“War,” Thomas Hardy once wrote, “makes rattling good history.” If you would like an example of exactly what Hardy meant, I commend “Russia Against Napoleon” by Dominic Lieven. Never in history, perhaps, did a man of such extraordinary military genius suffer so extraordinary a military disaster. On June 24, 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte, the master of continental Europe, led nearly half a million men into the depths of Russia to enforce his will upon Czar Alexander I. With greatly inferior forces, Russia could not afford to confront Napoleon head on. Instead, the Russian commander, Mikhail Kutuzov, of necessity adopted Fabian tactics, harassing the invaders but avoiding pitched battle when possible.
The one really big battle, Borodino, was more or less a draw, after Napoleon gave up personal command for reasons never satisfactorily explained. On Sept. 14 Moscow fell to Napoleon, and he sent peace overtures to Alexander, thinking the czar had no option but to negotiate.
The Russians stalled and hinted but never gave a firm answer, seeking to keep Napoleon in Moscow as long as possible. On Oct. 19, with the czar still dawdling, French food supplies dwindling rapidly, and the Russian winter closing in, Napoleon had no choice but to begin withdrawal. The weather, disease and constant Russian harassment then destroyed his Grande Armée. He started the invasion with 450,000 men; 6,000 returned home.
It was a pivotal moment in Russian history, remembered generations later in works like Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture and, of course, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” But people in the English-speaking world have always tended to view these events from an English and French perspective, not a Russian one. The British were locked in their own desperate struggle with Napoleon and, like the French, regarded Russia as a remote, backward, half-Asian place.
Mr. Lieven, a professor of Russian history at the London School of Economics and himself a descendant of Russian generals who fought Napoleon, does the English-speaking reader a service by telling this story from a distinctly Russian perspective, one looking west, not east. He even titles the chapter on Napoleon’s withdrawal “The Advance From Moscow.” His character sketches of the main Russian players in this epic drama are sure, his depiction of Russian social, economic and military realities revelatory.
Unlike Tolstoy he gives considerable space to the equally interesting and significant events of 1813 when Alexander fought Napoleon in Central Europe. With adroit diplomacy the czar peeled Prussia and Austria away from their alliances with Napoleon, and Sweden from its neutrality. In two great battles, Kulm and Leipzig (also known as the Battle of the Nations), the new allies decisively defeated the French, and Napoleon’s empire began rapidly to disintegrate.
A mere year and a half after French soldiers had entered Moscow in triumph, Russian soldiers were at the gates of Paris, and Napoleon was forced to abdicate.
While Mr. Lieven’s depiction of the battles and maneuvers are as sure and as exciting as Hardy could wish for, his explanation of the realities of warfare in the pre-industrial world is equally interesting. It’s an old saying in the military that “amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.” And the logistics of supplying an army as huge as Napoleon’s in Russia as it advanced a thousand miles from its bases were formidable to put it mildly.
An army of 120,000 men and 40,000 horses, according to Mr. Lieven, needed 850 carts just to carry a single day’s food and forage. Powder and shot for the artillery, medical care for the sick and wounded, tents and other supplies required many more. Napoleon’s vast army could not possibly have transported the food and fodder it needed and had to live off the resources of the lands he was invading. The Russians did their very considerable best to deny the French those resources.
And here was one of the Russians’ secret weapons, the Cossacks. Bred to irregular warfare, the Cossacks, along with Russia’s far superior light cavalry units, were the Russian forces most feared by the French (and admired by Napoleon, who wished they were on his side). Able to move quickly, informed by the local peasants of French units, they were able to harass the enemy’s foraging parties mercilessly.
When Napoleon reached Moscow, matters got even worse for him and his vital cavalry. A stationary army in this time quickly exhausted the local food supply for the horses, and foraging expeditions had to reach further and further, ever more exposed to partisan forces. Napoleon’s cavalry had been badly mauled at Borodino, but it was the six weeks in Moscow that largely destroyed it as a fighting force as well as decimated the artillery horses.
This had grave strategic consequences for the French, not just tactical ones. Napoleon had lost not only most of the men he had led to Russia but 175,000 horses as well. The men could be replaced, as indeed they largely were before the next year’s fighting, but the horses could not. In 1813, despite scouring the French Empire, only 29,000 could be procured, and most of them were not of top quality. This would cripple the French in the campaign of 1813 and be a considerable factor in Napoleon’s reverses of the summer and autumn of that year.
