Abbreviations
| AGM | Arkhiv grafov Mordvinovykh |
| BL | British Library |
| Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre | Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre Ier avec sa sœur la Grande Duchesse Cathérine 1805–1818, ed. Grand Duke Nicholas, SPB, 1910 |
| Entsiklopediia | V. Bezotosnyi et al. (eds.), Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda: Entsiklopediia, Moscow, 2004 |
| Eugen, Memoiren | Memoiren des Herzogs Eugen von Württemberg, 3 vols., Frankfurt an der Oder, 1862 |
| IV | Istoricheskii vestnik |
| Kutuzov | L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), M. I. Kutuzov: Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow, 1954, vols. 4i, 4ii, 5 |
| MVUA | Materialy voenno-uchenago arkhiva (1812, 1813) |
| PSZ | Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii |
| RA | Russkii arkhiv |
| RD | Relations diplomatiques |
| RGVIA | Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv |
| RS | Russkaia Starina |
| SIM | Sbornik istoricheskikh materialov izvlechennykh iz arkhiva S.E.I.V. kantseliarii |
| SIRIO | Sbornik imperatorskago russkago istoricheskago obshchestva |
| SPB | St Petersburg |
| SVM | Stoletie voennago ministerstva |
| TGIM | Trudy gosudarstvennogo istoricheskogo muzeia |
| VIS | Voenno-istoricheskii sbornik |
| VPR | Vneshniaia politika Rossii |
| VS | Voennyi sbornik |
Chapter 1: Introduction
1 Much of this introduction is drawn from my article, ‘Russia and the Defeat of Napoleon’, Kritika, 7/2, 2006, pp. 283–308. That article includes comprehensive footnotes, and interested readers should consult it as regards references to most of the secondary literature. This introductory chapter also skims across many topics covered in more detail later in the book, at which point I will make the necessary citations to literature in the notes.
2 For the key works in English on and around this subject, see Additional Reading.
3 The one exception is Christopher Duffy: see his Austerlitz, London, 1999, and Borodino and the War of 1812, London, 1999: both of these are reprints by Cassell of books published some years previously. Both books are brief and were written when Russian archives were shut to foreigners. Duffy’s main works on Russia cover an earlier period.
4 Of course by this I mean the primary sources: there is much splendid French secondary literature on the Napoleonic era. See my article in Kritika, n. 14.
5 Memoiren des Herzogs Eugen von Württemberg, 3 vols., Frankfurt an der Oder, 1862.
6 For example, the memoirs of Friedrich von Schubert, the chief of staff of Baron Korff’s cavalry corps: Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962.
7 Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia, London, 1992.
8 Clausewitz’s judgements on the later stages of the campaign are more mellow: conceivably it helped that by then he was serving under Peter Wittgenstein, at whose headquarters all the key officers were German.
9 The first three volumes of Rudolph von Friederich (Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815) cover the spring and autumn campaigns of 1813 and the campaign of 1814: Der Frühjahrsfeldzug 1813, Berlin, 1911; Der Herbstfeldzug 1813, Berlin, 1912; Der Feldzug 1814, Berlin, 1913.
10 See the five volumes of Geschichte der Kämpfe Österreichs: Kriege unter der Regierung des Kaisers Franz. Befreiungskrieg 1813 und 1814, Vienna, 1913.
11 This is most true as regards Henry Kissinger, A World Restored, London, 1957.
12 See e.g. Anthony D. Smith, ‘War and Ethnicity: The Role of Warfare in the Formation, Self-Images, and Cohesion of Ethnic Communities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4/4, 1981, pp. 375–97.
13 Above all thanks to Peter Hofschroer’s two volumes: 1815: The Waterloo Campaign, London, 1998 and 1999.
14 The tart comment by F. Zatler in 1860 that logistics is the big weakness of military history still largely remains true: Zapiski o prodovol’stvii voisk v voennoe vremia, SPB, 1860, p. 95. The best published source on Russian logistics in 1812–14 remains the report submitted to Alexander I by Georg Kankrin and Mikhail Barclay de Tolly: Upravlenie General-Intendanta Kankrina: General’nyi sokrashchennyi otchet po armiiam… za pokhody protiv Frantsuzov, 1812, 1813 i 1814 godov, Warsaw, 1815. There is a useful candidate’s dissertation by Serge Gavrilov, Organizatsiia i snabzheniia russkoi armii nakanune i v khode otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g. i zagranichnykh pokhodov 1813–1815 gg.: Istoricheskie aspekty, SPB, 2003. On Napoleonic logistics, see Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, Cambridge, 1977, ch. 2.
15 There is an interesting recent work on the horse in war by Louis DiMarco, War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider, Yardley, 2008.
16 On Wellington and the history of Waterloo, see Malcolm Balen, A Model Victory: Waterloo and the Battle for History, London, 1999, and Peter Hofschroer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory: The Duke, the Model-Maker and the Secret of Waterloo, London, 2004. Buturlin’s work was originally published in French in 1824: Histoire militaire de la campagne de Russie en 1812. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky’s first published campaign history was on the 1814 campaign: Opisanie pokhoda vo Frantsii v 1814 godu, 2 vols., SPB, 1836. His history of 1812 was published in Petersburg in 1839 in four volumes: Opisanie otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda. The next year his two-volume history of the 1813 campaign was published: Opisanie voiny 1813 g.
17 On Russian historiography of the Napoleonic Wars, see I. A. Shtein, Voina 1812 goda v otechestvennoi istoriografii, Moscow, 2002, and the article by V. P. Totfalushin in Entsiklopediia, pp. 309–13.
18 B. F. Frolov, ‘Da byli liudi v nashe vremia’: Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda i zagranichnye pokhody russkoi armii, Moscow, 2005.
19 See the discussion and bibliography in D. Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals, London, 2001.
20 There are some parallels in Chinese and Turkish historiography concerning the Manchu and Ottoman empires.
21 Anyone touching this theme owes much to John Keegan, The Face of Battle, London, 1978, pp. 117–206. There were great similarities and relatively few differences between the values of the British officers he discusses and their Russian counterparts.
22 Pamfil Nazarov and Ivan Men’shii.
23 J. P. Riley, Napoleon and the World War of 1813, London, 2000, is an interesting and original study of world war in 1813 by a senior British officer. It is true that the Anglo-American war of 1812–14 was directly linked to the Napoleonic Wars though not part of them: see Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America, Cambridge, Mass., 2007.
Chapter 2: Russia as a Great Power
1 See the chapters by Paul Bushkovitch and Hugh Ragsdale in D. Lieven (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, Cambridge, 2006, vol. 2, pp. 489–529, for surveys of Russian foreign policy in the eighteenth century.
2 On Catherine and her reign, the bible is Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, London, 1981. On the ‘Greek project’, see Simon Sebag Montefiore’s splendid Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin, London, 2000, pp. 219–21, 241–3.
3 The fullest recent survey of eighteenth-century Ottoman developments is Suraiya Faroqhi (ed.), Turkey, vol. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire 1603–1839, Cambridge, 2003. On the Ottoman army, see Virginia Aksan, Ottoman Wars 1700–1870: An Empire Besieged, Harlow, 2007. I attempted Russo-Ottoman comparisons in D. Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals, London, 2001, ch. 4, pp. 128 ff.
4 There is a vast literature on the European Old Regime. For the long view of state formation in Europe, see Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States: A.D. 990–1992, Oxford, 1990. Equally thought-provoking are Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, London, 1974, and Brian Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change, Princeton, 1992.
5 The best recent survey of the Russian peasantry is by David Moon, The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1930, London, 1999. On comparative European landholding by elites, see D. Lieven, Aristocracy in Europe 1815–1914, Basingstoke, 1992, chs. 1 and 2, pp. 1–73.
6 The exact figure is 7.3 per cent, and is derived from the nearly 500 generals included in Entsiklopediia. On education and Enlightenment in the Baltic provinces, see G. von Pistohlkors, Deutsche Geschichte in Osten Europas: Baltische Länder, Berlin, 1994, pp. 266–94.
7 The best source is the official history of Russian military engineering: I. G. Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, SVM, 7, SPB, 1902. On doctors see: A. A. Baranov, ‘Meditsinskoe obespechenie armii v 1812 godu’, in Epokha 1812 goda: Issledovaniia, istochniki, istoriografiia, TGIM, vol. 1, Moscow, 2002, pp. 105–24.
8 D. G. Tselerungo, Ofitsery russkoi armii, uchastniki Borodinskogo srazheniia, Moscow, 2002, p. 81. The best source on the origins of the general staff is N. Glinoetskii, ‘Russkii general’nyi shtab v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Aleksandra I’, VS, 17/10, 1874, pp. 187–250. See also: P. A. Geisman, Vozniknovenie i razvitie v Rossii general’nago shtaba, SVM, 4/1/2/1, especially pp. 169 ff: ‘Svita Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva po kvartirmeisterskoi chasti’.
9 This is to borrow the term used by John Brewer in the context of eighteenth-century Britain.
10 The Russian statistics are inexact because the government only counted the number of subjects who owed compulsory military service. This did not include women, nobles, priests, merchants or all non-Russian minorities. For the basic statistics on European populations, see R. Bonney (ed.), Economic Systems and Finance, Oxford, 1995, pp. 315–19 and 360–76. For a more detailed breakdown of the European population in 1812, see the statistics compiled by Major Josef Paldus which are contained in the appendix to Geschichte der Kämpfe Österreichs: Kriege unter der Regierung des Kaisers Franz. Befreiungskrieg 1813 und 1814, vol. 1: O. Criste, Österreichs Beitritt zur Koalition, Vienna, 1913. All these statistics have to be watched carefully. For example Paldus’s figure for the Russian population is much too low, though it may well be that he is using estimates for ethnic Russians rather than for all subjects of the emperor. Bonney cites P. G. M. Dickson for the Habsburg figure (Finance and Government under Maria Theresa 1740–1780, 2 vols., Oxford, 1987, vol. 1, p. 36), but Dickson does not include the population of the Habsburg Netherlands or Italy.
11 On Russian pay and rations, see F. P. Shelekhov, Glavnoe intendantskoe upravlenie: istoricheskii ocherk, SVM, 5, SPB, 1903, pp. 87, 92. On Wellington’s troops, see Matthew Morgan, Wellington’s Victories, London, 2004, pp. 33, 74.
12 E. K. Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, Princeton, 1990, ch. 4, pp. 74–95.
13 On Russian conscription, see Janet Hartley, Russia, 1762–1825: Military Power, London, 2008, ch. 2, pp. 25–47. On French conscription, see Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civil Order, 1789–1820s, London, 1994, ch. 13, pp. 380–426, and David Hopkin, Soldier and Peasant in French Popular Culture, Wood-bridge, 2003, pp. 125–214. On the nation in arms, see MacGregor Knox, ‘Mass Politics and Nationalism as Military Revolution: The French Revolution and After’, in MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of Military Revolution. 1300–2050, Cambridge, 2001, ch. 4, pp. 57–73.
14 ‘Zapiski I. V. Lopukhina’, RA, 3, 1914, pp. 318–56, at p. 345. On the militia and the debate that surrounded its mobilization, see V. V. Shchepetil’nikov, Komplektovanie voisk v tsarstvovanie imperatora Aleksandra I, SVM, 4/1/1/2, SPB, 1904, pp. 18–40, 69–72.
15 I. Merder, Istoricheskii ocherk russkogo konevodstva i konnozavodstva, SPB, 1868: the quote is on pp. 84–5. V. V. Ermolov and M. M. Ryndin, Upravlenie general-inspektora kavalerii o remontirovanii kavalerii. Istoricheskii ocherk, SVM, 3/3.1, SPB, 1906. This is a key work.
16 Marquess of Londonderry, Narrative of the War in Germany and France in 1813 and 1814, London, 1830, p. 31. Sir Robert Wilson, Campaigns in Poland. 1806 and 1807, London, 1810, p. 14.
17 Apart from Merder, see Shelekhov, Glavnoe intendantskoe upravlenie, for the purchase and upkeep of horses: e.g. purchase prices are on p. 104. A useful modern history of the Russian cavalry is A. Begunova, Sabli ostry, koni bystry, Moscow, 1992. On the incident with the Austrians, see T. von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des kaiserlichen russischen Generals der Infanterie Carl Friedrich Grafen von Toll, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1858, vol. 4, book 7, pp. 183–4.
18 There are two extremely useful unpublished Russian candidates’ dissertations (i.e. roughly equivalent to a contemporary British Ph.D.) on the military economy: S. V. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia i snabzheniia russkoi armii nakanune i v khode otechestvennoi voiny 1812g i zagranichnykh pokhodov 1813–1815gg: Istoricheskie aspekty, candidate’s dissertation, SPB, 2003, and V. N. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia podgotovka Rossii k bor’be s Napoleonom v 1812–1814 godakh, Gorky, 1967. The basic statistics on raw materials are in Gavrilov, pp. 39–42. Speransky is a mine of useful information: his only weakness appears to be that he neglects the crucial production of field artillery at the Petersburg arsenal. See the following note for references to this production. Viktor Bezotosnyi kindly confirmed that the arsenal did indeed produce most Russian field artillery.
19 For the basic statistics, see L. Beskrovnyi, The Russian Army and Fleet in the Nineteenth Century, Gulf Breeze, 1996, pp. 196–7. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia, pp. 38–58, on production at the Petrozavodsk and other works. On the artillery’s equipment, guns and tactics in 1812–14, see A. and Iu. Zhmodikov, Tactics of the Russian Army, 2 vols., West Chester, Ohio, 2003, vol. 2, chs. 10–15. See also: Anthony and Paul Dawson and Stephen Summerfield, Napoleonic Artillery, Marlborough, 2007, pp. 48–55.
20 On the three arms works, the best introduction are the articles in Entsiklopediia, pp. 296, 654 and 724–5.
21 Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia, ch. 2, especially pp. 82 ff., 362 ff. Much the most detailed primary source on the Tula works is an exceptionally interesting article by P. P. Svinin, ‘Tul’skii oruzheinyi zavod’, Syn Otechestva, 19, 1816, pp. 243 ff. Though naively Soviet-era in many of its judgements, V. N. Ashurkov, Izbrannoe: Istoriia Tul’skogo kraia, Tula, 2003, contains interesting details.
22 On the French tests, see K. Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815, Princeton, 1997, p. 339. On English criticism, see Philip Haythornthwaite, Weapons and Equipment of the Napoleonic Wars, London, 1996, p. 22. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia, pp. 458–9, on the sources of the muskets distributed to the army in 1812–13.
23 Even Wellington’s men did not usually expect to beat off attacks by musketry alone. Volleys were followed up by rapid counter-attacks with the bayonet.
24 Two recent surveys of Russian finance and taxation are: Peter Waldron, ‘State Finances’, in Lieven (ed.), Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 2, pp. 468–88, and Richard Hellie, ‘Russia’, in R. Bonney (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe c. 1215–1815, Oxford, 1999, pp. 481–506.
25 All these statistics should be viewed with a certain scepticism. The Russian ones are specially to be distrusted because of uncertainties as to whether sums are being cited in silver or paper rubles. Most of the statistics are drawn from Bonney, Economic Systems, pp. 360–76. The French figure is from Michel Bruguière, ‘Finances publiques’, in J. Tulard (ed.), Dictionnaire Napoléon, Paris, 1987, pp. 733–5. The British figure is from J. M. Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder: British Foreign Aid in the Wars with France 1793–1815, Cambridge, Mass., 1969, p. 96.
26 W. M. Pintner, Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I, Ithaca, NY, 1967, ch. 5. There is a useful table on p. 186 which shows the volume of paper money issued annually and its value vis-à-vis the silver currency. A well-informed source stated that the peasants’ obligation to feed the soldiers for very inadequate compensation from the state was a well-established custom: L. Klugin, ‘Russkaia soldatskaia artel’, RS, 20, 1861, pp. 90, 96–7.
27 Most of the subsequent discussion is gleaned from basic texts, with the addition of some of my own ideas: see in particular Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, Oxford, 1994; H. M. Scott, The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756–1775, Cambridge, 2001; H. M. Scott, The Birth of a Great Power System 1740–1815, Harlow, 2006; A. N. Sakharov et al. (eds.), Istoriia vneshnei politiki Rossii: Pervaia polovina XIX veka, Moscow, 1995.
