Field Marshal Kutuzov in 1812. Ending
After the bloody battle of Borodino, the Russian army did not receive the promised reinforcements (instead of the soldiers, Kutuzov received the wand of field marshal and 100 000 rubles), and therefore a retreat was inevitable. However, the circumstances of the evacuation of Moscow will forever remain a shameful stain on the reputation of the highest military and civilian leadership of the country. The enemy was left 156 guns, 74 974 guns, 39 846 sabers, 27 119 gun shells - and this despite the fact that weapons not enough, and in the Russian army at the end of 1812, it was officially prescribed to have 776 guns per battalion (1 000 people) - 200 privates and 24 noncommissioned officers were unarmed. Only in 1815, the number of guns was brought to the battalion 900. In addition, 608 old Russian banners and more 1 000 standards were left in Moscow. Russians have never left such a quantity of weapons and banners to anyone. At the same time, Mikhail I. Kutuzov, in his letter of September 4, solemnly assured the emperor: "All the treasures, the arsenal, and almost all the property, both official and private, were taken out of Moscow." But the worst thing was that thousands of wounded were left to 22,5 to die in the deserted city, who were "entrusted to the philanthropy of the French troops" (even from 10 to 17 thousands were left on the way from Borodino to Moscow). "My soul was torn apart by the moans of the wounded, left in the grip of the enemy," wrote Yermolov. It is not surprising that all this made a very difficult impression on the soldiers of the Russian army:
"The troops are in low spirits," reports N.N. Raevsky.
“Many people took off their uniforms and didn’t want to serve after Moscow’s vicious concessions,” recalls S. I. Maevsky, the head of the Kantuzov office.
"The escapes of the soldiers ... greatly increased after the surrender of Moscow ... In one day, four thousand of them were overfished," this is the testimony of the adjutant Kutuzov A. I. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky.
FV Rostopchin and his secretary A. Ya. Bulgakov write in their memoirs that after the surrender of Moscow many in the army began to call Kutuzov the "darkest prince". Kutuzov himself left Moscow "so that, as much as possible, not to meet with anyone" (A. B. Golitsin). 2 (14) of September (the day of Moscow’s evacuation) the commander essentially stopped performing his functions and Barclay de Tolly, who "stayed 18 hours without departing from the horse," followed the order of the troops.
At the council in Fili, Kutuzov ordered "to retreat along the Ryazan road." September followed the order from 2 to 5 (14-17), but on the night of 6 (18) September a new order was received by the commander in chief, according to which one Cossack regiment continued to move in the same direction, while the rest of the army turned to Podolsk and further on the Kaluga road to the south. Clausewitz wrote that "the Russian army (maneuver) perfectly fulfilled .... with enormous benefit for itself." Napoleon himself on St. Helena recognized that the "old fox Kutuzov" then "deceived him greatly" and called this maneuver the Russian army "beautiful." The honor of the “flank march” designation is attributed to Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, Bennigsen, Toll and many others, which speaks only of the naturalness of movement in this direction: the idea was “in the air”. In the novel "War and Peace" Leo Tolstoy wrote with some irony: "If we imagined ... just one army without chiefs, then this army could not do anything else but a return movement to Moscow, describing the arc on the side from which there was more food and the region was more abundant. The movement was ... it was so natural that the marauders of the Russian army ran off in this very direction. " The "flank march" near the village of Tarutino ended, where Kutuzov brought about 87 thousands of soldiers, 14 thousands of Cossacks and 622 guns. Alas, as Bagration had predicted, the top leadership of the Russian army was divided here into parties and groups that spent time in fruitless and harmful intrigues.
"Where is this fool? Redhead? Coward?" - shouted Kutuzov, pretending to have forgotten how to deliberately need the last name and trying to remember. When they decided to tell him whether Bennigsen meant it, the field marshal replied: "Yes, yes, yes!" So it was just the day of the Battle of Tarutino. Repeated before the eyes of the whole army story Bagration with Barclay ", - complained about E.Terle.
"Barclay ... saw the discord between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, but did not support either one or the other, and condemned both - the two weak old men, one of whom (Kutuzov) was in his eyes a" slacker "and the other ".
“Barclay and Bennigsen were at enmity from the very beginning of the war, all the time. Kutuzov also took the position of the“ third rejoicing ”towards them,” wrote N. A. Troitsky.
“I almost don’t go to the Main Apartment ... there is the intrigues of parties, envy, anger, and even more ... egoism, despite the circumstances of Russia that nobody cares about,” wrote N.N. Raevsky.
“Intrigues were endless,” recalled A.P.Ermolov.
"Everything that I see (in the Tarutinsky camp) inspires me with utter disgust," DS Dokhturov agrees with them. Recognized by his contemporaries as a great master of intrigue, Kutuzov remained a winner here, forcing Barclay de Tolly and then Bennigsen to leave the army. Barclay left 22 September (4 October) 1812 d. He had every right to say Lowenstern: "I gave the field marshal an army that was well-dressed, armed and not demoralized ... The field marshal did not want to share the glory of expelling the enemy from the sacred land of our Fatherland with anyone .... I brought the carriage up the mountain, and it will roll itself down from the mountain with a little guidance. "
Nevertheless, the mobilization services of the Russian army were working properly, and by mid-October Kutuzov had under his command about 130 thousands of soldiers and Cossacks, approximately 120 thousand militiamen and 622 guns. Napoleon, who was in Moscow, had an army of thousands of people in 116. The Russian army felt strong enough to push for an offensive. The first test of strength was the battle at the River Chernishny (Battle of Tarutino).
From 12 (24) of September 1812, the avant-garde of the Great Army (approximately 20-22 thousands of people) under the leadership of Murat stood idle at the Chernishna River in idleness. 4 (16) of October Kutuzov signed the dispositional attack on Murat’s squad, composed by Quarter General-General Tol, but Ermolov, wishing to “substitute” Konovnitsyn, who was the favorite of the commander-in-chief, left for an unknown destination. As a result, the next day there was not a single Russian division in the designated places. Kutuzov was furious, cruelly insulting two innocent officers. One of them (Lieutenant Colonel Eichen) then left the Kutuzov army. Yermolov, the commander-in-chief ordered “to be expelled from the service,” but he quickly reversed his decision. With a delay of 1 day, the Russian army still attacked the enemy. The infantry units were late (“You have everything in the language to attack, but you do not see that we are not able to do difficult maneuvers,” Kutuzov told Miloradovich about this). But the sudden attack of the Cossacks Orlov-Denisov was a success: "One desperate, frightened cry of the first Frenchman who saw the Cossacks, and everything that was in the camp, naked, wake up, threw guns, guns, horses, and ran anywhere. If the Cossacks were chasing the French without paying attention to what was behind and around them, they would have taken Murat and all that was there. The bosses wanted it. But it was impossible to move from the place of the Cossacks when they got to the booty and prisoners "(L. Tolstoy).
As a result of the loss of the tempo of the attack, the French came to their senses, lined up for battle and met the Russian regiments of Chasseurs who had come up with such close fire that, having lost several hundred people, including General Baggovut, the infantry turned back. Murat slowly and with dignity withdrew his troops beyond the Chernishna River to the Spas-Kupla. Believing that the massive attack of the retreating enemy would lead to its complete destruction, Bennigsen asked Kutuzov to provide troops for the pursuit. However, the commander-in-chief refused: “We did not know how to take Murat in the morning and arrive at the place on time, now there’s nothing to do,” he said. In this situation, Kutuzov was absolutely right.
The battle of Tarutino is traditionally highly valued in Russian historical literature. OV Orlik in the monograph "The Thunderstorm of the Twelfth Year" went, perhaps, the farthest, equating it in meaning to the battle on the Kulikovo field (1380). However, the insignificance of success was recognized even in the headquarters of the commander-in-chief. So PP Kononnitsyn believed that since Murat "was given the opportunity to retreat in order with little loss ... no one deserves an award for this cause."
In Moscow, Napoleon spent 36 days (from September 2 to October 7 old style). Marshals advised to leave the city immediately after the start of the fires, and from a military point of view, they were certainly right. However, there were also reasons for Napoleon, who claimed: "Moscow is not a military position, it is a political position." Just making sure that the Russians did not follow the peace proposals, Napoleon returned to the two-stage war plan he had previously rejected: spend the winter in the western Russian provinces or in Poland so that 1813 could start all over again in the spring. Still the Great Army numbered more than 89 000 infantrymen, some 14 000 cavalrymen and roughly 12 000 non-combatant (sick and wounded) warriors. The army leaving Moscow was escorted from 10 to 15 to thousands of wagons, into which "haphazardly crammed, furs, sugar, tea, books, paintings, actresses of the Moscow Theater" (A. Pastore). According to Segur, it all seemed like "a Tatar horde after a successful invasion."
