the course of the invasion was the soldiers' trust in Napoleon. Even during the retreat when soldiers were in the most desperate of situations which they knew were caused by Napoleon, they still looked to him for salvation and hoped if anyone, he would be able to lead them to victory. Even when tortured by Cossacks, few troops would speak ill of Napoleon and stories of soldiers cursing Napoleon were the exception, not the norm.
The massive size of Napoleon's army would greatly affect its ability to fight against the Russians, but it must be stressed again that the actual size of the fighting army was much less than the numbers usually given, and that the Army was spread out by corps over a large expanse of land, never traveling and never fighting all concentrated in one area.

Goals of the War


Louis-Nicolas Davout,
Commander of French 1st
Corps totaling some
70,000 men

The French and Russian goals and means of achieving their respective objects were both very confusing from the outset. Neither side really had a concrete way of achieving what they wanted.
Napoleon's goal in the war was not to conquer Russia, nor to dethrone Alexander and establish a puppet state, but was merely to return to the conditions after the Treaty of Tilsit between France and Russia.
To many this may seem like a poor goal, as it was obvious even to Napoleon that Tilsit had failed, no matter how much he had wished it hadn't. But, there was a great reason as to why Napoleon wished in securing a quick peace and defeating Britain. With the birth of Napoleon II on March 20, 1811, Napoleon began wishing to cement France's security in the near future so as not to have his son inherit any major was or threats when he took the throne. Napoleon also faced the problem of staying away from France for too long, as the longer he was gone, the greater the risk was of him being overthrown. In fact a failed Coup did take place while Napoleon was gone. Spending years in Russia to conquer it was not in Napoleon's interest, and overthrowing Alexander could have led to unrest which he would have to put down. The best option to Napoleon then, was to force Alexander into peace and afterwards defeat Britain.
However, achieving this goal was to prove more difficult than expected. Napoleon had assumed that when he invaded Russia would not dare retreat too far and abandon large amounts of Russian soil, and would therefore give battle to the French. Once the Russians were promptly defeated, he believed Alexander would sue for peace and negotiations could then begin. While with most nations this strategy may have worked, it was to be a different story against Russia.
Alexander and the Russian generals were much more conflicted as to what they wanted to accomplish in the war than Napoleon was. There were essentially two basic plans, either to only defend Russian soil and make Napoleon appear as an aggressor, or to invade into Poland and Germany at the outbreak of war and be seen as a liberator. It cannot be stressed enough that of the proposed Russian strategies at this point, none involved Russia retreating back and wearing down Napoleon's army through scorched earth tactics. The closest to this was a strategy that Barclay de Tolly had proposed in 1807, in which the Russian army would reatreat to a pre-determined defensible location until French forces were cut off from supplies and communication, at which time the Russians would give battle and drive the French back. No strategy banked on the Russian winter, and any strategy that involved retreating was only to be used after all of Russia's armies had been first defeated and was a last resort. This confusion as to the Russian strategy would leave commanders clueless as to what to do when the Grandy Army crossed the Niemen, and commander had no choice but to retreat.

Part II Niemen to Vitebsk

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A rather poor map showing the roads, or lack thereof, in Western Russia.

The Niemen


French forces crossing the Niemen.
Three pontoon bridges can be
seen going across the river.


All the planning and preparations finally led up to the French invasion across the Niemen River into Russia on the 24 of June. Napoleon spent most of the 23 of June in his tent in a somber and quiet mood. Napoleon also dispatched officer's to read his proclamation to his soldiers, it read:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Soldiers! The Second Polish War has begun. The first ended at Friedland and Tilsit: at Tilsit Russia swore an eternal alliance with France and war on England. She is now violating her promises. She refuses to give an explanation of her strange behavior unless the French eagles retire beyond the Rhine, thereby leaving our allies at her mercy. Russia is tempting fate! And she will meet her destiny. Does she think that we have become degenerate? Are we no longer the soldiers of Austerlitz? She has forced us into a choice between dishonour and war. There can be no question as to which we choose, so let us advance! Let us cross the Niemen! Let us take the war onto her territory. The Second Polish War will be glorious for French arms, as was the first; but the peace that we will conclude will be a lasting one, and will put an end to that arrogant influence which Russia has been exerting on the affairs of Europe over the past fifty years.

The soldiers, already anxious for battle, were overjoyed by this speech. Even officers who hated Napoleon stated they could not help but feel a strong sense of pride in what they were about to do.
At six o'clock that evening, Napoleon mounted his horse and reconnoitered the riverbank until the first crossings were made at ten o'clock. Even though this action took place on the 23, the 24 is still held as the day Napoleon's actual invasion began. At that time three bridging companies crossed the river but were soon spotted by Russian hussars.
One Russian hussar officer shouted in French asking who they were, to which a company officer shouted back that they were French. The Russians responded by shouting and asking what they were doing here, to which a French officer responded "F--k, we'll show you", at which time they opened fire. Rather the story was fabricated or not, the French crossing was known about sometime before daybreak due to shots being fired the previous night on the far bank of the Niemen by bridging companies.
Three pontoon bridges were put in place and by daybreak the Grand Army was successfully crossing with no resistance. The soldiers treated the occasion as a grand parade, and wore their full dress uniforms. by the end of the day, enough of the Grand Army had crossed the Niemen so as they were safe from a Russian counterattack. However, the Russians had no intention of attacking at this point

The Russian Panic


A painting of the rearguard of the Russian army retreating

While Napoleon and his men were marching into Russia and taking residence on their soil, Alexander was busy attending a ball in Vilna, a short distance away. Even after Alexander received news of the invasion and left, many officers stayed and danced the rest of the night.
Alexander held a hasty council of war the next day to address the situation. Bagration proposed an attack, but that was out of the question since Russian forces were extremely spread out. It was feared that Napoleon would be able to reach the Russian lines around Vilna before the Russian army could be amassed at a single location. This problem of forces being too spread out also threw out any option of organizing a defense of Vilna. There was no option left but to withdraw.
Barclay de Tolly shortly thereafter ordered a general retreat of his first army in the north, and sent a letter to Bagration in the south asking him to do likewise with the second army. Barclay also asked for cooperation between them, as the two had a quite public dislike of one another.
Alexander quickly made the decision to leave for Moscow and put Barclay in command. Alexander issued a proclamation to his soldiers and countrymen, but it had little effect on the confused population.
The Russian soldiers had assumed they had massed along the Niemen in order to push back and fight the French at the first sign of a crossing. The order to retreat confused and demoralized the soldiers, as they were abandoning Russian ground without putting up a fight. The Russian population also saw Alexander's leaving Vilna as a sign of cowardice and a loss of nerves. Alexander also offered peace at this point, now under the condition that Napoleon leave Russia, no longer demanding withdraw from Prussia and Poland.
The following morning, upon hearing reports of French cavalry reaching the outskirts of Vilna, Alexander made a hasty and less than noble exit from Vilna.

The French Enter Vilna


Dead horses lined the roadside after the storm upon entering
Vilna.

On the afternoon of June 28, Napoleon rode into Vilna with the bridges still burning from the hasty Russian retreat. Napoleon took up residence in the same palace that Alexander had occupied less than two days prior.
Although the campaign seemed to be going well, Napoleon was furious that he had not engaged the Russians, which was his primary goal after all. One minor battle had been won against the Russians in the north, but it was not enough to make a serious impact.
Upon reaching Vilna, the troops were already in bad condition. The roads from Kovno, where they crossed the Niemen, to Vilna were in terrible condition. Supply wagons were left behind and the marches on poorly made roads were tough on the new soldiers. To make matters worse, the area from Kovno to Vilna had little population, so the soldiers couldn't take much supplies and food from the locals. The weather was hot and humid, and veterans from Spain claimed it was better there.
When the soldiers reached Vilna, many could not find residence in the city and slept in the countryside outside (the French army did not use tents as standard equipment, so soldiers either found or built shelter, or braved the weather). A terrible freezing rainstorm rolled in that night and wreaked havoc on those who couldn't find shelter. Many artillery units reported a 25 percent loss of horses that night alone. In all, it is estimated that the storm could have killed as many as 40,000 men and horses in all. The psychological effect of seeing men dead and dying along the roadside were tremendous. Russian roads, which were almost all dirt, became nothing more than mudpools for days, and progress slowed tremendously.
Napoleon, who was in a furious state of anger at this point by the state of his army, did see one glimmer of hope. He had driven a wedge between Barclay in the north and Bagration in the south. However, due to slow communications caused by the bad weather and roads, his orders arrived too late and any opportunity was missed.

Jerome's Folly


Bagration, commander of the
Second Russian Army in the south

When Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother and commander of a combined force of 3 army corps, entered Grodno in the south, Bagration retreated his army north and east in an attempt to link up with Barclay in the north. Davout, commander of I Corps, in a clever move, marching his troops southeast of their position in Vilna, to Minsk and cut off Bagration's chance of linking up with Barclay.
With Davout in front of him in Minsk and Jerome behind him, Bagration was trapped, with the only direction to retreat being south. Bagration then foolishly decided rested his army for three days at Nieshviezh. Jerome could have used this opportunity to destroy Bagration's army, but his inability as a commander made him unable to get troops up to the front and Bagration slipped away to the south.
Although Napoleon openly vented his frustration on Jerome, it was in many ways his fault for appointing Jerome, who had no military experience, to such a high command in the first place. Also, Napoleon had given Davout complete control over operations in the south, but failed to inform Jerome of this, which caused Jerome to dismiss many orders Davout gave him. Rivalry and dislike between officers like this would continue to plague the Grand Army throughout the entire campaign.
It is important to note that the same occurred on the Russian side. Bagration did not retreat as quickly as he should have because it was Barclay who had ordered him to retreat.

Drissa


Russian infantry. Soldiers in Russia were unlike
those of France, as they were conscripted for a
period of 25 years, essentially making them
soldiers for life.


The Russian army retreated into Drissa on July 11, where Alexander was also currently at. Drissa was a pre-fortified position that the Russians intended to use as a fallback point. Alexander penned a proclamation to Russia saying that Drissa would produce a victory on the scale of Poltava. But the following day, Alexander and Barclay ordered a retreat from Drissa, after realizing Napoleon was surrounding the position.
Reality had set in on Alexander, and he left Drissa soon thereafter, saying to Barclay as he left, "Farewell, General, once more farewell, au revoir. I commend my army to your keeping. Do not forget that it is the only one I have".

Vitebsk


Napoleon addresses the Old Guard.

While Alexander's presence hurt the Russian army, Napoleon's absence from the front lines was devastating to the Grand Army. Until July 16, Napoleon remained in Vilna. Many historians believed he stayed so long because he was expecting Alexander to sue for peace, and believed if he delayed his departure, that his hope may come true. However, it did not.
When Napoleon heard of the Russian abandonment of Drissa, he attempted to outflank Barclay's army and prevent a linkup with Bagration. Napoleon moved too slow and Barclay slipped away, but did not link up with Bagration.
Murat, however, caught up to Barclays rearguard with his cavalry crops and began attacking. He could not break the Russian lines though, as he had no infantry or artillery support.
The next day, Barclay took up position outside Vitebsk and offered battle. Napoleon himself went to the front to reconnoiter, but most of his units were still arriving so he felt he could not commit to battle that day. Had Napoleon attacked, the Russians would have most likely been routed. However, Napoleon delayed the battle for a day.
The following morning, the Grand army, which consisted of the corps of Ney, Eugene, Murat's cavalry, and the Guard (not the entire Grand Army), prepared for battle. They dressed in their finest parade uniforms and polished the brass on their uniforms. Napoleon called the rising sun that morning the "sun of Austerlitz".
The Army formed up and prepared to give battle, and, the Russian army was not there. Barclay had slipped out in the middle of the night and the army escaped. Napoleon, who could have crushed the Russians the day before, now had no enemy.
Barclay had made the right decision in not giving battle. Had he fought, he probably would have lost, and along with it Russia's only major army (Bagration had a smaller army and could not had fought alone). Had he won, he would only have defeated a part of Napoleon's Grand Army, and would have sustained heavy casualties which could not be replaced. Napoleon had yet again lost another chance at destroying the Russian Army, which now lived to fight another day.

Part III Smolensk

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A map showing movements prior to the Battle of Smolensk.


Barclay and Bagration Meet


Bagration and Barclay meeting

On August 1, the Russian army trudged into Smolensk after retreating from Vitebsk earlier. The Russian army was confused about their retreat from Vitebsk, but that day Barclay issued a proclamation to the army that soon Bagration's army would join them in Smolensk, which lifted spirits. The next day, Bagration rode in to Barclay's camp, and the army soon followed after. Barclay then issued a proclamation stating that the Russian army was now ready to take on the French.
While the joining of the two armies greatly increased the size the Russians could field at one location, it did have a few downsides. Although Barclay outranked Bagration in the chain of command, many assumed that Bagration would take real control of the army due to his overwhelming personality. The two had also disliked each other at best. Although Bagration formally gave command to Barclay of his army, there was still tension between the two for control.
Even with a large force concentrated, Clausewitz pointed out after the war that the strength of the Russian army at this point was a strategic one rather than a tactical one. He argued that no matter what, a pitched battle would certainly have resulted in a loss for the Russians. Although the army knew the French were weakening with every day, and that retreat was still in all reality the best option, they were overwhelmed by their confidence in their new combined force. The army had heard reports of victories in the south and the north, and could not figure why a pitched battle would not be in their interest.

The Rudnia Offensive


Russian Infantry uniforms in 1812

Now that Bagration had finally joined Barclay, Bagration was pushing for a battle, and Barclay had no excuse for retreating, as fighting was universally wanted throughout the army and Russia.
Barclay, however, still knew that giving battle would be pointless and unnecessarily costly for the Russians, but was being overwhelmed with pressure to give battle. On 6 August he held a council of war arguing for further retreat, but was outnumbered by war hawks and it was decided that Russia should take the offensive.
On the following day, 7 August, three Russian columns were sent out to attack Murat's cavalry and Ney's corps, encamped near the Rudnia River. The offensive could have been successful, but it was carried out slowly and with little enthusiasm by Barclay, who had no real desire to fight. Although in the end this may have actually benefited Barclay, as a victory would have raised Russian morale and desire to fight, which would impede any attempts by Barclay to make the army retreat which he felt it would have to do anyways.
That night, Barclay received intelligence, later proven to be wrong, that a French force was moving north to the town of Poriechie to attack him. Barclay sent orders to Bagration to move his forces north, and Bagration followed reluctantly. However, the orders never reached Bagration's cavalry, so instead of moving north the next day, they moved westward as previously ordered.
The cavalry, who had moved westward, ran in to French forces under Murat and were quickly routed back. A little later that day, Barclay realized that the French had indeed not moved to Poriechie, and we has now dangerously exposed along is western flank. Bagration was given the order to move towards his previous position, which he followed.
Following the completion of this order, Bagration received his third order from Barclay, instructing him to carry out the original plan of attacking the French along the Rudnia River. Bagration was so angry by the confusion of the army that he ignored Barclay's order and marched in his current direction towards Smolensk. This disobedience by Bagration would, in the end, save the Russian army.

