Napoleon, 1812: Hubris, The March on Moscow, and The Destruction of The Grande Armee

On 14 September, 1812, Napoleon entered Moscow, the spiritual capital of all the Russia’s (St Petersburg was the political capital). His main strike army of 269,000 men, however, had been reduced by disease, starvation and battle to less than 96,000. He had expected the formal surrender of the city (surely now Tsar Alexander would come to terms) instead he found it abandoned. In doing so the Russian Authorities had stripped it of its supplies and its people had pillaged and looted the shops. The very same evening of Napoleon’s arrival the burnings began. Two-thirds of Moscows houses were made of wood. Moscow was set ablaze. The French rounded up and executed suspected fire raisers, but it was too late. Deprived of food and shelter the French army began to starve and freeze to death. For 4 weeks, Napoleon sat on his hands uncertain what to do. In desperation he wrote to the Tsar and appealed to “any remaining remnant of your former sentiments.” The Tsar, in declining to reply said to a courtier, “It is he or I, we can no longer reign together.” On 12 October he accepted the inevitable and ordered his army to abandon the city. The retreat from Moscow had begun.

At first the withdrawal began in reasonable good order. The weather was chilly but clear and the troops could still be warmed by the late Autumn sun. There were, however, few horses remaining for the baggage train and artillery (they had either died or been eaten) and many guns and materiel had to be abandoned in Moscow. The main problem was finding food to feed the army and so it proceeded on a more southerly course to forage for supplies, but following a confrontation with the Russian army at Maro-Jaroslavetz, it was forced to divert and travel across countryside already ravaged by the previous advance. It was also constantly being harassed by the Russian army, particularly its excellent but brutal Cossack cavalry. Those who survived the the incessant attacks or fell behind the main column were often picked off and murdered by Russian peasants who were driven to attack them by the desire for loot as much as any incipient patriotism.

On 6 November, the first snows fell. As the winds picked up and gales swept across a barren landscape half-starved, freezing, snow blinded men began to die in their thousands. Desparate for sleep they were afraid to do so for fear of not waking up. Sentries froze to death at their posts, soldiers murdered each other for an extra piece of warm clothing, and military discipline began to break down. By 14 November, temperatures had plunged to -25 degrees and would soon reach -30. 

By early December the remnants of the Grand Armee had reached the River Berezina. As Marshal Ney, who would win the laurels of “the bravest of the brave”, and the “hero of the Moscowa”, fought a desperate rearguard action, the rest of the army crossed the fast flowing, soon to ice over, waters on hastily improvised bridges. When the river finally defrosted the following Spring more than 12,000 bodies were recovered from its depths. As the Russian army closed in the bridges were burned leaving 10,000 stragglers behind to be killed by the marauding Cossacks.

Even now, the no longer so Grand Armee continued to be harassed by the Russians, as indeed it would until every Frenchman had been removed from Russian soil. On 6 December, Napoleon announced that pressing political issues at home meant that he had to depart for Paris immediately, and he abandoned his army to its fate. For another three weeks it fought on, exhausted and short on ammunition, but then it had long become a fight for mere survival. By January, the last remaining French soldier still in column had been vanquished from the Holy Motherland of Russia. Of the more than 600,000 in total who had invaded Russia, fewer than 28,000 bedraggled, malnourished, frost-bitten scarecrows ever returned to France. In 6 months the aura of invincibility that had for so long sustained Napoleon Bonaparte had vanished, his Grand Armee had been destroyed. Some 130 years later another apparent man of destiny would meet a similar fate.