Where did Napoleon lead his army? Soviet post-war historiography confirmed the opinion that Napoleon was going "through Kaluga to Ukraine", but Kutuzov, having guessed the plan of the enemy commander, saved Ukraine from the enemy invasion. However, Napoleon’s orders from October 11 (Marshal Victor and Generals Junot and Evers) are known to move to Smolensk. A.Kolenkur, F.-P.Segur and A.Zhomini report in their memoirs on the campaign of the French army to Smolensk. And, it should be recognized that this decision of Napoleon was quite logical and reasonable: after all, it was Smolensk who appointed the emperor to be the main base of the Great Army, it was in this city that the strategic stocks of food and fodder were to be created. Napoleon did not go to the Kaluga direction because he did not like the road he came to Moscow: with his movement the emperor intended only to cover Smolensk from Kutuzov. Reaching this goal under Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon did not go "through Kaluga to Ukraine", and, in accordance with his plan, he continued moving to Smolensk.
It is well known that after entering Napoleon in Moscow for 9 days he lost sight of the Russian army. Not everyone knows that Kutuzov found himself in a similar situation after Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow: the French left the city of October 7 (old style), but only the October Cossacks from Major General I.D. Ilovaisky brought this sensational news to the Russian camp in Tarutino. Due to the ignorance of the location of the French army, the corps of General Dokhturov almost died. Partisans of the Seslavin detachment saved him from defeat. On October 9, the commander of one of the partisan detachments, Major-General I.S. Dorokhov, told Kutuzov that the Ornano cavalry and the Brusy infantry had entered Fominskoe. Not suspecting that the whole "Great Army" was following them, Dorokhov asked for help in attacking the enemy. The commander-in-chief dispatched Dokhturov to the Fominsky Corps, who, having done an exhausting many-kilometer march, arrived in the village of Aristovo the next day. At dawn 11 October, the Russians were to attack the superior forces of the French, but at midnight in Aristovo, captain A.N. Seslavin delivered a captive noncommissioned officer, who said that the whole "Great Army" was moving to Maloyaroslavets. Upon receipt of this news, Kutuzov, who lost the enemy army, "shed tears of joy" and can be understood: if Napoleon had moved his troops not to Smolensk, but to Petersburg, the Russian commander-in-chief would have waited for the disgraceful resignation.
"Your responsibility will remain if the enemy is able to send a significant corps to Petersburg ... for with the army entrusted to you ... you have all the means to avert this misfortune," Alexander warned him in a letter from October 2 (October October 14 new style).
Dokhturov, who did not have time to rest, arrived at Maloyaroslavets on time. 12 (24) October, he joined the battle with the division of Delzona, which had the honor of the first to start the battle of Borodino. In this battle, Delzon died, and the famous partisan, Major General I. S. Dorokhov, was severely wounded (from the consequences of which he died). In the afternoon, the corps of General Rajewski and two divisions from Davout Corps approached Maloyaroslavets and immediately fought. The main forces of the opponents did not enter the battle: both Napoleon and Kutuzov watched from the side of a fierce battle in which about 30 thousands of Russians and 20 thousands of French participated. The city passed from hand to hand, according to various sources, from 8 to 13 times, only 200 survived from 40 houses, the streets were filled up with corpses. The battlefield was left for the French, Kutuzov withdrew his troops to 2, 7 km to the south and took a new position there (but in the report to the king from 13 in October 1812, he said that Maloyaroslavets remained with the Russians). October 14 and the Russian and French armies almost simultaneously retreated from Maloyaroslavets. Kutuzov withdrew his troops to the village of Detchino and the Linen Factory, and, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, was ready to continue the retreat even beyond Kaluga (“Kaluga is waiting for the fate of Moscow,” Kutuzov told his entourage). Napoleon issued an order: "We went to attack the enemy ... But Kutuzov retreated before us ... and the emperor decided to turn back." Then he led his army to Smolensk.
It should be recognized that from a tactical point of view, the battle for Maloyaroslavets, which Kutuzov put on a par with the Battle of Borodino, was lost by the Russian army. But it is about him that Segur will later tell the veterans of the Great Army: "Do you remember this ill-fated battlefield, where the conquest of the world stopped, where 20 years of continuous victories crumbled into dust, where the great collapse of our happiness began?" Under Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon for the first time in his life abandoned the general battle and for the first time voluntarily turned his back on the enemy. Academician Tarle believed that it was from Maloyaroslavets, not Moscow, that the true retreat of the Great Army began.
Meanwhile, because of Kutuzov’s unexpected retreat, the Russian army lost contact with Napoleon’s army and overtook it only at Vyazma. Napoleon himself 20 October said A. Kolenkuru, that "he can not understand the tactics of Kutuzov, who left us in complete peace". However, on October 21, a detachment of Miloradovich reached the old Smolensk road earlier than troops of Beauharnais, Poniatowski and Davout passed through it. He missed the first of them in order to be able to attack Davout's corps with superior forces. However, the “Great Army” was still great at that time, Beogharna and Poniatowski turned his troops back, while Kutuzov once again refused to send reinforcements: “he heard the cannonade as clearly as if it was held in his front, but despite on the insistence of all the significant persons of the Main Apartment, he remained an indifferent spectator of this battle ... He did not want to risk and chose to undergo the censure of the whole army, ”recalled General V. I. Levenshtern.
“It is better to build the enemy to build a golden bridge, rather than letting him break the chain,” so Kutuzov explained his tactics to the English Commissioner R. Wilson.
Nevertheless, near Vyazma, the French losses were several times greater than the losses of the Russians. Thus began the famous parallel march: "This maneuver was very well calculated by him (Kutuzov)," wrote Jomini, "he kept the French army under constant threat to overtake it and cut off the retreat path. Due to the latter circumstance, the French army was forced to force the march and move without the slightest recreation".
After the battle of Vyazma, frosts began, and "the vanguard of our most powerful ally, General Frost, appeared" (R. Wilson). Kutuzov’s auxiliary army "called the frost and the Russian memoirist S.N. Glinka. However, the General Frost ally was very doubtful, because he didn’t make out where they were, and where others were. The case was complicated by the theft of quartermasters and abusive suppliers:" that it is impossible to repel the enemy with bare hands, and shamelessly used this opportunity to enrich themselves, "- A.D. Bestuzhev-Ryumin recalled.
Even Tsarevich Konstantin Pavlovich did not consider it shameful to cash in on the Russian army: in the fall of 1812, he sold horses to the Yekaterinoslav regiment 126, 45 of which turned out to be “slapped” and “shot immediately, so as not to infect others”, “unfavorable 55 was ordered sell for anything, "and only 26 horses were" ranked as regiments. " As a result, even the soldiers of the privileged Life Guards Semenov regiment did not receive coats and boots.
"I protected my feet from frost, thrusting them into the fur hats of the French grenadiers, with which the road was littered. My hussars suffered terribly ... Our infantry was terribly upset. Nothing makes a person so craven as cold: if the soldiers managed to climb somewhere something under the roof, then there was no way to drive them out of there ... we were no less hostile to the enemy, "recalled General Levenshtern.