Napoleon's Smolensk Maneuver


Fighting outside Smolensk

When Napoleon heard of Barclay and Bagration's forced moving towards Poriechie, he formulated a plan to cross the Dnieper River west of Smolensk, and take the city from behind unoccupied. The plan was to cross at Rassasna, and the march east and north, striking Smolensk from behind in the south while being unoccupied. This plan would not only take the city without a fight, but would also successfully surround the Russian army and cut off any attempt at retreat they may have.
Napoleon's plan would have been a huge success and probably would have destroyed the Russian army had it not been for one thing: Bagration's insubordination. If Bagration had followed Barclay's orders and pushed westward with the offensive, Smolensk would have been left practically unguarded and the Russian army would have been cut off and surrounded.
With all of Barclay's shifting of forces, many units were lost and confused. Had Napoleon launched a frontal attack on the Russians, it probably would have destroyed all of Barclay's army, followed shortly thereafter by the destruction of Bagration's army, since the two were now split and Barclay's being in such bad order. However, this would have, in Napoleon's defense, been an unwise decision only knowing what he did. For all Napoleon knew, the Russian army was still unified and still marching north west out of Smolensk, and a frontal attack would have been costly had that been the situation. Napoleon's plan of outflanking Smolensk would have also worked perfectly.
On 14 August, Davout's, Murat's, and Ney's (including Prince Eugene's) corps all marched across the Dnieper River at Rassasna.
Upon reaching Korytnia, just south of Smolensk, Murat's cavalry met a small resistance by a Russian force place there by Bagration. The Russians retreated in good order, but lost about 2,000 men and 7 guns. However the main force was reinforced the next day and had their retreat to Smolensk covered, so as the prevent any furthur charges on the column by Murat's cavalry.
On the evening of 15 August, Napoleon's birthday, he was greeted in Korytnia with a 100 gun salute. But, it would not be a happy birthday for Napoleon. He entered Korytnia only to find that his billiant outflanking had failed. What was supposed to be an undefended city was now a occupied by Bagration's army, with Barclay's army moving to reinforce it.

The Worthless City


Dmitry Dokhturov

Smolensk was, to both sides, a completely worthless objective. To the Russians, it was a relatively small city of 12,600 citizens, with no economic or strategic importance. The only thing it did have was a renowned icon of the Virgin Mary, which the army would take with it for some time afterwards. The city was not worth defending, but Barclay, being under immense pressure to fight, felt that he must give a battle the army and Russia so badly wanted.
The French had even less to gain by taking the city. Smolensk was surrounded by a large brick wall 25 feet in height, and 15 feet in thickness, with a dry ditch in front, and 30 towers around the walls. Napoleon's aim was still to defeat the Russian army only, and taking Smolensk added difficulty to the task, as well as would cost the French unnecessary casualties, as city fights were always a costly task. Napoleon believed, however, that the Russians would come out in defense of their holy city and give open battle with the French. Carl von Clausewitz claims this to be Napoleon's greatest error of the entire campaign.
Napoleon did have options other than attacking Smolensk, though. Napoleon could have moved to the east and searched for another crossing across the Dnieper River, which probably would have forced the Russians out of the city. Napoleon did send scouting parties to look for crossings (as the main highway to Moscow was on the north side of the River, while Napoleon was on the south), but his real intention was to attack the Russians at Smolensk.

Barclay's Preparations

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A map of the Battle of Smolensk, I placed in spoilers due to its rather large size

For a while I must digress a minute to further clarify the situation at Smolensk in relation to its geography. Smolensk was essentially cut in half by the Dnieper River, one half on the north and one on the south. The main highway that led to Moscow was located along the northern bank of the Dnieper, running parallel to the river from there for some time. On each side of the Dnieper, south and north, the city slopes upwards from the River to their respective sides. This meant that artillery could fire downwards on a force crossing the bridges in the city. Napoleon, who was again located south of the city, could have moved east, crossed the River, and then cut off any Russian chance of retreat. Barclay's main force was located north of the Dnieper River, and Napoleon's south, while the Russians controlled all of Smolensk, north and south.
Although he knew it was a hopeless battle, Barclay did all he could to lessen the negative effect the outcome of the battle would most certainly yield. He send Bagration west, along the Moscow highway to cover any crossings across the Dnieper that Napoleon may use, so as to keep the Russian line of retreat open. He also placed only 30,000 men, under Dokhturov, on the southern half of the city. The rest of Barclay's forces and all of his artillery were placed along the northern half of Smolensk, with the artillery mostly being placed along the northern slope.

The Battle of Smolensk


French forces nearing the walls of Smolensk

On the morning of 17 August, French forces began an assault on the suburbs of the city, outside the walls. The Russians under Dokhturov counterattacked and effectively pushed back French forces. Napoleon saw this and hoped it was the prelude to a Russian assault outside the city.
Most of the morning consisted of French artillery firing upon Russian positions in the southern half of the city, and at noon there was a lull in the action. Napoleon was still waiting for the Russians to counterattack outside the city. But at around 2 o'clock, Napoleon finally realized that no Russian attack would occur, so he gave the order for an assault on the city itself.
Around 200 French guns of the Grand Army opened fire and three corps consisting of some 50,000 men charged the city in a grand spectacle. The Grand Army was attacking southern Smolensk from all three sides, and soldiers of the Grand Army along the southern slopes cheered on their comrades from above. Hand-to-hand bayonet fighting broke out between French and Russian forces in the suburbs, but the French eventually pushed back the Russian defenders. Every Russian attempt at a counterattack in the Smolensk suburbs failed, and the determined French force reached the city walls, only to find they had no ladders to scale the walls.
The soldiers bravely descended into the ditches surrounding the walls, and attempted the lift each other over the walls on the shoulder of another, but to no avail. French batteries which were firing on Russian positions occasionally fell short and hit the walls, killing French soldiers below with the fragments of the walls.
By the afternoon, shells thrown by French mortars had caught many of the wooden houses in Smolensk on fire. As the day dragged on, little progress was made by the forces of the Grand Army, as they were still mostly stuck at the walls of Smolensk. By nightfall, the city was mostly engulfed in fire from the shelling that day. Napoleon called the sight a grand spectacle and compared it to the eruption of Vesuvius, but Napoleon had nothing to be happy about.

The Abandoning of Smolensk


Smolensk near nightfall. The fires in the city can cleary be seen

By the end of the day, Napoleon had lost around 7,000 troops and Barclay around 11,000. Barclay had achieved nothing more than the satisfaction of saying he defended the city against Napoleon for a day. Realizing that he could not stay in the city much longer, as it would only be a day or two before Napoleon made a crossing upstream, Barclay gave the order to evacuate the city and fire to be set to any stores or shops that could supply the army with food. The icon of the Virgin Mary was removed from the city and taken with the army.
The order for the city to be abandoned caused an outcry from soldiers, officers, and civilians alike. Bennigsen, for example, stormed into Barclay's headquarters shouting every insult he could think of and demanding that he be placed under Bagration's army, as he no longer wished to serve under a German coward who was selling Russia.
Rather they liked it or not, the last of the Russian army left Smolensk two hours before dawn. On the way out of the city, Dokhturov's men set fire to the bridges in Smolensk. Shortly after dawn, the 2nd Polish Infantry managed to make a breach in the walls and entered the city, only to find the city ablaze and littered with corpses. They opened the main gate to the city, letting the French forces in, and the city was Napoleon's.

Fighting at Lubino - Valutina Gora


Jean-Andoche Junot

Barclay spent the remainder of the day in the suburbs north of Smolensk, using artillery to prevent French forces from rebuilding the burnt bridges, but he withdrew at nightfall. Since the Moscow road ran parallel to the river for several miles, Barclay had to march north, off the road, so as to avoid harassment from French guns along the other bank of the river. This slowed progress, and to make matters worse, Barclay split his force into two, which actually slowed progress further. After traveling north enough, Barclay headed east, parallel and north to the Moscow road, and then finally south to link back up with the road at Lubino.
Ney, in the mean time, repaired the bridge and started following the Moscow road in pursuit of Barclay. With progress so slow for Barclay, Ney actually caught up to Russian forces at Valutina Gora, and engaged with what was believed to be the Russian rearguard. Ney would have routed the Russian force there had it not been for the timely arrival of reinforcements from Barclay, who personally led him men.
While the Russians and French both threw more and more reinforcements into battle at Valutina Gora to try to knock the other back, Junot with a force of Westphalians was across the river on the southern bank watching the action unfold. Napoleon ordered him to cross behind Russian lines, and hit them from the back. Junot, who was usually fearless and obeyed commands, had been complaining of heat stroke and replied to Napoleon with incoherent correspondence. Murat, who was busy fighting the Russians on his own front, rode up to Junot and told him to attack the Russian flank, but he did not.
By now about 30,000 Russians and 50,000 French were engaged in what had been a small engagement not too long ago. The Russians only committed so many soldiers to battle because in reality they were so disorganized that any French breakthrough would have cut the army down the middle and spelled the end of Barclay and Bagration's forces.
The battle, which had by this point turned into a bloodbath, only ended because of nightfall, by which time about 9,000 French and 9,000 Russians lay dead on the field. The exhausted soldiers of the Grand Army lay down and slept next to their fallen comrades, as they were too tired to build camps.
The next day the Russians had retreated and the French remained at their current location. Napoleon rode to the front, and personally presented those soldiers who had shown their valour the previous two days with awards and medals.

Conclusion on Smolensk


Napoleon awarding a Polish soldier a medal after the Battle of Smolensk

Smolensk, and all the fighting around it, was again full of missed opportunities that so plagued the Grand Army during the entire campaign. What could have possibly been the end of the Russian army and the war, turned into a pointless battle. Had Napoleon found a crossing east of Smolensk, the Russian's would have had to meet him in open battle and would have almost undoubtedly been defeated. The Russian's, while showing their grit and determination in the defense of Smolensk, unnecessarily lost men that could not easily be replaced, all the while achieving absolutely nothing.
Napoleon had also destroyed a city that could have solved some, if not much, of his supply problems. Instead of gaining a city full of supplies, he found the city almost entirely abandoned and none of the much needed supplies were gained from the city.
Action at Lubino-Valutina Gora could have again broken the back of the Russian army, but Junot's reluctance to charge at the Russian flank made the battle a stalemate. Napoleon had twice, two days in a row, misjudged the Russian army and let it slip away when he had the opportunity to destroy it.
The effect on morale of the Grand Army was undoubtedly terrible. They had spent almost four days of fighting, two of which days were large scale battles, and saw little triumph of victory. They did not drive the Russians out of Smolensk, but rather entered it to find it abandoned, burnt, and littered with dead and dying bodies. All this and only a day later engaged in another battle with the Russians, in which the fighting only ended because of nightfall, and they had fought again only to see the Russians slip out in the middle of the night. No gallant victory was achieved, no proud moments, but death surrounded Smolensk and in vast numbers.

Part IV Buildup to Borodino

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Napoleon's Next Move


French forces outside Borodino

After his failure at Smolensk, Napoleon was completely lost as to what to do next. Napoleon failed to force the Russians into a decisive battle, and now did not know if he would have another chance. He had assumed that by this point in the campaign, Alexander would have sued for peace and given up.
Moscow, which was only 8 days march away from Smolensk, was Napoleon's most likely chance at forcing the Russians into battle. He believed there was no way that the Russians would let him take their most prized city without a full scale battle. While Napoleon realized that marching on Moscow was extraordinarily risky, he said "We are now committed too far to draw back, peace lies before us; we are only eight days' march from it; so close to the goal there can be no discussion. Let us march on Moscow!".
Napoleon's repeated policy of following the Russians deeper and deeper into Russian territory in order to get just one more battle and one more chance at peace would ultimately be what drove him so far into Moscow, not his desire to capture the country as a whole. So, now Moscow was Napoleon's last hope at victory and peace.

Barclay's New Position


Count Rostopchin, Governor of Moscow

As the Russians retreated from Smolensk, their tactics of retreating somewhat changed. As they were now being closely pursued by the French, and their rearguard was always threatened, they began to quicken their pace. Because of this, the Russians were forced to leave behind supply wagons and baggage trains.
The Russians responded by searching every nearby town along the road for food and supplies, and afterwards would burn the buildings, so as not to leave any supplies to the pursuing army. The pursuing French were awed by this, who had never really seen an army use such tactics, and felt it was a shameful way to fight.
Barclay was now himself looking for suitable ground on which the fight the forces of the Grand Army, however Bagration disapproved of most of the sites he picked. When Barclay urged for a stand at Usviate, Bagration criticized it as terrible ground. When Barclay argued for a stand near Dorogobuzh, Bagration objected a accused Barclay of treason and threatened to have him demoted, even though he was not really in a position to do so.
Finally, on the 26 August, Barclay and Bagration agreed to give battle outside Viazma, and the Russians soldiers began to dig in there. Viazma was only three to four days march from Moscow, and for the citizens of Moscow, the likelihood of a French occupation of the city became a reality.
This whole series of events came as a complete shock to the populace of Moscow, as the governor, Count Rostopchin, had turned every skirmish into a major Russian victory and the propaganda he issued made it seem as though the Russians were winning. For example, on the 17 August, Moscow was celebrating at the supposed Russian victory over the French at Smolensk, which was far from the truth. When the French army closed in on Moscow, a general panic ensued, with citizens burying or hiding their valuables. Churches were crowded with people praying for safety, and much of the wealthier began to evacuate the city as a precaution.
Rostopchin himself began evacuating the treasuries of the city and churches and valuables from the Kremlin. He claimed that before the French take the city, he would burn it to the ground and the French "will find only a heap of dust where the ancient capital of Russia stood".
Anyone who spoke French or even German instead of Russian in the city was attacked by angry mobs. Supposed French spies were rounded up and executed on the spot. Rostopchin's actions certainly didn't help settle the disorder just prior to the French occupation.