28 Isabel de Madariaga, Britain, Russia and the Armed Neutrality of 1780, London, 1962. There is a good description of the realities behind these disputes over maritime rights in ch. 1 of Ole Feldbaek, The Battle of Copenhagen 1801, Barnsley, 2002. Pitt’s miscalculation is analysed by Jeremy Black, ‘Naval Power, Strategy and Foreign Policy, 1775–1791’, in Michael Duffy (ed.), Parameters of British Naval Power 1650–1850, Exeter, 1998, pp. 93–120.
29 Apart from the general diplomatic histories, see in particular H. Heppner, ‘Der Österreichisch-Russische Gegensatz in Sudosteuropa im Zeitalter Napoleons’, in A. Drabek et al. (eds.), Russland und Österreich zur Zeit der Napoleonischen Kriege, Vienna, 1989, pp. 85 ff.
30 Elise Wirtschafter, ‘The Groups Between: raznochintsy, Intelligentsia, Professionals’, in Lieven, Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 2, pp. 245–63, is a good introduction to the evolution of the Russian middle classes. On state and society in the Napoleonic era, Nicholas Riasanovsky, A Parting of Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia 1801–1855, Oxford, 1976, remains valuable.
31 Jerzy Lukowski, The Partitions of Poland, Harlow, 1999, is a reliable introduction to this issue.
32 J. Hartley, Alexander I, London, 1994, pp. 58–72. A. A. Orlov, Soiuz Peterburga i Londona, Moscow, 2005, ch. 1, pp. 7 ff.
33 The key text for this is Alexander’s instructions for his envoy to the British government, Nikolai Novosil’tsev: VPR, 1st series, 2, pp. 138–46 and 151–3, 11/23 Sept. 1804. See also Patricia Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I, Berkeley, 1969, pp. 32–65.
34 On the 1805 campaign, see above all two recent works: R. Goetz, 1805 Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition, London, 2005; Frederick W. Kagan, Napoleon and Europe 1801–1805: The End of the Old Order, Cambridge, Mass., 2006.
35 For an interesting defence of Prussian policy, see Brendan Simms, The Impact of Napoleon: Prussian High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Executive 1797–1806, Cambridge, 1997. Russia’s foreign minister in 1806, Prince Adam Czartowski, was very unsympathetic to the Prussian dilemma. See W. H. Zawadski, A Man of Honour: Adam Czartoryski as a Statesman of Russia and Poland 1795–1831, Oxford, 1993, pp. 61–136.
36 The best source on this is Shelekhov, Glavnoe intendantskoe upravlenie, chs. VI–XIV; F. Zatler, Zapiski o prodovol’stvii voisk v voennoe vremia, SPB, 1860, is also an excellent source and provides statistics on relative population densities on pp. 23 and 78–9: even in 1860, after decades of rapid population growth, densities in Belorussia and Lithuania were one-quarter of what one found in Silesia, Saxony, Bohemia or north-eastern France. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia, p. 59. On salaries, see PSZ, 30, 23542, 17 March 1809 (OS), pp. 885–6. In 1809 the salaries of all junior officers had to be raised 33 per cent to offset the depreciation of the paper ruble.
37 There is a good, detailed article on this in Drabek et al. (eds.), Russland und Österreich by Rainer Egger: ‘Die Operationen der Russischen Armee in Mahren und Österreich ob und unter der Enns im Jahre 1805’, pp. 55–70.
38 See above all E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, Stanford, Calif., 1976, especially ch. 6, pp. 67 ff.
39 This statistic is based on a survey I carried out of 1,500 NCOs whose details are recorded in the personnel records (formuliarnye spiski) in RGVIA, Fond 489. I included all NCOs whose records were legible and who were not the sons of soldiers and clergy, from the following regimental lists: Preobrazhensky Guards (Ed. Khr. 1); Little Russia Grenadiers (Ed. Khr. 1190); Kherson Grenadiers (Ed. Khr. 1263); Murom (Ed. Khr. 517), Chernigov (Ed. Khr. 1039), Reval (Ed. Khr. 754), Kursk (Ed. Khr. 425) infantry regiments; the 39th (Ed. Khr. 1802) and 45th (Ed. Khr. 1855) Jaegers; His Majesty’s Life Cuirassiers (Ed. Khr. 2114) and the Mitau (Ed. Khr. 2446), Borisogleb (Ed. Khr. 2337), Narva (Ed. Khr. 2457), Iamburg (Ed. Khr. 2631) and Pskov (Ed. Khr. 212) dragoons; the 2nd (Ed. Khr. 3798), 5th (Ed. Khr. 3809) and 10th (Ed. Khr. 3842) artillery brigades.
40 There is much information on this in A. N. Andronikov and V. P. Fedorov, Prokhozhdenie sluzhby, SVM, 4/1/3, SPB, 1909, pp. 1–59, and Shchepetil’nikov, Komplektovanie, pp. 41–55.
41 On the artel, see the comments of William Fuller in Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914, New York, 1992, pp. 172–3; also L. Klugin, ‘Russkaia soldatskaia artel”, pp. 79–130; Andronikov and Fedorov, Prokhozhdenie sluzhby, pp. 112–14. On the formation of new regiments, see A. A. Kersnovskii, Istoriia russkoi armii, 4 vols., Moscow, 1992, vol. 1, p. 206.
42 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, p. 49; S. F. Glinka, Pis’ma russkogo ofitsera, Moscow, 1987, p. 347.
43 In 1806, for example, a circular from Alexander’s Personal Military Chancellery stressed that ‘the transfer of officers from one regiment to another is wholly contrary to the emperor’s wishes’: Andronikov and Fedorov, Prokhozhdenie sluzhby, p. 112. In 1812 Baron Cyprian von Kreutz became chief of the Siberian Lancer Regiment. Next year his two young brothers-in-law transferred into the regiment. Within thirty months one of them had been promoted twice and the other three times: RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 2670, fos. 34–45: ‘Spisok o sluzhbe i dostoinstv Sibirskago ulanskago polka generaliteta’ and ‘Spisok o sluzhbe i dostoinstv Sibirskago ulanskago polka rotmistrov i shtab-rotmistrov’. See the personnel records e.g. of the Preobrazhensky Guards (Ed. Khr. 1), the Little Russia and Kherson Grenadiers (Ed. Khr. 1190 and 1263), the Kursk and Briansk (39th Jaegers) regiments (Ed. Khr. 425 and 1802) and the Pskov Dragoons (Ed. Khr. 212).
44 On Karneev, see RGVIA, Fond 489, Ed. Khr. 1, fo. 506: ‘Formuliarnyi spisok leib gvardii Preobrazhenskago polka, generalam, shtab i ober ofitseram i drugim chinam’, dated 1 Jan. 1808 (OS). On the Briansk, Narva and Grenadier regiments, see the sections on NCOs in their personnel records listed in n. 39 above. On soldiers’ sons and NCOs, see Komplektovanie, SVM, pp. 173–208. On Russian NCOs, see D. G. Tselerungo, ‘Boevoi opyt unter-ofitserov russkoi armii – uchastnikov Borodinskago srazheniia’, in Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda: Istochniki, pamiatniki, problemy. Materialy XII vserossisskoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Borodino, 6–8 sentiabria 2004 g., Moscow, 2005, pp. 21–6.
45 Much the best evaluation of the Russian army’s performance in 1805–7 is in vol. 1 of Zhmodikov, Tactics.
46 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 1, p. 136.
47 This information comes from the biographical sketch which introduced Osten-Sacken’s own diaries when these were published by Russkii arkhiv in 1900: RA, 1, 1900, pp. 6–25.
48 ‘Iz zapisok fel’dmarshala Sakena’, RA, 1, 1900, pp. 161–80. Langeron’s memoirs are a useful source on this dispute, since he had a healthy respect for both Bennigsen and Sacken. Langeron’s letter to Bennigsen, dated 10 Dec. 1816, is in vol. 1, pp. xxvii–xxix, of Mémoires du Général Bennigsen, 3 vols., Paris, n.d. The comments in his own memoirs are in Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, pp. 15–18.
49 The best source on the views of both Alexander and his advisers is the many letters of Prince Aleksandr Kurakin to the Dowager Empress Marie, in RA, 1, 1868. See also A. Gielgud (ed.), Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski, 2 vols., London, 1888, vol. 2, pp. 174–83. V. Sirotkin, Napoleon i Aleksandr I, Moscow, 2003, is a good introduction to opinion within the Russian ruling elite on foreign policy.
50 S. Tatishcheff, Alexandre I et Napoléon, Paris, 1894, Alexander to Lobanov, 4/16 June 1807, p. 121.
51 D. N. Shilov, Gosudarstvennye deiateli Rossiiskoi imperii, SPB, 2001, pp. 377–9. Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, Russkie portrety, SPB, n.d., vol. 4, part 1, no. 62.
52 On Aleksandr Kurakin’s career, see S. N. Shipov and Iu. A. Kuz’min, Chleny gosudarstvennogo soveta Rossiiskoi imperii, SPB, 2007, pp. 412–16. Lobanov’s reports on the initial negotiations are in RS, 98, 1899, pp. 594–5, Lobanov to Alexander, 7/19 June 1807. See also RA, 1, 1868, Kurakin to Empress Marie, 10/22 June 1807, pp. 183–7.
53 It seems that in his initial drafts Tolstoy depicted the Kuragins in more sympathetic terms: K. B. Feuer, Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace, Ithaca, NY, 1976, p. 71. On the ancestry of Lobanov and Kurakin, see N. Ikonnikov, La Noblesse de Russie, 2nd edn., vols. A1–Z2, Paris, 1958–66: vols. H1, pp. 211–16 and I1, pp. 426–31.
54 On Constantine, see E. Karnovich, Tsesarevich Konstantin Pavlovich, SPB, 1899. On Paul, see R. McGrew, Paul I of Russia, Oxford, 1992, and H. Ragsdale (ed.), Paul I: A Reassessment of his Life and Reign, Pittsburgh, 1979.
55 V. I. Genishta and A. T. Borisovich, Istoriia 30-go dragunskago Ingermanlandskago polka 1704–1904, SPB, 1904, pp. 119–21, describes Lieven’s role in preparing the army for the 1805 campaign.
56 Lieven’s personnel record is in RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Delo 7062, fo. 356: as was true of many officers, he omitted to mention his parents’ property. See his self-appraisal in a letter to his fiancée, Dorothea, who was the god-daughter of the Empress Marie: J. Charmley, The Princess and the Politicians, London, 2005, p. 7.
57 S. W. Jackman (ed.), Romanov Relations, London, 1969, Grand Duchess Anna to Grand Duke Constantine, 2 April 1828, p. 149.
58 See e.g. Tatishcheff, Alexandre, pp. 140, 183, and A. Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre Premier, 3 vols., Paris, 1891, vol. 1, pp. 61–7. The instructions are in VPR, 1st series, 3, note 414, pp. 754–60.
59 Alexander did relinquish the Ionian Islands and Cattaro, which Russia could in any case never defend once at war with the Ottomans and Britain. It received the more useful Belostok district in return.
60 The treaties of peace and alliance are in VPR, 1st series, vol. 3, nos. 257 and 258, pp. 631 ff.
61 These comments on Alexander’s preferences and perceptions are drawn from the instructions he gave to Kurakin and Lobanov: VPR, 1st series, vol. 3, note 414, pp. 754–60.
62 For a list of regimental artisans, see I. Ul’ianov, Reguliarnaia pekhota 1801–1855, vol. 2, Moscow, 1996, p. 212. On the Church in the army, see L. V. Mel’nikova, Armiia i pravoslavnaia tserkov’ Rossiiskoi imperii v epokhu Napoleonovskikh voin, Moscow, 2007, pp. 45–56, 116–37.
63 The key work on officers’ profiles is Tselerungo, Ofitsery russkoi armii.
64 The information on the Preobrazhenskys comes from: RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 1, fos. 455–560: ‘Formuliarnyi spisok leib gvardii Preobrazhenskago polka, generalam, shtab i ober ofitseram i drugim chinam’, dated 1 Jan. 1808. Only occasionally in the personnel records of line regiments can one spot that officers have neglected to mention serf-owning: see for one example the three Dolzhikov brothers in the Narva Dragoons who had family serfs as orderlies: RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 2457, ‘Spisok o sluzhbe… Narvskago dragunskago polka’, fos. 95 ff. for the list of batmen and lines 6 ff. and 27 ff. for the personnel records of the brothers. It is much easier to spot omissions among the prominent officers of the Preobrazhensky officers, let alone in the generals’ personnel records in Fond 489, Opis 1, Delo 7602.
65 The quote is from Zapiski Sergeia Grigorovicha Volkonskago (dekabrista), SPB, 1902, p. 70. See e.g. L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Dnevnik Aleksandra Chicherina, 1812–1813, Moscow, 1966, for excellent insights into the cultured young Guards officers’ mentality. Two such strikes were in the Semenovskys on the eve of 1812 and in the Guards artillery in January 1814: P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, pp. 285–6; Dnevnik Pavla Pushchina, Leningrad, 1987, pp. 49–50.
66 On Lazarev, see http:www.svoboda.org/programs. For examples of ex-rankers being censured for poor behaviour after the war, see e.g. the cases of lieutenants Beliankin and Kirsanov of the 45th Jaegers (RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Delo 1855, fos. 19–20) or of three officers of the Iamburg Lancers (Lt. Krestovskii, Istoriia 14-go Ulanskago Iamburgskago E.I.V. velikoi kniagini Marii Aleksandrovny polka, SPB, 1873, appendices). Of course, many ex-rankers flourished.
67 ‘Imperator Aleksandr I: Ego kharakteristika po sochineniiu N. K. Shil’dera’, RS, 99/3, 1899, pp. 98–114, at p. 99.
68 The catalogue of the excellent recent exhibition at the Hermitage on Alexander contains articles with many insights into his personality: Aleksandr I: ‘Sfinks ne razgadannyi do groba’, SPB, 2005.
69 Quoted in N. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr pervyi: Ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, 4 vols., SPB, 1897, vol. 3, a letter to Alexander from Professor Parrot, p. 489.
70 D. V. Solov’eva (ed.), Graf Zhozef de Mestr: Peterburgskie pis’ma, SPB, 1995, no. 72, de Maistre to de Rossi, 20 Jan./1 Feb. 1808, p. 99.
71 There is a dearth of work on provincial society and administration under Alexander. The reign of Catherine II and the period from the 1861 Emancipation to 1917 are much better covered. For a good overview of local administration, see Janet Hartley, ‘Provincial and Local Government’, in Lieven (ed.), Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 2, pp. 446–67.
72 The book which best expresses Alexander’s dilemmas is S. V. Mironenko, Samoderzhavie i reformy: Politicheskaia bor’ba v Rossii v nachale XIX v., Moscow, 1989.
73 Metternich to Hardenberg, 5 Oct. 1812, in W. Oncken, Österreich und Preussen in Befreiungskriege, Berlin, 1878, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 378–80.
74 RD, 5, no. 520, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 19 Sept. 1810, pp. 138–40.
Chapter 3: The Russo-French Alliance
1 N. F. Dubrovin, ‘Russkaia zhizn’ v nachale XIX v.’, RS, 29/96, 1898, pp. 481–516.
2 RD, 4, no. 334, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 3 Oct. 1809, pp. 110–16.
3 e.g. RD, 1, no. 52, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 25 Feb. 1808, pp. 161–74; 2, no. 165, Caulaincourt to Napoleon, 8 Sept. 1808, pp. 344–6; 3, no. 187, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 15 Jan. 1809, pp. 27–32.
4 Zapiski Sergeia Grigorovicha Volkonskago (dekabrista), SPB, 1902, pp. 60–62.
5 A. Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre Premier, 3 vols., Paris, 1891, vol. 1, pp. 196–7. SIRIO, 89, 1893, no. 15, Tolstoy to Rumiantsev, 26 Oct./7 Nov. 1807, pp. 183–5; no. 86, Tolstoy to Alexander, Dec. 1807, pp. 312–13; no. 111, Tolstoy to Rumiantsev, 25 April/7 May 1808, pp. 519–27.
6 Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, no. 12, Catherine to Alexander, 25 June 1807, pp. 18–19. On the French émigrés in Russia, see André Ratchinski, Napoléon et Alexandre Ier, Paris, 2002.