The situation with the army’s food supply was also extremely bad. On November 28, Lieutenant A.V. Chicherin wrote in his diary that "the guards are already 12 days, and the army has not received bread for a whole month." Hundreds of Russian soldiers every day were out of action, not because of injuries, but because of hypothermia, malnutrition and elementary overwork. Not inclined to grieve the king with the truth Kutuzov in a letter to Alexander from 7 in December 1812 writes that soon the army will be able to catch up with at least 20 000 recovered. About how many people will never be able to catch up with the army, the field marshal chose not to report. It is estimated that Napoleon’s losses on the way from Moscow to Vilna amounted to approximately 132,7 thousand people, the losses of the Russian army were not less than 120 thousand people. Thus, F. Stendal had the full right to write that "the Russian army arrived in Vilna not in the best shape than the French." Moving against the enemy army, Russian troops reached the village of Krasnoe, where 3-6 (15-18) November, a number of clashes with the enemy occurred. November 15 A young guard led by General Horn knocked out a fairly strong Russian detachment of Russian General Ozhanovsky from Red (22-23 thousands of soldiers with 120 guns). 16 November Napoleon continued to maneuver in an offensive spirit. Here is how the sergeant of the French army of Bourgogne describes the events of those days: "While we were standing in Krasnoe and its environs, the army in 80 000 people surrounded us ... there were Russians everywhere, obviously expecting to overpower us without difficulty ... The Emperor, bored by this the hordes decided to get rid of it. After going through the Russian camp and attacking the village, we forced the enemy to throw part of the artillery into the lake, after which most of their infantry sat in houses, some of which were on fire, and there we fought with hand-to-hand fighting. at of bloody battle was that the Russian retreated from their positions, but not removed. "
For two days under the Red, the emperor expected to hear from the "bravest of the brave" - Marshal Ney, who marched in the rearguard of the Great Army. On November 17, making sure that Ney's troops were blocked and had no chance of salvation, Napoleon began to withdraw his troops. All the battles under Krasny were approximately the same: Russian troops alternately attacked on the march three corps of the Great Army (Beaugarne, Davout and Nei) as they advanced towards Red. Each of these corps was surrounded for some time, but all of them came out of the encirclement, losing mainly completely decomposed and incompetent soldiers. This is how one of the episodes of this battle was described by L. N. Tolstoy in the novel War and Peace: “I give you guys this column,” he said (Miloradovich), approaching the troops and pointing the cavalry to the French. And the cavalry barely moving horses, driving them with spurs and sabers, trotting after strong tensions, drove up to the donated convoy, that is, to the crowd of frostbitten, stiff and hungry French; and the donated convoy threw weapons and surrendered, which she has long wanted. " Denis Davydov also draws a similar picture in his memoirs: “The Battle of Red, bearing the magnificent name of a three-day battle for some military writers, may be called just a three-day search for the hungry, half-naked French; by all means, trophies like my own could be proud of it, but not the main army. Entire crowds of the French hurriedly threw their weapons at the mere appearance of our small detachments on the high road. " But how, according to the descriptions of the same D. Davydov, the famous Old Guard looked under Red: "The Old Guard finally arrived, in the midst of which Napoleon himself was ... The enemy, seeing our noisy crowds, took the gun on the trigger and proudly continued on, not adding not a single step ... I will never forget the free walking and terrible posture of death of threatened warriors by all births ... The Guard with Napoleon passed in the middle of the crowd of our Cossacks like a stop-iron ship between fishing boats. "
And again, almost all memoirists paint pictures of the weakness and lack of initiative of the leadership of the Russian army, whose commander-in-chief, by all accounts, clearly sought to avoid meeting Napoleon and his guard:
“Kutuzov, for his part, avoiding meeting Napoleon and his guard, not only did not persecute the enemy persistently, but remaining almost in place, was all the time significantly behind” (D. Davydov).
Kutuzov under Red "acted indecisively mainly out of fear of meeting face to face with a genius commander" (M.N. Pokrovsky).
Georges de Chombre, a French historian and participant in a campaign to Russia, believed that under the Red the French had survived only because of Kutuzov’s slowness.
“This old man accomplished only half and badly what he so wisely conceived,” wrote F.-P. Segur.
The Russian commander-in-chief hardly deserved so many reproaches: a mortally tired, sick man did more than his strength allowed. We have already told you how much suffering young men experienced on the way from Maloyaroslavets to Vilna, for the old man this path became a godfather, in a few months he died.
"Kutuzov believed that the French troops, in the event of a perfect cut off of the path of retreat, could sell the success dearly, which, in the opinion of the old field marshal, without any efforts on our part is beyond doubt," explained the tactics of the commander-in-chief, AP Ermolov. A captured French general, M.-L.Plyuibisk, recalled that before Berezina, Kutuzov said in a conversation with him: "I, confident of your death, did not want to sacrifice for this not a single soldier." However, it is hardly worth taking these words of Kutuzov seriously: the commander-in-chief saw perfectly well that the winter way was killing Russian soldiers rather than enemy bullets. Everyone demanded rapid maneuvers and brilliant results from Kutuzov, and he had to somehow explain his “inaction”. The truth was that the majority of Russian troops were unable to move faster than the French, and therefore could not “cut off” or surround them. The main forces of the Russian army struggled to keep up with the pace set by the retreating French, giving the right to attack the remnants of the "Great Army" to light cavalry detachments, which were easily captured by the "non-combatants" but could not cope with the combat forces of the French army.
Nevertheless, in the words of A.Z. Manfred, after the Red "Great Army" "ceased to be not only great, it ceased to be an army." There were no more than 35 thousand men in combat-ready soldiers, tens of thousands of unarmed and sick people stretched for this core, stretching for many kilometers.
And what about Her? On November 18, not yet knowing that Napoleon had already left Red, the marshal tried to break through the troops of Miloradovich, Paskevich and Dolgoruky. He had 7-8 thousands of combat-ready soldiers, as many sick and wounded, and 12 guns. He was surrounded on all sides, his guns were hit, the main forces of the Russian army stood in front, and the Dnieper, barely covered with ice, was behind. She was offered to surrender: "Field Marshal Kutuzov would not have dared to make such a cruel offer to such a famous warrior if he had at least one chance of salvation. But 80 thousands of Russians are standing before him, and if he doubts this, Kutuzov invites him to send someone walk along the Russian ranks and count their strengths, "it was written in a letter delivered by an envoy.
“Have you ever heard, sir, that the imperial marshals surrendered to captivity?” She answered.
“To advance through the forest!” He ordered his troops, “There are no roads? To advance without roads! Go to the Dnieper and cross the Dnieper! The river is not completely frozen yet? It will freeze! March!”
On the night of November 19, 3 000 soldiers and officers approached the Dnieper, 2 200 of them fell through the ice. The rest, led by Neh, came to the emperor. "She fought like a lion ... he had to die, he had no other chance of salvation, except for his strength of will and a firm desire to save Napoleon his army ... this feat will be forever memorable in the annals of military history," he wrote in his memoirs V. I. Levenshtern.
"If the goal of the Russians was to cut off Napoleon and the marshals and capture them, and this goal was not only not achieved, and all attempts to achieve this goal were destroyed every time in the most shameful way, then the last campaign period is quite rightly presented by the French near victories and completely unfairly Russian seems victorious, "- wrote L. Tolstoy.
"Napoleon ruined what he decided to wage a victorious war with the Russians. Most surprisingly, it happened: Napoleon did wage a victorious war with the Russians. Everywhere the Russians retreated, Napoleon defeated, the Russians left Moscow, Napoleon entered Moscow, the Russians tolerated defeat, Napoleon suffered victories. It ended with Napoleon who suffered his last victory at Berezina and galloped off to Paris, "one of the authors of World History, processed by Satyricon A. Averchenko, ironically. So what happened on Berezina?