Михаи́л Илларио́нович Голени́щев-Куту́зов, Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov


Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov

Alexander, who had by this point taken up residence in his summer hour on the Kamenny Island, was being swarmed by letters from military commanders and politicians alike calling for the removal of Barclay from command. Alexander had stood by Barclay after his initial retreat, after Vitebsk, and still hoped to keep him in command after Smolensk. However, public opinion had already decided who it wanted to be commander: Kutuzov.
On 17 August, the same day as Smolensk, Alexander held a meeting with senior generals to discuss Barclay's replacement, and Kutuzov was promptly decided upon. However, Alexander was slow to act on this, and instead kept searching for another commander. He looked into appointing Bennigsen to the position, or even inviting Bernadotte of Sweden to command the army. Although he probably would have preferred Bennigsen above all, he was powerless to choose anyone besides Kutuzov. Alexander wrote to Barclay informing him of his replacement, but also told one of Barclay's aides, "The public wanted him, so I appointed him, but as far as I am concerned, I was my hands of it".
When Kutuzov arrived at the armies location at Tsarevo-Zaimishche, he was greeted by joyous shouts from the army. Many felt the old veteran of the Turkish wars would immediately send them into battle against the French, and defeat them. Barclay, who at first accepted his new position under Kutuzov, now asked Alexander to remove him of his command altogether.
While Kutuzov was indeed a decent leader and commander, he had many faults. The greatest of these was his distrust of officers below him. He would fail to inform generals of what orders he had given to others, and left many in the dark altogether on what the overall plans were. In battles, he would tell a commander of a lower rank one thing, and not inform his superior, and many times when the superior found out, they would simply move the men back where they were to begin with.
Another fault of his was the way he gave orders. Instead of using the proper chain of command, he would give orders to whoever happened to be there, so many times officers of lower ranks would issue orders to their men that were supposed to be ordered to an entire division. He also changed his mind often, and failed to inform those who needed to be told of the change in plans.
Although Kutuzov is many times portrayed as a Russian hero that was in many ways "all-Russian", he gave orders in impeccable French. He also had a taste for foreign wines and foods, and indeed was more of a western European in many aspects than a Russian.

The Battlefield



A map of Russian (white) and French (red) positions at Borodino on the morning of 7 September

While Barclay had chosen his place he wanted to fight the French, Kutuzov estimated that the Russians were too outnumbered and decided to fall back and wait for reinforcements. Barclay, on the orders of Kutuzov, found another ideal location to give battle, near the village of Borodino. On 3 September, Kutuzov gave his approval of the spot, and the building of earthworks began.
Kutuzov positioned his troops mostly along the Kolocha River, except south of Borodino, where they bent southward along the Kamionka and Semeonovka creeks. The general outlay of the forces was this, Bagration in the south defending the two creeks, with Tuchkov even further south with a small force guarding the Old Smolensk road to prevent any attempt at outflanking the position. Barclay was in the north guarding the Raevsky Redoubt and the New Smolensk Road, and extending extremely far north along the bank of the Kolocha River.
While the Raevsky Redoubt guarded the Russian center adequately, the south was rather exposed. Kutuzov ordered three V-shaped fleches to be built at the position, and had cannons placed on the earthworks. In addition to this, he built a pentagonal shaped redoubt at Shevardino, but this was very far ahead of the main Russian lines. The Shevardino Redoubt would puzzle Russian commanders, as they were not sure if it was merely an outpost for tracking French movements at the opening of the battle or the true Russian frontline. Kutuzov never informed the commanders of its role, and it is likely that Kutuzov did not know which he wished to use it for.
Kutuzov was expecting an attack along the New Smolensk Road, where the bulk of his forces and defenses were located. He felt that if they attacked here, victory would surely be within reach. However, he understood that if the French tried to outflank the Russian position along the Old Smolensk Road to the south, the Russian line could easily fold up and be defeated.
Seeing his exposed flank, Kutuzov sent a corps under Tuchkov to defend the road, and place them in wooded position to ambush any flanking force, but did not inform Barclay or Bennigsen. When the two complained the Kutuzov, he listened but did nothing, and did not tell them of Tuchkov's position along the road. This greatly worked against Kutuzov, as when Bennigsen was riding along the lines later that day, he found Tuchkov's corps, and repositioned it, bringing it out in the open along the road. As the 7 of September approached, the Russian lines were dug in deep, and strong in the center but exposed along the flank.

Napoleon's Plan


Fighting around the Shevardino Redoubt

Although they arrived on near Borodino on the 5 of September, the Grand Army was in no position to yet attack the lines. Napoleon spent the 6 September scouting the Russian defenses, and he noticed the extremely strong center position along the New Smolensk Road. On 5 September, two days before the battle, Napoleon ordered an attack on the Shevardino Redoubt, and small fighting took place around the redoubt. The Shevardino redoubt changed hands multiple times, but the Russians finally gave up trying to capture it by 11 o'clock at night. The Russians lost 5,000 men and 5 guns, but captured 8 French guns and killed some 4,000 French, which allowed Kutuzov to claim the fighting a victory for Russia.
The 6 September was spent scouting the field. It was on this day that Napoleon spotted the Russian weakness in their lines.
His orders were finally issued, Davout and Ney were to attack he fleches, while Poniatowski would hit the left wing in a sweeping flanking move, and then all three with support by Junot would roll up in a northward direction and destroy the Russian army, ideally pinning it against where the Kolocha and Moskva Rivers joined in the north.

Opposing Forces


French artillery on the eve of Borodino

It is always difficult to estimate the true number of soldiers engaged in a battle, and Borodino was no exception. On the French side, the generally accepted number of soldiers was about 134,000, but certainly this could easily be larger than the force was because officers would inflate their numbers during roll call. Most Russian historians put he French force at no more than 126,000. The French had around 584 artillery pieces, but many of these were of uselessly small calibre, and had much shorter range than their Russian counterparts. It is estimated that three fourths of the French guns were of such small calibre that they could only be used in close support of infantry attacks.
No matter what the correct estimate is, it is known that the French were outnumbered. Early accounts by Russian historians put the force at no more than 112,000, but this is almost certainly false. Modern estimates range from about 154,800 to 157,000. But, this force included 10,000 militia, who did not fight, and 30,000 cossacks. But on the flip side it is usually worth noting that the French numbers include the Imperial Guard, some 25,000 men, who saw no action and fired no shots during the course of the battle. The Russians had around 640 artillery pieces, but it is worth noting that 300 were kept in reserve and fired few shots.

The King of Rome


Napoleon II

The day before the battle, after Napoleon returned from his scouting of the Russian lines, he was presented with a gift from Paris. It was a portrait of his son, Napoleon II, holding a miniature orb and sceptre. Napoleon was extremely taken by the portrait, and placed it on a stool outside his tent for all to see. The soldiers, veterans in particular, were taken by the painting, and it certainly raised morale for those who saw it, and for Napoleon himself.
Napoleon, who had not been feeling well the previous days, wrote to his wife, "I am very tired. Bausset delivered the portrait of the king. It is a masterpiece. I thank you warmly for thinking of it. It is as beautiful as you are. I will write you in more detail tomorrow. I am tir. Adio, mio bene. Nap." The letter certainly gave an insight into Napoleon's state prior to and during the battle. He had been feeling ill, and would continue to feel bad the day of the battle.
Napoleon was feeling uncertain about the outcome of the following days battle, and said to a sentry at his tent, "Fortune is a fickle courtesan, I has always said so, and now I am beginning to experience it." The sentry explained to him that the army understood its position, and that it knew defeat certainly meant its destruction, for if the Russians did not kill them, their stagnation would starve them to death. Napoleon replied, "Poor army, it is much reduced, but what is left is good; and my Guard is intact."

Part V The Battle for Moscow (Borodino)

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Modern reenactors on location at Borodino


Pre-Battle


Russian artillery at the Raevsky Redoubt

Napoleon awoke the day of the battle, 7 September, at three o'clock in the morning, and rode to the Shevardino Redoubt, capture just in the latter part of the previous day, to inspect his forces. The forces of the Grand Army were busy moving into position, but cheered their Emperor as he rode by.
As the army prepared to fight, officers read to them the proclamation written the night before by Napoleon. It read:

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Soldiers! This is the battle that you have looked forward to so much! Now victory depends on you: we need it. It will give us abundance, good winter quarters and a prompt return to our motherland! Conduct yourselves as you did at

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Austerlitz, at Friedland, at Vitebsk, at Smolensk, and may the most distant generations cite your conduct on this day with pride; let it be said of you: "He was at that great battle under the walls of Moscow!"

Napoleon took up position on the western end of the Shevardino Redoubt, with his Imperial Guard, Young and Old, drawn up beside and behind him. Napoleon would remain in his chair in this position for the remainder of the battle.
Kutuzov took position in the village of Gorki, just east of Borodino along the New Smolensk Road. It was here, not along the Old Smolensk Road and the three fleches, that Kutuzov believed the main action would take place. Kutuzov, unlike Napoleon, could not view the battlefield from his position. He issued a statement to his men before the battle that read:

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Boys, today it will fall on you to defend your native land; you must serve faithfully and truly to the last drop of blood. I am counting on you. God will help us! Say your prayers!

The Opening Stages


Kutuzov at Borodino

At around six o'clock, hundreds of French and Russian guns began exchanging fire with one another. As the guns fired, the battlefield immediately began filling with smoke and dust. French guns pounded the Russian earthworks, wreaking havoc upon the men ad horses inside, and kicking up clouds of dirt as the round shot hit. Russian artillery responded by firing round and canister shot on the exposed French infantry, who were still waiting for their marching orders. The veterans of the Russian army had to remind their recruit comrades not to put their leg out to stop a slowly moving round shot, as the sheer weight and slow movement of the roundshot could rip a mans leg off. The canister shot, which was composed of hundreds of small metallic balls in the range of about a few centimeters (and which most resembles a shotgun of today, but out of a cannon), would prove disastrous to exposed French and Russian infantry.
After a half an hour of continuous bombardment, French troops were finally given their orders to advance upon the Russian lines. From Borodino, in the north, to Utitsa, in the south, soldiers of the Grand Army slowly made their way towards the Russian lines. The Battle of Borodino had finally at last begun.
In the north, Prince Eugene successfully crossed the Kolocha River and captured Borodino. As the soldiers charged forward trough the city, they became carried away and broke rank and order. The Russians mounted a swift counterattack and routed the disorderly troops. Prince Eugene pulled back to prepare for another assault.
In the south, Davout launched a frontal assault along the three fleches, although they were only aware that there were two at the time. Further south of Davout, Poniatowski began his flanking maneuver and attacked the village of Utitsa, quickly capturing the town.
The fighting between Davout's men and Bagration's along the fleches quickly devolved into hand-to-hand combat. In the end, the French drove the Russians out of the front two fleches, only to discover there was a third. As the French occupied the V shaped fleches, it exposed their front to Russian artillery fired, and trapped them along the front earthworks. The Russian guns opened a devastating barrage of canister shot, mowing down rows of trapped French soldiers. After a murderous artillery barrage, the Russians under General Neverovsky counterattacked the fleches and drove the French out. The French quickly formed up for another assault.
Only an hour after the battle began, Kutuzov received requests for reinforcements in the south, or else it would quickly collapse. Kutuzov ordered the number of troops in the south to be increased from 18,000 to some 30,000, supported by 300 pieces of artillery; as opposed to the French who had 40,000 men and 200 artillery in the same area.
The fleches repeatedly changed hands over the course of the morning through assaults and counterattacks, usually devolving into intense bayonet fighting. The sheer depth of the armies on each side prevented retreats when forces became outnumbered and lost momentum. This was uncommon because units tended to fall back rather than engage in hand-to-hand combat to the last man. The boxing match over the fleches continued until around 10 o'clock, when the French captured all three fleches.

Bagration is Dead?

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Bagration after being hit in the leg. He would later die of his wounds.

After the French captured all three fleches, Bagration began to rally his troops for a final counterattack to retake the fleches. Bagration successfully led his men and retook the fleches, but he was hit by a bullet in the leg right after the successful counterattack.
Bagration slipped off his horse and fell to the ground. He was carried away, against his wishes, by a group of soldiers to the back of the frontline. An aide-de-camp of Barclay's spotted Bagration and began speaking with him. Bagration said to him, "Tell the general that the fate of the army and its preservation is in his hands. So far all is going well, but let him look after my army, and may God help us all." Although a long time rival of Barclay, Bagration could not help but finally admit Barclay's competence as a commander and his own respect and trust he had in him.
Like a children's game of telephone, news spread of Bagration's wound, but it quickly turned into rumors of his death. As the already tired, and now leaderless, Russian soldiers heard the news, the French launched another assault on the fleches. This time, the assault pushed the Russians all the way back to the Semeonovka creek, near the rear of the Russian lines.
Ney and Murat, who had spearheaded the attack, now saw a gap in the Russian lines. Both commanders, realizing their own men to be too exhausted to carry out any additional attacks, sent dispatches to Napoleon requesting reinforcements, particularly the Guard, to drive through the Russian lines.
Napoleon, who was usually very proactive in battles and very much a part of them, did not respond. While Napoleon had a clear view of the battlefield at the beginning, smoke and dust not blocked his view of the events occurring, and he felt he could not trust the commanders' judgments. He dismissed the dispatches without saying a word, and continued to view the battlefield through his telescope.

