Russia Against Napoleon

10 For the basic narrative from rival sides, see Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 309–29; Houssaye, Napoleon, pp. 142–59. R. von Friederich, Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815, vol. 3: Der Feldzug 1814, Berlin, 1913, pp. 214–22, is semi-neutral and accurate. On Heurtebise, and the battle of the Russian jaegers, see S. I. Maevskii, ‘Moi vek, ili istoriia generala Maevskogo, 1779–1848’, RS, 8, 1873, pp. 268–73. He commanded the 13th Jaeger Regiment during the battle.

11 Apart from the works cited in the previous note, see specifically on the Russian retreat, Ivan Ortenberg, ‘Voennyia vospominaniia starykh vremen’, Biblioteka dlia chteniia, 24/6, 1857, pp. 18–33, at pp. 18–19.

12 Burghersh, Operations, p. 196. Clausewitz, Feldzug, 1862, p. 379.

13 Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 324–5; Captain Koch, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la campagne de 1814, 3 vols., Paris, 1819, vol. 1, pp. 399–400. Houssaye, Napoleon, p. 157. Alain Pigeard, Dictionnaire de la Grande Armée, Paris, 2002, pp. 648–9. Friederich, Feldzug, writes that 15,000 Russians actually fought 21,000 French soldiers on the battlefield of Craonne.

14 There is a good description of meeting Blücher at this time in F. von Schubert, Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962, pp. 345–6.

15 Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 243–8; Müffling, Memoirs, pp. 167–76.

16 I. I. Shelengovskii, Istoriia 69-go Riazanskago polka, 3 vols., Lublin, 1911, vol. 2, pp. 251–75. Skobelev was actually an odnodvorets, in other words the descendant of free peasant colonists who had manned the southern frontier regions of Muscovy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By Alexander’s reign the burdens and constraints on odnodvortsy were roughly the same as those of the state peasantry.

17 Alexander’s correspondence in RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, contains a mass of letters expressing these worries: see e.g. fos. 147ii and 151i for letters of 28 Feb. (OS) to Schwarzenberg urging him to press forward more quickly, and of 5 March (OS) to Nikolai Raevsky, who had replaced Wittgenstein, warning him not to become isolated and to expect an attack by Napoleon at any moment. For the scenes at GHQ, see Karl Fürst Schwarzenberg, Feldmarschall Fürst Schwarzenberg: Der Sieger von Leipzig, Vienna, 1964, pp. 306–8, 483–4. Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, p. 423.

18 Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 434–7, has a good discussion of these two options.

19 T. von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des kaiserlichen russischen Generals der Infanterie Carl Friedrich Grafen von Toll, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1858, vol. 4ii, pp. 292–4, cites Napoleon’s own subsequent conversations on this point.

20 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, fo. 154ii, Volkonsky to Gneisenau, 10 March 1814 (OS). The basic narrative of events is the same in Friederich, Feldzug, and in Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814.

21 Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 281–2. On previous criticism of Oertel, see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/120, Sv. 12, Delo 126, fo. 71: Barclay to Oertel, 16 Feb. 1814 (OS). A. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie pokhoda vo Frantsii v 1814 godu, SPB, repr. 1841, pp. 284–5.

22 The only witness of this discussion to leave a detailed account is Toll: see Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. 4ii, pp. 310–14. Bernhardi is right to dismiss Austrian claims to authorship of the plan, for which there is no evidence and which make a nonsense of Schwarzenberg’s actions. One cannot rule out Volkonsky’s role so easily, however. According to Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, Alexander himself told him of Volkonsky’s advice. If Mikhailovsky had merely recorded Volkonsky’s role in his published history one could easily dismiss it as one of his many efforts to please still-living grandees of Nicholas’s reign by praising their role in the war. But he says the same in a manuscript not intended for publication in which in general he is critical of his former boss: Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Memuary 1814–1815, SPB, 2001, pp. 33–5. See also, however, Diebitsch’s brief account in a letter to Jomini of 9 May 1817, published in Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 491–3.

23 Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenberg, p. 323.

24 Ibid., pp. 308–9. RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 227–8, 235, 238–9, Kankrin to Barclay: 12, 13, 17 March 1814 (OS).