September 8 (old style) Aide-Adjutant A.I. Chernyshov brought to Kutuzov a plan drawn up in St. Petersburg to defeat the French troops on Berezin. It consisted in the following: the army of Chichagov (from the south) and Wittgenstein (from the north) were in the area of Borisov to block the path of the French troops pursued by the Main Army of Kutuzov. Until mid-November, it really seemed that Napoleon would not be able to leave Russia: 4 (16) in November, the vanguard of Admiral P.V. Chichagov captured Minsk, where huge stocks of food, fodder and military equipment were waiting for the French army. The Cossack regiment of Chernyshov, already familiar to us, was sent to Wittgenstein’s army with a message about victory, and Chichagov had no doubt that his movement towards Berezina would be supported from the north. On the way, this detachment intercepted the 4's couriers, sent by Napoleon to Paris and freed the captured General Vincengorod (F.F. Winzengorod was the commander of the first partisan detachment of the war 1812, created by order of Barclay de Tolly. He was taken prisoner in October in Moscow captured by the French). 9 (21) November, Chichagov’s army defeated the Polish units of Bronikovsky and Dombrowski and captured the city of Borisov. The admiral was so sure of the success of the operation that he sent Napoleon omens to the surrounding villages. For "greater reliability," he ordered to catch and bring to him all the little ones. However, on November, 11 (23) troops of Udine broke into Borisov and almost captured Chichagov himself, who fled to the right bank, leaving "his lunch with silverware." However, the admiral burned the bridge over the Berezina, so the position of the French was still critical - the width of the river at that place was 107 meters. Murat even advised Napoleon to "save himself before it is too late" and to secretly flee with a detachment of Poles, which caused the emperor's wrath. While 300 soldiers were south of Borisov, they were guided across the bridge in full view of the Russian troops, Napoleon personally supervised the construction of bridges near the village north of this city. Studenki. French sappers led by military engineer J.-B. Ebla coped with the task: standing up to the throat in icy water, they built two bridges - for infantry and cavalry and for carts and artillery. 14 (26) in November, the first to cross the coast was the Udino corps, which entered the battle on the move and, rejecting the small barrage of Russians, allowed the rest of the army to start crossing. As early as the morning of November 15 (27), Chichagov assumed that the events at Studenka were only a demonstration with the aim of deceiving him, and Wittgenstein managed to pass by Studenki to Borisov on the same day without finding the crossing of the French troops. On this day, the troops of Wittgenstein and the vanguard of Platov were surrounded and the captive division of General Partuno was surrendered (about 7 000 people). 16 (28) of November was supported by the main forces of Platov and the vanguard of Miloradovich to Borisov, and Chichagov and Wittgenstein finally understood what was happening in Studenka, but it was already too late: Napoleon with the Old Guard and other combat-ready units crossed the Berezina a day earlier. On this day, the army of Witggenstein attacked Victor's corps on the left bank of the Berezina, and Chichagov's army on the right bank struck Udino's troops, and so powerful that Napoleon brought Ney's corps into battle and even the guard. 17 (29) November Napoleon ordered Victor to go to the right bank, after which the bridges across the Berezina were set on fire. On the left bank, 10 000 remained sick and practically unarmed people, who were soon destroyed or taken prisoner. For Napoleon, they not only did not represent any value, but were even harmful: every state and every government needs dead heroes, but absolutely no need for living people with disabilities who tell the war differently than they should and require all sorts of benefits. In the twentieth century, the leaders of North Vietnam understood this very well, who sincerely hated the Americans who had fought with them, but ordered their snipers not to kill, but to cripple US soldiers.
Contemporaries did not consider the crossing of the Berezina as a defeat of Napoleon. Z.de Mestre called the Berezinsky operation "just a few loud strikes on the tail of the tiger." A. Zhomini, A. Kolenkur, A. Tier, K. Klauzevits and many others considered it a strategic victory for Napoleon.
“Napoleon gave us the bloodiest battle ... The greatest commander achieved his goal. Praise him!”, Said engineer Chichagov’s army officer Martos, who responded to the events of the last day of the Berezinsky epic.
"The eyewitnesses and participants in the case had forever united with Berezina: the strategic victory of Napoleon over the Russians when, it seemed, he was threatened with complete destruction, and at the same time a terrible picture of the massacre after the Emperor's transfer to the western bank of the river," 1938, academician E.V. Tarle. The blame for the failure of the Berezinsky operation was assigned to Admiral Chichagov. “Wittgenstein saved Petersburg, my husband –Russia, and Chichagov - Napoleon” - even Byron knew about these words of E. I. Kutuzov. Langeron called the admiral "Napoleon's guardian angel", Zhukovsky "threw out" all the text about Chichagov from his poem "The Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors", Derzhavin ridiculed him in the epigram, and Krylov in the Pike and the Cat fable. However, the documents show that it was Chichagov’s troops that caused the greatest damage to Napoleon’s army: “Except for laying down arms, the entire loss of the enemy belongs more to the action of Admiral Chichagov’s troops,” AP Yermolov reported. The English Commissioner Wilson reported: “I did not hear from anyone that Admiral Chichagov deserved disapproval. The local situation was such that it did not allow to go to the enemy. We (ie, Kutuzov and his headquarters at which Wilson was) were to blame because that two days were in Red, two days in Kopys, why the enemy was free to cross the river. " However, society needed a scapegoat, but since Kutuzov at that time was already perceived by all as the “savior of Russia,” and Wittgenstein, who reflected the advance of Udino’s avant-garde on Petersburg, was called the savior of Petropol and the second Suvorov, the public Chichagov was brought.
Conditions for the retreat of the Napoleonic army from Berezina to Vilna became even more destructive. It was after the crossing of Napoleon that the most severe frosts struck. The most amazing thing is that under these conditions the French continued to carry along Russian captives, a number of which they brought to Paris. Among them were V.A. Perovsky (great-uncle of the famous Sophia Perovskaya) and private soldier Semenov, who remained in France, the ancestor of the no less famous Georges Simenon. 21 November 1812 (old style) Napoleon wrote the last ("funeral") 29 bulletin in which he admitted defeat, explaining it to the vicissitudes of the Russian winter. On November 23, the emperor left his army, leaving command of the remnants of the troops to Murat (who in January 1813, in turn, left the army on E. Beauharnais and left for Naples). It should immediately be said that the departure of Napoleon was not fleeing from the army: he did everything he could, the remnants of the army moved to the border without stopping, and after 8 days after the emperor left, Marshal Ney was the last of the French to cross the Neman. "Emperor Napoleon left the army to go to Paris, where his presence became necessary. Political considerations prevailed over those considerations that could make him stay at the head of his troops. More importantly, even in the interests of our army, it seemed alive and terrible, despite the failure. It was necessary to appear before Germany, already hesitating in its intentions ... It was necessary to let France know, anxious and deafly worried, doubtful friends and secret enemies that Napoleon did not die in terrible mischief tvii, befell his legions, "- wrote Bourgogne (not only the marshals, but the sergeants of the French army turns out to be an expert in strategy).
“In these 8 days, Napoleon himself wasn’t at risk anymore, and his presence could not change anything for the better. The departure of the emperor was, from a military-political point of view, necessary for the speedy creation of a new army,” E. Tarle admitted. And it was necessary to create an army: according to Georges de Chombre in December 1812, Napoleon had 58, 2 thousands of soldiers, of whom only 14 266 people belonged to the central grouping of the "Great Army", the rest were part of the flank groupings J.- E. Macdonald and J.-L. Rainier. Kutuzov brought the entire 27,5 to thousands of people to the Neman. At the same time, according to the testimony of all the memoirists, the Russian army "lost sight" and looked more like a peasant militia than a regular army. Seeing this crowd, mistrustfully and not keeping pace with the parade in Vilna, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich indignantly exclaimed: “They can only fight!”.
"The war spoils the army," Alexander I agreed with him, referring to the deterioration of the personnel structure due to losses and recruiting by untrained recruits.
Kutuzov was showered with awards, including the Order of St. George I, the portrait of Alexander I, studded with diamonds, a golden sword with diamonds and much more. The emperor everywhere emphasized his respect for the commander-in-chief, walked with him "hand in hand", hugged him, but, strangely enough, still did not trust him: "I know that the field marshal did not do anything of what he had to do. He avoided, as far as this was in his power, any actions against the enemy. All his successes were forced by external force ... But the Moscow nobility is behind him and want him to lead the nation to the glorious end of this war ... However, now I I will not leave my army and will not allow inconsistencies in the order and Field Marshal, "- said Alexander in conversation with Wilson.
With awards in general, there were a lot of insults and misunderstandings.
"Many awards are handed out, but only a few are not given by chance," Lieutenant-General N. N. Raevsky wrote to his wife.
“Intrigue is an abyss, others were rewarded with rewards, and the other was not domesticated,” General A.Rimsky-Korsakov complained to the Minister of the Interior.
"For one decent, five trashy are produced, to which all the witnesses are," the Life Guards rebelled Colonel S.N. Marin.
This is not surprising. According to the classification of L.N.Gumilev (proposed in the work "Ethnogenesis and Earth's Biosphere"), the Patriotic War of 1812 should be referred to the most terrible and dangerous for the nation type of wars in which the most active (passionate) part of the population of the country dies, sacrificing themselves in the name of saving the Motherland and the places of fallen heroes, they inevitably engage in prudent and cynical selfish subpassionaries (a typical example of a subpassional personality is Boris Drubetskaya from L. Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace).
Kutuzov did not want to continue the war in Europe. First, the field marshal rightly assumed that the destruction of Napoleon and his empire would be beneficial only to Great Britain and the results of the victory over Napoleonic France would not be taken by Russia, but by England: “I’m not at all convinced whether the complete destruction of Napoleon and his army would be a great blessing for the Universe His legacy will not be gained by Russia or any other of the mainland powers, but by that power that now dominates the seas, and then its predominance will be unbearable ", - even under Maloyaroslavets l Kutuzov Wilson. Secondly, he understood that with the expulsion of the enemy from the territory of Russia, the people's war ended. The attitude to the foreign campaign in Russian society was generally negative. In the Russian provinces they said loudly that "Russia has already done a miracle and that now that the Fatherland has been saved, it has no need to sacrifice for the good of Prussia and Austria, whose union is worse than outright hostility" (N.K.Shilder), and the Penza province even recalled her militia. However, Alexander I already imagined himself as a new Agamemnon, leader and leader of kings: "God sent me power and victory, so that I could bring peace and tranquility to the universe," he declared absolutely earnestly in 1813. Therefore, in the name of peace, war began again.