The Leaderless Armies


Napoleon at Borodino

It is now that I will need to digress a bit to discuss the state of either armies’ leadership, or lack thereof, during the Battle of Borodino. On the French side, Napoleon was feeling ill the day of the battle and did not respond to any commanders requests, and hardly issued any new orders. In a sense, Napoleon's presence hindered the French, as the army was truly composed of about 6 commanders (Eugene, Ney, Davout, Murat, Junot, and Poniatowski) all acting as equals and independent of one another. Cooperation between the commanders did occur, but coordinating attacks in this manner was so time consuming that usually the opportunity had been missed before the plans were carried out.
The Russian army was also practically leaderless, but in a much different manner. Rather because of a combination of stress and being overwhelmed by the events, or because he though it the best strategy, Kutuzov issued almost not new orders and merely reacted to what lower commanders requested. When a commander requested reinforcements, Kutuzov would comply without so much as assessing the overall battlefield and where the actual best placement of the reinforcements was. Kutuzov would sometimes comply with a request and not inform the commander, so the commander was unsure if the troops had been moved and had to waste time sending a dispatch to find out. At one point, he turned to Karl von Clausewitz and said, "Karl, whatever you say I will do." Like the French, the Russian commanders were forced to work along and independent of one another.

Lucky Breaks


Uvarov's cavalry charge, his along with Platov's would trick Napoleon into halting
all advancements

Upon hearing of Bagration's wound, Kutuzov sent commanders to try to ease the situation at Semeonosvkoie. Luckily for Kutuzov, Bennigsen and Toll both took great initiative in steadying the troops and calming the panic among the Russian lines in the south.
Shortly after Bagration was wounded, in the north the French opened up a frontal assault on the Raevsky Redoubt, the center of the Russian defenses. The French occupied the Redoubt after a series of musket volleys and bayonet charges. It would turn out a lucky series of events would save the Russians from total collapse following the occupation of the Raevsky Redoubt.
Barclay had left the front lines to go to Gorki, but General Lowenstern took command of the situation and swept a battalion of men into battle against the French. General Yermolov, who happened to be riding by with reinforcements to head southward, saw the fighting and immediately sent him men into action. The French retreated into the Redoubt, but with no men covering their flanks could not hold for long.
It was around this time that General Platov made a request to Kutuzov, asking that his 5,500 cossacks and Uvarov's 2,500 regular cavalry that were sitting idle in he north, cross the Kolocha River north of any French positions and swing around behind their line. Kutuzov gave him the go, and about 8,000 cavalry supported by 36 artillery pieces crossed the Kolocha. As soon as the cavalry crossed the river, French infantry who had been posted there opened fire on the horsemen. The cossacks ran out of range, and the regular cavalry, who had taken the blunt of the volley, fled in disorder. The cavalry charge retreated, and seemingly waste, but it would have some very unexpected consequences in the outcome of the battle.
Some time between 11 and 12 o'clock the French attacks stopped to a standstill. The Raevsky Redoubt was back in Russian hands, Poniatowski had been halted in his flanking move, and while the fleches and Semeonovkoie had been taken, new Russian lines formed up behind the village. No French commander was in a position to attack with enough strength to break through decisively, and Ney, Murat, and Davout called for reinforcements. Napoleon was reluctant to send in his Guard, so he decided only to send in the Young Guard and the artillery of the Guard forward.
However, just as Napoleon was about to send his Young Guard into action, he spotted Platov's cavalry on his northern exposed flank, and halted all troop movements out of fear of being hit from the side. While the Russians were nearly beaten, their defenses almost all breached and their troops tired, Napoleon hesitated and gave them time to bring up fresh reinforcements to the front and patch up their defenses. For two whole hours the French infantry did not move, and Russian artillery harassed them the entire time, firing volleys of round shot at the soldiers. The artillery would wreak havoc upon the idle infantry, and in particular the cavalry, which had hardly moved the entire day. All the French soldiers could do was stand there and hope for the best.


The Final Assault


French cavalry charge against the Raevsky Redoubt



It was not until two hours later, at 2 o'clock, that the Grand Army began massing for a last assault on the Raevsky Redoubt. While nearly 200 French guns pounded the earthworks, Eugene drew up infantry divisions from other commanders. At around 3 o'clock the infantry began their climb up the hill towards the Raevsky Redoubt.
French cuirassiers were the first inside the Redoubt, and were met with a deadly volley of fire. The infantry arrived to find the cuirassiers mostly dismounted, fighting hand to hand with the Russian defenders. Brutal hand-to-hand combat broke out, as it did many times at Borodino, and the French broke through the frontline. French cavalry charged forward in pursuit of the fleeing Russians, only to find Barclay had formed a second line of squares, leaving the cavalry powerless to fight.
Barclay mounted a small cavalry counterattack, as Kutuzov had removed his cavalry without informing him, and pushed the French back to the Redoubt. Nonetheless, the Russian line was breaking, and all that was needed now was one final push by French reinforcements. But none would come. The men would fight for several hours near the Raevsky Redoubt, while in the south Poniatowski pushed the Russians back past Utitsa. The fierce fighting continued, until around 6 o'clock, when the Russians finally retreated, but in good order.


The Aftermath


Napoleon at Borodino


The battlefield at Borodino was littered with some 45,000 dead Russians and some 28,000 French. Supposedly around 35,478 horses were also buried the next year by Russian officials on the site. Some historians claim it was the greatest massacre in European history until the first day of the Somme in 1916 (although this claim is arguable). French artillery had fired somewhere around 70,000 rounds during the course of the day, and cavalry and infantry had fired 1,400,000 musket-shots. This averages at 100 cannon shots and 2,300 musket-shots per minute.
The Russian army was now completely useless, it had lost half of its fighting strength and could not give battle again before Moscow. The soldiers that had died were the Russian armies' best, as now mostly cossacks and militia remained, with some elements of the Russian infantry. However, while it was an ineffective fighting force, it still existed, and so on a strategic level the Battle of Borodino was a major loss for Napoleon.
In the Raevsky Redoubt, bodies were piled as high as 6 to 8 men on average. Since a disproportionately high number of men died from artillery, as compared to other battles, mangled bodies were a common sight on the battlefield. Below I will include several quotes from people at the battle, most need little explanation and while they are only slightly relevant I will put them in spoilers, so those who want to read them can and those who do not do not have to:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

One could see some (horses) which, horribly disemboweled, nevertheless kept standing, their heads hunt low, drenching the soil with their blood, or, hobbling painfully in search of some pasture, dragged beneath them shreds of harness, sagging intestines or a fractured member, or else, lying flat on their sides, lifted their heads from time to time to gaze on their gaping wounds.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They (the wounded) lay one on top of the other, swimming in pools of their own blood, moaning and cursing as they begged for death.

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Around the eagles one could see the remaining officers and non-commissioned officers along with a few soldiers, hardly enough to guard the flag. Their uniforms were torn by the ferocity of the struggle, blackened by powder and sullied with blood; and yet, in the midst of these tatters, of this misery, of this disaster, they maintained a proud look and even managed, at the sight of the Emperor, a few cheers; but they were rare and contrived, for in that army, which was capable of clear-sightedness as well as enthusiasm, each one was assessing the overall position

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The number of dead testified to the courage of the vanquished rather than to the scale of the victory

Kutuzov, realizing that he was in no position to fight again for some time, retreated not towards Moscow, but south towards Kaluga. Kutuzov made the decision that the Russian army was more valuable than the whole of Moscow, and so he abandoned the city and left it to the fate of the French. As Kutuzov retreated south, Napoleon was at the gates of Moscow, and victory seemed sure if he could capture and hold the city.

Part VI The Occupation of Moscow

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Road to Moscow


A painting of the Moscow fire started by the Russians

Napoleon was now faced with a two choices, to pursue what was left of Kutuzov's army and destroy it, venturing further into enemy territory with even less supplies than he already had, or to occupy Moscow, which was plentiful in supplies and loot for the soldiers to take. Napoleon chose the latter, feeling that once Moscow was taken, either Alexander would sue for peace and once an agreement was reached the Russians would supply Napoleon's army, or if need be he could sit out the winter in Moscow, and resume campaigning in the spring and march on St. Petersburg. Napoleon's choice of entering Moscow was probably the better of the two, but as fortune would have it, none of what he had hoped for in Moscow would be there.
As the Russian army retreated through Moscow, a general panic followed. Citizens began shouting insults at the cowardly soldiers, some threw supplies to them so the French could not have them, and there are even reports of civilians dragging wounded soldiers off wagons and hoping on so as to escape the city. The Governor of Moscow, Count Rostopchin, barely escaped being lynched by a mob of angry civilians, and he only did so by turning over to them a suspected French spy. One can only assume the mob began butchering him as Rostopchin left on his carriage.
Rostopchin, who was furious at the abandonment of the city, vowed to leave nothing for the French. He worked tirelessly making sure soldiers burnt down any food store or supply, and removed all of the hand pumps used for fighting fires. As most of the buildings were made of wood in Moscow, the fires quickly began to spread to other areas and districts of the city. This was extremely rare behavior and seen as dishonorable even by many Russians, as it was usually customary for all local government officials to remain in their posts and see to it that the city runs as smoothly as possible, even when occupied by a foreign nation.
As the Russian rearguard was nearing the middle of the city, still far from leaving, Murat's cavalry entered the city, and cut off a good portion of the army inside the city. Miloradovich, seeing that if they engaged the French they would be surrounded and killed, sent a dispatch to Murat telling him that if he did not engage, the Russians would hand over the city peacefully. Since Napoleon wanted the city as undamaged as possible, Murat accepted, and the French cavalry retreated, allowing the Russian army to continue its evacuation.
As French soldiers occupied Moscow, they assumed that the war was over, and supplies would be plentiful. Many radical Russians were even beginning to believe that peace was inevitable and that they were beaten. Many generals started talks of how to escape to Spain to join the English in fights against the French there. The next day, on the 14 September, French infantry moved into the city and began looking for supplies.

The Moscow Fire


Napoleon leaving Moscow due to the fire

On the day of the occupation, only about a third of the 200,000 population of Moscow remained in the city. This consisted of those with no means as to escape, or those who thought they could loot at free will when everyone else left the city. Many of these civilians accidentally added to the already spreading fire by starting fires of their own, as did many careless French soldiers.
By the night of 15 September, a large portion of the city was on fire, and the morning of the 16 September, the fire had spread dangerously close to the Kremlin, where Napoleon was staying, and he was forced to evacuate. The fire was spreading around the city, burning mostly the 6,500 some wooden houses in Moscow. As the fire spread, it engulfed buildings, trapping soldiers inside and killing them.
By the night of 16 September, the fire hit its peak. At night, it was possible easily read a book outside the city using only the firelight from the city, and heat could be felt in all parts of the city, even those far away from the fire. Napoleon described it as, "...the most grand, the most sublime, and the most terrific sight the world ever beheld!"
As the fire raged, the city turned into a free for all. Soldiers and civilians alike ran for shelter far from the fire, and others turned to mass looting. The fire broke down all discipline in the ranks, and most officers had fled the city anyway, so soldiers were free to do as they pleased. Some soldiers write in their personal journals that they were doing the Russians and everyone a favor by looting, as they did not wish to see such fine pieces of art or such expensive furs to go to waste.
Even generals could not help but loot. Prince Eugene, who remained in the city, stole artwork from the mansion he was staying in. He too, used the excuse of needing to save such fine and irreplaceable objects from destruction as his reason for looting. The streets became filled with anything that could make soldiers some money when they returned. This heavy baggage that they acquired would later have a deadly consequence on the army in the winter, but I will discuss more of that at an appropriate time.
Not all soldiers were having a good time looting during the fire, those closer to the fire were in imminent danger at all times. A hospital containing wounded Russian soldiers also caught of fire, and those strong enough were forced to throw themselves out of the windows and fall to their death. The more severely wounded who could not move, suffered some of the most unimaginable deaths. It is estimated 2,000 Russian soldiers died in the hospital due to the fire.
Civilians were beaten up and had loot stolen from them by soldiers, and then were forced to carry the soldiers loot around for them. Women were raped in the streets, and those with no loot were simply beaten up and many times killed because the soldiers were angry they had nothing to offer.
Finally, after days of inferno, on the 18 September the flames had burnt themselves out, and Napoleon and other officers re-entered the city. Order was restored in the city slowly but surely. About 70% of the city was burnt or destroyed, and little supplies remained. Napoleon was baffled at the sight, and could not understand why the Russians would do this to their own city. With Moscow burned to the ground, Alexander would now never surrender Russia to the French, and any delegation sent was promptly rejected.

Napoleon's Indecision


Napoleon instructing Lauriston to go to
St. Petersburg and get peace at all costs

Napoleon had never really meant to stay in Moscow, although sitting out the winter in Moscow had been an option, this was now completely out of the question, as most of the supplies that could have lasted the army the winter were lost in the fire. Taking Moscow was a hollow victory for Napoleon, it had achieved little and now Napoleon had no good options ahead of him. He could go after Kutuzov again, and risk winter setting in and the army running out of supplies, or he could retreat.
Contrary to what many believe, Napoleon did look in to retreat almost immediately upon re-entering the city. The only problem was, there was no place they could retreat to until Vilna that had the supplies to last the army the winter. Napoleon considered leaving a small garrison in Moscow, and attacking St. Petersburg, but the plan was shot down by most of the generals in Napoleon's staff. With no viable military option, Napoleon hoped for the best in negotiations.
What Napoleon failed to see was that since Moscow, any hope of Alexander requesting peace was gone. The blame for the fire fell back on Napoleon, but he did not grasp that. Moscow had pushed the war to a new height, and now there was no turning back on the Russian side. With each passing day, winter was also drawing nearer, and the Russian position was becoming stronger. Napoleon sent so many peace delegations and dispatches to St. Petersburg that it seemed he was desperate. Before giving Alexander enough time to respond, which he stopped doing anyways, Napoleon would send another dispatch or another delegate.