7 VPR, 4, no. 219, Stroganov to Alexander, 1/13 Feb. 1809, pp. 490–91.
8 On Mordvinov, see e.g. AGM, 4, pp. xliv–xlv: see in particular his memorandum on the Continental System dated 25 Sept. 1811 (OS), pp. 479–86. For Gurev’s statement, see C. F. Adams (ed.), John Quincy Adams in Russia, New York, 1970, p. 277. Since official policy on the surface remained committed to the French alliance until the moment Napoleon crossed the border, diplomats usually camouflaged this view. The main but by no means only exception was Petr Tolstoy, who was already arguing for rapprochement with Britain as early as the summer of 1808. See e.g. SIRIO, 89, 1893, no. 111, Tolstoy to Rumiantsev, 25 April/7 May 1808, pp. 519–27; no. 176, Tolstoy to Rumiantsev, 26 July/7 Aug. 1808, pp. 631–5. But see also e.g. VPR, 4, no. 101, Alopaeus to Rumiantsev, 18/30 April 1808, pp. 233–5, for just one of many examples of other Russian diplomats expressing very ‘Tolstoyan’ views.
9 Mémoires du Général Bennigsen, 3 vols., Paris, n.d., vol. 1, 4th letter, pp. 33–52; vol. 3, annex 53, pp. 377–95.
10 The main English-language source on Speransky remains Marc Raeff’s classic Mikhail Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, The Hague, 1969, but at the very least the anglophone reader should also turn to John Gooding, ‘The Liberalism of Michael Speransky’, Slavonic and East European Review, 64/3, 1986, pp. 401–24.
11 For de Maistre’s views, see D. V. Solov’eva (ed.), Graf Zhozef de Mestr: Peterburgskie pis’ma, SPB, 1995, no. 72, de Maistre to de Rossi, 20 Jan./1 Feb. 1808, pp. 98–101. For Caulaincourt, see RD, 1, no. 18, Caulaincourt to Napoleon, 13 Jan. 1808, pp. 48–51. Count A. de Nesselrode (ed.), Lettres et papiers du Chancelier Comte de Nesselrode 1760–1850, Paris, n.d., vol. 3, Nesselrode to Speransky, 2/14 April 1810, pp. 251–2. See also Joanna Woods, The Commissioner’s Daughter: The Story of Elizabeth Proby and Admiral Chichagov, Witney, 2000.
12 RA, 2, 1876, Prozorovsky to Golitsyn, 23 July/4 Aug. 1807, pp. 157–9. On the British angle, see Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783, London, 2007.
13 On Ireland, see S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660–1760, Oxford, 1992, pp. 249–50.
14 On the global context, see Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914, Oxford, 2004, part 1, chs. 1–3, pp. 27–120; John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire, London, 2007, ch. 4, ‘The Eurasian Revolution’, pp. 158–217.
15 RD, 5, no. 563, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 14 Dec. 1810, pp. 235–43.
16 Adams, Adams, p. 209.
17 Ibid., pp. 87, 432.
18 The debate on the origins of the Industrial Revolution seldom bothers even to mention Russia as a potential candidate. Apart from the reasons set out in the text, it is generally assumed that industrial take-off required a densely concentrated population. See e.g. the interesting discussion in Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton, 2000.
19 RD, 4, no. 334, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 3 Oct. 1809, pp. 110–16; no. 423, 11 March 1810, pp. 325–8.
20 P. Bailleu (ed.), Briefwechsel König Friedrich Wilhelm III’s und der Königin Luise mit Kaiser Alexander I, Leipzig, 1900, no. 157, Alexander to Friedrich Wilhelm, 2 Nov. 1807, pp. 167–8. VPR, 4, no. 146, Kurakin to Rumiantsev, 16/28 Aug. 1808, pp. 320–21, is merely one of many Russian appreciations on the damage done to any hopes of peace by Napoleon’s debacle in Spain. Another is no. 198, Rumiantsev to Alexander, 16/28 Dec. 1808, p. 441.
21 N. Shil’der: ‘Nakanune Erfurtskago svidaniia 1808 goda’, RS, 98/2, 1899, pp. 3–24, Marie to Alexander, 25 Aug. 1808 (OS), pp. 4–17. The Erfurt convention is in VPR, 4, no. 161, pp. 359–61.
22 RS, 98/2, 1899, Alexander to Marie, n.d. but certainly late Aug. 1808, pp. 17–24.
23 Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, no. 19, Alexander to Catherine, 26 Sept. 1808, p. 20.
24 This paragraph is based on reading all the Russian diplomatic correspondence in these six months and it is impossible to cite all the relevant dispatches. The key ones are: VPR, 4, no. 131, Kurakin to Alexander, 2/14 July 1808, pp. 291–8; no. 143, Alexander to Kurakin, 14/26 Aug. 1808, pp. 316–17; no. 144, Rumiantsev to Kurakin, 14/26 Aug. 1808, pp. 317–19; no. 150, Alexander to Kurakin, 27 Aug./8 Sept. 1808, pp. 331–2; no. 174, Rumiantsev to Alexander, 26 Oct./7 Nov. 1808, pp. 387–9; no. 186, Anstedt to Saltykov, 22 Nov./4 Dec. 1808, pp. 410–12; no. 217, Rumiantsev to Alexander, 30 Jan./11 Feb. 1809, pp. 485–7; no. 220, Alexander to Rumiantsev, 2/14 Feb. 1809; no. 224, Alexander to Rumiantsev, 10/22 Feb. 1809, pp. 502–4; no. 246, Rumiantsev to Anstedt, 11/23 March 1809, pp. 543–5.
25 SIRIO, 89, 1893, no. 94, Rumiantsev to Tolstoy, March 1808, pp. 496–7; no. 112, Tolstoy to Rumiantsev, 26 April/8 May 1808, pp. 525–7.
26 Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, Marie to Catherine, 23 Dec. 1809 (OS), pp. 251–7; Catherine to Marie, 26 Dec. 1809 (OS), pp. 259–60.
27 On the non-ratification of the convention, see RD, 4, no. 410, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 26 Feb. 1810, pp. 296–9; Barclay de Tolly’s memorandum is reproduced in MVUA 1812, 1/2, pp. 1–6.
28 VPR, 4, no. 221, Rumiantsev to Kurakin, 2/14 Feb. 1809, pp. 496–7.
29 The statistics are drawn from A. A. Podmazo, ‘Kontinental’naia blokada kak ekonomicheskaia prichina voiny 1812 g.’, Epokha 1812 goda: Issledovania, istochniki, istoriografiia, 137, TGIM, Moscow, 2003, vol. 2, pp. 248–66, and M. F. Zlotnikov, Kontinental’naia blokada i Rossiia, Moscow, 1966, ch. IX, pp. 335 ff. For Caulaincourt’s comment, see RD, 2, no. 179, Caulaincourt to Napoleon, 9 Dec. 1808, pp. 387–8.
30 Adams, Adams, pp. 236–8, 364; J. Hanoteau (ed.), Mémoires du Général de Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicenze, 3 vols., Paris, 1933, vol. 1, pp. 282–3. AGM, vol. 4, no. 1050, 25 Sept. 1811, pp. 479–86 for Nikolai Mordvinov’s memorandum on the Continental System.
31 SIRIO, 121, 1906, Chernyshev to Barclay de Tolly, 31 Dec. 1811/12 Jan. 1812, pp. 196–202. V. M Bezotosnyi, Razvedka i plany storon v 1812 godu, Moscow, 2005, pp. 51–5.
32 The quote is from a letter to Rumiantsev from Chernyshev dated 6/18 June 1810: SIRIO, 121, 1906, no. 7, pp. 55–8.
33 Nesselrode (ed.), Nesselrode, vol. 3, 5/17 July 1811, pp. 375–9.
34 The memorandum is reprinted in N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr pervyi: Ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, 4 vols., SPB, 1897, vol. 3, pp. 471–83, but note the comment in VPR, 5, note 246, pp 692–3, which corrects Shil’der’s error as to when this report reached Alexander.
35 All this is drawn from Chernyshev’s reports to Alexander, Barclay de Tolly and Rumiantsev published in SIRIO, 121, 1906, parts 2 and 4, pp. 32–108 and 114–204. The quote is from report no. 6, to Barclay, dated Nov. 1811, pp. 178–87. Chernyshev’s one error was a moment of carelessness on departure in 1812 which allowed his agent in the War Ministry to be caught. Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre, vol. 3, pp. 306–18, 377, 393, discusses Chernyshev’s activities. Some details differ: for example, he writes that the War Ministry’s ‘book’ was produced every fortnight. More importantly, he underestimates the scale and impact of Chernyshev’s role, let alone the importance of his and Nesselrode’s information combined.
36 Bailleu (ed.), Briefwechsel, no. 192, Frederick William to Alexander, 19/31 Oct. 1809, pp. 204–5. Nesselrode (ed.), Nesselrode, vol. 3, Nesselrode to Speransky, 6/18 Aug. 1811, pp. 382–5. The most detailed description of Chernyshev’s activities is ch. 2 of General A. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Zhizneopisanie kniazia Aleksandra Ivanovicha Chernysheva ot 1801 do 1815 goda, reprinted in Rossiiskii arkhiv, 7, Moscow, 1996, pp. 13–40.
37 SIRIO, 121, 1906, no. 12, Chernyshev to Barclay, received 3 March 1812, pp. 204–10.
38 VPR, 6, Barclay de Tolly to Alexander, 22 Jan./3 Feb. 1812, pp. 267–9.
39 By far the best source in English on these men and issues is Alexander Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I, De Kalb, Ill., 1997. There are also useful biographical details about Rostopchin in A. Kondratenko, Zhizn’ Rostopchina, Orel, 2002.
40 All this discussion is drawn from Richard Pipes’s excellent translation and analysis of Karamzin’s work: see R. Pipes, Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia: A Translation and Analysis, Ann Arbor, 2005; the quote is from p. 146.
41 Ibid., pp. 147–67.
42 VPR, 6, no. 137, Rumiantsev to Stackelberg, 28 March/9 April 1812, pp. 341–3; no. 158, Stackelberg to Rumiantsev, 29 April/11 May 1812, pp. 393–4.
43 Bailleu (ed.), Briefwechsel, no. 196, Frederick William to Alexander, 30 April/12 May 1812, pp. 214–18.
44 W. H. Zawadski, A Man of Honour: Adam Czartoryski as a Statesman of Russia and Poland 1795–1831, Oxford, 1993, pp. 188–205. See VPR, 6, p. 693, n. 98 for a detailed demolition of Vandal’s statement that Russia was planning a pre-emptive strike in 1811.
45 W. Oncken, Österreich und Preussen in Befreiungskriege, 2 vols., Berlin, 1878, vol. 2, appendices, no. 30, Saint-Julien to Metternich, 13 Aug. 1811, pp. 611–14.
46 Bailleu (ed.), Briefwechsel, no. 198, Alexander to Frederick William, 14 May 1811, pp. 219–22; no. 208, Frederick William to Alexander, 19/31 March 1812, pp. 238–9.
47 I. G. Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, SVM, 7, SPB, 1902, pp. 733–58. There is a new and interesting book on Ottoman warfare by Virginia Aksan: Ottoman Wars 1700–1870: An Empire Besieged, London, 2007. If it has a weakness it is that it says too little about actual battle and tactics.
48 SIRIO, 121, 1906, no. 13, Chernyshev to Rumiantsev, 13/25 July 1810, and no. 15, 5/17 Sept. 1810, pp. 75–80 and 88–95. For his account of his mission to Sweden, see SIRIO, 121, pp. 22–48.
49 The quote is from a letter from Bernadotte to Count Löwenhielm, the special Swedish emissary to Alexander, dated 7/19 March 1812 and published in La Suède et la Russie: Documents et matériaux 1809–1818, Uppsala, 1985, pp. 96–8. The text of the Russo-Swedish treaty of alliance is no. 66, pp. 105–11.
50 The phrase ‘blundered towards empire’ was suggested by Owen Connelly to describe Napoleon’s campaigns: Blundering to Glory: Napoleon’s Military Campaigns, Wilmington, Del., 1987.
51 The literature on Napoleon’s empire is so immense that any attempt at a bibliography is impossible here. The best up-to-date general history in my opinion is Thierry Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, 3 vols., Paris, 2004–7. In English, the best recent works include P. Dwyer (ed.), Napoleon and Europe, Harlow, 2001; M. Broers, Europe under Napoleon, London, 1996; S. Wolff, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe, London, 1991.
52 See above all Christopher Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge, 1988, ch. 3, and the chapters by Michael Duffy, Patrick O’Brien and Rajat Kanta Ray in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1998.
53 Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy, 1765–1818’, in Marshall (ed.), British Empire, pp. 509–29, at p. 525. On changing European views on overseas empire, see especially Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France, Princeton, 2005. On French (and other) views of eastern Europe, see Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford, Calif., 1994.
54 This is to risk embroiling myself in a vast literature on the origins of nations: see e.g. A. D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, London, 1986. The Napoleonic era provides fine opportunities to test national identities’ strength and constituent elements, not just in Europe but in comparative terms across the globe: R. G. S. Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Campaign and the Contest for India, Cambridge, 2003, illustrates the internal weaknesses of a polity which was Britain’s toughest enemy in India. Compare this with e.g. M. Rowe (ed.), Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe, Basingstoke, 2003.
55 The perfect model of an imperial conqueror is the Chinese Emperor Ch’in Shih-Huang, whom Sam Finer calls the ruler who left the biggest and most lasting mark on government. Measured against him, Napoleon’s ambitions and impact appear puny: S. Finer, The History of Government, 3 vols., Oxford, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 472–3. For a fuller study of the First Emperor, see D. Bodde, ‘The State and Empire of Ch’in’, in D. Twitchett and M. Loewe (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1: The Ch’in and Han Empires 221 BC–AD 220, Cambridge, 1986, ch. 1. Michael Doyle, Empires, Ithaca, NY, 1986, is perceptive as regards institutionalization.
56 On this and many other points discussed in this section, see the excellent Lentz, Nouvelle histoire, vol. 3: La France et l’Europe de Napoléon 1804–1814, Paris, 2007. As will be evident from the above, I agree with Professor Lentz on the question of ideology: see pp. 671–5 of his book.
57 VPR, 5, no. 142, Memorandum of F. P. Pahlen, not later than 14/26 Nov. 1809, pp. 294–5.
58 On Napoleon’s ‘Indian projects’ and Russian fears that they would be forced to serve them, see V. Bezotosnyi, ‘Indiiskie proekty Napoleona i Rossiia v 1812 g.’, in Epokha 1812 goda: Issledovaniia, istochniki, istoriografiia, 161, TGIM, Moscow, 2006, vol. 5, pp. 7–22.
Chapter 4: Preparing for War
1 D. V. Solov’eva (ed.), Graf Zhozef de Mestr: Peterburgskie pis’ma, SPB, 1995, no. 72, 20 Jan./1 Feb. 1808, pp. 98–9.
2 On Arakcheev, see E. Davydova, E. Liatina and A. Peskov (eds.), Rossiia v memuarakh: Arakcheev. Svidetel’stva sovremennikov, Moscow, 2000, a very useful collection of contemporary recollections of Arakcheev. See also ch. 1 by K. M. Iachmenikov, ‘Aleksei Andreevich Arakcheev’, pp. 17–62, in Russkie konservatory, Moscow, 1997.
3 Solov’eva, de Mestr, no. 72, 20 Jan./1 Feb. 1808, p. 99.
4 Above all these were better canister ammunition and better sights.
5 P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, chs. VI and VIII, pp. 99–153, is the best source on Arakcheev’s role. There is a useful chapter also in V. N. Stroev, Stoletie sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva kantseliarii, SPB, 1912, pp. 98–129. As regards memoirs, see above all ‘Zapiski A. A. Eilera’, RA, 11, 1880, pp. 333–99, at pp. 342–3, 348–50. F. Lange (ed.), Neithardt von Gneisenau: Schriften von und über Gneisenau, Berlin, 1954: ‘Denkschrift Gneisenaus an Kaiser Alexander I’, pp. 119–34, at p. 133.
