Footsore Forces

Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 was one of the most dramatic episodes in European history, an event of epic proportions that etched itself deeply into the popular imagination. The books written about it are rarely objective, but their number is impressive -- over 5,000 were published in Russia alone in the first hundred years after the war.

That being said, the invasion needn't have happened at all. As Adam Zamoyski shows in "1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow," neither Tsar Alexander I of Russia nor Emperor Napoleon of France wanted war, but each felt that the other had betrayed him, both personally and in the spirit of the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit that had effectively obliged Russia to espouse French policies. Napoleon later admitted in his memoirs that they had got themselves "into the position of two blustering braggarts who, having no wish to fight each other, seek to frighten each other."

On June 24, 1812, Napoleon led part of the largest army the world had ever seen over the Niemen River into Russia. The Grande Armee, numbering nearly half a million men, included soldiers from almost every nation in Europe. Its main body was made up of Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutchmen, Italians and Swiss from areas incorporated into Napoleon's empire, supplemented by contingents from every vassal or allied state. According to the diaries kept by officers on both sides, the magical presence of Napoleon and the belief that the Emperor, and therefore his army, were invincible, buoyed up his forces and paralysed the Russians for a long time.

Six months later, the wretched remnants struggled back across the Niemen, leaving behind some three quarters of their men, of whom less than one quarter had been killed in battle. The rest had succumbed to starvation, cold and disease, or were murdered in captivity. Also left behind were 160,000 dead horses and nearly all of the Grande Armee's 800 cannon.

Explanations for Napoleon's defeat abound, and Zamoyski favors the theory that Napoleon should never have advanced as far as Moscow and lingered there. He was defeated not by the Russian army but by the Russian winter. Throughout the campaign, Napoleon's formidable powers of concentration and legendary energy had been noticeably lacking -- a result, some say, of a failing pituitary gland. And it is a fact that, during the three vital days of the Battle of Borodino, in which the French failed to win a decisive victory, Napoleon was functioning in a daze because of a bad cold and bladder problem. It was only at the crossing of the Berezina River in November that he rose to the occasion, extricating himself and his remaining men from what the great military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, who participated in the campaign on the Russian side, considered "one of the worst situations in which a general ever found himself."

www.hermitage.ru Napoleon's aura of invincibility helped boost his army's morale and temporarily weakened the resolve of the Russian side.

Most books about 1812 dwell on the disastrous retreat. But Zamoyski's book is a valuable contribution to the literature for its descriptions of the disastrous advance. The great majority of the 300 kilometers before the Niemen River and the first half of the 950 kilometers from there to Moscow was through poor country, infertile for the most part and sparsely inhabited. It is thought that some 50,000 horses perished during the first weeks of the campaign due to lack of food and water and the effects of a terrible storm, while some 30,000 sick men were crowded into improvised hospitals in Vilnius.

Lacking tents and unable to shelter in the miserable roadside villages, soldiers slept out in the open, sometimes under torrential rain. By the middle of July, most of their boots had fallen to pieces. With few wells in sight and ponds and ditches filled with brackish water, desperate men drank horses' urine out of the ruts in the road. Not surprisingly, many died of dehydration, malnutrition and dysentery. Hundreds committed suicide. Others deserted. The army was reduced by a third -- consisting chiefly of the weaker, younger recruits -- by the time it reached Vitebsk, having not yet fought a single battle.

However, Napoleon continued to advance, convinced that a swift engagement and French victory would make Alexander sue for peace. Instead, the Russians retreated, abandoning town after town to the Grande Armee. After the Russians abandoned Smolensk, Napoleon decided to march on to Moscow, which was only 400 kilometers away.

It was around this time that, anxious to quell dissent, rivalry and intrigue on the Russian side, Alexander I made Prince Mikhail Kutuzov commander-in-chief and embarked on an enormous propaganda exercise to ensure that patriotic feeling was spread through every class of the nation. The Orthodox Church was brought into play, with bishops condemning the alien and godless "army of twenty tongues," and calling all to take up arms in defense of faith and fatherland.

In "War and Peace," Leo Tolstoy describes Kutuzov as a corpulent old man, half-blind and very forgetful, but wise -- a general of intuition who identifies with the Russian people. Zamoyski, quoting from sound sources, tells us that by 1812, Kutuzov was an incompetent old fool, secretive, sly and cowardly, and incapable of making a definite decision. Clausewitz thought that he was senile. Others believed that Kutuzov's refusal to give the order to attack was a matter not of strategy, but cowardice. He knew that Napoleon was the better general, that Napoleon's marshals and generals were superior to his own bickering subordinates, and that the soldiers of the Grande Armee -- however greatly reduced -- would outfight his own, a huge proportion of whom were recently conscripted peasants.

Zamoyski's descriptions of the major events and battles of the campaign are riveting. He is the master of his subject, portraying both the larger picture and many extraordinary instances of heroism and horror, including acts of cannibalism. For instance, had Napoleon emulated his Polish units, who took advantage of the weeks in Moscow to have their horses shod with spiky winter horseshoes to help them keep their balance on the icy roads, tens of thousands of the Armee's horses might not have died. In turn, many more men might have survived, as supply wagons and the wagons carrying the wounded could have gotten through.

Supplementing the text with many illustrations published for the first time, Zamoyski also draws heavily on original letters or diaries and memoirs -- some written soon after the retreat from Moscow, some decades later -- letting the participants tell the story in their own words whenever possible. As he writes in his introductory note, "It is a deeply human story -- of hubris and nemesis, of triumph and catastrophe, of glory and squalor, of joy and suffering." Zamoyski brings that story to life in dense, brilliantly written descriptions of Borodino, the occupation of Moscow, the burning of Moscow, the horrendous retreat and aftermath, yet, unlike the Grande Armee, the reader never gets bogged down.

Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky is a freelance writer and lecturer living in London.