1810–1812: the Russian campaign.

The breach with Russia was not sudden. At Tilsit in 1807 I had offered Alexander a division of the world: the continent against the sea. He was young, voluble, easy to charm. By 1810 he had begun to slip. The Continental System was costing his nobility their English trade. He opened his ports to neutrals, which meant English goods. He would not marry into my family. He fortified the Niemen. By the spring of 1812 I knew: he would fight or yield at the last moment. I assembled the largest army Europe had seen: about four hundred and fifty thousand men in the first wave, six hundred thousand to six hundred and eighty-five thousand with every reinforcement, of whom not half were French. Germans, Italians, Poles, Dutch, Swiss, Croats, Portuguese — twenty nations under one set of eagles.

On 22 June 1812 at Wilkowyszki I proclaimed the second Polish war. On 23 and 24 June the army crossed the Niemen at Kovno. The river was low, the summer brilliant. We marched into an empty country. Barclay fell back, burning nothing at first, then burning everything. The roads were sand. The horses died of heat and bad forage. I entered Vilna on 28 June an hour after Barclay left. Polish deputies asked me to restore Poland whole. I answered that I had many interests to reconcile. I stayed in Vilna to 16 July. The delay was a fault: I let the Russians draw me deeper.

Smolensk was taken on 18 August as the Russians withdrew after a fierce fight. They burned the suburbs themselves. I had expected a decisive battle there; Barclay gave me only the walls. I could have wintered at Smolensk. I did not. The army pushed on. On 7 September at Borodino, on the Moskva river, I had the battle I had wanted. The proclamation before it: “Soldiers, here is the battle you have so long desired! From now on victory depends on you: it is necessary to us. It will give us abundance, good winter quarters and a speedy return to our country!” It was the bloodiest day in our history. Forty-four generals killed or wounded. I had a heavy cold and had lost my voice; as Constant and Fain tell it, I wrote my orders two days later because I could not speak. The Russian army left the field intact, in good order. At St Helena, as Gourgaud records in 1817, I judged that I had been wrong to attack their entrenched position because I had wanted a great battle.

On 14 September, Murat’s vanguard entered an emptied Moscow. I lodged in the Kremlin on the 15th. That evening the fires began. Who set them is disputed. I wrote to Alexander on 20 September: “The beautiful and superb city of Moscow no longer exists. Rostopchin has had it burned.” I added: “I have made war on Your Majesty without animosity: a note from you, before or after the last battle, would have stopped my march, and I should have wished to be able to sacrifice to you the advantage of entering Moscow.” No answer came. I waited five weeks. I sent Lauriston to the Russian headquarters on 5 October. Nothing. At St Helena, as Gourgaud records on 23 April 1816, I said I should have stayed two weeks at most.

On 19 October the army marched out by the old Kaluga road. I aimed for the untouched southern provinces. On 24 October at Maloyaroslavets we were blocked by Kutuzov. I turned back to the stripped Smolensk road. The cold began on 7 November. From that day the army was a dying thing. Smolensk was left on 13 November. Krasnoi was fought on 16 to 18 November; the Russians took many prisoners. The Berezina was crossed on 26 to 29 November on two bridges thrown at Studienka. By my own bulletin’s account the enemy was deceived and beaten off. Some forty thousand stragglers were left behind, a number that is disputed.

On 3 December at Molodechno I dictated the 29th Bulletin. It says: “This army, so fine on the 6th, was very different by the 14th, almost without cavalry, without artillery, without transport.” It blames the cold and gives no total of losses. It ends that my health had never been better. The same day I wrote privately to Maret: “We are horribly tired, and very hungry. Send bread, meat and brandy to meet us. I have 100,000 stragglers looking for food and no longer with the colours, which exposes us to terrible dangers. My Old Guard alone is together, but hunger is overtaking it too.”

On 5 December at Smorgoni I left the army, put Murat in command, and travelled by sledge and carriage with Caulaincourt through Warsaw on 10 December and Dresden, reaching Paris on the night of 18 December. I had been gone since 9 May. On 20 December I replied to the Senate: “I could have armed the greater part of its population against itself by proclaiming the freedom of the serfs; a great many villages asked me for it; but when I came to know the brutishness of that numerous class of the Russian people, I refused that measure, which would have doomed many families to death, devastation and the most horrible tortures.” I blamed the early severity of the season. The losses are disputed: of about 685,000 men sent in, estimates give about 93,000 to 120,000 survivors, mostly not French, or 580,000 to 630,000 casualties of every kind. I owned none of that in the bulletin. The truth is I lost the army in Russia and the truth is that I have still not told it fully.