6 See e.g. laws and decrees published in these years: PSZ, 30, 22756, 17 Jan. 1808, p. 27 (all reports to Alexander to go via Arakcheev); 22777, 25 Jan. 1808, pp. 42–3 (accounting); 22809, 5 Feb. 1808, p. 58 (no private letters); 23052, 2 June 1808, p. 284 (accurate service records); 23205, 5 Aug. 1808, pp. 486–508 (rules for the acceptance of cloth supplied).
7 PSZ, 30, 23923, 21 Oct. 1809, pp. 1223–7, on cloth supplies; MVUA 1812, 1/2, no. 8, Arakcheev to Barclay, 26 Jan. 1810, pp. 21–3. The regimental histories are the best source for Arakcheev’s instructions on shooting practice and the upkeep of weapons: see e.g. V. V. Rantsov, Istoriia 96-go pekhotnago Omskago polka, SPB, 1902, pp. 114–17.
8 MVUA 1812, 1, no. 116, Barclay to Commissary-General, 4 June 1810, p. 53; RD, 4, no. 332, Caulaincourt to Champagny, 2 Oct. 1809, pp. 106–8.
9 On recruit uniforms, see e.g. PSZ, 30, 20036, 23 May 1808, pp. 272–4. On initial emergency measures regarding cloth supplies, 23121, 26 June 1808, pp. 357–68. S. V. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia i snabzheniia russkoi armii nakanune i v khode otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g. i zagranichnykh pokhodov 1813–1815 gg.: Istoricheskie aspekty, candidate’s dissertation, SPB, 2003, pp. 117–20, 124.
10 The same was true in France: see K. Alder, Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815, Princeton, 1997, p. 466 for all the references to the failed effort to introduce interchangeable parts.
11 See above all the excellent chapter on small arms production in V. N. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia podgotovka Rossii k bor’be s Napoleonom v 1812–1814 godakh, Gorky, 1967, pp. 82–135. On the new musket and its calibre, PSZ, 30, 23580, 13 April 1809, pp. 908–11. On lead, 22827, 16 Feb. 1808, pp. 71–7, and also MVUA 1812, 4, no. 11, Kremer to Barclay de Tolly, 25 July 1811, pp. 82–5; no. 12, Barclay to Gurev, draft, pp. 85–6. P. Haythornthwaite, Weapons and Equipment of the Napoleonic Wars, London, 1996, p. 21.
12 PSZ, 30, 23297, 10 Oct. 1808, pp. 603–38.
13 ‘Dvenadtsatyi god: Pis’ma N. M. Longinova k grafu S. R. Vorontsovu’, RA, 4, 1912, pp. 381–547, 13 Oct. 1812, pp. 534–5. I. P. Liprandi, Materialy dlia otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda: Sobranie statei, SPB, 1867, ch. 10, pp. 199–211.
14 Much the best source on Barclay’s background, values and early life is Michael and Diana Josselson, The Commander: A Life of Barclay de Tolly, Oxford, 1980.
15 See e.g. the comments of Eugen of Württemberg: Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 1, pp. 274–7.
16 Josselson, Commander, pp. 81–2. V. P. Totfalushin, M. V. Barklai de Tolli v otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda, Saratov, 1991, ch. 1.
17 The law is in PSZ, 31, no. 24975, 27 Jan. 1812 (OS), pp. 43–164. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia, pp. 61 ff. discusses it in detail.
18 The amendment is PSZ, 31, no. 25035, 13 March 1812 (OS), pp. 228–9. On the law, see P. A. Geisman, Svita Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva po kvartirmeisterskoi chasti v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Aleksandra I, SVM, 4/2/1, SPB, 1902, pp. 284 ff.
19 The law on forming the 13 new regiments is PSZ, 30, no. 24505, Jan. 1811, pp. 537–43; the law on internal security is vol. 30, no. 24704, pp. 783–802. On the new regiments’ quality, see e.g. F. G. Popov, Istoriia 48-go pekhotnago Odesskago polka, 2 vols., Moscow, 1911, vol. 1, pp. 7–52; S. A. Gulevich, Istoriia 8-go pekhotnago Estliandskago polka, SPB, 1911, pp. 117–21.
20 A collection of documents on the internal security troops was published in Moscow in 2002: Vnutrenniaia i konvoinaia strazha Rossii: Dokumenty i materialy. For English-language readers John LeDonne provides a short guide in Absolutism and Ruling Class, Oxford, 1991, pp. 132–9. P. E. Shchegoleva (ed.), Zapiski grafa E. F. Komarovskgogo, SPB, 1914, pp. 183–7, is very revealing about the formation of the internal security troops and Alexander’s attitude towards them. For Alexander’s views on Balashev, see ‘Zapiski Iakova Ivanovicha de Sanglena: 1776–1831 gg.’, RS, 37, 1883, pp. 1–46, at pp. 20–25.
21 See in particular Lobanov’s letter to Alexander of 8 May 1814 (OS): RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 153, fo. 65. It is only fair to add that Lobanov wrote that some of these officers were excellent.
22 In this period all regiments had so-called chiefs. They might be anything from colonels to senior generals. They bore responsibility for their regiment’s training, finances and administration. If they had no other job, then chiefs would actually command the regiment. In all circumstances they exercised a strong influence on their subordinate officers’ behaviour.
23 Colonel Markov, Istoriia leib-gvardii kirasirskago Eia Velichestva polka, SPB, 1884, pp. 199–201; E. K. Wirtschafter, From Serf to Russian Soldier, Princeton, 1990, pp. 97–8.
24 M. A. Rossiiskii, Ocherk istorii 3-go pekhotnago Narvskago general-fel’dmarshala kniazia Mikhaila Golitsyna polka, Moscow, 1904, pp. 291–302.
25 P. Voronov and V. Butovskii, Istoriia leib-gvardii Pavlovskago polka 1790–1890, SPB, 1890, pp. 46–73; Popov, Istoriia 48go, vol. 1, pp. 26–8. For another example of how poor leadership contributed to desertion in individual squadrons, see Lt. Krestovskii, Istoriia 14-go Ulanskago Iamburgskago E.I.V. velikoi kniagini Marii Aleksandrovny polka, SPB, 1873, pp. 327–33.
26 The latest British work on Wellington’s 95th Regiment makes these points convincingly: see Mark Urban, Rifles, London, 2003.
27 Hon. George Cathcart, Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany in 1812 and 1813, London, 1850, p. 7.
28 On the regulations for training jaegers and recruits, see A. I. Gippius, Obrazovanie (Obuchenie) voisk, SVM, 4/1, book 2, SPB, 1903, pp. 76–7, 81–2. On the history of the jaegers, see e.g. Rantsov, Istoriia 96-go, pp. 1–36. The three-volume history of the Russian infantry by I. Ulianov, Reguliarnaia pekhota 1801–1855, Moscow, 1995–8, is a very useful summary of regulations, uniforms, weaponry and tactics: fortunately, it includes the jaegers. Lange, Gneisenau, pp. 130–31.
29 The two light infantry regiments of the Guard have excellent histories which tell one a great deal about jaegers in this era: Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka za sto let 1796–1896, SPB, 1896, and S. Gulevich, Istoriia leib gvardii Finliandskago polka 1806–1906, SPB, 1906.
30 Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, pp. 74–5. On the 2nd Jaegers, see Rantsov, Istoriia 96-go, pp. 81–3. On the 10th Jaegers, see N. Nevezhin, 112-i pekhotnyi Ural’skii polk: Istoriia polka 1797–1897, Vilna, 1899, pp. 35–8.
31 Digby Smith, Napoleon against Russia: A Concise History of 1812, Barnsley, 2004, p. 92. M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, 3 vols., SPB, 1859–60, vol. 2, p. 456.
32 I read all the issues of Voennyi zhurnal for 1810–12. It is impossible to cite them all.
33 The two key works on the origins of the general staff are Geisman, Svita, SVM, and N. Glinoetskii, ‘Russkii general’nyi shtab v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Aleksandra I’, VS, 17/10, Oct. 1874, pp. 187–250 and 17/11, Nov. 1874, pp. 5–43.
34 Volkonsky’s former subordinate, Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, damns him with faint praise: A. I. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Memuary 1814–1815, SPB, 2001, pp. 156–7.
35 Glinoetskii, ‘Russkii general’nyi shtab’, VS, 17/11, Nov. 1874, p. 11.
36 RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Ed. Khr. 1, fos. 215 ff.
37 All these statistics are drawn from S. V. Shvedov, ‘Komplektovanie, chislennost’ i poteri russkoi armii v 1812 godu’, in K 175-letiiu Otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g., Moscow, 1987, pp. 120–39. The older statistics provided in Geisman, Vozniknovenie, SVM, p. 298, are higher. As Adam Czartoryski commented, ‘I have so often seen in Russia 100,000 men on paper represented only by 65,000 effectives’: A. Gielgud (ed.), Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski, 2 vols., London, 1888, vol. 2, p. 221.
38 The basic rules on the structure and wartime deployment of regiments are in PSZ, 31, nos. 24400 and 24526, pp. 420–24 and 553–8.
39 The likeliest reason for this was that the Guards veterans companies, the marine regiments and the many other military units and institutions in Petersburg provided a more than sufficient rear cadre so there was no need to leave the second battalions behind.
40 For Alexander’s view, see SIM, 1, no. 56, Alexander to Essen, 3 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 46–7. When he arrived in Riga, General von Steinhel supported Essen’s view: ‘The troops here are reserve battalions, weak in numbers and inferior in combat-readiness to front-line units’: SIM, 13, no. 3, Steinhel to Arakcheev, 7 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 205–7.
41 For picking one’s way through the complicated changes in policy and nomenclature as regards recruit depots and reserve formations, the outstanding Entsiklopediia on 1812 is immensely useful.
42 The key document on the distribution of the fourth battalions is a memorandum attached to a letter of Alexander to Wittgenstein dated 3 Aug. 1812 (OS): SIM, 1, no. 58, pp. 47–9.
43 On the Noble Regiment, see M. Gol’mdorf, Materialy dlia istorii byvshego Dvorianskago polka, SPB, 1882: the statistics are from p. 137. On attracting officers, see also A. N. Andronikov and V. P. Fedorov, Prokhozhdenie sluzhby, SVM, 4/1/3, SPB, 1903, pp. 2–9, 100–182.
44 N. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr pervyi: Ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, 4 vols., SPB, 1897, vol.3, pp. 98–102. This will be covered in more detail in Ch. 7. The instructions to Lobanov to form twelve new regiments on the basis of voluntary contributions were enclosed in a letter from Barclay of 10 May 1812 (OS): RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 15, fos. 2–10. Estimates of costs are contained in a letter from the governor of Voronezh to Balashev on 24 June 1812 (OS): RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 16, fos. 92–3.
45 MVUA 1812, 1/2, no. 1, pp. 1–6.
46 For Wolzogen’s view, see his memorandum of 13 Oct. 1811 (OS) in MVUA 1812, 5, no. 139, Wolzogen to Barclay, pp. 273–9. For the minister’s own view that an offensive strategy was the better option, see e.g. a memorandum by him of Jan. 1811: MVUA 1812, 7, no. 16 (additional), pp. 187–9.
47 MVUA 1812, 2, no. 56, Plan of Military Operations, Feb. 1811, pp. 83–93.
48 Alexander of Württemberg’s useful memorandum is in MVUA 1812, 10, no. 143, pp. 253–75; for Bagration, see e.g. MVUA 1812, 12, no. 103, Bagration to Barclay, 12 June 1812 (OS), pp. 107–9; for Volkonsky, MVUA 1812, 11, no. 260, 29 April 1812 (OS), pp. 324–33.
49 There are very many documents on the difficulties of feeding the troops but see e.g. a report from Barclay to Alexander of 4 April 1812 (OS) in which he states that food and particularly fodder is a great problem, the roads are impassable, he cannot requisition since a state of war has not yet been proclaimed but has no money to buy food, and is keeping sickness rates down so long as the units are well dispersed; MVUA 1812, 11, no. 41, 4 April 1812 (OS), pp. 54–5.
50 Again, there are very many memorandums on this theme in MVUA but the best summary of the problem is in I. G. Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, SVM, 7, SPB, 1902.
51 For Wolzogen’s views, see his memorandum above (n. 6). Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812 goda, vol. 1, pp. 407–11, describes the terrain well. Oppermann’s report to Barclay is dated 10 Aug 1811 (OS): MVUA 1812, 4, no. 56, pp. 207–9.
52 The two key works on the Pfühl plan in particular and Russian planning in general are V. M. Bezotosnyi, Razvedka i plany storon v 1812 godu, Moscow, 2005, pp. 85–108, and V. V. Pugachev, ‘K voprosu o pervonachal’nom plane voiny 1812 goda’, in K stopiatidesiatiletiiu otechestvennoi voiny, Moscow, 1962, pp. 31–46. I owe a great deal to both works.
53 ‘Analiticheskii proekt voennykh deistvii v 1812 P. A. Chuikevicha’, in Rossiiskii arkhiv, 7, 1996, pp. 41–57.
54 Josselson, Commander, pp. 41–2; Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, no. 73, Alexander to Catherine, 18 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 86–93; Comte de Rochechouart, Souvenirs de la Révolution, l’Empire et la Restauration, Paris, 1889, pp. 167–8. Rostop-chin’s letter is quoted in A. G. Tartakovskii, Nerazgadannyi Barklai, Moscow, 1996, p. 73.
55 F. von Schubert, Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962, pp. 212–13: ‘Russia would have been irretrievably lost’. Metternich: The Autobiography 1773–1815, London, 2004, p. 153. MVUA 1812, 7, prilozheniia, no. 21, ‘Plan voennykh deistvii’, Johann Barclay de Tolly, 1811, pp. 217–42, at p. 218.
56 It is impossible to cite all this correspondence: see e.g. a typical letter from Lieutenant-General Baggohufvudt to Barclay, dated 9 Feb. 1812 (OS): MVUA 1812, 9, no. 50, p. 128.
57 Most of these retreats are too famous to require references, but see C. Esdaile, The Peninsular War, London, 2002, p. 412, for the impact on British discipline of the retreat from Burgos (‘many units went to pieces’). The quote comes from Gordon Corrigan, Wellington: A Military Life, London, 2001, p. 227. For Bagration, see his letter to Alexander of 6 June 1812 (OS): MVUA 1812, 13, no. 57, pp. 48–50.
58 See e.g. the comments by the historian of the Iamburg Lancer Regiment: Lieutenant Krestovskii, Istoriia… Iamburgskago… polka, pp. 102–3. The English-speaking reader will get some sense of Suvorov’s ‘doctrine’ from P. Longworth, The Art of Victory, London, 1965. Christopher Duffy, Russia’s Military Way to the West, London, 1981, is a very good introduction to the eighteenth-century Russian army’s history, including the evolution of its ‘doctrine’.
59 MVUA 1812, 1/2, no. 60, Diebitsch to Barclay, 9 May 1810 (OS), pp. 87–91; the anonymous report is not dated but clearly originates from the winter of 1811–12: see MVUA 1812, 7, no. 13, pp. 175–83.
60 C. F. Adams (ed.), John Quincy Adams in Russia, New York, 1970, p. 426. Longinov’s letter to S. R. Vorontsov is dated 28 July 1812 (OS): RA, 4, 1912, pp. 481–547, at p. 490.
61 MVUA 1812, 16, no. 2, Alexander to Barclay, 7 April 1812 (OS), pp. 180–81, on the significance of the alliance and the impossibility now of a pre-emptive strike; 13, no. 190, Arenschildt to Münster, 22 May (3 June) 1812, pp. 189–94.
62 MVUA 1812, 12, no. 260, Memorandum by Volkonsky, 29 April 1812 (OS), pp. 324–33.
63 MVUA 1812, 13, no. 65, Barclay to Bagration, 6 June 1812 (OS), p. 56.
64 MVUA 1812, 13, no. 94, pp. 96–7, and no. 103, pp. 107–9: Bagration to Barclay.
65 MVUA 1812, 13, no. 57, Bagration to Alexander, 6 June 1812 (OS), pp. 48–50.
Chapter 5: The Retreat
1 Statistics from S. V. Shvedov, ‘Komplektovanie, chislennost’ i poteri russkoi armii v 1812 godu’, in K 175-letiiu Otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g., Moscow, 1987, p. 125.