The Need for Retreat


Napoleon in Moscow

In all reality, the lack of supplies left in Moscow is a bit of an exaggeration. Napoleon did indeed probably have enough food and supplies left for his men in Moscow to make it through the winter (although a vast amount of men would have, indeed, died). The problem was with horses, there was not nearly enough food for the cavalry, who were already drastically reduced because of supply problems and in terrible condition. Without horses, Napoleon could not keep his communication open, nor could he track enemy movements, and horses used to carry artillery would be limited or ineffective giving him less artillery on the field, or use cavalry effectively on the battlefield in general.
Another pressing matter was Napoleon's flanks. While Napoleon's force was indeed the main force, two other forces had been launched at the time of the invasion, one in the far north near Lithuania, and one in the far south near the southern border of Poland. Both of these forces had been stopped far westward of Napoleon's position, and if one or both were beaten, Napoleon was threatened with the Russians encircling him or at the least cutting of his supply and communications line.
The most pressing however, had to be the weather. Russian winters are notoriously cold, and since campaigning in the winter in the Napoleonic Era was rare, winter clothes were not a standard issue in those days. Some generals did make outfit adjustments for their corps, and these would help tremendously, but most soldiers were still wearing the same uniform they had crossed the Niemen in, and these most certainly were in terrible condition to say the least.
Weather had already played an important and deadly role in the campaign. At Vilna, a storm had killed thousands of horses, and the heat caused thousands of soldiers to die. Just eight weeks in to the campaign, having fought only a few major battles, the army had been reduced in half (although not half had died, this estimate is figured from the strength Napoleon could muster at Borodino, the loss of life was certainly not half), most certainly this occurred mostly from weather and disease (and desertion, the Russian countryside was filled with rogue units of French or stragglers).
Napoleon was making the mistake that many make, and that was he felt that by waiting he was somehow keeping his options open. In all reality, Napoleon had only one option and that was to retreat. As October began, Napoleon was still discussing other options than retreat and valuable time was being wasted, and the Russian winter was getting closer and closer.

Napoleon's Invasion of Russia: The Retreat


Part VII Moscow to Viazma

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Decision


The opening manuevers outside Moscow. The map is off on scale, but it roughly gives a
decently vague outline of how the situation played out.

As September passed and October began, it became evident to almost everyone except Napoleon that Alexander would not make peace, at least not in 1812. While it may have been obvious to most, to Napoleon it seemed that if he stay in Moscow that Alexander may change his mind and decide to accept peace on French terms, but in all reality Moscow was a hollow victory and it sealed the fate on Alexander's decision to fight Napoleon no matter what the cost. It is worth noting that Napoleon did not at this time truly grasp the poor state his troops were already in. While he did know many thousands had died from starvation, heat stroke, exhaustion, disease, and weather, he did not know how widespread the suffering was. Napoleon held reviews and parades frequently, and at the reviews he only saw his troops in their best uniforms after they had eaten a good meal (commanders were willing to go out of their way and spend personal money if needed to make the soldiers look good before reviews).
While the army deteriorated, little was done. Some commanders, like Davout, ordered that soldiers be equipped with more weather appropriate clothing, and his efforts would undoubtedly save thousands of lives in the next two months. But, for the most part, soldiers of the Grand Army were still wearing the same uniforms they had when they crossed the Niemen. The cavalry was also wasting away every day the army spent in Moscow, as food for the horses was scarce, and little was being done to save these precious horses that were left.
Napoleon had, indeed, studied weather charts for Russia, which gave him the indication that it did not get very cold in Russia until early December, giving him no true sense of urgency to retreat in early October. Napoleon did not take into account a couple of factors, the first being that he studied average temperatures for daytime, not nighttime, when soldiers are most likely to freeze due to colder temperatures and the bodies natural slowing down when sleeping. He also did not take into account how quickly the weather could change in Russia, along with rain patterns, wind, wind-chill, etc. Also the weather in October was unusually warm that year, giving Napoleon the illusion that it would stay warmer longer, giving him more time to retreat and thus making the need to retreat sooner rather than later not all that important.
In the beginning of October, Napoleon saw the need to move out the wounded from Moscow, and on 5 October, the movable wounded were ordered to retreat from the city into friendly territory. However, it was not until the 10 October that these soldiers actually left the city. These fortunate soldiers, who left on 10 October, marched from Moscow to Paris in perfect weather conditions, without meeting any serious enemy resistance, and thus their casualty rate was as low as one could possibly hope for them to be. Even those wounded who were sent out as late as 16 October met only light resistance from enemy cossacks, but traveled in perfectly good weather conditions.
Even as he was sending back wounded, Napoleon saw little need to hasten retreating, until he received his wakeup call on the 12 and 13 October. On the 12 October, dispatches going from Moscow to Paris and vice versa were intercepted by the enemy, meaning that the Russians were now able to completely cut of Napoleon's only line of retreat and communications. On the 13 October, the army was shook when the first snowfall occurred, and Moscow was covered in a thing white sheet of snow.
Napoleon now saw the urgency of retreating, he immediately began preparations for retreat and said, "Let us make haste. We must be in winter quarters in twenty nine days time". Napoleon was by no means not capable of accomplishing this. Smolensk was only about a two week march away, and Vilna only another two weeks from there, both cities presumably having decent amounts of supplies. Minsk was also only ten days march from Smolensk in case the situation got dire enough.
Napoleon stockpiled ten days worth of rations for his soldiers, and the retreat was scheduled for 19 October, although this would later be put off until the 20 October. He kept open the option for returning to Moscow, and turned monasteries into fortresses and ordered horseless cavalry to be put as garrisons there. Instead of sending back the useless horseless cavalry, Napoleon kept them around, arming them with muskets, which they were neither trained how to use nor effective in battle as they were taught cavalry tactics and their nerves broke in the midst of infantry fighting.
Napoleon ordered his soldiers not to march back along the New Smolensk Road, which they had used to enter Moscow, since the forage that could be obtained had already been used up by the army when it entered. Instead, Napoleon broke his army up into three divisions, one under Mortier taking the Old Smolensk Road, one under Eugene heading southeastern in direction, and another under Ney and Davout (under the command of Napoleon) to head south towards Tarutino, where Kutuzov's army was stationed.
Kutuzov had entered Tarutino with only 40,000 men left over from Borodino, but now had a force around 88,000 with 662 artillery pieces plus an additional 28,000 cossacks. As Napoleon weakened every day, Kutuzov grew stronger, and he knew it. Although his force was now large enough to fight Napoleon, it was too inexperienced and it went against Kutuzov's plan of wearing down Napoleon as he retreated from Moscow. Kutuzov's main hope was to encircle Napoleon after he had been worn down enough, and only then would he commit his full force into battle and destroy Napoleon, as it is widely known that Kutuzov greatly feared engaging in battle with Napoleon during his retreat.
Despite his reluctance to engage, Kutuzov was under political pressure to attack Murat's force of 25,000, which was on it's own some distance south of Moscow. What could have been an easy operation and wiped out Murat, turned into a small skirmish after Kutuzov delayed the attack for a day, and then the next day failed to show up. The Russians routed the French, but only inflicted some 2,500 casualties.
As the soldiers left Moscow on 20 October, they took with them something which may well have been the cause of their future troubles: booty. It is estimated that about 8,000 men left their ranks to attend to personal baggage trains and carts which were filled with tonnes of treasure they had looted from Moscow. These carts would slow down the movement of the army, as they had to travel with the army or they would be attacked, and they wasted valuable space and horses. Also, soldiers were weighed down by their packs which were now filled with objects they wanted to take back to their countries to make a fortune with. Napoleon left Moscow with only about 95,000 soldiers capable of fighting, but had around 50,000 civilians traveling with them, that would also slow progress and waste up valuable food.

The Retreat


Napoleon's men begin leaving Moscow

Finally, the retreat began and the soldiers of the Grand Army left Moscow behind them, never to return. The soldiers spirits were high until a terrible rain came on the 22 October, causing progress to slow to a crawl. Napoleon who was marching south along the Old Kaluga Road towards Tarutino changed his mind on the 22 October, and turned and marched his soldiers west across open fields to the New Kaluga Road, where he linked up with Eugene. It seemed that Napoleon was considering an attack on Kutuzov, but changed his mind at the last minute and turned westward, in an attempt to avoid the army and leave it behind him. The French forces under Napoleon marched towards Maloyaroslavets, which was the crossroads that could send them on a westerly path back to Smolensk and Vilna.
The French arrived in the city just before the Russians, and Russian commanders begged Kutuzov to attack the French, and Kutuzov was slow to react as usual. Fighting broke out between the Russians and French at Maloyaroslavets, and an outnumbered French force (technically mostly consisting of Italians on the frontline) held their ground against the Russians. The battle ended when night fell, and by the end of the day Napoleon had some 65,000 men in the area, but that was all he could muster as opposed to the Russian force of 90,000 south of the town.
Napoleon decided not to engage the Russians the next day, even though he probably could have defeated them. Had he defeated them it would have been extremely costly and he would have had to leave the wounded from the battle behind as he retreated. Napoleon had three options at this point: Engage Kutuzov, defeat him and then retreat west towards Smolensk so as not to make the retreat seem like a defeat, take the road west through Maloyaroslavets since the Russians were now positioned south of the town but risk having the Russian army on his tail the entire march back to Smolensk, or to turn northward and take the Old Smolensk Road back to Smolensk and thus most likely ensuring safety but risking lack of food due to the farms by the road being depleted on the march in. Napoleon chose the third option, turning north and taking the Old Smolensk Road.

Re-entering Borodino


Russian cossacks.

Once the Russians learned that the French force near Maloyaroslavets was under Napoleon, they began retreating southward, while Napoleon retreated northward to the Old Smolensk Road. Napoleon met up with Mortier on the Old Smolensk Road and continued westward. Napoleon was in a dangerous situation though, he was only three days march from Moscow, but it had been ten days since he left the city. Such progress wasted valuable food that the army had stockpiled, and supplies were running dangerously short.
Shortly after the army linked up, it suffered a terrible blow to their morale as they marched across the battlefield at Borodino. The dead had never been moved or buried since there was no civil administration in place to take care of such tasks. Bodies were surprisingly well preserved due to nightly frosts. The soldiers were forced to march across the bodies of the tens of thousands of dead that they had left a month earlier. Wounded who had managed to find some food off the bodies of other soldiers were still lingering around the battlefield, and Napoleon ordered, against the wishes of doctors traveling with the army, for them to be taken along and put on wagons.
It was when the army was near Borodino that Napoleon received some grave news, that Smolensk or Vitebsk did not have adequate supplies to sustain the army through the winter, and that they would have to make it back to Vilna if they wished to survive the winter. Napoleon now knew that he must keep the army together until Vilna, but he thought that he himself must go back to Paris as soon as possible in order to prepare an army for the next campaigning season. He did not, however, want to leave the army now in its dire situation, and felt he must wait until in got closer to Vilna to do so.
As the French retreated down the road past Borodino, a new problem began to rise up. Cossacks, who had been a joke on the way to Moscow, were now taking a serious toll on the army. Since the French no longer had as much cavalry to combat the cossacks, they now freely rode by the army just out of muskets range and stalked them until an opportunity arose for them to safely attack a group of soldiers. The French became increasingly demoralized by these frequent attacks.
The lack of cavalry also meant that artillery could no longer be moved as effectively. Smaller guns which served little purpose were tossed to the side of the road, and wagons full of ammunition for artillery were emptied to make room for soldiers' loot. Many artillery crew were now forced to push their own guns, which slowed progress, especially when the roads became muddy, which they almost always were in the beginning stages of the retreat.

Viazma


Fighting at Viazma

As the French army passed through Gzhatsk, the weather was still favorable. Nightly frosts occurred, but nothing to seriously threaten the well being of the army. Napoleon was beginning to believe that the Russian winter would not be nearly as bad as claimed. The army was still held together quite well, but was marching on a single road westward, and was susceptible to attack.
On 2 November, such an attack finally occurred. Miloradovich tried to cut the road, and attacked Davout's corps. Although the attack caused a terrible psychological effect on the French troops, Miloradovich did not have enough infantry to effectively hold the road and split the army in half.
Two days later, on 4 November, Miloradovich had gathered a force of about 25,000 men, and made a second attempt to cut off Davout, this time not trying to cut the army in half but to catch the tail end of it and separate it from the rest of the army, making it easy to destroy. Miloradovich attacked Davout near the town of Viazma from the south, while Platov attacked Davout's rearguard in the back, and cossacks and irregulars hassled his flanks.
Upon hearing the exchanges of fire, Ney, Eugene, and Poniatowski all turned around to go to the aid of Davout. Ney covered the approaches to the town, while Eugene and Poniatowski both turned on the Russian flank. The Russians were beaten back, and the French even managed to capture a few Russian guns. Late in the afternoon, two fresh Russian divisions arrived, but the French managed to retreat through Viazma along the road, and Ney burned the bridges upon the last crossings. The battle could have completely cut off the army from Napoleon and his Guard (which was in the front of the line marching, and did not turn back towards Viazma) if Kutuzov had attacked the French western flank with his forces which sat the day out just south of Viazma. However, Kutuzov was extremely cautious and decided not to act, and therefore the Russian attack failed.
French losses at the Battle of Viazma amounted to about 6,000 dead and wounded, 2,000 taken prisoner. Russian casualties were no more than 2,000. Poniatowski had fallen off his horse during the battle and crushed his knee and shoulder, putting him out of action.

Winter!