24 December 1812 was the Russian army under the formal command of Kutuzov, but in the presence of Alexander I, who was in command of everything, came out of Vilna. 1 January 1813 Russian troops crossed the Neman, but that's another story.
"The troops are in low spirits," reports N.N. Raevsky.
“Many people took off their uniforms and didn’t want to serve after Moscow’s vicious concessions,” recalls S. I. Maevsky, the head of the Kantuzov office.
"The escapes of the soldiers ... greatly increased after the surrender of Moscow ... In one day, four thousand of them were overfished," this is the testimony of the adjutant Kutuzov A. I. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky.
FV Rostopchin and his secretary A. Ya. Bulgakov write in their memoirs that after the surrender of Moscow many in the army began to call Kutuzov the "darkest prince". Kutuzov himself left Moscow "so that, as much as possible, not to meet with anyone" (A. B. Golitsin). 2 (14) of September (the day of Moscow’s evacuation) the commander essentially stopped performing his functions and Barclay de Tolly, who "stayed 18 hours without departing from the horse," followed the order of the troops.
At the council in Fili, Kutuzov ordered "to retreat along the Ryazan road." September followed the order from 2 to 5 (14-17), but on the night of 6 (18) September a new order was received by the commander in chief, according to which one Cossack regiment continued to move in the same direction, while the rest of the army turned to Podolsk and further on the Kaluga road to the south. Clausewitz wrote that "the Russian army (maneuver) perfectly fulfilled .... with enormous benefit for itself." Napoleon himself on St. Helena recognized that the "old fox Kutuzov" then "deceived him greatly" and called this maneuver the Russian army "beautiful." The honor of the “flank march” designation is attributed to Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, Bennigsen, Toll and many others, which speaks only of the naturalness of movement in this direction: the idea was “in the air”. In the novel "War and Peace" Leo Tolstoy wrote with some irony: "If we imagined ... just one army without chiefs, then this army could not do anything else but a return movement to Moscow, describing the arc on the side from which there was more food and the region was more abundant. The movement was ... it was so natural that the marauders of the Russian army ran off in this very direction. " The "flank march" near the village of Tarutino ended, where Kutuzov brought about 87 thousands of soldiers, 14 thousands of Cossacks and 622 guns. Alas, as Bagration had predicted, the top leadership of the Russian army was divided here into parties and groups that spent time in fruitless and harmful intrigues.
"Where is this fool? Redhead? Coward?" - shouted Kutuzov, pretending to have forgotten how to deliberately need the last name and trying to remember. When they decided to tell him whether Bennigsen meant it, the field marshal replied: "Yes, yes, yes!" So it was just the day of the Battle of Tarutino. Repeated before the eyes of the whole army story Bagration with Barclay ", - complained about E.Terle.
"Barclay ... saw the discord between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, but did not support either one or the other, and condemned both - the two weak old men, one of whom (Kutuzov) was in his eyes a" slacker "and the other ".
“Barclay and Bennigsen were at enmity from the very beginning of the war, all the time. Kutuzov also took the position of the“ third rejoicing ”towards them,” wrote N. A. Troitsky.
“I almost don’t go to the Main Apartment ... there is the intrigues of parties, envy, anger, and even more ... egoism, despite the circumstances of Russia that nobody cares about,” wrote N.N. Raevsky.
“Intrigues were endless,” recalled A.P.Ermolov.
"Everything that I see (in the Tarutinsky camp) inspires me with utter disgust," DS Dokhturov agrees with them. Recognized by his contemporaries as a great master of intrigue, Kutuzov remained a winner here, forcing Barclay de Tolly and then Bennigsen to leave the army. Barclay left 22 September (4 October) 1812 d. He had every right to say Lowenstern: "I gave the field marshal an army that was well-dressed, armed and not demoralized ... The field marshal did not want to share the glory of expelling the enemy from the sacred land of our Fatherland with anyone .... I brought the carriage up the mountain, and it will roll itself down from the mountain with a little guidance. "
Nevertheless, the mobilization services of the Russian army were working properly, and by mid-October Kutuzov had under his command about 130 thousands of soldiers and Cossacks, approximately 120 thousand militiamen and 622 guns. Napoleon, who was in Moscow, had an army of thousands of people in 116. The Russian army felt strong enough to push for an offensive. The first test of strength was the battle at the River Chernishny (Battle of Tarutino).
From 12 (24) of September 1812, the avant-garde of the Great Army (approximately 20-22 thousands of people) under the leadership of Murat stood idle at the Chernishna River in idleness. 4 (16) of October Kutuzov signed the dispositional attack on Murat’s squad, composed by Quarter General-General Tol, but Ermolov, wishing to “substitute” Konovnitsyn, who was the favorite of the commander-in-chief, left for an unknown destination. As a result, the next day there was not a single Russian division in the designated places. Kutuzov was furious, cruelly insulting two innocent officers. One of them (Lieutenant Colonel Eichen) then left the Kutuzov army. Yermolov, the commander-in-chief ordered “to be expelled from the service,” but he quickly reversed his decision. With a delay of 1 day, the Russian army still attacked the enemy. The infantry units were late (“You have everything in the language to attack, but you do not see that we are not able to do difficult maneuvers,” Kutuzov told Miloradovich about this). But the sudden attack of the Cossacks Orlov-Denisov was a success: "One desperate, frightened cry of the first Frenchman who saw the Cossacks, and everything that was in the camp, naked, wake up, threw guns, guns, horses, and ran anywhere. If the Cossacks were chasing the French without paying attention to what was behind and around them, they would have taken Murat and all that was there. The bosses wanted it. But it was impossible to move from the place of the Cossacks when they got to the booty and prisoners "(L. Tolstoy).
As a result of the loss of the tempo of the attack, the French came to their senses, lined up for battle and met the Russian regiments of Chasseurs who had come up with such close fire that, having lost several hundred people, including General Baggovut, the infantry turned back. Murat slowly and with dignity withdrew his troops beyond the Chernishna River to the Spas-Kupla. Believing that the massive attack of the retreating enemy would lead to its complete destruction, Bennigsen asked Kutuzov to provide troops for the pursuit. However, the commander-in-chief refused: “We did not know how to take Murat in the morning and arrive at the place on time, now there’s nothing to do,” he said. In this situation, Kutuzov was absolutely right.
The battle of Tarutino is traditionally highly valued in Russian historical literature. OV Orlik in the monograph "The Thunderstorm of the Twelfth Year" went, perhaps, the farthest, equating it in meaning to the battle on the Kulikovo field (1380). However, the insignificance of success was recognized even in the headquarters of the commander-in-chief. So PP Kononnitsyn believed that since Murat "was given the opportunity to retreat in order with little loss ... no one deserves an award for this cause."
In Moscow, Napoleon spent 36 days (from September 2 to October 7 old style). Marshals advised to leave the city immediately after the start of the fires, and from a military point of view, they were certainly right. However, there were also reasons for Napoleon, who claimed: "Moscow is not a military position, it is a political position." Just making sure that the Russians did not follow the peace proposals, Napoleon returned to the two-stage war plan he had previously rejected: spend the winter in the western Russian provinces or in Poland so that 1813 could start all over again in the spring. Still the Great Army numbered more than 89 000 infantrymen, some 14 000 cavalrymen and roughly 12 000 non-combatant (sick and wounded) warriors. The army leaving Moscow was escorted from 10 to 15 to thousands of wagons, into which "haphazardly crammed, furs, sugar, tea, books, paintings, actresses of the Moscow Theater" (A. Pastore). According to Segur, it all seemed like "a Tatar horde after a successful invasion."