2 See Appendix 1. The table is drawn from MVUA 1812, 17, pp. 51–4.
3 See e.g. Paulucci’s letter to Alexander of 14 July 1812 (OS) in MVUA 1812, 14, no. 130, pp. 128–9.
4 For biographical information on Toll, see D. N. Shilov, Gosudarstvennye deiateli Rossiiskoi imperii, SPB, 2001, pp. 671–4. The comments are drawn from N. Murav’ev, ‘Zapiski Nikolaia Nikolaevicha Muraveva’, RA, 3, 1885, pp. 5–84, at p. 81.
5 P. Grabbe, Iz pamiatnykh zapisok: Otechestvennaia voina, Moscow, 1873, pp. 17–19, 60, 74–7.
6 Murav’ev, ‘Zapiski’, p. 53. P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, pp. 155–6.
7 Ludwig von Wolzogen, Mémoires d’un Général d’Infanterie au service de la Prusse et de la Russie (1792–1836), Paris, 2002, pp. 106, 115. V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, vol. 1, pp. 217, 247–8.
8 SIM, 5, nos. 1 and 2, Ermolov to Alexander, 1 and 10 Aug. 1812, pp. 411–17. V. Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god v dnevnikakh, zapiskakh i vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 4 vols., Vilna, 1900–1907, vol. 1, p. 183 (‘Iz zapisok Vistitskago’).
9 S. N. Golubeva (ed.), General Bagration: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Moscow, 1945, no. 102, Ermolov to Bagration, 30 June 1812 (12 July NS), pp. 189–90. There is a vast literature on the Decembrists, much of which discusses Ermolov: see e.g. M. A. Davydov, Oppozitsiia ego velichestva, Moscow, 1994. For Alexander’s comment: ‘Zapiski Iakova Ivanovicha de Sanglena: 1776–1831 gg.’, RS, 37, 1883, pp. 1–46, 539–56, at p. 551.
10 See, above all, R. I. Sementkovskii, E. F. Kankrin: Ego zhizn’ i gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nost’, SPB, 1893.
11 Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, no. 73, Alexander to Catherine, 18 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 86–93. For Alexander’s key statement on the need to beware public opinion, see VS, 47/1, 1904, no. 19, Alexander to Barclay, 24 November 1812 (OS), pp. 231–3.
12 On Wittgenstein, see MVUA 1812, 13, no. 173, Barclay to Alexander, 18 June 1812 (OS), pp. 183–4; Baggohufvudt’s letter is quoted in I. I. Shelengovskii, Istoriia 69-go Riazanskago polka, 3 vols., Lublin, 1911, vol. 2, p. 143.
13 Mémoires du Général Bennigsen, 3 vols., Paris, n.d., vol. 3, p. 77; see Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, e.g. p. 35, for the view that Bennigsen was Russia’s best tactician.
14 On Barclay’s frustrating efforts to create a mobile magazine, see e.g. V. P. Totfalushin, M. V. Barklai de Tolli v otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda, Saratov, 1991, pp. 29–31.
15 See Pushchin’s diary: V. G. Bortnevskii (ed.), Dnevnik Pavla Pushchina: 1812–1814, Leningrad, 1987, pp. 46–7. Aleksei Nikitin, for instance, notes that most of the Polish Lancer Regiment deserted at Vitebsk: ‘Vospominaniia Nikitina’, in Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 2, pp. 140–41. This may be an exaggeration.
16 M. M. Petrov, ‘Rasskazy sluzhivshego v 1-m egerskom polku polkovnika Mikhaila Petrova o voennoi sluzhbe i zhizni svoei’, in 1812 god: Vospominaniia voinov russkoi armii, Moscow, 1991, pp. 112–355, at pp. 176–7.
17 N. E. Mitarevskii, Rasskazy ob otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda, Moscow, 1878, pp. 13–23. The story about the priests comes from the reminiscences of Ivan Liprandi, the quartermaster general of Sixth Corps: Kharkevich, 1812 god, vol. 2, p. 5: ‘Zamechaniia I. P. Liprandi’.
18 MVUA 1812, 13, no. 203, Uvarov to Alexander, 19 June 1812 (OS), pp. 206–7.
19 Armand de Caulaincourt, At Napoleon’s Side in Russia, New York, 2003, p. 43. V.M. Bezotosnyi, Razvedka i plany storon v 1812 godu, Moscow, 2005, pp. 58–9, 100–101.
20 Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, 32 vols., Paris, 1858–70, vol. 24, no. 18925, Napoleon to Clarke, 8 July 1812, pp. 33–4.
21 On Orlov’s mission, see e.g. the diary of Nikolai Durnovo for 21 and 22 June 1812 (OS), in A. G. Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, Moscow, 1990, pp. 79–80.
22 Grabbe, Iz pamiatnikh, pp. 22–35.
23 MVUA 1812, 13, no. 296, Barclay to Alexander, 25 June 1812 (OS), pp. 302–3 and no. 323, 27 June 1812 (OS), pp. 331–3.
24 On the engineers, see I. G. Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, SVM, 7, SPB, 1902, pp. 392–5.
25 See the discussion in Bezotosnyi, Razvedka, pp. 112–13, where it is argued that the so-called Pfühl plan was a cunning ploy on Alexander’s part to avoid responsibility for a policy of strategic withdrawal which he considered necessary but did not want to acknowledge.
26 Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 1, p. 208. MVUA 1812, 17, Alexander to Bagration, 5 July 1812 (OS), pp. 275–6. Shishkov reproduces the letter to Alexander in his memoirs and discusses the conversations between the three men: N. Kiselev and I. Iu. Samarin (eds.), Zapiski, mneniia i perepiska Admirala A. S. Shishkova, 2 vols., Berlin, 1870, vol. 1, pp. 141–8.
27 For Bagration’s ‘system’, see e.g. his order of the day to his troops of 7 July 1812 and his earlier letter to Arakcheev: General Bagration, nos. 95, pp. 179–80, and 103, which is simply dated June 1812 and is on pp. 190–91. For his proposed diversion, see MVUA 1812, 13, no. 120, Bagration to Alexander, 26 June 1812, pp. 131–3.
28 I. Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski artillerista s 1812 po 1816 god, 3 vols., Moscow, 1835, vol. 1, p. 67.
29 See e.g. Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 1, p. 209. In defence of Ostermann-Tolstoy, see I. I. Lazhechnikov, ‘Neskol’ko zametok i vospominanii po povodu stat’i “Materialy dlia biografii A. P. Ermolova” ’, Russkii vestnik, 31/6, 1864, pp. 783–819. On Ostermann-Tolstoy’s appearance, see Serge Glinka, Pis’ma russkogo ofitsera, Moscow, 1987, p. 316.
30 On the Ingermanland Dragoons, see V. I. Genishta and A. T. Borisovich, Istoriia 3-go dragunskago Ingermanlandskago polka 1704–1904, SPB, 1904, pp. 172–5, and prilozhenie 7. One cannot be absolutely sure that all five promoted NCOs were not nobles but they were certainly not junkers, in other words officer cadets. See G. P. Meshetich, ‘Istoricheskie zapiski voiny rossiian s frantsuzami i dvadtsat’iu plemenami 1812, 1813, 1814 i 1815 godov’, in Vospominaniia voinov russkoi armii: Iz Sobraniia otdela pis’mennykh istochnikov gosudarstvennogo istoricheskogo muzeia, Moscow, 1991, pp. 39–102, at pp. 42–3.
31 Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski, pp. 32–3.
32 Here as elsewhere in this chapter my narrative owes much to M. Bogdanovich, Istoriia otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, 3 vols., SPB, 1859–60, supported in all moments of uncertainty by Entsiklopediia. On the decision to retreat from Vitebsk, see e.g. Barclay’s explanation to Alexander of 22 July 1812 (OS), MVUA 1812, 14, no. 196, pp. 195–6.
33 See e.g. Barclay’s letter to Alexander of 15 July 1812 (OS) in MVUA 1812, 14, no. 136, pp. 136–7. On Peter Pahlen, see M. Bogdanovich, ‘Graf Petr Petrovich fon der Palen i ego vremia’, VS, 7/8, 1864, pp. 410–25. General Gourgaud as usual defends Napoleon from these attacks but does so partly by blurring the timing of the Russian decision to retreat: Général Gourgaud, Napoléon et la Grande Armée en Russie ou Examen critique de l’ouvrage de M. le Comte de Ségur, Paris, 1826, pp. 132–6.
34 Duc de Fezensac, Souvenirs militaires, Paris, 1863, pp. 221–2; Philippe de Ségur, History of the Expedition to Russia, 1812, 2 vols., Stroud, 2005, vol. 1, p. 145.
35 ‘Zapiski Paskevicha’, in Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 1, pp. 82–119, at p. 96. ‘Zhurnal uchastnika voiny 1812 goda’, VIS, 1/3, 1913, pp. 155–72, at pp. 152–3.
36 SIM, 5, no. 1, 1 August 1812 (OS), Ermolov to Alexander, pp. 411–14.
37 MVUA 1812, 14, no. 257, Alexander to Barclay, 28 July 1812 (OS), pp. 263–4. N. Dubrovin (ed.), Otechestvennaia voina v pis’makh sovremennikov, Moscow, 2006, no. 60, Alexander to Barclay, 30 July 1812 (OS), pp. 68–9.
38 MVUA 1812, 16, no. 59, Barclay to Alexander, 9 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 47–8.
39 MVUA 1812, 16, no. 92, Barclay to Alexander, 16 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 76–7; 17, Barclay to Chichagov, 31 July 1812 (OS), pp. 167–8; Barclay to Kutuzov, 17 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 186–7.
40 Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 1, p. 220. Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812 goda, vol. 1, pp. 234–5.
41 MVUA 1812, 14, no. 277, Bagration to Barclay, 30 July 1812 (OS), pp. 280–81.
42 Golubeva (ed.), General Bagration, no. 129, Bagration to Arakcheev, 29 July 1812 (OS), p. 226.
43 e.g. Popov, Istoriia 48-go pekhotnago Odesskago polka, 2 vols., Moscow, 1911, vol. 1, pp. 7–26. D. V. Dushenkovich, ‘Iz moikh vospominanii ot 1812 goda do 1815 goda’, in 1812 god v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, Moscow, 1995, pp. 103–35.
44 Baron Fain, Manuscrit de Mil Huit Cent Douze, Paris, 1827, p. 359.
45 Dushenkovich, ‘Iz moikh vospominanii’, in 1812 god v vospominaniiakh, p. 111.
46 ‘Zapiski Paskevicha’, in Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 1, pp. 99–103.
47 There is a good discussion of these issues in A. G. Tartakovskii, Nerazgadannyi Barklai, Moscow, 1996, pp. 103–8.
48 ‘Zamechaniia I. P. Liprandi na “Opisanie Otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda” Mikhailovskago-Danilevskago’, in Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 2, pp. 1–35, at pp. 15–16. Dushenkovich, ‘Iz moikh vospominanii’, p. 111.
49 P. A. Geisman, Svita Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva po kvartirmeisterskoi chasti v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Aleksandra I, SVM, 4/2/1, SPB, 1902, pp. 313–14. The best source on overburdening is the memoirs of Nikolai Muravev: ‘Zapiski’.
50 Much the best sources on this action are Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 1, pp. 285–9, and Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, book 2, pp. 18–41.
51 F. von Schubert, Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962, p. 97.
52 Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 1, p. 13 (‘Zapiski Shcherbinina’) and pp. 219–24 (‘Iz vospominanii grafa Orlova-Denisova’). SIM, 5, no. 2, Ermolov to Alexander, 10 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 414–17.
53 T. Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, 3 vols., Paris, 2004–7, vol. 2, p. 324.
54 Schubert, Doppeladler, pp. 203–4.
Chapter 6: Borodino and the Fall of Moscow
1 The best source on Riga’s defences is I. G. Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, SVM, 7, SPB, 1902, pp. 355–9. As always, M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, 3 vols., SPB, 1859–60 (here vol. 1, pp. 340–43) and the many relevant entries in Entsiklopediia, are also invaluable. See VS, 53/11, 1910, pp. 30–38 for the memoirs of General Emme, the commandant of the Riga fortress: these are interesting but perhaps a little unfair to General Essen.
2 I derive all troop strengths for 1812 from the relevant entries in Entsiklopediia, unless otherwise stated. For Wittgenstein’s instructions, see MVUA 1812, 17, Barclay to Wittgenstein, 4 July 1812 (OS), pp. 134–5.
3 Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 1, pp. 351–2, makes the point about experience in the Finnish war but see too e.g. two regimental histories: Captain Geniev, Istoriia Pskovskago pekhotnago general-fel’dmarshala kniazia Kutuzova-Smolenskago polka: 1730–1831, Moscow, 1883, pp. 178–82; S. A. Gulevich, Istoriia 8-go pekhotnago Estliandskago polka, SPB, 1911, pp. 128–41. On morale in Wittgenstein’s corps and the impact of victory, see V. Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god v dnevnikakh, zapiskakh i vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 4 vols., Vilna, 1900–1907, ‘Zapiski A. I. Antonovskago’, vol. 3, pp. 72–3.
4 See e.g. comments by Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, in A. G. Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, Moscow, 1990, pp. 333, 345.
5 On d’Auvray, see e.g. F. von Schubert, Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962, p. 58;on Sukhozhanet, see e.g., N. M. Zatvornitskii, Pamiat’ o chlenakh voennago soveta, SVM, 3/4, SPB, 1906, pp. 141 ff.
6 On Diebitsch, see e.g. the comments of Aleksandr Chicherin: L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Dnevnik Aleksandra Chicherina, 1812–1813, Moscow, 1966, p. 135. Dnevnik Pavla Pushchina, SPB, 1896, p. 111.
7 Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, 32 vols., Paris, 1858–70, vol. 24, no. 19100, Napoleon to Berthier, 19 Aug. 1812, pp. 158–9.
8 Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire militaire sous le Directoire, le Consulat et l’Empire, Paris, 1831, vol. 3, pp. 79–81; MVUA 1812, 17, Wittgenstein to Alexander, 6 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 284–5.
9 Gulevich, Istoriia… Estliandskago polka, pp. 137–41.
10 Saint-Cyr, Mémoires, vol. 3, p. 87.
11 MVUA 1812, 17, no. 32, p. 295: Wittgenstein to Alexander: the letter is dated 25 Aug. (OS) but it seems clear that these reports to the emperor are dated by when Alexander received them rather than when they were written. The sum of 14 million comes from Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812 goda, vol. 2, p. 72. The figure for the 1811 budget comes from F. P. Shelekhov, Glavnoe intendantskoe upravlenie, SVM, 5/1, SPB, 1903, p. 373. The slight vagueness as regards the number of provinces is caused by complications in defining the word province in the Russia of 1812. Some border districts and Asiatic regions were not called provinces.
12 See e.g. the comments of Major-General Prince Vasili Viazemsky, who commanded a brigade in Tormasov’s army: Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, pp. 199–215.
13 Langeron calls this army ‘one of the best in Europe’. As deputy commander of this force his view is biased but it was to be proved by the Army of the Danube’s performance. Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, p. 7.
14 VPR, 6, no. 164, Russo-Turkish peace treaty, pp. 406–17.
15 The two key letters from Alexander to Chichagov were written on 6 and 22 July (OS): VIS, 2/3, 1912, pp. 201–6.
16 MVUA 1812, 16, Alexander to Barclay, 7 April 1812 (OS), pp. 181–2.
17 The instructions are VPR, 6, no. 145, 21 April 1812, pp. 363–5.
18 VPR, 6, no. 197, Rumiantsev to Alexander, 5/17 July 1812, pp. 486–90.
19 MVUA 1812, 13, no. 321, Tuyll to Barclay, 26 June/8 July 1812, pp. 329–30. VIS, 2/3, 1912, Alexander to Chichagov, 13 June 1812 (OS), pp. 196–8. On Austrian promises, see in particular Francis II’s conversation with Stackelberg: VPR, 6, no. 158, Stackelberg to Rumiantsev, 29 April/11 May 1812, pp. 393–6.
20 For march-routes and times, see MVUA 1812, vol. 17, pp. 197–8.
21 V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, vol. 1, p. 250. VS, 47/1, 1904, no. 19, Alexander to Barclay, 24 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 231–6.
