Napoleon entered Moskva on September 14. The Russians set up camp east of Moskva, near Tarotino, and began to reinforce their army with new recruits and supplies. Napoleon waited, hoping the Russians would agree to make peace; after all, he now occupied their capital. However, the Russians proved unwilling to negotiate until invaders left their soil. Napoleon now faced a difficult decision. Sitting in a half-burned city without sufficient supplies, organization was breaking down within the army. He considered his options. He could stay for the winter, march northwest toward St. Petersburg, or pursue a southern route through areas not yet destroyed by the war. This decision grew more difficult when news came that the Russians had ended their wars with Sweden in the north and Turkey in the south. Russian units could now march against MacDonald in the northwest and Schwarzenberg in the southwest. Hostilities had already erupted again near Polatsk, where Wittgenstein attacked St. Cyr in order to stop the advance toward St. Petersburg. The French did receive reinforcements through Marshal Claude Victor’s IX Corps, which marched 30,000 men from Poland to Smolensk. However, Napoleon apparently regarded this as too little to secure his position, because he decided to order a southwesterly retreat.
On October 19, Napoleon left Moskva with just over 105,000 soldiers. He marched southwest, toward Malojaroslavetz. Overstretched, the army faced frequent enemy ambushes, so Napoleon decided to retreat farther west toward Smolensk along the same road by which his Grand Army had invaded Russia months earlier. Their supply problems persisted, because they had already exhausted the surrounding territory of its material wealth and the land had little left to offer. Then, at the end of October, the weather began to exact its toll. Temperatures dropped far below zero degrees Celsius as heavy snows began to fall. Severe winter weather punished Napoleon’s army as they marched into Smolensk on September 9. Three different Russian armies harassed them as they fell back (see figure 1-4). Kutuzov’s main army tailed Napoleon from Moskva, while the western army under Admiral Pavel Chichagov battled the Austrians in the west and Wittgenstein engaged the French in the north near Polatsk. Harassing attacks persisted as they retreated. Soldier morale sank.
On November 14, the French army left Smolensk with just over 50,000 men. A Russian force of 80,000 under the command of a hesitant Kutuzov pursued them. Continued skirmishes and small battles, notably at Krasnoi, thinned the army to a mere 25,000 soldiers. On November 19, Napoleon reached Orsha as Chichagov and his Russian force marched east toward the Berezina River. Two days earlier, Chichagov’s army had captured Minsk, which had functioned as a French supply center. On November 22, Chichagov reached the Berezina River and captured Barysaw. Napoleon ordered Oudinot to move his corps south to Barysaw and support the local garrison there, as Victor tried to slow down Wittgenstein, who was closing in from the north. Oudinot drove the Russians from Barysaw to the west bank of the Berezina River, but not before the Russians destroyed the river’s only bridge. Victor and Napoleon joined him on the November 25. There was no bridge to cross, however.
The bridge’s loss dealt a serious blow to Napoleon. Weeks earlier, he had ordered his soldiers to destroy or abandon unnecessary materials. This included bridge building equipment. He would not need them, the emperor had assumed, because the winter weather would allow his soldiers to cross over Russian’s frozen rivers with ease. He had not expected the temperature to rise, but it did, making the river impassable by foot. The French had to quickly find another place on the river to cross. Fortunately, they deceived Chichagov’s army into thinking that they would cross the Berezina south of Barysaw. Instead, Oudinout found a suitable location near the village of Studianka, a few kilometers north of the city. Fortunately for Napoleon, his commander of the army’s mostly Dutch unit of pontonniers (pontoon bridge builders), General Jean Baptiste Eblé, had disobeyed his emperor’s orders and kept all his bridge building supplies intact. That same day, November 25, he ordered his bridge builders to begin construction on two bridges.
Figure 1-4, adapted from an 1848 original, shows the positions of the French and Russian troops at a particular moment in time during their three-day battle around the Berezina River’s crossing. The map has been enhanced with data from a digital elevation model to emphasis the terrain. The river was between 80 and 100 meters wide, but melting ice made both banks swampy.
In the early morning hours, a small group of Polish lancers crossed the Berezina River to establish a bridgehead on its far side. They met with little resistance. By 13:00 the next day, the pontonniers finished the first bridge, which they had built for infantry only. Oudinout hastily moved his II Corps over the bridge to strengthen the bridgehead. Fighting erupted at Brillo when the Russians descended upon the Berezina’s western bank. Three hours later, at 16:00, the pontonniers finished the second bridge made for artillery and other heavy goods. Other units followed II Corps across the first bridge, starting with III and V Corps. The second bridge collapsed twice during the evening and early morning of the November 27, and it took the pontonniers three to four hours to repair them. The bridge builders were exposed to frigid and wet weather, many of them working up to their necks in the river’s freezing water, and few survived. Among the casualties was General Eblé, who died a month later. Once across the river, the French army marched forth to face Chichagov.
Figure 1-4. Moving towards the Berezina River. The terrain near Studianka undulates slightly (see figure 1-5).
At 13:00 on November 27, Napoleon and the Imperial Guard crossed the Berezina River. Heavy fighting on both sides of the river continued throughout the rest of the day (see figure 1-6). On the eastern bank, remaining French units and stragglers grouped around the bridgehead, as Wittgenstein closed in from the northeast in pursuit of Victor’s IX Corps. The 125th Line Infantry Regiment commanded by General Louis Partonneaux remained in the town of Stari Barysaw where, after a fierce battle, they were forced to surrender (see figure 1-7). Gerrit Janz Kraak numbered among the casualties. Most of Victor’s corps crossed the river by day’s end, however. Two days later, in the early morning of November 29, the French destroyed the bridges.
Figure 1-5. The terrain along the Berezina River between Barysaw and Studianka.
When Napoleon’s army crossed the Berezina, the main Russian force under Kutuzov was still several days’ march away. Slow communication among the three Russian armies certainly aided Napoleon’s escape, as did the long time it took Chichagov to realize that the French had crossed the river at Studianka. Napoleon did not cross over unscathed, however. He lost more than half of his remaining force, more than 25,000 men, which Minard’s map explains so starkly and eloquently (see chapter 2, figure 2-3c). In his extensive study of the crossing, Alexander Mikaberdze (2010) explains why: Cold, hunger, and disorder proved to be on the side of the Russians. Napoleon and the remnants of his Grand Army beat a hasty retreat toward Vilnius. When he reached the village of Smarhon on December 5, Napoleon left his army for Paris. On December 18, Marshal Ney was the last French soldier to cross the Neman back into Poland.
Figure 1-6 presents a set of maps that depicts each of the three days of the battle at the Berezina River. Breaking the event into a series of smaller “stills”—like frames in a piece of animation—helps to better explain what happened over time. Still, for both a single map (figure 1-5) and a set of maps (figure 1-6) one has to make arbitrary selections of the individual moments and time intervals to display, which can affect the viewer’s interpretation of troop positioning. What snapshot moment during this action-filled, three-day event is shown on the map in figure 1-5? Which moments are displayed on the three maps shown in figure 1-6? One might expect that the authors of these maps chose characteristic or decisive moments to represent, but their selections may simply have been circumscribed by the availability of data.