Where did Napoleon lead his army? Soviet post-war historiography confirmed the opinion that Napoleon was going "through Kaluga to Ukraine", but Kutuzov, having guessed the plan of the enemy commander, saved Ukraine from the enemy invasion. However, Napoleon’s orders from October 11 (Marshal Victor and Generals Junot and Evers) are known to move to Smolensk. A.Kolenkur, F.-P.Segur and A.Zhomini report in their memoirs on the campaign of the French army to Smolensk. And, it should be recognized that this decision of Napoleon was quite logical and reasonable: after all, it was Smolensk who appointed the emperor to be the main base of the Great Army, it was in this city that the strategic stocks of food and fodder were to be created. Napoleon did not go to the Kaluga direction because he did not like the road he came to Moscow: with his movement the emperor intended only to cover Smolensk from Kutuzov. Reaching this goal under Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon did not go "through Kaluga to Ukraine", and, in accordance with his plan, he continued moving to Smolensk.
It is well known that after entering Napoleon in Moscow for 9 days he lost sight of the Russian army. Not everyone knows that Kutuzov found himself in a similar situation after Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow: the French left the city of October 7 (old style), but only the October Cossacks from Major General I.D. Ilovaisky brought this sensational news to the Russian camp in Tarutino. Due to the ignorance of the location of the French army, the corps of General Dokhturov almost died. Partisans of the Seslavin detachment saved him from defeat. On October 9, the commander of one of the partisan detachments, Major-General I.S. Dorokhov, told Kutuzov that the Ornano cavalry and the Brusy infantry had entered Fominskoe. Not suspecting that the whole "Great Army" was following them, Dorokhov asked for help in attacking the enemy. The commander-in-chief dispatched Dokhturov to the Fominsky Corps, who, having done an exhausting many-kilometer march, arrived in the village of Aristovo the next day. At dawn 11 October, the Russians were to attack the superior forces of the French, but at midnight in Aristovo, captain A.N. Seslavin delivered a captive noncommissioned officer, who said that the whole "Great Army" was moving to Maloyaroslavets. Upon receipt of this news, Kutuzov, who lost the enemy army, "shed tears of joy" and can be understood: if Napoleon had moved his troops not to Smolensk, but to Petersburg, the Russian commander-in-chief would have waited for the disgraceful resignation.
"Your responsibility will remain if the enemy is able to send a significant corps to Petersburg ... for with the army entrusted to you ... you have all the means to avert this misfortune," Alexander warned him in a letter from October 2 (October October 14 new style).
Dokhturov, who did not have time to rest, arrived at Maloyaroslavets on time. 12 (24) October, he joined the battle with the division of Delzona, which had the honor of the first to start the battle of Borodino. In this battle, Delzon died, and the famous partisan, Major General I. S. Dorokhov, was severely wounded (from the consequences of which he died). In the afternoon, the corps of General Rajewski and two divisions from Davout Corps approached Maloyaroslavets and immediately fought. The main forces of the opponents did not enter the battle: both Napoleon and Kutuzov watched from the side of a fierce battle in which about 30 thousands of Russians and 20 thousands of French participated. The city passed from hand to hand, according to various sources, from 8 to 13 times, only 200 survived from 40 houses, the streets were filled up with corpses. The battlefield was left for the French, Kutuzov withdrew his troops to 2, 7 km to the south and took a new position there (but in the report to the king from 13 in October 1812, he said that Maloyaroslavets remained with the Russians). October 14 and the Russian and French armies almost simultaneously retreated from Maloyaroslavets. Kutuzov withdrew his troops to the village of Detchino and the Linen Factory, and, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, was ready to continue the retreat even beyond Kaluga (“Kaluga is waiting for the fate of Moscow,” Kutuzov told his entourage). Napoleon issued an order: "We went to attack the enemy ... But Kutuzov retreated before us ... and the emperor decided to turn back." Then he led his army to Smolensk.
It should be recognized that from a tactical point of view, the battle for Maloyaroslavets, which Kutuzov put on a par with the Battle of Borodino, was lost by the Russian army. But it is about him that Segur will later tell the veterans of the Great Army: "Do you remember this ill-fated battlefield, where the conquest of the world stopped, where 20 years of continuous victories crumbled into dust, where the great collapse of our happiness began?" Under Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon for the first time in his life abandoned the general battle and for the first time voluntarily turned his back on the enemy. Academician Tarle believed that it was from Maloyaroslavets, not Moscow, that the true retreat of the Great Army began.
Meanwhile, because of Kutuzov’s unexpected retreat, the Russian army lost contact with Napoleon’s army and overtook it only at Vyazma. Napoleon himself 20 October said A. Kolenkuru, that "he can not understand the tactics of Kutuzov, who left us in complete peace". However, on October 21, a detachment of Miloradovich reached the old Smolensk road earlier than troops of Beauharnais, Poniatowski and Davout passed through it. He missed the first of them in order to be able to attack Davout's corps with superior forces. However, the “Great Army” was still great at that time, Beogharna and Poniatowski turned his troops back, while Kutuzov once again refused to send reinforcements: “he heard the cannonade as clearly as if it was held in his front, but despite on the insistence of all the significant persons of the Main Apartment, he remained an indifferent spectator of this battle ... He did not want to risk and chose to undergo the censure of the whole army, ”recalled General V. I. Levenshtern.
“It is better to build the enemy to build a golden bridge, rather than letting him break the chain,” so Kutuzov explained his tactics to the English Commissioner R. Wilson.
Nevertheless, near Vyazma, the French losses were several times greater than the losses of the Russians. Thus began the famous parallel march: "This maneuver was very well calculated by him (Kutuzov)," wrote Jomini, "he kept the French army under constant threat to overtake it and cut off the retreat path. Due to the latter circumstance, the French army was forced to force the march and move without the slightest recreation".
After the battle of Vyazma, frosts began, and "the vanguard of our most powerful ally, General Frost, appeared" (R. Wilson). Kutuzov’s auxiliary army "called the frost and the Russian memoirist S.N. Glinka. However, the General Frost ally was very doubtful, because he didn’t make out where they were, and where others were. The case was complicated by the theft of quartermasters and abusive suppliers:" that it is impossible to repel the enemy with bare hands, and shamelessly used this opportunity to enrich themselves, "- A.D. Bestuzhev-Ryumin recalled.
Even Tsarevich Konstantin Pavlovich did not consider it shameful to cash in on the Russian army: in the fall of 1812, he sold horses to the Yekaterinoslav regiment 126, 45 of which turned out to be “slapped” and “shot immediately, so as not to infect others”, “unfavorable 55 was ordered sell for anything, "and only 26 horses were" ranked as regiments. " As a result, even the soldiers of the privileged Life Guards Semenov regiment did not receive coats and boots.
"I protected my feet from frost, thrusting them into the fur hats of the French grenadiers, with which the road was littered. My hussars suffered terribly ... Our infantry was terribly upset. Nothing makes a person so craven as cold: if the soldiers managed to climb somewhere something under the roof, then there was no way to drive them out of there ... we were no less hostile to the enemy, "recalled General Levenshtern.