22 S. Panchulidzev, Istoriia kavalergardov, SPB, 1903, vol. 3, p. 180.
23 N. M. Konshin, ‘Zapiski o 1812 gode’, IV, 8, 1884, pp. 263–86, at pp. 281–2. A.M. Valkovich and A. P. Kapitonov (eds.), Borodino: Dokumental’naia khronika, Moscow, 2004, no. 27, Kutuzov to Alexander, 19 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 24–5. Kutuzov, vol. 4i, Moscow, 1954, no. 125, Kutuzov to E. I. Kutuzova, 19 August 1812 (OS), p. 108.
24 Langeron, Mémoires, p. 28. Many wounded were actually abandoned at Mozhaisk but this was exceptional.
25 Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia, London, 1992, pp. 175–6.
26 Antoine de Jomini, The Art of War, London, 1992, pp. 64–5, 230, 233–8.
27 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, pp. 70–72.
28 F. Glinka, Pis’ma russkogo ofitsera, Moscow, 1987, p. 293.
29 See the comments by Konovnitsyn and General Kreutz (who commanded some of the rearguard’s cavalry) in Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 2, pp. 70–72, 124–5; also Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky’s reminiscences about Konovnitsyn in Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, pp. 313–16. Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 2, pp. 129–36.
30 Ivan Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski artillerista s 1812 po 1816 god, 3 vols., Moscow, 1835, vol. 1, pp. 131–2.
31 For the record of this committee, see Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 82, pp. 71–3. For the issues behind the choice, see A. G. Tartakovskii, Nerazgadannyi Barklai, Moscow, 1996, pp. 130–37. A. A. Podmazo, ‘K voprosu o edinom glavnokomanduiushchem v 1812 godu’, in Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda: Istochniki, pamiatniki, problemy. Materialy X vserossiiskoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Borodino, 3–5 sentiabria 2001 g., Moscow, 2002, pp. 140–46.
32 Dnevnik Pavla Pushchina, 19 Aug. 1812 (OS), p. 59. Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, nos. 70 and 73, Alexander to Catherine, 8 Aug. and 18 Sept. (OS), pp. 81–2, 86–93.
33 The literature on Kutuzov is immense. Probably the best summary is by N. A. Troitskii, Fel’dmarshal Kutuzov: Mify i fakty, Moscow, 2002.
34 On relations among the leading generals, see above all V. Bezotosnyi, ‘Bor’ba general’skikh gruppirovok’, in Epokha 1812 goda: issledovaniia, istochniki, istoriografiia, TGIM, Moscow, 2002, vol. 1, but also Lidiia Ivchenko, Borodino: Legenda i deistvitel’nost’, Moscow, 2002, pp. 6–18.
35 In addition to the sources listed in the previous note, see Mémoires du Général Bennigsen, 3 vols., Paris, n.d., vol. 3, pp. 77–84. On one dispute, concerning the design of the Raevsky Battery, see I. P. Liprandi, Materialy dlia otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda: Sobranie statei, SPB, 1867, 176–8.
36 Clausewitz, Campaign, p. 148.
37 The secondary literature on Borodino is vast: English-language readers should start with A. Mikaberidze, The Battle of Borodino, Barnsley, 2007, which provides a clear and fair interpretation, above all from the Russian perspective. Duffy, Borodino, remains a good, brief introduction. As almost always, the place to start in the case of Russian-language work is the entry in Entsiklopediia (in this case ‘Borodinskoe srazhenie’, pp. 80–92), which gives a good summary of the best contemporary Russian interpretation of the battle. The Russian literature on military operations in 1812 is immense, detailed and often very good. An example of this is the three long articles which A. A. Smirnov devotes to the battle at Shevardino on 5 September: these cover tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet historiography respectively. See Epokha 1812 goda: Issledovaniia, istochniki, istoriografiia, TGIM, Moscow, vol. 3, 2004, pp. 320–51; vol. 4, 2005, pp. 239–71; vol. 5, 2006, pp. 353–68: ‘Chto zhe takoi Shevardinskii redut?’
38 There is a good description of this deployment and its implications in the memoirs of a young staff officer in Fifth Corps, Nikolai Muravev: see ‘Zapiski Nikolaia Nikolaevicha Murav’eva’, RA, 3, 1885, pp. 225–62, at p. 250. For a discussion of casualties caused by artillery fire, see: A. A. Smirnov, ‘Somnitel’nye vystrely’, in Problemy izucheniia istorii otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, Saratov, 2002, pp. 150–4.
39 Mark Adkin, The Waterloo Companion, London, 2001, pp. 120–21, 284–301.
40 The distances are from Entsiklopediia, pp. 80–83. Barclay’s report to Kutuzov is in Valkovich and Kapitonov (eds.), Borodino: Dokumental’naia khronika, no. 331, 26 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 249–51. In his excellent book Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon, London, 1998, Rory Muir states on p. 15 that the Russians had 36,000 men per mile in comparison to 24,000 in Wellington’s army. These calculations are always difficult to make but I suspect that if one looked at where the Russian army actually fought rather than where it was initially deployed the figure would be even higher.
41 For example, Barclay through Löwenstern urged the commander of the Guards cavalry to try to keep his men, the army’s ultimate elite reserve, under cover. General Shevich responded that there was no cover to be found. Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 1, p. 264. Grabbe, for example, writes that Ermolov told him to order the troops covering the Raevsky Redoubt to lie down in order to reduce the impact of artillery fire but that they refused to do so: P. Grabbe, Iz pamiatnykh zapisok: Otechestvennaia voina, Moscow, 1873, p. 77.
42 The best description from the Russian viewpoint is the official history of the Russian corps of military engineers in this period: Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, pp. 760–65, covers Borodino but needs to be read in the context of other sections on sieges in 1812 and on the structure and tasks of the corps of military engineers at that time. Bogdanovich has a sensible description of the fortifications, which he describes as ‘very weak’ in Istoriia… 1812, vol. 2, pp. 142–3. Inevitably the English-language secondary literature usually just repeats established myths of French origin. Thus the recently published Fighting Techniques of the Napoleonic Age, London, 2008 (edited by Robert Bruce et al.), writes of ‘the daunting defences of the… massive Russian redoubt’: p. 113.
43 Bogdanov’s memoirs are reproduced in Borodino v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, SPB, 2001, pp. 169–71.
44 Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, pp. 762–4. Clausewitz, Campaign, p. 151.
45 Liprandi, Materialy, pp. 177–80.
46 Mikaberidze, Borodino, pp. 75–6, handles these issues well. Even young (and at this point retired) Lieutenant Glinka records seeing from Borodino bell-tower how Napoleon’s troops massed on the left towards the evening of 6 September and recalls ‘the general opinion’ of Russian officers he met that day that Napoleon would attack the Russian left: Pis’ma, pp. 18, 299.
47 Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 1, pp. 261–2.
48 Mikaberidze, Borodino, pp. 49–53, discusses numbers and provides a table showing the many differing estimates by historians and contemporaries.
49 On Miloradovich’s reinforcements, see his report to Alexander of 18 Aug. 1812 (OS), in Valkovich and Kapitonov (eds.), Borodino: Dokumental’naia khronika, pp. 21–2.
50 Philippe de Ségur, History of the Expedition to Russia, 1812, 2 vols., Stroud, 2005, vol. 1, p. 255.
51 Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, vol. 24, no. 19182, p. 207.
52 Ségur, History, vol. 1, pp. 251–2. On this occasion General Gourgaud, Napoléon et la Grande Armée en Russie ou Examen critique de l’ouvrage de M. le Comte de Ségur, Paris, 1826, pp. 213–15, is wholly correct in his defence of Napoleon’s decision.
53 The official report of the regiment’s commander, Karl Bistrom, rather confuses the reader by its details, as does the regiment’s official history: Valkovich and Kapitonov (eds.), Borodino: Dokumental’naia khronika, no. 293, Bistrom to Lavrov, 31 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 168–70; Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka za sto let 1796–1896, SPB, 1896, pp. 84–6. On Barclay, see Grabbe, Iz pamiatnykh, p. 74. For rumours, see e.g. Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, p. 107, diary of Ivan Durnovo.
54 Complete casualty figures for other ranks are provided in the prilozhenie (appendix) 4 of Valkovich and Kapitonov (eds.), Borodino: Dokumental’naia khronika, pp. 332–54. On the French artillery, see A. P. Larionov, ‘Izpol’zovanie artillerii v Borodinskom srazhenii’, in K stopiatidesiatiletiiu otechestvennoi voiny, Moscow, 1962, pp. 116–31 at p. 127.
55 Jomini, Art of War, pp. 202–3.
56 T. von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des kaiserlichen russischen Generals der Infanterie Carl Friedrich Grafen von Toll, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1858, vol. 4, p. 74.
57 I. Ul’ianov, 1812: Russkaia pekhota v boiu, Moscow, 2008, pp. 164–5.
58 On Kutaisov, see A. A. Smirnov, General Aleksandr Kutaisov, Moscow, 2002.
59 Thanks to their translator and editor, Alexander Mikaberidze, Ermolov’s memoirs are now available in English: The Czar’s General, Welwyn Garden City, 2007. His account of this episode is on pp. 159–61. Löwenstern’s account is in Mémoires, vol. 1, pp. 257–9.
60 On the deployment of artillery at Borodino, see Larionov, ‘Izpol’zovanie’, passim. P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, pp. 181–2, explains these failings by Kutaisov’s death. For Liprandi’s views, see Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 2, ‘Zamechaniia I. P. Liprandi’, pp. 28–9.
61 For Paskevich’s account, see I. F. Paskevich, ‘Pokhodnyia zapiski’, in 1812 god v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, Moscow, 1995, pp. 72–105, at pp. 102–3.
62 Pototskii, Istoriia, p. 178, for Norov’s comment. Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 2, pp. 176–84, for the excellent memoirs of Lieutenant-Colonel Vasilii Timofeev of the Izmailovskys. For the Finland Regiment, see S. Gulevich, Istoriia leib gvardii Finliandskago polka 1806–1906, SPB, 1906, pp. 204–20. For the Lithuania Regiment, see N. S. Pestreikov, Istoriia leib-gvardii Moskovskago polka, SPB, 1903, vol. 1, pp. 59–83.
63 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, pp. 110–11; Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812 goda, vol. 2, pp. 219, 226.
64 Together the Preobrazhenskys and Semenovskys lost fewer than 300 men on 7 Sept.: Valkovich and Kapitonov (eds.), Borodino: Dokumental’naia khronika, p. 342.
65 D. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon, London, 1993, p. 807, writes that Napoleon’s decision was probably correct.
66 The most recent analysis of the second attack on the redoubt is by V. N. Zentsov, ‘Borodinskoe srazhenie: Padenie “bol’shogo reduta” ’, in Borodinskoe pole: Istoriia, kul’tura, ekologiia, Moscow, 2000, pp. 31–55.
67 ‘Zhurnal uchastnika voiny 1812 goda’, VIS, 3/2, 1913, pp. 163–4.
68 Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski, vol. 1, p. 168.
69 Valkovich and Kapitonov (eds.), Borodino: Dokumental’naia khronika, pp. 332–5. Mikaberidze, Borodino, p. 209.
70 V. M. Bezotosnyi, Donskoi generalitet i ataman Platov v 1812 godu, Moscow, 1999, pp. 33–4, 62–4, 75–83. The memoirs of Fedor Akinfov, Miloradovich’s aide-de-camp, are very useful for this period: ‘Iz vospominanii Akinfova’, in Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 2, pp. 205–12.
71 Countess Edling’s memoirs in A. Libermann (ed.), Derzhavnyi sfinks, Moscow, 1999, p. 177, for Kutuzov’s words to Alexander. Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 105, Kutuzov to Rostopchin, 17 August 1812 (OS), pp. 90–91.
72 As usual, the best summary account of the council of war is in Entsiklopediia, pp. 666–7. Mikaberidze’s translation of Ermolov’s memoirs gives a strong sense of the game played between him and Kutuzov over responsibility for Moscow’s abandonment: The Czar’s General, pp. 168–72. Bennigsen’s letter to Alexander of 19 Jan. 1813 (OS) in VS, 1, 1903, pp. 235–8, puts his side of the argument.
73 S. I. Maevskii, ‘Moi vek ili istoriia generala Maevskago, 1779–1848’, RS, 8, 1873, pp. 135–67, at p. 143.
74 ‘Iz vospominanii Akinfova’, in Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god, vol. 1, pp. 205–12. Maevskii, ‘Moi vek’, pp. 143–4.
75 The most up-to-date surveys are, as usual, in Entsiklopediia: see especially the pieces on Moscow (pp. 476–9) and the fire (pp. 482–4). For the figure on private property destroyed, see Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812 goda, vol. 3, p. 28. For the evacuation of the wounded, see Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Memuary 1814–1815, SPB, 2001, p. 189, for a subsequent conversation with Wylie. Also S. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia i snabzheniia russkoi armii nakanune i v khode otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g. i zagranichnykh pokhodov 1813–1815 gg.: Istoricheskie aspekty, SPB, 2003, pp. 143–4.
76 On the barges, see the records of the post-war inquiry in Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, prilozhenie no. 20, pp. 717–18.
77 As always, A. I. Popov, Velikaia armiia v Rossii: Pogonia za mirazhom, Samara, 2002, pp. 178 ff., has an excellent discussion of these issues.
78 V. N. Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia podgotovka Rossii k bor’be s Napoleonom v 1812–1814 godakh, candidate’s dissertation, Gorky, 1967, pp. 386–8. Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 294, Kutuzov to Voronov, 7 Sept. 1812 (OS), p. 250.
Chapter 7: The Home Front in 1812
1 P. A. Chuikevich, ‘Analiticheskii proekt voennykh deistvii v 1812. P. A. Chuikevicha’, Rossiiskii Arkhiv, 7, 1996, p. 46. S. N. Golubeva (ed.), General Bagration: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Moscow, 1945, no. 57, ‘Plan kampanii 1812 goda, predstavlennyi P. I. Bagrationom Aleksandru I’, pp. 130–38. Janet Hartley provides a very useful survey of Russian society’s resistance to Napoleon in ‘Russia and Napoleon: State, Society and the Nation’, in M. Rowe (ed.), Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe, Basingstoke, 2003, pp. 186–202.
2 N. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr Pervyi: Ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, 4 vols., SPB, 1897, vol. 3, pp. 100–103.
3 MVUA 1812, 17, Barclay to Asch, 21 July 1812 (OS), pp. 157–8.
4 L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Narodnoe opolchenie v otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda: Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow, 1962, no. 2, 6 July 1812 (OS), pp. 14–15.
5 The statistics come from Beskrovnyi (ed.), Narodnoe opolchenie, no. 205, pp. 218–19: these are the final reports of Lieutenant-General Tyrtov, the commander of the Tver militia. C. F. Adams (ed.), John Quincy Adams in Russia, New York, 1970, p. 452.
6 The outstanding work on Russian popular (and other) resistance to Napoleon is A. I. Popov, Velikaia armiia v Rossii: Pogonia za mirazhom, Samara, 2002. Popov also contributed many excellent articles, on ‘People’s War’, peasant disturbances, partisans and adjacent topics, to Entsiklopediia. There are parallels here with Spain, where Charles Esdaile shows that many of the guerrillas were regular cavalrymen. The Russian case was much more clear-cut, however, as one would expect. Unlike in Spain, the Russian state had not collapsed. See Charles Esdaile, Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits and Adventurers in Spain 1808–14, London, 2004.
7 Beskrovnyi, Narodnoe opolchenie, no. 140, Kutuzov to Alexander, 23 Oct. 1812 (OS), pp. 155–6; see e.g. no. 89, pp. 113–17, and no. 121, p. 142, for descriptions of individual actions.
8 Popov, Velikaia armiia, pp. 185–229. A. G. Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, Moscow, 1990, diary of Prince D. M. Volkonsky, p. 146. For an older but still useful view of peasant disturbances, see V. I. Semevskii, ‘Volneniia krest’ian v 1812 gi. sviazannyia s otechestvennoi voinoi’, in A. K. Dzhivelegov, S. P. Melgunov and P. I. Pichet (eds.), Otechestvennaia voina i russkoe obshchestvo, 7 vols., Moscow, 1911, vol. 5, pp. 74–113.