The infamous painting showing Napoleon's army retreating in winter of 1812

The 3 November was to be the last day of good weather for most of the French army. On the 3 November, soldiers write in their diaries of picking flowers along the roadside, but the 4 November was to be a different story. On the 6 November, the rain turned to snow, and winter had set in. For the remainder of the retreat, the temperature would continue to drop well below freezing point.
Although the weather was not terribly cold in early November and was certainly not bad enough to be lethal to anyone with winter clothing, the French army had no such thing. Soldiers were not prepared with overcoats or caps to keep their heads warm. Those who had taken clothing or furs from Moscow began wearing them over their uniform, and it became more and more common to see full grown men in women's dresses marching with a gun in hand. Some soldiers wore entire bear furs, but this proved to be overkill and was unnecessary. The most sensible of soldiers found two or three layers of decent clothing and survived just fine. Soldiers who did wear too much often began sweating as they marched, and the sweat would freeze, causing the soldiers to actually be worse off than if he was wearing just his uniform.
Cavalry soldiers were extremely susceptible to freezing to death, as many would remain on their horses despite the cold. Those who walked side by side with their horses were more likely to survive, as the motion of walking kept their blood flowing and kept them warmer. Reports of cavalry freezing and becoming completely stuck to their horses were not uncommon.
As conditions worsened, cohesion in the army broke down. Soldiers began forming small units that would take care of each other, but would utterly reject any loners or stragglers seeking help. Those who could not find an immediate seat around a fire at night were forced to stand behind other soldiers and get as much warmth as possible.
Soldiers even began to throw away muskets as conditions worsened. The metal on the musket would often times stick to soldiers' bare hands and cause flesh to rip away. Soldiers used this as an excuse to throw out their muskets so as not to have to bear the load, but this mostly occurred near the end of the campaign in December.
Many smarter soldiers adapted to either sleeping in a constant state of napping for a short period and waking up, or did shifts with their comrades. Falling asleep too long in such weather made a person very susceptible to freezing to death, and sleeping in short intervals was for more beneficial than the unpleasant side effect of sleep deprivation.
As food became scarce, eating the dead horses became common, as was eating any other animal that could be found. Gunpowder was used to flavor the horse meat. If such luxuries could not be attained, then a common meal eaten by the soldiers consisted of melting snow over a campfire, mixing in flour or any other substance available, and adding gunpowder to add taste to the glue-like gruel. Soldiers would many times walk by cavalry soldiers, cut their horses leg and drain blood into their pans in order to either drink it on the spot or use it to add to their meal to attain some nutrition from it. Some reports say that soldiers could walk by a horse, rip or cut a portion of its body off, and the horses would be so numb and cold that it could not feel it, and the cold would freeze over the blood so quickly that the horse would go on walking and living as if nothing happened. Certainly the horse would die not long after due to freezing, however, but nonetheless it proves the extreme cold that the soldiers suffered through. For example, in just a two day window, 1,200 horses died in early November.
Soldiers ate food raw, which led to disease, diarrhea, indigestion, e coli, etc. Soldiers that died on the side of the road were not buried, as few soldiers wanted to risk the effort of burying a soldier and wasting energy and time. Wounded soldiers on the side of the road cried out to those marching on the road, but compassion was soon a lost trait to soldiers of the Grand Army, as their primary concern soon became only the survival of themselves. Many soldiers left the ranks and risked walking the countryside to find and steal food, as opposed to remaining with the army.
Conditions continued to worsen, but I will discuss the deteriorating situation of the later campaign at a more appropriate time, as this was only the beginning of the soldiers problems.

Part VIII Smolensk to Krasny

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Napoleon's men retreating in Russia. Note the odd, non-uniform clothing they are
wearing.

Napoleon Enters Smolensk


Polish Guard Lancers escorting Napoleon near
Smolensk

While the main army was held up at Viazma and was busy fighting, Napoleon ignored the fighting as merely commanders overreacting to cossack attacks. Napoleon continued onward down the road with his Imperial Guard to Smolensk (although he did consider giving battle after Viazma, but Ney talked him out of this action). Napoleon soon found himself marching through a blizzard on the road to Smolensk, and he realized his timing had been terribly wrong with the retreat. To make matters worse, it was at this time that Napoleon learned of a coup d'etat in France to overthrow him.
It was not until 9 November, with the ground turned to ice and the temperature hovering around 5 F(Fahrenheit, all temperatures used will be Fahrenheit), that Napoleon finally entered Smolensk. What he found there was not at all what he had been hoping for.
Napoleon had ordered, as early as the first days of October, for stockpiles of food to be amassed for the army when it arrived in Smolensk. Despite local authorities and French leaderships best efforts, this was truly an impossible task. There were already 15,000 wounded French soldiers left over from Valutina Gora and the Battle of Smolensk that needed to be fed daily. Also, as Napoleon had ordered troops up from Prussia France, the reserve food had to be used to feed these troops as they passed by. As the land had already been pillaged by the army on the advance, little was left over and locals were unwilling to sell goods, so many times force had to be used to acquire the food just to keep the wounded soldiers alive.
By this time Napoleon's army was already on the brink of collapse. It is estimated that Napoleon had lost around 60,000 men since leaving Moscow, and only about 40,000 were still organized with their original units, meaning the army was less cohesive and therefore much less effective at fighting.
Upon entering Smolensk, Napoleon issued an order to Prince Eugene to advance west to Vitebsk, not by road but by cutting through open country directly to the city. This would not have been a difficult task, had it not been for the weather. All was going well until Eugene's corps came across the Vop River, a small and easily fordable river by any means in normal conditions.
However, since the corps was not moving along any roads, there was no bridge for them to cross, and construction on a bridge was ordered by Eugene. Meanwhile, cossacks took the high ground along the river and set up cannons and began harassing the French troops below. A bridge was indeed built, but it soon collapse from the weight of the soldiers marching across. Hundreds of soldiers plunged into the water below, no doubt suffering from hypothermia when they go out of the river, and many dying before making it out of the water.
Since there was not enough time to build another bridge, and cossacks were getting bolder in their attacks on his men, Eugene ordered his men to ford the river, including his artillery. Men who crossed had water up to their chins, and artillery got stuck in mud along the steep banks of the river. Carts piled up as one cart plunged into the water, the one behind it would stop and be hit by the cart behind that, and so one, creating one big jam of horse and carts.
The men struggled the entire day to get the artillery across, but only twelve cannons could be dragged across, the others were destroyed on the other side of the river. As horses forded the river, they froze while walking, and the cavalry on top of them had to swim the rest of the way. Undoubtedly the most casualties were suffered by the infantry, who had to endure the night with freezing wet clothes and absolutely no shelter. In all about 2,500 men died, which was amazingly about one fourth of the forces Prince Eugene had left.

Smolensk


Marshall Michel Ney

Since the Guard was the first to enter Smolensk, they were naturally the first to try to find food and drink, which were handed out until supplies finally dried up. After the Guard entered the city, the gates to the walled city were shut, and only units marching under their colors with an officer were permitted to enter.
This unfairly discriminated against not only stragglers and those who had left their units, but also those whose units had simply died. Most cavalrymen who were left were a select few, and had no real unit with which they traveled, since the rest had died off some time earlier. These poor men, along with wounded and other infantrymen who were part of wiped out units, were forced to stay outside the city and spend nights out in the open fields.
As these soldiers were not permitted to enter through the main gate, many simply found other ways into the city. Once they were inside, all soldiers only thought of themselves and fights broke out around stores for food and liquor. Store owners were issued flour, but no ovens or baking bread it, so they simply poured the flour into water and boiled it, issuing food not much better than the soldiers had been eating on the march.
The Guard took control of the bazaar in the center of town, and did not allow anyone except those in the Imperial Guard in. This caused other soldiers to attack the Guard anytime they saw them in the city outside of the bazaar.
The army had began to enter the city on 9 November, and by 12 November, they still remained there despite these horrible conditions. The temperature had dropped to about -10 F, and most of the army was still camped outside with no shelter whatsoever in summer clothing.
Even loyalty to Napoleon was beginning to weaken. Napoleon thought that if he seemed well fed (which he most certainly was) and able to carry on with no problem, it would inspire the troops to do likewise. This was taken by most however to be a sign of Napoleon not caring for their suffering.
In all reality, the death of so many men could have been a benefit to Napoleon, as Caulaincourt pointed out. He said that instead of having a massive army of unfit soldiers, they were now left with the best of the best. There was more food for these resilient men, and they undoubtedly should be better fighters than those who had died, and the elite remained who would most likely not abandon or die off easily. Rather this belief was true or not is really a matter of personal opinion.

Krasnoi (Krasny)


Battle at Krasny

Finally on 14 November, Napoleon and the bulk of the army left Smolensk behind them. They marched out to a road filled with knee high snow that turned into sheets of ice as thousands of men marched on it. The French got word that the Russians had overtaken them and blocked the road ahead of them at Krasny. Unrelated but worth noting, Napoleon supposedly ordered his doctor to give him a dose of poison in a syringe, which he wore in a black sachet around his neck so that he could not be captured.
While Napoleon's Guard made it safely to Krasny, the Russians slipped in between his men and Prince Eugene's to block the road. On 15 November, Prince Eugene's men were the first to see the Russian force, under Miloradovich, blockading the road. The Russians asked him to surrender (as they could see how small and tattered his force was), but Eugene refused and force his small force up and opened his artillery on the Russian line.
The French under Eugene bravely held out against a much superior force of Russians until nightfall. Even most French soldiers agreed that they would have routed had night come an hour later. Realizing there was no way through the Russians, almost immediately after nightfall Eugene ordered his men to go around the road in a northerly direction. A scouting party convinced the Russian sentries that they were Russian and to leave and let them go through, and the Russians did so, meaning Eugene's move was completely unnoticed by the Russian force.
As Miloradovich formed up his troops to finish the French the next morning, Eugene's men safely slipped into Krasny behind enemy lines. Knowing that Davout and Ney were still cut off from Krasny by Miloradovich, Napoleon decided it would be in his interest to attack into Miloradovich's back to help them through, as Napoleon was worried Kutuzov would manouvre and cut of Napoleon as well.
On 16 November, Napoleon personally led his Guard out and turned backwards towards Smolensk to confront Miloradovich. Sensing the trap, Miloradovich moved south of the road and let Davout pass through, so he was not surrounded.
The order of the corps from west to east along the road was this: Napoleon, Eugene, Davout, Ney. Napoleon and Eugene had passed through safely on the 15 November, and the road was now open for Davout to link up with the bulk of the French force. But Davout had hurried forward to meet Napoleon and left Ney completely behind him. Napoleon was furious at Davout for this, but he could not wait for Ney or he would risk himself being surrounded.
Meanwhile, Miloradovich had set up another blockade west of Krasy at Ladi. He had also set up a line of troops parallel to the Old Smolensk Road and put the bulk of his artillery here, so as to harass the enemy forces. During all these actions, Kutuzov was sitting even further south of Krasny, afraid of committing troops against Napoleon himself.
Napoleon sent numerous infantry units and the Young Guard to attack the Russian artillery positions south of the road. These French infantrymen who attack the Russian positions suffered some of the worst casualty rates of the war. The Young Guard was almost completely wiped out covering the retreat. Napoleon, Eugene, and Davout managed to break through at Ladi, and broke free of the Russian forces. Ney was not so lucky; he was still lost somewhere along the road far back from Napoleon. The only thing that kept the Russians from completely annihilating Napoleon's army was Kutuzov's reluctance to commit more troops to block the road at Ladi, and to send more artillery to the positions south of the Old Smolensk Road.
The next day, Napoleon gave a speech to his Old Guard and what little remained of the Young Guard, pleading for them to not throw away their weapons as much of the army had, and to continue to fight for him. The Guard joyously showed their support for Napoleon. Other units were not so supportive. When General Gerard gave a speech to his men, one soldiers threw down his weapon and refused to fight. Gerard responded by threatening to shoot him, and when the soldiers refused again, Gerard stuck his pistol in the soldiers mouth and blew his brains away. It was only after this that the soldiers cheered for Gerard and Napoleon, saying they would fight to the death.

Where is Ney?



Count Miloradovich

On 18 November, Ney closed in near Krasny, and he had by now realized that Napoleon had abandoned him. Ney said, "That b------ has abandoned us; he sacrificed us in order to save himself; what can we do? What will become of us? Everything is f---ed!" Ney furiously settled down for the night just shy of the Russian positions near Krasny. He sent scouts to find a crossing north across the Dnieper river, so as to avoid the Russian forces. The scouts reported back that they had found a place, and Ney, in a clever move, lit fires to make it appear to the Russians that they were still positioned where they had stopped for the night, but really marched northwards and crossed the river.
Ney's men bravely crossed the frozen river, despite it cracking and making popping noises as they crawled across. As the wagons began crossing things got much worse. On the north side of the Dnieper River was a steep slope, which the wagons had to travel up once they had crossed. It had become iced over, and many wagons slipped back down onto the river, many times breaking the ice where it crashed. As more wagons piled on the ice, it eventually cracked and gave way. Hundreds of men fell into the water and froze to death. All of his artillery and some poor 300 men could not get across, and had to be left behind.
Miloradovich was absolutely furious the next morning when he learned he had missed a third opportunity of completely cutting off and destroying a French force. But nonetheless, Ney marched west, north of the Dnieper, and parallel to the road in order to meet up with Napoleon eventually. The Russians did not pursue Ney because they didn't know his exact location and crossing the Dnieper was an extremely risky venture. Finally on the 19 November, Ney marching southwards and found Prince Eugene and his men. Ney was back with the main body, and the French army was not together. A very dangerous situation had managed to have been avoided at Krasny, but only because of Kutuzov's reluctance, and the extreme sacrifice of thousands of French soldiers, which could not be replaced.

Part IX The Berezina River

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Battle of Berezina

The State of the Armies


Early crossings of the Berezina. Note the cavalry fording the River, this would
kill many of the horses that Napoleon picked up at Orsha.

While most of the suffering during the Russian campaign is indeed focused on the French, it is important to note that the Russian armies did also suffer terrible losses and survived through absolutely horrific conditions as well. While the French army melted, or froze, away so did the Russian army pursuing it. By the time of the Battle of Krasny, Kutuzov had lost some 30,000 men, and so was only left with an effective fighting force of about 26,500 under his direct command. The Russian army was much more split up than the French, and marched either through open fields, in an attempt to overtake the French army, or through the road that the Grand Army had previously just marched on.
The main army hardly, if ever, engaged the main French lines outside of major battles. For the most part, the two armies would leave each other alone, Kutuzov too scared to attack, and Napoleon too weak and the army too ineffective to risk battle. Most of the harassing of the Grand Army was left to the Russian cossacks, most of whom by this point rode around in the most expensive furs and were covered with gold objects that they had taken off French dead or captured.
The Russian cossacks treated the French prisoners terribly. Prisoners were usually stripped naked, their clothes taken by the cossacks to sell, and then forced to march and were given little or no food. Officers were treated fairly when Russian officers or foreigners were present, but were many times killed and their bodies stripped as soon as the person left. Local peasants were encouraged to come out and attack or harass French prisoners as they marched to their holding location. Most never made it that far, and died off along the marches.
Kutuzov still greatly feared fighting the 30,000 to 40,000 men that Napoleon had left, and it was also part of his grand strategy of wearing Napoleon down further before finally engaging him, preferably after he had been surrounded.
While the Russians had it bad, the French undoubtedly had it much worse, and 16 November made their situation harder and hopes of survival much slimmer. On 16 November, while fighting was taking place at Krasny, a 60,000 strong army under the command of Chichagov captured Minsk, a city that Napoleon had been hoping to retreat to as there was plenty of supplies stockpiled there. With Minsk now in enemy hands and Napoleon lacking the numbers to fight, Vilna was now the closest safehaven. To make matters worse, Minsk was west of Napoleon's current position, so now while Kutuzov, Platov, and Yermolov were approaching behind him, Chichagov was coming from the southwest. Wittgenstein, with 50,000 men, was also north of Napoleon's army, and Marshal Claude Victor and his corps was the only thing standing between Wittgenstein and Napoleon's northern flank.
The French army was slowly being pushed together and surrounded around the 21 November. Victor was being pushed southwards, Napoleon westward, and Oudinot and Dabrowski, both of whom were supposed to stop Chichagov were being pushed east towards Napoleon.
On 18 November, Napoleon sent a dispatch to Dabrowski telling him to capture and hold Borisov, a town along the Berezina River at which bridges could be used to safely cross. The army rested for two days at Orsha, and received rations if men were with their units. This action caused many men to join back up with their actual commanders, and would play a major role in the days to come. Along with the food supplies were a large number of horses and a pontoon bridge. Seeing as there was no possible need for the pontoon bridge if Borisov was held, Napoleon burnt the bridge.
The army safely made it to Dabrowski's position at Borisov. The sight of these properly dressed soldiers cheered the retreating men's spirits, but undoubtedly shocked the men under Dabrowski who had just arrived. This happiness was short lived, when Chichagov attacked and captured Borisov from the rear of the French column.