This is a story of great sweep and drama, played out over the map of Europe by larger-than-life characters whose names are still familiar to us today. And Dominic Lieven, a master of the material and a fine writer, tells it rattling well.
John Steele Gordon’s history of the national debt, “Hamilton’s Blessing,” has just been released in a updated edition by Walker & Company.
The Russians stalled and hinted but never gave a firm answer, seeking to keep Napoleon in Moscow as long as possible. On Oct. 19, with the czar still dawdling, French food supplies dwindling rapidly, and the Russian winter closing in, Napoleon had no choice but to begin withdrawal. The weather, disease and constant Russian harassment then destroyed his Grande Armée. He started the invasion with 450,000 men; 6,000 returned home.
It was a pivotal moment in Russian history, remembered generations later in works like Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture and, of course, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” But people in the English-speaking world have always tended to view these events from an English and French perspective, not a Russian one. The British were locked in their own desperate struggle with Napoleon and, like the French, regarded Russia as a remote, backward, half-Asian place.
Mr. Lieven, a professor of Russian history at the London School of Economics and himself a descendant of Russian generals who fought Napoleon, does the English-speaking reader a service by telling this story from a distinctly Russian perspective, one looking west, not east. He even titles the chapter on Napoleon’s withdrawal “The Advance From Moscow.” His character sketches of the main Russian players in this epic drama are sure, his depiction of Russian social, economic and military realities revelatory.
Unlike Tolstoy he gives considerable space to the equally interesting and significant events of 1813 when Alexander fought Napoleon in Central Europe. With adroit diplomacy the czar peeled Prussia and Austria away from their alliances with Napoleon, and Sweden from its neutrality. In two great battles, Kulm and Leipzig (also known as the Battle of the Nations), the new allies decisively defeated the French, and Napoleon’s empire began rapidly to disintegrate.
A mere year and a half after French soldiers had entered Moscow in triumph, Russian soldiers were at the gates of Paris, and Napoleon was forced to abdicate.
While Mr. Lieven’s depiction of the battles and maneuvers are as sure and as exciting as Hardy could wish for, his explanation of the realities of warfare in the pre-industrial world is equally interesting. It’s an old saying in the military that “amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.” And the logistics of supplying an army as huge as Napoleon’s in Russia as it advanced a thousand miles from its bases were formidable to put it mildly.
An army of 120,000 men and 40,000 horses, according to Mr. Lieven, needed 850 carts just to carry a single day’s food and forage. Powder and shot for the artillery, medical care for the sick and wounded, tents and other supplies required many more. Napoleon’s vast army could not possibly have transported the food and fodder it needed and had to live off the resources of the lands he was invading. The Russians did their very considerable best to deny the French those resources.
And here was one of the Russians’ secret weapons, the Cossacks. Bred to irregular warfare, the Cossacks, along with Russia’s far superior light cavalry units, were the Russian forces most feared by the French (and admired by Napoleon, who wished they were on his side). Able to move quickly, informed by the local peasants of French units, they were able to harass the enemy’s foraging parties mercilessly.
When Napoleon reached Moscow, matters got even worse for him and his vital cavalry. A stationary army in this time quickly exhausted the local food supply for the horses, and foraging expeditions had to reach further and further, ever more exposed to partisan forces. Napoleon’s cavalry had been badly mauled at Borodino, but it was the six weeks in Moscow that largely destroyed it as a fighting force as well as decimated the artillery horses.
This had grave strategic consequences for the French, not just tactical ones. Napoleon had lost not only most of the men he had led to Russia but 175,000 horses as well. The men could be replaced, as indeed they largely were before the next year’s fighting, but the horses could not. In 1813, despite scouring the French Empire, only 29,000 could be procured, and most of them were not of top quality. This would cripple the French in the campaign of 1813 and be a considerable factor in Napoleon’s reverses of the summer and autumn of that year.
This is a story of great sweep and drama, played out over the map of Europe by larger-than-life characters whose names are still familiar to us today. And Dominic Lieven, a master of the material and a fine writer, tells it rattling well.
John Steele Gordon’s history of the national debt, “Hamilton’s Blessing,” has just been released in a updated edition by Walker & Company.
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