9 See the many interesting documents in RGVIA, Fond 1, Opis 1ii, Delo 2584: ‘O vozmushcheniiakh krest’ian i ob usilenii sredstv k poimke beglykh rekrut, dezertirov i kazakov’: fos. 41–2: d’Auvray to Gorchakov, 1 Nov. 1812 (OS), describes the rout of the dragoons, and fo. 35: Wittgenstein to Gorchakov, 6 Nov. 1812 (OS), explains why military operations have to come first.
10 SIM, 2, no. 312, Alexander to Gorchakov, 9 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 171–2.
11 There is an immense literature on Moscow in 1812 with many interesting materials contained, for example, in the multi-volume series compiled by P. I. Shchukin: Bumagi otnosiashchiiasia do otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, Moscow, 1897–1908. N. Dubrovin (ed.), Otechestvennaia voina v pis’makh sovremennikov, Moscow, 2006, contains a number of Rostopchin’s letters to Balashev: see in particular nos. 55 and 62, 23 July and 30 July 1812 (OS), pp. 60–63, 70–71. English-speaking readers need to look no further than an excellent article by Alexander Martin, ‘The Response of the Population of Moscow to the Napoleonic Occupation of 1812’, in Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe (eds.), The Military and Society in Russia, 1450–1917, Leiden, 2002, pp. 469–89.
12 Dubrovin, Otechestvennaia voina, no. 47, 15 July 1812 (OS), pp. 54–6. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr, vol. 3, p. 90. L. V. Mel’nikova, Armiia i pravoslavnaia tserkov’ Rossiiskoi imperii v epokhu Napoleonovskikh voin, Moscow, 2007, pp. 57–90, 100–115.
13 PSZ, 22, 16187, 21 April 1785 (OS), p. 348.
14 Compare for example the language of Alexander’s decree to Governor Suponev of Vladimir with Suponev’s own subsequent reference to the emperor’s ‘commands’: RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1, Delo 16, fos. 21, 23–8: Suponev to Lobanov-Rostovsky, 11 June 1812 (OS), and Alexander to Suponev, 13 May 1812 (OS). As regards service in the militia and its evasion, see e.g. N. F. Khovanskii, Uchastie Saratovskoi gubernii v otechestvennoi voine 1812 g., Saratov, 1912, pp. 41–64; I. I. Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia guberniia v 1812 godu, Riazan, 1913, pp. 277–528.
15 See the memoirs of Countess Edling, reprinted in A. Libermann (ed.), Derzhavnyi sfinks, Moscow, 1999: ‘Grafinia Roksandra Skarlatovna Edling: Zapiski’, pp. 157–236, at pp. 174–5. On sabotaging the estate tax, see e.g. Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia, pp. 8–21.
16 ‘V. V. Viazemskii: Zhurnal 1812 g.’, in Russkie dnevniki: 1812 god, Moscow, 1990, pp. 185–225, at p. 211.
17 Khovanskii, Uchastie, pp. 31–3.
18 Upravlenie General-Intendanta Kankrina: General’nyi sokrashchennyi otchet po armiiam… za pokhody protiv Frantsuzov, 1812, 1813 i 1814 godov, Warsaw, 1815, pp. 11, 44. L. G. Beskrovnyi, Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda, Moscow, 1962, pp. 245–7. S. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia i snabzheniia russkoi armii nakanune i v khode otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g. i zagranichnykh pokhodov 1813–1815 gg.: Istoricheskie aspekty, SPB, 2003, p. 121.
19 V. V. Tivanov, Finansy russkoi armii, Moscow, 1993, p. 79.
20 PSZ, 32, nos. 24975 and 25035, 27 Jan. and 13 March 1812 (OS), pp. 43–164 and 228–9. Upravlenie General-Intendanta, p. 134. Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 387, Kutuzov to Kaverin, 13 Sept. 1812 (OS), p. 305: the same letter went to the governors of Riazan, Orel, Tver and Tula.
21 The estimate is by Tivanov, Finansy, p. 66, but is based on the discussion in M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, 3 vols., SPB, 1859–60, vol. 2, pp. 31–90.
22 The key documents for Kleinmichel’s operation are in SIM, 1, no. 3, Alexander to Gorchakov, 27 June 1812 (OS), pp. 5–11; no. 9, Alexander to Kleinmichel, 27 June 1812 (OS), pp. 14–15; no. 21, Alexander to Kleinmichel, 6 July 1812 (OS), pp. 23–4. There is a fine new book on the Russian marines which includes extensive coverage of the Napoleonic era: A. Kibovskii and O. Leonov, 300 let Rossiiskoi morskoi pekhoty, Moscow, 2007.
23 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 16, e.g. fos. 18–19, Suponev to Lobanov, 6 June 1812 (OS); fo. 21, Suponev to Lobanov, 11 June 1812 (OS); fos. 23–8, copies of Alexander’s orders to Suponev, dated 13 May 1812 (OS). See Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia, p. 168, for a list of these provinces.
24 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 16, fos. 2–3, Pasynkov to Lobanov, 18 June 1812 (OS); fos. 90–91, Shter to Lobanov, 6 July 1812 (OS).
25 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 188a, Delo 16, fos. 6–7, Pasynkov to Lobanov, 23 July 1812 (OS); fos. 100–101, Shter to Lobanov, 18 July 1812 (OS).
26 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 16, fos. 6–7, Pasynkov to Lobanov, 23 July 1812 (OS); fos. 284–5, Prince Grigorii Golitsyn to Lobanov, 9 July 1812 (OS). RA, 6, 1866, pp. 922–7: ‘Avtobiograficheskie zametki Grafa Arakcheeva’.
27 Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia, pp. 174–82, 210–22; Entsiklopediia, p. 297.
28 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 16, fos. 92–3, Shter to Balashev, 24 June 1812 (OS); Delo 19, fos. 77–81, Urusov to Lobanov, 23 July 1812 (OS). Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia, p. 188.
29 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 16, fos. 29 and 32, Dolgorukov to Lobanov, 6 Aug. and 3 Sept. 1812 (OS).
30 RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 19, fos. 2–4, Gorchakov to Lobanov, 20 Aug. 1812 (OS); fos. 134–40, ‘Spisok o vsekh shtab i ober ofitserakh postupivshikh na sluzhbu’.
31 Kutuzov, vol 4ii, Kutuzov to Alexander, 9 October 1812 (OS), pp. 62–3. Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia, pp. 224–7. RGVIA, Fond 125, Opis 1/188a, Delo 16, fos. 100–101, Shter to Lobanov, 18 July 1812 (OS).
32 Beskrovnyi, Narodnoe opolchenie, no. 3, 18 July 1812 (OS), pp. 15–16, is the text of this manifesto.
33 The statistic comes from an article by V. I. Babkin, the leading Soviet-era expert on the militia: ‘Organizatsiia i voennye deistviia narodnogo opolcheniia v otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda’, in K stopiatidesiatiletiiu otechestvennoi voiny, Moscow, 1962, pp. 134–62, at p. 145.
34 Beskrovnyi, Narodnoe opolchenie, no. 117, pp. 137–9: regulations of the Kaluga militia committee, 25 July 1812 (OS).
35 Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia, p. 228. A few of these men did receive new uniforms produced abroad: see Ch. 10. The minister added that even in wartime not all wool could be assigned for uniforms.
36 Beskrovnyi, Narodnoe opolchenie, no. 354, Tolstoy to Alexander, 28 Sept. 1812 (OS), p. 368.
37 Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812 goda, vol. 2, p. 56.
38 Apart from Babkin and Bezotosnyi, the fullest source on the militia is the many volumes compiled by V. R. Apukhtin for the centenary of 1812: see e.g. Narodnaia voennaia sila: Dvorianskiia opolcheniia v otechestvennoi voine, Moscow, 1912. Apukhtin is as determined to sing the nobles’ glory as Babkin is to downplay their contribution. Prokhodtsev, Riazanskaia, pp. 229–621, is an immensely informative study of the Riazan militia.
39 Speranskii, Voenno-ekonomicheskaia podgotovka, pp. 381, 392, 407–23. Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 18: memorandum by Müller-Zakomel’sky, 10 July 1812 (OS), p. 20.
40 SIM, 1, no. 81, Alexander to Kutuzov, 24 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 64–5.
41 A. I. Ulianov, ‘Tarutinskii lager: “neudobnye” fakty’, in Ot Tarutino do Maloiaroslavtsa: K 190-letiiu Maloiaroslavetskogo srazheniia, Kaluga, 2002, pp. 23–36.
42 Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski, vol. 1, p. 172. Viazemskii, ‘Zhurnal’, p. 215. Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, nos. 33 and 37, Catherine to Alexander, 6 Sept. and 23 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 107–8, 119–22.
43 Meshetich, ‘Istoricheskie zapiski’, p. 50. L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Dnevnik Aleksandra Chicherina, 1812–1813, Moscow, 1966, pp. 14–16.
44 On Tishchenko, see MVUA 1812, 19, pp. 335–6. Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka za sto let 1796–1896, SPB, 1896, p. 88. V. Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god v dnevnikakh, zapiskakh i vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 4 vols., Vilna, 1900–1907, vol. 2, p. 200: ‘Opisanie srazhenii’.
45 Dnevnik Chicherina, pp. 18–19, 28. Dnevnik Pavla Pushchina, Leningrad, 1987, pp. 61–2.
46 ‘Edling’, pp. 172–3, makes this point about mutual distrust.
47 E. F. Komarovskii, Zapiski grafa E. F. Komarovskago, SPB, 1914, p. 195. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr, vol. 3, pp. 88–90.
48 Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr, pp. 90–92. ‘Edling’, pp. 174–5.
49 Sir Robert Wilson, The French Invasion of Russia, Bridgnorth, 1996, pp. 115–16.
50 Ibid., pp. 116–17.
51 Ibid.
52 ‘Edling’, pp. 178–9.
53 Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, nos. 33, 38, 39, Catherine to Alexander, 6, 23 and 28 Sept., 1812 (OS), pp. 83–4, 93–6 and 98–9; nos. 73 and 74, Alexander to Catherine, 18 and 24 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 86–93, 96–8.
54 Elizabeth to the Margravine of Baden, 7 and 9 Sept. 1812, in Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, L’Impératrice Élisabeth, épouse d’Alexandre Ier, 4 vols., SPB, 1908–9, vol. 2ii, pp. 443–5.
55 Quoted in F. Ley, Alexandre Ier et sa Sainte-Alliance (1811–1825), Paris, 1975, pp. 49–55; ‘Edling’, pp. 176–9.
56 See Michaud’s account of the conversation in Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr, vol. 3, prilozheniia, document VII, pp. 509–10.
Chapter 8: The Advance from Moscow
1 Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 187, Kutuzov to Alexander, 27 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 154–5; no. 241, Alexander to Kutuzov, 31 Aug. 1812 (OS), pp. 194–5.
2 The plans were set out in Alexander’s letter of 31 Aug. (OS) and also in the draft instructions to Chichagov, Tormasov, Wittgenstein and Steinhel which Chernyshev brought with him to Kutuzov’s headquarters. For the latter see prilozheniia 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Kutuzov, vol. 4i, pp. 463–70.
3 Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 322, Chernyshev to Alexander, 10 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 265–8.
4 Chernyshev’s own account of these actions is in RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3386, fos. 2ii–3ii: ‘Zhurnal voennykh deistvii General Adiutanta Chernysheva’. MVUA 1812, 20, no. 1, Wittgenstein to Alexander, 6 Nov. 1812 (OS), p. 4.
5 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, pp. 169, 173. A. Brett-James (ed.), General Wilson’s Journal 1812–1814, London, 1964, p. 75.
6 A good translation of Davydov’s memoirs was recently published in English: In the Service of the Tsar against Napoleon: The Memoirs of Denis Davydov, trans Prince G. Trubetskoy, London, 2006.
7 T. J. Binyon, Pushkin: A Biography, London, 2002, p. 130.
8 I. Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski artillerista s 1812 po 1816 god, 3 vols., Moscow, 1835, vol. 1, pp. 205–6. On Figner, see an anonymous article entitled ‘Uverennost’ v zvezde svoego schastiia’, Rodina, 8, 2002, pp. 47–50.
9 MVUA 1812, 18, no. 124, Davydov to Konovnitsyn, 21 Sept. 1812 (OS), p. 101.
10 P. Grabbe, Iz pamiatnykh zapisok: Otechestvenniaia voina, Moscow, 1873, pp. 97–8; V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, vol. 1, p. 296.
11 S. G. Volkonskii, Zapiski Sergeia Grigorovicha Volkonskogo (dekabrista), SPB, 1902, pp. 170–71, 189–94;Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 2, pp. 7, 182. Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 163, Kutuzov to Alexander, 20 Oct. 1812 (OS), p. 175. For Arakcheev’s efforts to reduce his own contributions, see his angry correspondence with Governor Sumarokov of Novgorod in the summer and autumn of 1812 and his appeals for help to Balashev: P. I. Shchukin (ed.), Bumagi otnosiashchiiasia do otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, vol. 4, Moscow, 1899, pp. 118–27.
12 See, above all, G. Bibikov, ‘Aleksandr Khristoforovich Benkendorf (1781–1844): Istoricheskii ocherk’, Vestnik MGU, 1, 2007, pp. 36–60. Also an informative letter from Johann to Christoph Lieven, dated 5 Jan. 1811 (OS): BL Add. MSS 47410, p. 56.
13 Zapiski Benkendorfa, 1812 god: Otechestvennaia voina. 1813 god. Osvobozhdenie Niderlandov, Moscow, 2001, pp. 70–71.
14 All these statistics are drawn from Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 439, Kutuzov to Alexander, 22 Sept. 1812 (OS), pp. 353–61, and prilozheniia.
15 For example, on 22 September Kutuzov’s order of the day warned that remounts would soon be arriving from many sources and told his regiments to prepare to collect them. One such source was Tula province, whose governor had been told by Kutuzov to purchase 500 horses and send 2,000 militia horses to the army’s regular cavalry: Kutuzov, vol. 4i, nos. 287, 296, 320, pp. 246–7, 251, 264: the first two documents are letters of 6 and 7 Sept. (OS) to Governor Bogdanov, the third is an order of the day of 10 September.
16 Babkin, ‘Organizatsiia’, p 145. L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Narodnoe opolchenie v otechestvennoi voine 1812 goda: Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow, 1962, nos. 452, 453, pp. 473–7. The first document is a report of 23 July (OS) from the Don region to Platov on the universal mobilization. The second is Platov’s October report to Alexander I on the results of the mobilization. See also V. M. Bezotosnyi, Donskoi generalitet i ataman Platov v 1812 godu, Moscow, 1899, pp. 92–6.
17 Viscount de Puybusque, Lettres sur la Guerre de Russie en 1812, Paris, 1816, pp. 142–4.
18 For Kutuzov’s comment, see A. I. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie otechestvennoi voiny v 1812 godu, repr. Moscow, 2008, p. 384. Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 531, Alexander to Kutuzov, 2 Oct. 1812 (OS), pp. 431–2.
19 A. P. Ermolov, The Czar’s General, ed. and trans. A. Mikaberidze, Welwyn Garden City, 2007, pp. 178–80, covers Tarutino and Ermolov’s views on the command structure in the English translation of his memoirs. Prince Aleksandr Golitsyn, Kutuzov’s aide-de-camp, describes his rage in VS, 53/12, 1910, pp. 21–35, at p. 29: ‘Zapiska o voine 1812 goda A. B. Golitsyna’.
20 Barclay’s letter to Alexander of 24 Sept. 1812 (OS) on this score is in MVUA 1812, 18, no. 148, pp. 118–22.
21 N. A. Troitskii, Fel’dmarshal Kutuzov: Mify i fakty, Moscow, 2002, quotes Raevsky on pp. 232–3.
22 By far the fullest recent account of the battle is by V. A. Bessonov, ‘Tarutinskoe srazhenie’, in Epokha 1812 goda: Issledovaniia, istochniki, istoriografiia, TGIM, Moscow, 2006, vol. 5, pp. 101–53.
23 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, pp. 175–82, gives a graphic but fair account.
