History_of_War_43_2017

Frontline
1812 MARCH TO MOSCOW
NAPOLEON’S
GREAT ESCAPE?
Can the retreat across the Berezina be
considered a French victory, or was it
merely the avoidance of total annihilation?
A dispirited Napoleon
retreats from Moscow
alongside his men. Of
the 600,000 men that
marched into Russia,
only 100,000 returned
The invasion of Russia turned into a
nightmare for Napoleon’s Grande
Armée, but it could actually have
ended on an even more downbeat
note — the total destruction of
the army and the capture of Napoleon. This
faintest of bright spots amid the gloom of a
truly disastrous campaign has sparked intense
debate ever since, with historians unable
to agree on whether it was a victory for the
Russians or the French.
Only a fraction of Napoleon’s army returned
from its ill-fated Russian adventure, and the
enormity of the defeat was famously depicted
in the Carte Figurative of Charles Minard.
When presented in such (literally) graphic
detail, it is impossible to argue that the 1812
Russian campaign was anything other than a
catastrophe, yet that unlikeliest of escapes at
Berezina continues to tantalise.
An added complication is that most of the
historians who have written about the campaign
have shared the same weakness – an inability
to read Russian. This, coupled with a far more
common proficiency in French, means that
the use of eye-witness accounts is inevitably
skewed. A story has emerged of a superior
French Army being defeated by geography and
weather rather than the effective strategy
and tactics of its opponent. For propaganda
purposes, the French were desperate to
salvage whatever dignity they could from the
disaster. The fact that their Emperor had
survived, along with the precious seed (in
officers and experienced men) from which a
new army could be grown, was a much more
palatable version of events.
As well as the debate over whether this
constituted a victory, a fascinating ‘what if’
hangs over the Battle of Berezina. What if
Napoleon had been captured and his army totally
destroyed? The following campaigns, including
such battles as Lutzen and Leipzig, would not
have needed to be fought, as France could not
have continued without its driving force.
Even then, the end of the war might still have
been familiar. Had Napoleon been exiled a year
earlier, he might simply have escaped a year
earlier. Waterloo, or something similar, might
have been fought in 1814 instead of 1815, the
year of his flight from the island of Elba.
The idea, however, that the war was in any
doubt following the retreat from Moscow does
not survive scrutiny. Napoleon was finished,
even though it would take many months of hard
campaigning for it to become apparent. The new
army he raised was a pale imitation of the Grand
Armée he had driven to its destruction in Russia.
Nor can the Russians be dismissed as lucky
bystanders as first the summer and then the
winter drained the French Army of men and
horses. This idea is countered by the fact that
Russian military losses were almost as great
as those of the French. They had played a
careful game, avoiding battle and drawing the
French Army deeper into Russia, which denied
Napoleon his goal – a quick, overwhelming
military success, the destruction of the
Russian Army and enforced negotiations with
the Tsar. Napoleon had grown increasingly
frustrated with this strategy, once haranguing
a Russian general (Balachov) over his country’s
refusal to stand and fight. On more than one
occasion, in the words of historian Steven
Englund, Napoleon’s men were left to “gape in
astonishment at the empty spot that a Russian
Army had just evacuated”.
Russian tactics had changed once their
enemy began to retreat and there is room for
debate on the performance of their armies, at
Berezina in particular, when more co-operation
and energy might have closed the escape
route. However, the idea that they somehow
allowed Napoleon to get away strays into the
realm of conspiracy theories.
The French were beaten by a superior
strategy, one to which Napoleon, curiously
lethargic for most of the campaign, failed to
adapt. It is ironic that, in a campaign with such
lofty ambitions, Napoleon only really roused
himself when the game was up and only a
tiny part of his army remained. Nevertheless,
his performance at the Berezina, marked by
boldness and decisiveness in equal measure,
was a reminder of what a great general he was
when on the top of his game. It was a sort of
victory, allowing part of his army to escape. But
the escape was only temporary.
Image: Getty
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