Battle of Berezina (25 November - 26 November)


A painting showing the carnage of crossing the bridges at the Berezina River

When news of the Russian capture of Borisov reached the upper command, a swift counterattack was made. Dabrowski launched an attack on Borisov before the Russians could even settle in, and they quickly took Borisov back, killing or capturing some 9,000 Russian soldiers, only about 1,000 escaped. But the retreating Russians had the sense to burn the only bridge across the Berezina River in Borisov. When news reached Napoleon that the bridge had been burned, he was furious about his decision to burn the pontoon bridge he had just received at Orsha.
While the temperature was indeed in the negative Fahrenheit in late November, the Berezina had been thawed a considerable amount just prior to the French arriving at the sight. The River was no longer a frozen passageway over which the army could safely cross, but was now an icy river not completely frozen over, making any attempt to walk over it impossible and extremely deadly.
The French army had just all converged upon Borisov, only to find their only hope of crossing the river safely completely gone now. A search for a new crossing soon began, and some of Oudinot's cavalry spotted a good area for crossing near Studzienka. Napoleon was at first reluctant and wanted to cross at Borisov and fight Chichagov, but was talked out of it by Oudinot, and soon the entire French army made for Studzienka on the night of 25 November.
With Wittgenstein, Platov, Yermolov, Miloradovich, and Kutuzov on his tail, Napoleon needed to cross quickly. He sent a feint to the south to trick Chichagov into sending his army south to look for a crossing, while indeed it was going north towards Studzienka. Chichagov bought it, and sent his army south. Even after cossacks reported seeing the entire French army moving north, Chichagov ignored this as the feint, and still firmly believed the Grand Army would cross south of Borisov.
Meanwhile, Wittgenstein, who was approaching from the northwest, was instructed to cross the Berezina and cut off any French attempt at crossing the river. But Wittgenstein ignored Kutuzov's orders, instead wanting to attack the French rear (Victor's Corps) and claim victory for himself.
The Berezina River was only about two meters deep and not considerably wide, meaning that making a bridge should not have been much of a problem. However, the banks of the River were steep and muddy, so the bridge had to be made much longer than the width of the River, as artillery could not get through the banks. Oudinot ordered sappers to work through the night building the bridge, and were spotted by Russians on the far bank (which was quite steep) and came under some fire.
The next morning (26 November), however, Chichagov ordered all Russian units to move south, and the Russians on the banks above left the French alone. Napoleon arrived on the scene just as the Russians had left, and was elated to find that his feint had worked, and the army may have a chance of survival in this otherwise impossible situation they found themselves in.
Polish cavalry were the first to cross, and they reached the west bank of the river and fought of all the remaining cossacks. French artillery was then set up on east side of the river to cover the crossings. The bridge was not completely, however, and pontoneers had to be sent in to neck high water to build the bridge, each paid 50 francs extra. Certainly it was their realization of the dire situation that actually drove them to jump into the icy waters. They worked in 15 minute shifts, but many, if not most, nonetheless died of hypothermia, being hit by floating ice, or slipping under the water and never returning to the surface.
The bridge was completed some time after noon on 26 November. It was a pitiful excuse for a bridge, but it was suitable given the conditions under which it was built. While Napoleon wished for the army to cross all at once, Oudinot wanted to cross immediately with his corps and set up a defensive position on the west bank of the river. Napoleon warned him against this, but did not tell Oudinot not to do so, and Napoleon watched as Oudinot led his men across the bridge. Oudinot's men set up a defensive position facing southwards to fight off Chichagov in case he realized his mistake and attacked. Once on the other side, Napoleon could no longer see Oudinot's men because of the snow, and it was unknown to him of their situation.
Meanwhile, a second bridge was being constructed just south of the first one. This one was to be much sturdier and used for baggage and artillery, but it was not yet completed. Three bridges had originally been planned to be built, but a shortage of supplies made them settle for two. By four o'clock, the second bridge was up and ready.
The Guard crossed the smaller bridge while Oudinot's artillery began crossing the newly constructed one shortly thereafter. The artillery bridge gave out four hours later and sank into the far bank, leaving tons of horses and artillery pieces stranded in the mud, and drowning many others. Work began on the bridge again, and it was opened three hours later, at eleven o'clock. But at two o'clock in the morning on 27 November, the bridge collapsed yet again, but this time in the middle, sending hundreds of men to their death in the river. The pontoneers began work yet again, and the bridge was opened four hours later yet again. Thousands of troops died from these collapsings of the bridges, and many died repairing them as well.

Battle of Berezina (27 November - 29 November)


The crossing at the Berezina

The 27 November was spent trying to get the army across the bridges, but the artillery bridge was becoming a death trap for many. Horses would get their legs stuck in between the logs (the builders didn't have enough resources to cover the bridge with any material, and the material it did was soon kicked off the bridge by those crossing) and quickly caused jams. Horses, artillery, wagons, and men were thrown into the river as shoving matches occurred to try to clear the bridge.
Only men with their units were permitted to cross, and civilians and wounded had to wait until later in the day. Many of these stragglers and those who could not make it across on the 27 November were slaughtered later by Russian forces as they had fallen behind the main body.
As night approached on the 27 November, the situation was this: Oudinot, Napoleon, Dabrowski, Davout, and Ney had made it across the Berezina to the west bank. Victor was still on the east bank covering the retreat, along with thousands of stragglers and civilians. The 4,000 men used as the feint attack had now been overrun in Borisov and were retreating northward under the cover of darkness that night.
Some time during the night, Chichagov had realized his mistake, and sent his men on a 50 kilometer forced march, one they had just previously made going south, looking for the army to attack the main French force on the west side of the Berezina. The Russians attacked Oudinot on the morning of 28 November. Oudinot personally led his men out to fight the Russians, and was hit in the leg by shell shrapnel, which was his twenty-second wound in his life. Napoleon placed Ney in command to hold out as long as possible to get as much of the remainder of the army across the river.
Ney, who could only muster some 14,000 exhausted troops at most, was up against Chichagov's force of 30,000 fresh, well supplied troops. The fighting that ensued was ferocious. The Russians fired their cannons above the heads of the French troops, hitting the tall trees around them and sending showers of wood splinters on them. Dabrowski was wounded by splinters of pine tree, and was replaced. But his replacement suffered the same fate, and he was wounded and another replacement was put into action. This replacement was also wounded, and another was put in place of him. Ney send forth numerous bold cavalry charges, which succeeded in driving back the Russians for periods of time and relieving the exhausted infantry.
Simultaneously, on the other side of the River, Victor was being attacked by the bulk of the Russian army. Victor held, but Wittgenstein occupied high ground with his artillery and spent the entire day raining artillery down upon the massive group of men waiting to cross the river. Panic broke out among the French on the east bank, and a mad rush started towards the bridge. Hundreds of men were trampled or run over by wagons. Many committed suicide by lunging into the Berezina, fearing being wounded. It was not until Victor led a successful counterattack that the shelling finally stopped, but the damage had been done and the panic did not completely calm down.
Wittgenstein mounted a second attack, and Victor sent nearly all the cavalry he had left at the Russians. The Russians routed but nearly all of Victor's cavalry was wiped out in the process. As night fell, Victor still held all the ground he had in the morning, and the army had been spared another day.
It was a bittersweet day for the French. On one hand, the army was intact and most of it was across the Berezina. On the other, thousands of men had died covering the crossing, and those wounded would undoubtedly have to be left behind.
Victor received orders to cross the bridge that night, but it was now jammed with overturned wagons and dead horses and men therefore many of the civilians and stragglers could not get across, so Victor decided to defy that order and cover as many people across the next day as he could.
Victor now remained with very few forces defending the bridges. He warned the stragglers that he would burn the bridges in the morning, but few took his warning and they stayed. Many were too apathetic to their fate and no longer had the will to go on, others wanted to sleep until morning, and many were waiting to be taken prisoner by the Russians.
In the morning, Victor ordered a fire be set to wagons near the bridge, but not the actual bridge itself yet be burned. This was a warning to those stragglers still able to cross the bridge, and a some came and finally crossed, but many either did not care or did not make it in time. Victor was told to burn the bridge at seven, and his men waited on the bridge for the order, but Victor could not stand to see so many stragglers be left to die, and he delayed for an hour and a half before finally giving the order.
The burning of the bridge was a gruesome sight, many hundreds of men were still on or near the bridge trying to cross. Those on the bridge were engulfed in flames, and jumped into the River to swim the remainder of the way, most not making it. Men ran through the flames to the other side and soldiers aided to put the fire out on them, but they were so badly burned that they had to be left behind.

The Aftermath


Claude Victor

The Russians were appalled when they finally arrived at the bridges on the afternoon of 29 November. There were thousands of soldiers dead and dying in the River. Many Russians spent the remainder of their day putting those who were slowly freezing to death out of their misery by shooting them in the head. Estimates of those left behind vary widely, but Chichagov reports that 9,000 stragglers were killed and 7,000 were taken prisoner, which is probably closest to the truth.
French losses in the battle were about 25,000, of which only about a third or a half were caused by battle related wounds. The remainder died of drowning, hypothermia, freezing to death, being trampled to death by men, being crushed to death by wagons, burning to death from the bridges, starvation due to lack of supplies, mercy killings by Russians, and suicide. Russians losses were around 15,000, almost all being battle related.
Berezina, despite its high cost of life, proved that Napoleon was still a magnificent leader capable of the most amazing feats. It saved the entire French army from total annihilation. The French army fought against a vastly superior numbered force of Russians, who were well fed and equipped, and whom surrounded the French, and managed to not give up any ground, and inflicted more casualties (battle related) upon the enemy than they suffered. Berezina would prove to be the last great feat of the Grand Army in the Russian campaign.

Part X The Demise of the Grand Army

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Chart showing the advance and retreat of the French army and the number of men present. It is difficult to read but this graph can be found on almost any website discussing the invasion of Russia.

Make for Vilna


Armand Augustin Louis de Caulaincourt. Although a
foreign minister (to Russia, he accompanied Napoleon
throughout the Russian campaign and rode with
Napoleon back to Paris.

During the Berezina, Napoleon's plan was still to defeat Chichagov and turn southeast towards Minsk and supply his army there. But seeing his army in its desperate state after crossing the Berezina, Napoleon quickly realized that the army had given its final fight, and now the only chance of safety lay in Vilna. He sent a dispatch to Hugues-Bernard Maret in Vilna telling him to prepare supplies for the army. In his letter he wrote:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It will take two weeks to bring them back to their colors, but where can we find two weeks? The cold and hunger have dissolved the army. We will soon be in Vilna, but can we make a stand there? Yes, if only we can survive the first eight days, but if we are attacked during that first week, it is doubtful whether we will be able to hold on there. Victuals, victuals, victuals! Without that there is no horror that this undisciplined mob will not visit upon the city. It may be that this army will only be able to rally itself behind the Niemen. In that case, it is possible that I may believe my presence to be necessary in Paris, for the sake of France, the Empire, and the army itself

Napoleon ordered that Maret evict all foreign diplomats from Vilna, so as they would not see the horrid condition that the army was presently in. The ramifications in Germany and other parts of Continental Europe would be disastrous if word of the armies fate got out, and rumors were already spreading, mostly out of St. Petersburg. If the support of Prussia, Austria, and many of the German states were lost, then Napoleon would be pushed back to France and have to refight many of the same enemies he had defeated in years prior.
If Napoleon was able to return to Vilna with an army that could fight in the future, the venture would not appear to be such a failure, as it was, and his allies would be more likely to stay with him and therefore against Russia in the next years campaigning season.
Therefore, Maret was instructed to boast the news of the victory at the Battle of Berezina. Maret sent thousands of Russian prisoners and captured guns on a parade through the major cities of Germany and Northern Europe until they reached Paris. This would all have little effect though once the true scale of Napoleon's defeat was learned later.
The new men from Oudinot and Victor were dying out in huge numbers, suffering the same Darwinism that the bulk of the army had undergone for months. These men soon were in as bad of conditions as the rest of the army which had been campaigning for months.
On 3 December, the army finally found some supplies at the town of Molodechno, and was fed and received mail from home. The next day they found more food, but could not stop to take advantage of all the food and eat it, as the Russians were close behind them. Carts were so scarce that soldiers had little to put the food in, so much was simply left behind. However, it was around this time that Kutuzov realized his army was in too poor of a state to fight the French, so he too slowed his army down and found supplies. With the Russians off the armies' tail, Napoleon now made the decision he had been delaying for so long.
On 5 December, Napoleon finally decided to leave for Paris, seeing as he was no longer fully needed to see out of the retreat of the army to Vilna, as they were so near. It was more important for Napoleon to return to France and raise more armies for the next year than to see out the retreat of what little he had left. Napoleon held a meeting with his marshals, at which he supposedly apologized for staying in Moscow too long. That night he boarded his carriage, and set off for Moscow.
The departure caused mixed reactions among the army. The officers and most junior officers understood why he left, but the average soldier was greatly discouraged to see their Emperor leave. This soon broke from their mind, as there were more important things to worry about.

