3 – Napoleon’s Russian Campaign
By 1812 the Emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, had conquered practically the whole of mainland Europe: from Southern Italy to the Baltic and from Poland in the East to Portugal in the West. He hadn’t managed to subdue the British though; short of swimming the English Channel there was little his army could do as Admiral Nelson had destroyed the combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. But he hoped to cripple them financially, mainly by enforcing a trade embargo between them and the continental powers. The only problem was that Russia wasn’t playing ball. And for this, they would have to be brought to heel.
In 1812 Napoleon led his seemingly invincible forces into Russia. His army numbered around half a million men; the largest European army ever raised, of which half was French and the rest levies from occupied European countries. He expected a battle or two in Lithuania, after which might continue to India to cut off Britain’s gold supply. Instead, he got nothing as the Tsar’s forces turned tail and ran. On June 28 he arrived in Vilnius, the capital of modern-day Lithuania, to a rapturous welcome before setting off again to Moscow in pursuit of the Russians. However, the Tsar’s army continued to withdraw, scorching the earth behind them and forcing Napoleon’s forces deeper and deeper into the barren Russian heartland.
Tens of thousands perished under the baking summer sun, lost to exhaustion, starvation and dehydration. On September 7 Napoleon engaged the Russians in a bloody but indecisive Battle at Borodino—described by the Emperor as “the most terrible of all my battles”. His army then arrived in Moscow. But no sooner had they arrived than the city went up in flames. For weeks Napoleon waited for the Tsar to send peace terms from St. Petersburg. But nothing came. And so, with trouble brewing back in France, and carrying as much plunder as he could from the charred remains of Moscow, Napoleon began his retreat. And with it, he started upon a new, grueling campaign: against “General Winter”.
In just the two months it took to reach Vilnius, Napoleon’s army was reduced to 50,000. Wading through knee-high snow, his men and horses were overcome by frostbite, starvation, and angry Cossacks. Little improved when they reached Vilnius; they found that provisions were so few that scores more died in the city. In fact, the German writer Ernst Moritz Arndt was there in January 1813, and described horrific scenes; piles of corpses three stories high. Of the almost 500,000 men who had crossed the Polish border into Russia, at most only 20,000 would make the return journey. But it wasn’t the lack of manpower that would hand Napoleon defeat to the forces of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden in 1813. It was the lack of horses.