Russian eyewitness accounts of the campaign of 1807

367 Pages·2015·5.06 MB·English

by  Mikaberidze

Russian Eyewitness Accounts of the Campaign of 1807
This edition published in 2015 by Frontline Books,
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
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Copyright © Alexander Mikaberidze 2015
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Editor’s Note
Map of the Campaign of 1806–7
1 The Eclipse of Austerlitz
2 The Winter Campaign, December 1806
3 The Road to Eylau
4 The Bloodbath at Eylau
5 The Spring Campaign
6 The Disaster at Friedland
7 The Aftermath of the Campaign
Bibliography
Illustrations
Map
The Campaign of 1806-1807
Plates
1 Napoleon and his staff at the battle of Eylau, 8 February 1807 (by
Alexander Averyanov).
2 The attack of the Moscow grenadiers at Eylau (by Alexander
Averyanov).
3 The famous charge of Marshal Joachim Murat’s Reserve Cavalry at
Eylau (by Jean Antoine Simeon Fort).
4 The Death of General Hautpoult at Eylau.
5 Prussian troops celebrating the capture of a French flag at Eylau (by
Georg Buxenstein).
6 An early nineteenth-century German print of the Battle of Eylau.
7 Napoleon inspecting the field of battle after Eylau (by Antoine-Jean
Gros).
8 Emperor Alexander of Russia (by George Dawe).
9 General Karl Baggovut.
10 General Peter Bagration.
11 General Mikhail Barclay de Tolly.
12 Alexander Benckendorff.
13 General Levin Bennigsen.
14 Faddei Bulgarin.
15 General Fedor Buxhöwden.
16 Denis Davydov (portrait by George Dawes).
17 General Dmitrii Dokhturov.
18 Nadezhda Durova, the famed ‘Cavalry Maiden’.
19 Alexsey Yermolov.
20 General Dmitrii Golitsyn.
21 Field Marshal Mikhail Kamenski.
22 General Fabian von der Osten-Sacken.
23 General Alexander Osterman-Tolstoy.
24 Ivan Alexandrovich Petin.
25 General Alexsey Sherbatov.
26 Alexander Shishkov.
27 General Peter Tolstoy.
28 Sergei Volkonskii.
29 The tombstone of Vasilii Timofeyev.
30 Marshal Ney at Friedland (by Alexander Averyanov).
31 The Charge of the Russian Life Guard Horse Regiment at Friedland (by
Wiktor Mazurowski).
32 A early nineteenth-century French print of the battle of Friedland.
33 The Battle of Friedland (by Ernest Meissonier).
34 Napoleon celebrating his victory at Friedland (by Horace Vernet).
35 A contemporary print showing the raft in the middle of the River Nieman
where Napoleon and Emperor Alexander met in June 1807.
36 Emperor Alexander and Napoleon meet on the River Niemen
(contemporary French print after Jean Francois Debret’s painting).
37 The Meeting of Three Sovereigns: Napoleon, Alexander and Frederick
William at Tilsit (contemporary German print).
Foreword
Napoleon Bonaparte’s masterpiece, the battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805,
was a terrible defeat for the Russian army. Twenty-seven-year-old Tsar
Alexander I was present at and contributed to the debacle. Yet there was little
official reaction to the calamity in St. Petersburg or Moscow, thus allowing the
Tsar and his generals largely to escape blame. Instead, most Russians blamed the
Austrians. Defiant in defeat, Alexander refused to ratify a peace treaty with
France. The next year, when Prussia forced a new war on France, Russia allied
with Prussia and sent its armies westward to confront Napoleon again. The
ensuing collisions took place in Poland. Chastened by his experience in 1805,
Alexander stayed home during the autumn and winter. His absence allowed
military professionals to conduct the campaign.
The Russian army of 1806–07 was an army in transition. Alexander’s father,
Tsar Paul I, had insisted upon perfection of appearance and robotic ability to
perform drill. Alexander tolerated limited reforms. The army had learned from
its defeat at Austerlitz. It entered Poland with a new organisational structure
featuring permanent divisions, which was a step towards a future featuring a
French-like army corps structure. On a tactical level, Russian infantry utilised
the same array of formations as every other European army: column, line and
square. However, there was increasing emphasis on open order combat,
necessary training to contest French skirmish superiority. The 1806–07
campaign would witness the army’s light infantry, its jagers, repeatedly
displaying exemplary conduct while serving as the army’s advance and rear
guard. The superbly-mounted cavalry regiments fought bravely, but flaws in
doctrine, training and organisation prevented them from accomplishing as much
as their imposing numbers promised. Likewise, the artillery suffered from
numerous deficiencies, including an absence of standardised doctrine, the use of
inefficient regimental guns, and the lack of joint training with infantry and
cavalry. In 1806, the armies assembling for the Polish campaign were assigned
fifty-three artillery companies totalling 624 guns. The sheer weight of fire
coming from so many artillery pieces made it a formidable battlefield force.
When the Russian army met Napoleon in 1806, the French emperor had just
won an overwhelming victory over Prussia. He and his army appeared
invincible. Then came a seemingly implausible reversal of fortune when an
inexperienced Russian army, riven by command dissension, inflicted a pair of
severe checks at Pultusk and Golymin. Napoleon’s opponents rejoiced to see the
‘Corsican Ogre’ falter as he retired to winter quarters to lick his wounds. The