The State of the Armies


Civilians and soldiers struggling to retreat

The 55,000 or so men who survived and crossed the Berezina mostly celebrated the day after their crossing, thinking that surely the worst was over and the Russians would not be able to pursue as they had before. Celebrations erupted as men found their old units and reunited, but these were very short-lived.
The next two days, 30 November - 1 December, saw a great temperature drop, to almost -22F. The soldiers who had fell in the river mostly froze to death while sleeping during those two nights, as many had clothes so layered that the bottom layers were still wet from the water.
Hundreds of wagons were left behind at the river, many of them carrying coats and other clothing that soldiers had been saving for later, but were now long lost. As the temperature dropped, soldiers without shoes quickly stole boots from the dead. Those who were not so lucky so as to find boots, simply suffered from losing toes or sometimes their entire foot or leg. It was not an uncommon sight to see men pulling off toes or other extremities.
Those soldiers who were lucky enough to have plentiful clothing or fur coats quickly became targets by others without proper clothing. If a soldier did not have weapon, they were usually killed or at the least attacked and left for dead by others.
Conditions were no better for the Russians, as most units had lost about two thirds of their effective fighting force, although some of these were deserters and not from deaths, as was the same with the French. Fighting over food and clothing soon turned to outright murder, looting occurred during the night, and pity on those dying was something long lost by almost all soldiers.
It is around this time and later that reports of cannibalism begin to appear. However, it does not appear that anyone was murdered for the purpose of being eaten, mostly because it was easy to find a dead body anyways. Soldiers report seeing dead men with strips cut out of them by other soldiers, in case they absolutely needed to resort to eating it later.
Through all this there are, as in most disastrous times in history, acts of extreme selflessness. Stories of soldiers giving up their last alcohol to those who needed amputations after Berezina are recorded, as are reports of men helping carry wounded men from Borodino all the way back to Vilna.
On 6 December another drop in the temperature occurred, this time reaching -36F. Men froze to death while walking, first appearing to be drunk they would swing from side to side, and then fall to the ground never to get back up.
At one point Chichagov's men caught up to the rear of the French line, and as the Russian's marched down the middle of the road, the French marched on each side of it. Neither side even attempted to fight, each side too tired, too frozen and ill fed, and their weapons hardly functioned if they even had a weapon at all.
Nonetheless, the first remnants of the Grand Army stumbled in to Vilna on 7 December.

Vilna


The French army upon the retreat into Vilna

Reinforcements arrived in Vilna on 6 December from Prussia, under General Loison. These men took up positions in Vilna when the weather reached its coldest, and, not learning from the previous mistakes of the Grand Army, had not acquired winter clothing. Loison lost at least half of his fresh division within one day, and other sources say his 10,000 strong force dwindled to 2,000 in the first night. By the time the army reached Vilna on 9 December, supposedly not a single soldier remained in his post, most dead and those who lived had deserted.
Men began arriving in Vilna on 7 December, but the bulk of the army arrived on 9 December. As the army poured into the city men began looting houses and kicking out citizens to take up residence. The city was fairly well prepared, with monasteries arranged for each corps to take up housing in, and artillery to be placed on the outskirts of main roadways so that any shells and powder could be dropped off there so as to make the artillery units as efficient as possible again.
The officer corps fell into shambles with the departure of Napoleon, and despite some officer's best efforts, cooperation was almost nonexistent. Many of the military and civil administration that were supposed to prepare Vilna had left once they learned Napoleon was heading back to Paris, so the city administrations were not running to their full potential. Murat tried calling a meeting with the top generals, but few showed up because they were too busy attending to their own comforts once inside the city.
As the army poured in the main road on 9 December, it became so jammed that men and horses were trampled to death in the streets of Vilna. Once inside the soldiers ignored notices that told them to go to their respective monastery based on their corps, and simply found the nearest houses or stored and looted them.
Men settled down for the night, finding alcohol and food and eating and drinking as much as possible. Many became so intoxicated they passed out in the streets, never to wake up. Those who were near starvation ate as much as they could, and in turn their stomachs went into overdrive and they ate themselves to death (a problem similar to many holocaust survivors). As the men settled down for the night, they assumed they would be safe inside the city and would wait out the winter there, but their fate was to be far different.

Leaving Vilna


Michel Ney with his men fighting to defend the bridge at Kovno

The next day, Murat decided that Vilna was indefensible and the army needed to retreat as soon as possible. But instead of sending out orders through the civil administration who could have posted the orders and informed the entire army of this action and when each corps should depart, Murat simply sent out an order to as many officers as he could to retreat immediately.
As the order went around, some ignored it wishing to stay in Vilna, others did not believe it, and those who wanted to go along with it simply weren't ready and organized enough to depart yet. Many soldiers went into a state of what can only be described as madness after being given only one night of comfort before being told to go out into the frozen wilderness and march more. Many soldiers would remain behind in Vilna.
A panic insued as soldiers tried to leave, many stealing horses and wagons to take supplies with (this would prove worthless very quickly however). Road jams popped up everywhere and more men were trampled to death as men rushed around the city, either leaving or looting.
Just outside Vilna, at the village of Ponary, the Kovno road leads up a long incline to the top of a hill. In most years, the local administration would put sand on the road to make it easy for wagons and horses and even people to walk up the snow covered hill. But the French had no even considered doing this. After the first initial lines of infantry marched up the snow covered hill, the snow became compacted and quickly turned to sheets of ice. Men and horses struggled for hours to make it up the hill, but most wagons were abandoned and horses with broken legs were killed (or eaten).
When a fresh artillery battery arrived they immediately headed to Murat and asked him what his orders were, Murat responded, "Major, we are f--ed! Get on your hose and run!"
Wagons carrying wounded men had to be left behind, and the wounded sat at the base of the hill and either were transported back to Vilna or in some cases they froze to death. Those who had kept their guns had a distinct advantage, as they used their bayonets as ice picks to crawl their way up. Some went around the hill, and got their wagons through that way, but most did not bother and just left their baggage.
A free for all erupted around a particular wagon, which was carrying Napoleon's personal loot from Moscow. It was abandoned at the base of the hill, and as soldiers recognized it they ripped it opened and looted thousands of gold and silver coins and jewelry. Some struck it rich and lived out the rest of their lives off Napoleon's and other's loot, but for most they could not get to it in time, as cossacks soon showed up and happily squandered most of the loot.
As the army continued its retreat towards Kovno, the temperature lingered around -35F. The army entered the city on 12 December, and as with Vilna most men went straight to the stores and ransacked them. Ney, who was still in the rearguard, found himself in a dangerous position when crossing the Niemen into Kovno, as he was almost entirely encircled. As men flooded across the bridge, the usual fights broke out and casualties occurred, but since the river was frozen over the crossing was relatively easy.
As they fought their way back retreating under fire, Ney personally went to the front lines and fought with his men. Once across, he fired a last shot, threw his musket into the river and retreated with his men. Ney arrived in Kovno the next day. As the Grand Army crossed the Niemen, it sealed its fate politically, and the Grand Army was dead.

The Beginning of the End


Napoleon after the abdication

As Napoleon rode back to Paris, he went over the campaign again and again with Caulaincourt. Napoleon realized his mistake and said he should have stopped at Vitebsk, or at least left Moscow two weeks earlier and crushed Kutuzov at Tarutino. Napoleon boasted at every stop in Warsaw that he would return the next spring with a force of 300,000. Little did he realized the army had crossed over the Niemen into the Duchy of Warsaw already, and the damage was done. With such an action, there was little hope of Napoleon being able to keep his position in Europe he had previously had. Certainly he would be forced to face much of his old enemies in another war.
Napoleon addressed a letter to Murat in Vilna saying he was looking forward to returning and was quite pleased with the situation, the same day that Kutuzov was entering the city. Alexander entered the city four days later, but was surprisingly quite displeased with the situation. Kutuzov had let the Grand Army get away, and Alexander stated that every victory, tactical or strategic, that had been under Kutuzov was because it was forced upon him. But, nevertheless, for Kutuzov the campaign was over. Pursuing across into Poland would have been politically risky and militarily disastrous. He needed time to rest his army until spring and bring up fresh reinforcements.
The Russians in Vilna behaved no better than the French, and even while Alexander was there looting, attacks, and murder were prevalent. As winter progressed conditions remained horrible for both armies.
As news of the French retreat across the Niemen spread through Prussia, a wave of hatred for the French swept the nation. A defection took place in the Prussian army, and realizing it was no longer safe in Kovno, Murat retreated the army in Konigsberg. In the south, Schwarzenberg retreated from Poland in Austria, realizing the dangerous political situation brewing in northern Europe. The French had now entirely left Poland and East Prussia by the end of January.

Conclusion


Napoleon on his deathbed in St. Helena

The extent of the loss of life in the Russian Campaign of 1812 was extensive to say the least, but hard to exactly figure. The Grand Army crossed the Niemen in June with 550,000 to 600,000 men, and this number operated east of the Niemen, although not always on the front line. Of that number, only about 120,000 men remained by December, with about 30,000 wounded having retreated before that, 100,000 or so prisoners taken by the Russians, of which only about 20,000 survived. Therefore it can be estimated that about 400,000 soldiers of the Grand Army died during the invasion of Russia, of which only about a fourth were of battle casualties.
Losses on the Russian side are equally as difficult to figure as on the French. It is assumed that around 400,000 soldiers and militia died during 1812, only about 110,000 of these from battle. The number of civilians killed is almost impossible to figure, but certainly is many thousands. In all, it is safe to say probably a million or so people died in the invasion of Russia.
For France, the losses were even worse than they seemed. Of the 120,000 men that left in December, 50,000 of these were Prussian or Austrian soldiers, who would soon form alliances against France. In all only about 35,000 truly French soldiers remained by the end of the campaign. This totaled with the 150,000 or so horses lost during the campaign from all over Europe and 1,000 or so cannons truly shows the devastation the campaign had on the French army.
The death of so many horses, which were short from years of warfare to begin with, would plague Napoleon in 1813, as he had almost no cavalry that year and would contribute to his losses, particularly at Leipzig.
Certainly while these numbers may be high one may be prone to say that they are not that high, but that is when compared to today's populations. In 1812, France had a population of no more than 30 million, and today the loss of French soldiers in the Grand Army would be comparable to around 800,000 men being lost. Certainly these numbers do not compare with WWI, but these are still staggering nonetheless.
The Russian campaign would ultimately lead to the demise of Napoleon. The political landscape at the beginning of 1813 was the most prone to change it had been since the French Revolution. Prussia and Austria both declared war on France in 1813, and Sweden joined in as well. Napoleon would fight brilliantly throughout 1813, outnumbered and outmatched, fighting with newer recruited soldiers against vastly superior armies with veteran troops. But the sheer weight of Europe was too much for Napoleon, and Napoleon was forced into exile on 6 April, 1814. On 15 March, 1815 he landed in France and reclaimed power, at which time nearly every nation in Europe declared war solely on Napoleon. Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and forced to remain the rest of his life at St Helena until his death on 5 May, 1821.
Any attempt to predict how history would have played out had Napoleon won against Russia is near impossible. Indeed, after the defeat of France, many authors theorized on the future of France if Napoleon had won, most ending in the world being brought under French rule in the most comical, and sometimes racist, of circumstances. Certainly Napoleon's power in Europe would have been cemented, but for how long would be the real question. Alexander would have remained in power, and with such a vast empire and the risk of nations revolting against French hegemony ever prevalent, Napoleon may not have been able to carry out his planned invasion of India or Egypt, and Britain probably could have carried on despite the Continental System. But speculation is up to anyone who has information on the campaign and an imagination, so I will not delve any deeper into this subject.
The Russian campaign was more or less a prelude to Napoleon's mind frame of 1813-1815, when indecision replaced the once extremely decisive Emperor Napoleon di Bounaparte. Many believe it was overconfidence, and past luck that made him extremely optimistic in his view on things, believing that events would turn in his favor simply because they always had in the past. While Napoleon had in the past, as he himself stated later on St. Helena, always played luck as a factor in his decision making, it seems that in Russia he was exclusively relying on it. Hoping that things would turn out the way he wanted them to, Napoleon set his beliefs in stone, that the Russians would sue for peace upon one major defeat. It was far too late by the time Napoleon realized his mistake, and it was truly his fault and his alone. Napoleon's ideas on what he wanted to achieve from the campaign were up in the air, his way of accomplishing it relied on the Russians doing what he wanted them to do, that is give battle, and how far he should carry out the campaign in one season changed continuously from time to time. Had Napoleon stopped short of Moscow, or had he even left Moscow just two weeks earlier, the army would most likely have been saved, and he would have even had time to crush Kutuzov at Tarutino before he received reinforcements. Had Napoleon been younger, it has been speculated, perhaps his mental mind frame for the campaign would have been far different and more realistic, but again this is all speculation.
Napoleon's invasion of Russia was his own doing, and his own undoing. It was his confidence and his belief that things would go his way because they always had, that led him to carry out the Russian campaign in such a reckless manner. The war was started as a result of a failed foreign policy by Napoleon, and he was equally as to blame for the war as Alexander was. Rather it was ambition, love of war, or truly his fear of a Russian invasion, Napoleon was indeed the aggressor in the Russian campaign, unlike most of campaigns in which he was the "target of conquest", and this coupled with his retreat across the Niemen caused the whole of Europe to turn on him. Napoleon, who had once been the master of Europe, now, in one bad campaign, had turned all his enemies loose on him and was in too irreversible of a position to save his Empire.
The Russians on the other hand, were as equally to blame for the war as Napoleon. They began the buildup of forces, and though they had reason to do so, these were mostly exaggerated. Alexander had planned an invasion of Northern Europe in which Poland and Prussia would join Russia and Alexander be hailed as the liberator, but as fate did not allow such an opportunity to arise, Russia took the role as the innocent defender in the war. Throughout the campaign, commanders feared fighting Napoleon, even up to the very end when Napoleon's army was in such a fragile state that even the slightest of battles could have sent it into nonexistence. Kutuzov's reluctance to fight Napoleon is claimed to be a strategy by many historians, but in all reality could very well have been out of his own fear of losing, as the costs of defeat were so high. In the end, Napoleon, not Kutuzov or Alexander, was his own greatest enemy in the invasion of Russia, and it was his imperfections that led to the loss of the Russian Campaign and the end of the French Empire.