Russia Against Napoleon

Obviously Napoleon made a fatal mistake in dwelling almost six weeks in Moscow while his cavalry withered, reinforcements poured in to Kutuzov and winter approached. Had he rested his troops in Moscow even for a fortnight, he could still have made it safely back to Smolensk long before the first snows or the arrival of Kutuzov’s Cossack regiments from the Don. Instead he hung on, awaiting Alexander’s response to his hints about peace. Perhaps the only thing one can say in Napoleon’s defence is that most European statesmen and much of the Russian elite shared some of his doubts about Alexander’s strength of will. Inevitably, however, Napoleon’s peace feelers themselves fed Russian confidence and gave them every opportunity to encourage him to stay in Moscow while awaiting some response from Alexander. The basic point, however, was that Napoleon had failed to destroy the Russian army and had completely miscalculated the effect of Moscow’s fall on both Alexander and the Russian elites. Having made this mistake he was too stubborn to listen to wise advice, to cut his losses, and to retreat in time.

Subsequently Kutuzov was to have a revealing discussion with a captured senior official of the French commissariat, the Viscount de Puybusque. Puybusque wrote that the Russian commander had asked him ‘through what form of blindness had he [Napoleon] failed to spot a trap which was visible to the whole world? In particular, the field-marshal was astonished at the ease with which all the ruses employed to keep him in Moscow had succeeded and at his absurd cheek (prétention) in offering peace when he no longer possessed the means to make war.’ The Russians had been only too happy to encourage the hopes of Napoleon’s envoy, General Lauriston, that Alexander would respond to Napoleon’s advances or the even sillier faith placed in the possible disloyalty of the Cossacks. ‘Of course,’ added Kutuzov, ‘we did everything possible to drag out the conversations. In politics if someone offers you an advantage, you don’t reject it.’¹⁷

By mid-October even Napoleon acknowledged that Alexander had duped him and that he must retreat. His departure from Moscow was hastened, however, by an attack by Kutuzov’s army on Marshal Murat’s detachment, which was watching the Russian camp at Tarutino. Left to his own devices, Kutuzov is unlikely to have ordered the attack. He was happy for Napoleon to stay in Moscow for as long as possible. In addition, as he told Miloradovich, ‘we are not yet up to complicated movements and manoeuvres’. But the commander-in-chief was under pressure from Alexander to take the offensive and liberate Moscow. Kutuzov’s generals were also raring for action, with Bennigsen stressing the need to inflict a heavy blow on Napoleon before the arrival of Marshal Victor’s reinforcements from Smolensk. Above all, Russian reconnaissance showed that Marshal Murat’s corps was vulnerable. Murat was heavily outnumbered and might be crushed long before reinforcements could arrive. Especially on its eastern flank, his camp could easily be stormed by a surprise attack from the nearby forest. French outposts and patrols were slack, which made the idea of a surprise attack all the more enticing.¹⁸

The initial plan was to attack early in the morning of 17 October. Kutuzov’s orders had to be passed to the troops through Aleksei Ermolov, as chief of staff of the now combined First and Second armies. On the evening of 16 October, however, Ermolov had gone to a fellow-general’s headquarters for dinner and was not to be found, so the attack had to be postponed. Ermolov’s memoirs are silent on this subject and this is by no means the only occasion where they have to be read with a critical eye. Conceivably Ermolov proved non-cooperative because he believed that the attack was Bennigsen’s brainchild and would not bring him any personal credit, but perhaps this is too harsh. Kutuzov was more angry about the bungling on 16 October than at any other time during the campaign.¹⁹

The mess which occurred on the evening of 16 October reflected the confusion in the army’s structure of command. Kutuzov by now deeply distrusted his chief of staff, Levin von Bennigsen, but he could not yet get rid of him. Instead he brought Petr Konovnitsyn into his headquarters, officially as duty-general but in reality as a substitute for Bennigsen. Inevitably this caused still further enmity between Kutuzov and his chief of staff. Moreover, for all his virtues as a front-line commander, Konovnitsyn had neither the training nor the aptitude for staff work.