The situation with the army’s food supply was also extremely bad. On November 28, Lieutenant A.V. Chicherin wrote in his diary that "the guards are already 12 days, and the army has not received bread for a whole month." Hundreds of Russian soldiers every day were out of action, not because of injuries, but because of hypothermia, malnutrition and elementary overwork. Not inclined to grieve the king with the truth Kutuzov in a letter to Alexander from 7 in December 1812 writes that soon the army will be able to catch up with at least 20 000 recovered. About how many people will never be able to catch up with the army, the field marshal chose not to report. It is estimated that Napoleon’s losses on the way from Moscow to Vilna amounted to approximately 132,7 thousand people, the losses of the Russian army were not less than 120 thousand people. Thus, F. Stendal had the full right to write that "the Russian army arrived in Vilna not in the best shape than the French." Moving against the enemy army, Russian troops reached the village of Krasnoe, where 3-6 (15-18) November, a number of clashes with the enemy occurred. November 15 A young guard led by General Horn knocked out a fairly strong Russian detachment of Russian General Ozhanovsky from Red (22-23 thousands of soldiers with 120 guns). 16 November Napoleon continued to maneuver in an offensive spirit. Here is how the sergeant of the French army of Bourgogne describes the events of those days: "While we were standing in Krasnoe and its environs, the army in 80 000 people surrounded us ... there were Russians everywhere, obviously expecting to overpower us without difficulty ... The Emperor, bored by this the hordes decided to get rid of it. After going through the Russian camp and attacking the village, we forced the enemy to throw part of the artillery into the lake, after which most of their infantry sat in houses, some of which were on fire, and there we fought with hand-to-hand fighting. at of bloody battle was that the Russian retreated from their positions, but not removed. "
For two days under the Red, the emperor expected to hear from the "bravest of the brave" - Marshal Ney, who marched in the rearguard of the Great Army. On November 17, making sure that Ney's troops were blocked and had no chance of salvation, Napoleon began to withdraw his troops. All the battles under Krasny were approximately the same: Russian troops alternately attacked on the march three corps of the Great Army (Beaugarne, Davout and Nei) as they advanced towards Red. Each of these corps was surrounded for some time, but all of them came out of the encirclement, losing mainly completely decomposed and incompetent soldiers. This is how one of the episodes of this battle was described by L. N. Tolstoy in the novel War and Peace: “I give you guys this column,” he said (Miloradovich), approaching the troops and pointing the cavalry to the French. And the cavalry barely moving horses, driving them with spurs and sabers, trotting after strong tensions, drove up to the donated convoy, that is, to the crowd of frostbitten, stiff and hungry French; and the donated convoy threw weapons and surrendered, which she has long wanted. " Denis Davydov also draws a similar picture in his memoirs: “The Battle of Red, bearing the magnificent name of a three-day battle for some military writers, may be called just a three-day search for the hungry, half-naked French; by all means, trophies like my own could be proud of it, but not the main army. Entire crowds of the French hurriedly threw their weapons at the mere appearance of our small detachments on the high road. " But how, according to the descriptions of the same D. Davydov, the famous Old Guard looked under Red: "The Old Guard finally arrived, in the midst of which Napoleon himself was ... The enemy, seeing our noisy crowds, took the gun on the trigger and proudly continued on, not adding not a single step ... I will never forget the free walking and terrible posture of death of threatened warriors by all births ... The Guard with Napoleon passed in the middle of the crowd of our Cossacks like a stop-iron ship between fishing boats. "
And again, almost all memoirists paint pictures of the weakness and lack of initiative of the leadership of the Russian army, whose commander-in-chief, by all accounts, clearly sought to avoid meeting Napoleon and his guard:
“Kutuzov, for his part, avoiding meeting Napoleon and his guard, not only did not persecute the enemy persistently, but remaining almost in place, was all the time significantly behind” (D. Davydov).
Kutuzov under Red "acted indecisively mainly out of fear of meeting face to face with a genius commander" (M.N. Pokrovsky).
Georges de Chombre, a French historian and participant in a campaign to Russia, believed that under the Red the French had survived only because of Kutuzov’s slowness.
“This old man accomplished only half and badly what he so wisely conceived,” wrote F.-P. Segur.
The Russian commander-in-chief hardly deserved so many reproaches: a mortally tired, sick man did more than his strength allowed. We have already told you how much suffering young men experienced on the way from Maloyaroslavets to Vilna, for the old man this path became a godfather, in a few months he died.
"Kutuzov believed that the French troops, in the event of a perfect cut off of the path of retreat, could sell the success dearly, which, in the opinion of the old field marshal, without any efforts on our part is beyond doubt," explained the tactics of the commander-in-chief, AP Ermolov. A captured French general, M.-L.Plyuibisk, recalled that before Berezina, Kutuzov said in a conversation with him: "I, confident of your death, did not want to sacrifice for this not a single soldier." However, it is hardly worth taking these words of Kutuzov seriously: the commander-in-chief saw perfectly well that the winter way was killing Russian soldiers rather than enemy bullets. Everyone demanded rapid maneuvers and brilliant results from Kutuzov, and he had to somehow explain his “inaction”. The truth was that the majority of Russian troops were unable to move faster than the French, and therefore could not “cut off” or surround them. The main forces of the Russian army struggled to keep up with the pace set by the retreating French, giving the right to attack the remnants of the "Great Army" to light cavalry detachments, which were easily captured by the "non-combatants" but could not cope with the combat forces of the French army.
Nevertheless, in the words of A.Z. Manfred, after the Red "Great Army" "ceased to be not only great, it ceased to be an army." There were no more than 35 thousand men in combat-ready soldiers, tens of thousands of unarmed and sick people stretched for this core, stretching for many kilometers.
And what about Her? On November 18, not yet knowing that Napoleon had already left Red, the marshal tried to break through the troops of Miloradovich, Paskevich and Dolgoruky. He had 7-8 thousands of combat-ready soldiers, as many sick and wounded, and 12 guns. He was surrounded on all sides, his guns were hit, the main forces of the Russian army stood in front, and the Dnieper, barely covered with ice, was behind. She was offered to surrender: "Field Marshal Kutuzov would not have dared to make such a cruel offer to such a famous warrior if he had at least one chance of salvation. But 80 thousands of Russians are standing before him, and if he doubts this, Kutuzov invites him to send someone walk along the Russian ranks and count their strengths, "it was written in a letter delivered by an envoy.
“Have you ever heard, sir, that the imperial marshals surrendered to captivity?” She answered.
“To advance through the forest!” He ordered his troops, “There are no roads? To advance without roads! Go to the Dnieper and cross the Dnieper! The river is not completely frozen yet? It will freeze! March!”
On the night of November 19, 3 000 soldiers and officers approached the Dnieper, 2 200 of them fell through the ice. The rest, led by Neh, came to the emperor. "She fought like a lion ... he had to die, he had no other chance of salvation, except for his strength of will and a firm desire to save Napoleon his army ... this feat will be forever memorable in the annals of military history," he wrote in his memoirs V. I. Levenshtern.
"If the goal of the Russians was to cut off Napoleon and the marshals and capture them, and this goal was not only not achieved, and all attempts to achieve this goal were destroyed every time in the most shameful way, then the last campaign period is quite rightly presented by the French near victories and completely unfairly Russian seems victorious, "- wrote L. Tolstoy.
"Napoleon ruined what he decided to wage a victorious war with the Russians. Most surprisingly, it happened: Napoleon did wage a victorious war with the Russians. Everywhere the Russians retreated, Napoleon defeated, the Russians left Moscow, Napoleon entered Moscow, the Russians tolerated defeat, Napoleon suffered victories. It ended with Napoleon who suffered his last victory at Berezina and galloped off to Paris, "one of the authors of World History, processed by Satyricon A. Averchenko, ironically. So what happened on Berezina?
September 8 (old style) Aide-Adjutant A.I. Chernyshov brought to Kutuzov a plan drawn up in St. Petersburg to defeat the French troops on Berezin. It consisted in the following: the army of Chichagov (from the south) and Wittgenstein (from the north) were in the area of Borisov to block the path of the French troops pursued by the Main Army of Kutuzov. Until mid-November, it really seemed that Napoleon would not be able to leave Russia: 4 (16) in November, the vanguard of Admiral P.V. Chichagov captured Minsk, where huge stocks of food, fodder and military equipment were waiting for the French army. The Cossack regiment of Chernyshov, already familiar to us, was sent to Wittgenstein’s army with a message about victory, and Chichagov had no doubt that his movement towards Berezina would be supported from the north. On the way, this detachment intercepted the 4's couriers, sent by Napoleon to Paris and freed the captured General Vincengorod (F.F. Winzengorod was the commander of the first partisan detachment of the war 1812, created by order of Barclay de Tolly. He was taken prisoner in October in Moscow captured by the French). 9 (21) November, Chichagov’s army defeated the Polish units of Bronikovsky and Dombrowski and captured the city of Borisov. The admiral was so sure of the success of the operation that he sent Napoleon omens to the surrounding villages. For "greater reliability," he ordered to catch and bring to him all the little ones. However, on November, 11 (23) troops of Udine broke into Borisov and almost captured Chichagov himself, who fled to the right bank, leaving "his lunch with silverware." However, the admiral burned the bridge over the Berezina, so the position of the French was still critical - the width of the river at that place was 107 meters. Murat even advised Napoleon to "save himself before it is too late" and to secretly flee with a detachment of Poles, which caused the emperor's wrath. While 300 soldiers were south of Borisov, they were guided across the bridge in full view of the Russian troops, Napoleon personally supervised the construction of bridges near the village north of this city. Studenki. French sappers led by military engineer J.-B. Ebla coped with the task: standing up to the throat in icy water, they built two bridges - for infantry and cavalry and for carts and artillery. 14 (26) in November, the first to cross the coast was the Udino corps, which entered the battle on the move and, rejecting the small barrage of Russians, allowed the rest of the army to start crossing. As early as the morning of November 15 (27), Chichagov assumed that the events at Studenka were only a demonstration with the aim of deceiving him, and Wittgenstein managed to pass by Studenki to Borisov on the same day without finding the crossing of the French troops. On this day, the troops of Wittgenstein and the vanguard of Platov were surrounded and the captive division of General Partuno was surrendered (about 7 000 people). 16 (28) of November was supported by the main forces of Platov and the vanguard of Miloradovich to Borisov, and Chichagov and Wittgenstein finally understood what was happening in Studenka, but it was already too late: Napoleon with the Old Guard and other combat-ready units crossed the Berezina a day earlier. On this day, the army of Witggenstein attacked Victor's corps on the left bank of the Berezina, and Chichagov's army on the right bank struck Udino's troops, and so powerful that Napoleon brought Ney's corps into battle and even the guard. 17 (29) November Napoleon ordered Victor to go to the right bank, after which the bridges across the Berezina were set on fire. On the left bank, 10 000 remained sick and practically unarmed people, who were soon destroyed or taken prisoner. For Napoleon, they not only did not represent any value, but were even harmful: every state and every government needs dead heroes, but absolutely no need for living people with disabilities who tell the war differently than they should and require all sorts of benefits. In the twentieth century, the leaders of North Vietnam understood this very well, who sincerely hated the Americans who had fought with them, but ordered their snipers not to kill, but to cripple US soldiers.