Russian armies were not done. Flush with his success at Pultusk, General
Bennigsen assumed overall command of the Tsar’s forces and launched a
surprise offensive. It compelled Napoleon to abandon winter quarters and begin
a gruelling campaign. Napoleon’s brilliantly-conceived strategic envelopment
miscarried. A five-day all-out pursuit finally brought the Russians to bay on the
snow-covered ground of Eylau. Here over 140,000 French and Russian soldiers
fought a terrible battle. They displayed surpassing courage and moments of
inspired leadership, but also committed costly blunders as victory trembled in
the balance. The battle inflicted nearly 60,000 casualties. Then and thereafter,
both sides claimed victory, but what was absolutely clear was that for the first
time in his career Napoleon had met a foe capable of effectively resisting him.
The winter of 1806–07 provided little breathing space for the exhausted
armies. A series of battles blunted a Russian offensive and attention turned to the
fortress city of Danzig. Spring 1807 brought renewed campaigning as once again
the Russians launched a surprise offensive during which Bennigsen almost
destroyed a major French force. Instead came Napoleon’s counter-offensive
leading to the battle of Heilsberg. Four days later occurred the decisive
encounter at Friedland, followed by the fateful meeting on 26 June 1807
between Alexander and Napoleon on a raft in the middle of the Niemen River
outside of Tilsit. The Russian people had made an enormous sacrifice to fight
Napoleon. After Tilsit, they asked why. Over the coming years, Tsar Alexander
would answer by exhibiting an implacable determination to bring down the
French tyrant.
Russian eyewitness accounts provide nuggets of solid, primary source history,
reminders of the limitations of these sources, and insights into the human
condition when warriors engage. Alexander Benckendorff is utterly convincing
as he describes Russo-Prussian friction as the two allies uneasily try to
coordinate campaign strategy. It is an important theme that will recur in 1813.
Otto Löwenstern’s letter describing Eylau is a good reminder how participants in
a battle have a limited, and often incorrect understanding of the course of a
battle. Levin Bennigsen’s informative, detailed report about Eylau provides
another demonstration of how generals try to explain away misfortune to their
superiors. Sergei Volkonskii’s account of Friedland showcases some of the
internal frictions in the army. It is amusing to learn that one faction referred to
officers who had achieved promotion during Emperor Paul’s time as ‘the
Gatchina Rareripes’. For English-language readers, much of our knowledge
about the Russian army comes from the pen of the British busybody, Robert
Wilson. Wilson had a high self-regard. Alexander Obolenskii provides a
delightful detail, writing that the Russians nicknamed Wilson ‘the Beacon’
because he always surmounted the highest terrain to view the battle.
Most published history of the Napoleonic Wars portrays Russia’s warriors as
walking muskets: stupid, inflexible, but brave. Their leaders are usually viewed
as inept at best. In this volume, as well as in his similar publications, Alexander
Mikaberidze gives voice to the Russian experience. His invaluable work portrays
a very different reality.
James R. Arnold
Lexington, Virginia
Autumn 2014
Preface
The War of the Fourth Coalition holds a particular place in the history of the
Napoleonic Wars. Fought in the wake of Napoleon’s triumphant campaign of
1805, this war had solidified French control over central and parts of eastern
Europe through a brilliant campaign against Prussia in October 1806 and a
prolonged but ultimately victorious conflict with Russia in late 1806 and the
spring of 1807. The war culminated in the Treaty of Tilsit that marked a turning
point in the Napoleonic Wars. In the wake of his triumphs at Austerlitz, Jena and
Friedland, Napoleon emerged as the master of almost all western and central
Europe, with a free hand to do whatever he liked toward recreating Europe
according to his own designs for the benefit of France, himself and his family.
Much has been written on this campaign over the last 200 years. The
historiography of the War of the Fourth Coalition, however, tends to focus on
Napoleon’s short but triumphant campaign against Prussia in the autumn of
1806. The Franco-Russian War, sometimes referred to as the Polish Campaign
as Napoleon himself styled it, received relatively scant attention from historians.
Most of what has been written on this campaign comes from German (Eduard
Höpfner, Oscar von Lettow-Vorbeck, etc.) and French (G. Lechartier, Paul
Foucart, Adolphe Thiers, Jean Thiry, etc.) historians, with occasional
contribution from English/American ones. Lorraine Petre’s Napoleon’s
Campaign in Poland, 1806-1807, originally published in 1901, remained the
standard account of the campaign for much of the century, supplemented by
Christopher Summerville’s general survey in 2005,* and was only superseded in
2011 with the publication of the second volume of James Arnold and Ralph
Reinertsen’s excellent study of the campaign.†
Yet, with the exception of Arnold and Reinertsen, the existing studies betray a
clear partiality towards the French – they tend to rely on French sources and
explore the campaign from the French point of view. This is partly the result of