Contemporaries did not consider the crossing of the Berezina as a defeat of Napoleon. Z.de Mestre called the Berezinsky operation "just a few loud strikes on the tail of the tiger." A. Zhomini, A. Kolenkur, A. Tier, K. Klauzevits and many others considered it a strategic victory for Napoleon.
“Napoleon gave us the bloodiest battle ... The greatest commander achieved his goal. Praise him!”, Said engineer Chichagov’s army officer Martos, who responded to the events of the last day of the Berezinsky epic.
"The eyewitnesses and participants in the case had forever united with Berezina: the strategic victory of Napoleon over the Russians when, it seemed, he was threatened with complete destruction, and at the same time a terrible picture of the massacre after the Emperor's transfer to the western bank of the river," 1938, academician E.V. Tarle. The blame for the failure of the Berezinsky operation was assigned to Admiral Chichagov. “Wittgenstein saved Petersburg, my husband –Russia, and Chichagov - Napoleon” - even Byron knew about these words of E. I. Kutuzov. Langeron called the admiral "Napoleon's guardian angel", Zhukovsky "threw out" all the text about Chichagov from his poem "The Singer in the Camp of Russian Warriors", Derzhavin ridiculed him in the epigram, and Krylov in the Pike and the Cat fable. However, the documents show that it was Chichagov’s troops that caused the greatest damage to Napoleon’s army: “Except for laying down arms, the entire loss of the enemy belongs more to the action of Admiral Chichagov’s troops,” AP Yermolov reported. The English Commissioner Wilson reported: “I did not hear from anyone that Admiral Chichagov deserved disapproval. The local situation was such that it did not allow to go to the enemy. We (ie, Kutuzov and his headquarters at which Wilson was) were to blame because that two days were in Red, two days in Kopys, why the enemy was free to cross the river. " However, society needed a scapegoat, but since Kutuzov at that time was already perceived by all as the “savior of Russia,” and Wittgenstein, who reflected the advance of Udino’s avant-garde on Petersburg, was called the savior of Petropol and the second Suvorov, the public Chichagov was brought.
Conditions for the retreat of the Napoleonic army from Berezina to Vilna became even more destructive. It was after the crossing of Napoleon that the most severe frosts struck. The most amazing thing is that under these conditions the French continued to carry along Russian captives, a number of which they brought to Paris. Among them were V.A. Perovsky (great-uncle of the famous Sophia Perovskaya) and private soldier Semenov, who remained in France, the ancestor of the no less famous Georges Simenon. 21 November 1812 (old style) Napoleon wrote the last ("funeral") 29 bulletin in which he admitted defeat, explaining it to the vicissitudes of the Russian winter. On November 23, the emperor left his army, leaving command of the remnants of the troops to Murat (who in January 1813, in turn, left the army on E. Beauharnais and left for Naples). It should immediately be said that the departure of Napoleon was not fleeing from the army: he did everything he could, the remnants of the army moved to the border without stopping, and after 8 days after the emperor left, Marshal Ney was the last of the French to cross the Neman. "Emperor Napoleon left the army to go to Paris, where his presence became necessary. Political considerations prevailed over those considerations that could make him stay at the head of his troops. More importantly, even in the interests of our army, it seemed alive and terrible, despite the failure. It was necessary to appear before Germany, already hesitating in its intentions ... It was necessary to let France know, anxious and deafly worried, doubtful friends and secret enemies that Napoleon did not die in terrible mischief tvii, befell his legions, "- wrote Bourgogne (not only the marshals, but the sergeants of the French army turns out to be an expert in strategy).
“In these 8 days, Napoleon himself wasn’t at risk anymore, and his presence could not change anything for the better. The departure of the emperor was, from a military-political point of view, necessary for the speedy creation of a new army,” E. Tarle admitted. And it was necessary to create an army: according to Georges de Chombre in December 1812, Napoleon had 58, 2 thousands of soldiers, of whom only 14 266 people belonged to the central grouping of the "Great Army", the rest were part of the flank groupings J.- E. Macdonald and J.-L. Rainier. Kutuzov brought the entire 27,5 to thousands of people to the Neman. At the same time, according to the testimony of all the memoirists, the Russian army "lost sight" and looked more like a peasant militia than a regular army. Seeing this crowd, mistrustfully and not keeping pace with the parade in Vilna, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich indignantly exclaimed: “They can only fight!”.
"The war spoils the army," Alexander I agreed with him, referring to the deterioration of the personnel structure due to losses and recruiting by untrained recruits.
Kutuzov was showered with awards, including the Order of St. George I, the portrait of Alexander I, studded with diamonds, a golden sword with diamonds and much more. The emperor everywhere emphasized his respect for the commander-in-chief, walked with him "hand in hand", hugged him, but, strangely enough, still did not trust him: "I know that the field marshal did not do anything of what he had to do. He avoided, as far as this was in his power, any actions against the enemy. All his successes were forced by external force ... But the Moscow nobility is behind him and want him to lead the nation to the glorious end of this war ... However, now I I will not leave my army and will not allow inconsistencies in the order and Field Marshal, "- said Alexander in conversation with Wilson.
With awards in general, there were a lot of insults and misunderstandings.
"Many awards are handed out, but only a few are not given by chance," Lieutenant-General N. N. Raevsky wrote to his wife.
“Intrigue is an abyss, others were rewarded with rewards, and the other was not domesticated,” General A.Rimsky-Korsakov complained to the Minister of the Interior.
"For one decent, five trashy are produced, to which all the witnesses are," the Life Guards rebelled Colonel S.N. Marin.
This is not surprising. According to the classification of L.N.Gumilev (proposed in the work "Ethnogenesis and Earth's Biosphere"), the Patriotic War of 1812 should be referred to the most terrible and dangerous for the nation type of wars in which the most active (passionate) part of the population of the country dies, sacrificing themselves in the name of saving the Motherland and the places of fallen heroes, they inevitably engage in prudent and cynical selfish subpassionaries (a typical example of a subpassional personality is Boris Drubetskaya from L. Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace).
Kutuzov did not want to continue the war in Europe. First, the field marshal rightly assumed that the destruction of Napoleon and his empire would be beneficial only to Great Britain and the results of the victory over Napoleonic France would not be taken by Russia, but by England: “I’m not at all convinced whether the complete destruction of Napoleon and his army would be a great blessing for the Universe His legacy will not be gained by Russia or any other of the mainland powers, but by that power that now dominates the seas, and then its predominance will be unbearable ", - even under Maloyaroslavets l Kutuzov Wilson. Secondly, he understood that with the expulsion of the enemy from the territory of Russia, the people's war ended. The attitude to the foreign campaign in Russian society was generally negative. In the Russian provinces they said loudly that "Russia has already done a miracle and that now that the Fatherland has been saved, it has no need to sacrifice for the good of Prussia and Austria, whose union is worse than outright hostility" (N.K.Shilder), and the Penza province even recalled her militia. However, Alexander I already imagined himself as a new Agamemnon, leader and leader of kings: "God sent me power and victory, so that I could bring peace and tranquility to the universe," he declared absolutely earnestly in 1813. Therefore, in the name of peace, war began again.
24 December 1812 was the Russian army under the formal command of Kutuzov, but in the presence of Alexander I, who was in command of everything, came out of Vilna. 1 January 1813 Russian troops crossed the Neman, but that's another story.
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