24 Bennigsen’s view is best put in a letter to his wife of 10 Oct. 1812 (OS): no. 177, pp. 223–5 in N. Dubrovin (ed.), Otechestvennaia voina v pis’makh sovremennikov, Moscow, 2006. The casualty figures are from Bessonov, ‘Tarutinskoe’, pp. 142–3, though A. I. Ulianov cites higher ones in Entsiklopediia, p. 694. Kutuzov’s report to Alexander on Tarutino is in Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 16, Kutuzov to Alexander, 7 Oct. 1812 (OS), pp. 16–19.
25 P. de Ségur, History of the Expedition to Russia, 1812, 2 vols., Stroud, 2005, vol. 2, pp. 75–8, recalls some of Napoleon’s thinking on the various possibilities. Napoleon himself spelled them out in a number of letters and memorandums written in Moscow in October 1812: see Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, 32 vols., Paris, 1858–70, vol. 24, especially no. 19237, notes, undated, pp. 235–8, but also his letters to Berthier of 5 and 6 Oct. and to Maret of 16 Oct.: nos. 19250, 19258, 19275, pp. 246–7, 252–4, 265–6.
26 Ségur, History, vol. 2, pp. 82–3; A. de Caulaincourt, At Napoleon’s Side in Russia, New York, 2003, pp. 136–8; Duc de Fezensac, Souvenirs militaires, Paris, 1863, p. 258. Brett-James, Wilson’s Journal, p. 80. On the astonishing level of plundering in the Italian campaign, see Martin Boycott-Brown, The Road to Rivoli, London, 2001, pp. 287–8, 306, 335–6.
27 The key report from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, written at 9.30 p.m. on 22 October, is in Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 59, pp. 75–6.
28 The best account of the battle is by A. Vasil’ev, Srazhenie pri Maloiaroslavtse 12/24 oktiabria 1812 goda, Maloiaroslavets, 2002; see p. 27 for the information on the 6th Jaegers. The entries on the battle and the monastery in Entsiklopediia, on pp. 437–9 and 472, are very useful too.
29 Kutuzov’s account is in his report to Alexander of 16 Oct. 1812 (OS), which enclosed his army’s journal of military operations: Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 119, pp. 128–34.
30 Sir Robert Wilson, The French Invasion of Russia, Bridgnorth, 1996, p. 234.
31 His comment about England is cited by Troitskii, Fel’dmarshal Kutuzov, p. 278.
32 Many of Wilson’s letters both to the emperor and to his compatriots are published in Dubrovin (ed.), Otechestvennaia voina. They were drawn from police files. Bennigsen’s letter of 8 October (OS) asking Alexander to return to headquarters is published in MVUA 1812, 19, pp. 344–5.
33 N. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr pervyi: Ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, 4 vols., SPB, 1897, vol. 3, p. 124.
34 See e.g. Alexander’s comments to Wilson in Vilna in December 1812 or the Grand Duchess Catherine’s annoyance about Kutuzov’s huge popularity and how unworthy of it he was: Wilson’s Journal, p. 95. Correspondance de l’Empereur Alexandre, no. 46, Catherine to Alexander, 25 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 108–9.
35 Kutuzov, vol 4ii, no. 192, pp. 195–201, journal of military operations. MVUA 1812, 19, e.g. Ermolov to Kutuzov, 18 Oct. 1812 (OS), p. 73; Platov to Kutuzov, 20 Oct. 1812 (OS), p. 78.
36 P. B. Austen, 1812: Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia, London, 2000, p. 47.
37 F. Glinka, Pis’ma russkogo ofitsera, Moscow, 1987, p. 371.
38 S. V. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia i snabzheniia russkoi armii nakanune i v khode otechestvennoi voiny 1812 g. i zagranichnykh pokhodov 1813–1815 gg.: Istoricheskie aspekty, candidate’s dissertation, SPB, 2003, p. 109, for the statistics quoted here.
39 Kutuzov, vol 4i, no. 536 and annex, Kutuzov to Lanskoy, 3 Oct. 1812 (OS), pp. 439–40. See also Gavrilov, Organizatsiia, pp. 158–9.
40 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 210/4, Sv. 1, Delo 1: fos. 1–2, Kutuzov’s circular to twelve governors of 15 Sept. 1812 (OS); fos. 28–9, Lanskoy’s report to Kutuzov of 9 Oct. (OS).
41 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 210/4, Sv. 1, Delo 1: fos. 38–9: Major-General Potulov to Bennigsen, 11 Oct. 1812 (OS); NB the letter was received on 16 Oct.; fos. 77–8, Lanskoy to Kutuzov, 11 Nov. (OS); fo. 97, Santi to Kutuzov, November but no day given; fos. 113–14, Lanskoy to Kutuzov, 11 Dec. (OS); fos. 126–7, Lanskoy to Kutuzov, 15 Dec. (OS); fos. 137–8, Lanskoy to Kutuzov, 23 Jan. 1813 (OS). On winter clothing, see e.g. Kutuzov, vol. 4i, no. 387, Kutuzov to Kaverin, 13 Sept. 1812 (OS), p. 305.
42 See e.g. Kutuzov’s letters to Nikolai Bogdanov, the governor of Tula, of 19 and 24 Oct. (OS): Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, nos. 159 and 196, pp. 169–70 and 205–6.
43 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 195, pp. 203–4, 24 Oct. 1812 (OS): an Order of the Day. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie 1812, p. 457, writes that 74 million rubles’ worth of property was destroyed in Smolensk province in 1812. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia, p. 159.
44 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, pp. 204–7. Entsiklopediia, p. 170, states that the Russians lost 1,800 men, the enemy 7,000. Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski, vol. 1, pp. 250–51.
45 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, prilozhenie 21, p. 719, has a table showing the temperature month-by-month in 1812 in various places with statistics indicating how much this diverged from the norm. Anyone using this table must remember that the months are according to the Russian calendar. R. M. Zotov, Sochineniia, Moscow, n.d., p. 611, on how winter came suddenly in 1812. It would be tedious to list all the Russian sources which criticize French excuses about the weather, but see e.g. V. Kharkevich (ed.), 1812 god v dnevnikakh, zapiskakh i vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 4 vols., Vilna, 1900–1907, vol. 1, pp. 80–81, for General Kreutz’s comments. Baron Fain, Manuscrit de Mil Huit Cent Douze, Paris, 1827, pp. 151–2.
46 Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski, vol. 1, pp. 256–67.
47 Puybusque, Lettres, pp. 105–15: 7, 10, 12 Nov. 1812. Fezensac, Souvenirs, p. 276.
48 T. von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des kaiserlichen russischen Generals der Infanterie Carl Friedrich Grafen von Toll, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1858, vol. 4, p. 307.
49 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, pp. 241–50. Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 1, p. 348.
50 Both M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia otechestvennoi voiny 1812 goda, 3 vols., SPB, 1859–60, vol. 3, pp. 101–46, and Entsiklopediia, pp. 379–80, give accurate and fair accounts. Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, pp. 268–70 explains Ney’s escape from the Russian perspective.
51 Dnevnik Pavla Pushchina, Leningrad, 1987, pp. 71–2.
52 Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 2, p. 275.
53 Gavrilov, Organizatsiia, pp. 154–71. Upravlenie General-Intendanta Kankrina: Generalnyi sokrashchennyi otchet po armiiam… za pokhody Frantsuzov, 1812, 1813, 1814 godov, Warsaw, 1815, p. 79. On the troops’ exhausting marches down snow-bound side roads, see Zapiski o pokhodakh 1812 i 1813 godov ot Tarutinskago srazheniia do Kul’mskago boia, SPB, 1834, part 1, p. 40. The book is anonymous because its author, V. S. Norov, had been imprisoned after the Decembrist rising of 1825 and wrote it in custody.
54 There are interesting sidelights on this from Kutuzov’s discussions with the captured Puybusque: Lettres, especially as recorded in his letters of 11 and 18 Dec. 1812 (OS), pp. 141 ff. Note too Kutuzov’s earlier comments to Wilson and Bennigsen discussed in this chapter and his later conversations with Alexander and Shishkov which I will discuss in Ch. 9.
55 The letter is in a footnote on p. 282 of Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 295.
56 Kutuzov’s two letters to Chichagov are in Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 295, 3 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 282–3, and no. 363, 10 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 344–5. His letter to Wittgenstein of 8–9 November is in the same volume, no. 349, pp. 334–5. His comment to Ermolov is cited by V. S. Norov who was an aide-de-camp and an officer of the Guards Jaegers, one of the Guards regiments entrusted to Ermolov. See Norov’s Zapiski, p. 75. Ermolov quotes the first but not the second sentence in his memoirs and he was best placed to know exactly what Kutuzov said. Norov may have been embellishing his tale. But the words he ascribes to Kutuzov do sum up an attitude which comes across in many accounts, including Ermolov’s: see A. P. Ermolov, Zapiski A. P. Ermolova 1798–1826, Moscow, 1991, pp. 243–6.
57 Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia, London, 1992, pp. 213–14.
58 The basic narrative here comes from Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 2, ch. XXXI, pp. 442 ff. and vol. 3, ch. XL, pp. 205 ff. See RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3419: ‘Iskhodiashchii zhurnal Generala Sakena’, fos. 4i–ii, Sacken to Kutuzov, 21 Feb. 1813 for his complaint that he and his men had sacrificed themselves for the common good without hope of personal recognition.
59 Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 3, pp. 206–35. A. G. Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, Moscow, 1990, pp. 211–25, covers the advance to the Berezina.
60 Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 3, p. 236.
61 See Oertel’s letter to Chichagov of 3 Nov. 1812 (OS): MVUA 1812, 21, pp. 115–17; Chichagov to Alexander, 17 Nov. 1812 (OS): SIRIO, 6, 1871, pp. 56–8.
62 MVUA 1812, 19, Wittgenstein to Alexander, 19 Oct. 1812 (OS), p. 265.
63 Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire militaire sous le Directoire, le Consulat et l’Empire, Paris, 1831, vol. 3, pp. 201–3.
64 Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 3, pp. 198–204. MVUA 1812, 19, Wittgenstein to Alexander, 26 Oct. 1812 (OS), p. 268; Wittgenstein to Alexander, 31 Oct. 1812 (OS), pp. 270–72. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia, p. 163. See e.g. Alexander’s letter to Kutuzov of 30 Oct. 1812 (OS) in SIM, 2, no. 270, pp. 140–41, and Kutuzov’s letter to Wittgenstein of 3 Nov. (OS) on the same danger in Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 293, pp. 280–81.
65 V. Kriuchkov, 95-i pekhotnyi Krasnoiarskii polk: 1797–1897, SPB, 1897, p. 172. Gavrilov, Organizatsiia, p. 161, on requisitioning in Mogilev province.
66 Ermolov, Zapiski, pp. 244–8.
67 P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, pp. 207–10. (Norov), Zapiski, pp. 76–7; Istoriia leib-gvardii egerskago polka za sto let 1796–1896, SPB, 1896, pp. 88–94.
68 S. Gulevich, Istoriia leib gvardii Finliandskago polka 1806–1906, SPB, 1906, pp. 256–61. (Norov), Zapiski, pp. 76–7.
69 Chichagov’s letters to Alexander constitute his first defence of his actions: see SIRIO, 6, 1871, pp. 51–67: 17 and 18 Nov. 1812 (OS). In the memoir material, perhaps the best defence comes in an article by General Ivan Arnoldi: ‘Berezinskaia pereprava’, VS, 53/9, 1910, pp. 8–20. The main recent defence is by I. N. Vasilev, Neskol’ko gromkikh udarov po khvostu tigra, Moscow, 2001.
70 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 363, Kutuzov to Chichagov, 10 Nov. 1812 (OS), pp. 344–5. Clausewitz, Campaign, p. 210.
71 Ermolov, Zapiski, p. 251.
72 Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 3, pp. 255–61. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie 1812, p. 519.
73 Arnol’di, ‘Berezinskaia pereprava’, pp. 11–12.
74 The best Russian descriptions are Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 3, pp. 263–76, and Vasil’ev, Neskol’ko gromkikh udarov, pp. 190–200, 248–68.
75 Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 3, pp. 270–72, 277–84, 297. Vasil’ev, Neskol’ko gromkikh udarov, pp. 235–48, 268–85. Clausewitz, Campaign, pp. 204–8.
76 Ermolov, Zapiski, pp. 254–5.
77 Both Bogdanovich, Istoriia… 1812, vol. 3, p. 288, and Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. 4, p. 319, make this point.
78 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 563, Kutuzov to Alexander, 19 Dec. 1812, pp. 551–4. N. Murav’ev, ‘Zapiski Murav’eva’, RA, 3, 1885, pp. 389–90. The numbers do not include Osten-Sacken’s corps.
79 I. I. Shelengovskii, Istoriia 69-go Riazanskago polka, 3 vols., Lublin, 1911, vol. 2, p. 192. Upravlenie General-Intendanta, pp. 108–16.
80 Upravlenie General-Intendanta, pp. 114–16.
81 Kutuzov, vol. 4ii, no. 516, Kutuzov to Alexander, 1 Dec. 1812 (OS), pp. 494–5.
Chapter 9: 1813: The Spring Campaign
1 C. F. Adams (ed.), John Quincy Adams in Russia, New York, 1970, pp. 458–9. VPR, 7, no. 120, Rumiantsev to Alexander, 27 June/9 July 1813, pp. 293–4; no. 158, Rumiantsev to Alexander, 18/30 Sept. 1813, pp. 386–9.
2 Countess Choiseul-Gouffier, Historical Memoirs of the Emperor Alexander I and the Court of Russia, London, 1904, p. 148.
3 S. I. Maevskii, ‘Moi vek ili istoriia generala Maevskago’, RS, 8, 1873, p. 253.
4 ‘Grafinia Roksandra Skarlatovna Edling: Zapiski’, in A. Libermann (ed.), Derzhavnyi sfinks, Moscow, 1999, p. 181.
5 See e.g. the comments by Sir Charles Stewart, later Marquess of Londonderry, in his Narrative of the War in Germany and France in 1813 and 1814, London, 1830, pp. 33, 242–3.
6 On seduction, see e.g. V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, and Boris Uxkull, Arms and the Woman: The Intimate Journal of an Amorous Baltic Nobleman in the Napoleonic Wars, London, 1966. The Guards officers’ memoirs bear out David Bell’s point about the links between sex and war in aristocratic military culture: D. A. Bell, The First Total War, London, 2007, pp. 23–4.
7 For Shishkov’s conversation with Kutuzov, see N. Kiselev and Iu. Samarin (eds.), Zapiski, mneniia i perepiska Admirala A. S. Shishkova, 2 vols., Berlin, 1870, vol. 1, pp. 167–9. For Toll’s memorandum, see T. von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des kaiserlichen russischen Generals der Infanterie Carl Friedrich Grafen von Toll, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1858, vol. 3, book 5, pp. 469–70.
8 VPR, 7, no. 12, Nesselrode to Alexander I, early Feb. 1813, pp. 33–4.
9 L. G. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod russkoi armii protiv Napoleona v 1813 g. i osvobozhdenie Germanii: Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow, 1964: no. 24, Chernyshev to Kutuzov, 1/13 Jan. 1813, p. 23.
10 ‘Perepiska markviza Paulushi s imperatorom Aleksandrom, prusskim generalom Iorka i drugimi litsami’, in K. Voenskii (ed.), Akty, dokumenty i materialy dlia istorii 1812 goda, 2 vols., SPB, 1910–11, vol. 2, pp. 330–443.
11 See F. Martens (ed.), Sobranie traktatov i konventsii, zakliuchennykh Rossiei s inostrannymi derzhavami, vol. 7: Traktaty s Germaniei 1811–1824, SPB, 1885, no. 254, pp. 40–62.
12 See F. Reboul, Campagne de 1813: Les préliminaires, 2 vols., Paris, 1910, vol. 1, pp. 194–6, on Yorck’s numbers.
13 See Paulucci’s letter to Alexander I of 27 Dec. 1812 (OS), in Voenskii, Akty, vol. 2, pp. 400–402, and Wittgenstein’s angry letter to Chichagov about Paulucci’s idiotic behaviour: MVUA 1813, vol. 2, no. 24, Wittgenstein to Chichagov, 4 Jan. 1813 (OS).
14 Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 16, pp. 14–15.
15 Ibid., no. 7, 6/18 Dec. 1812, pp. 6–8, and no. 53, 25 Jan./6 Feb. 1813, for two important memorandums by Stein to Kutuzov about feeding the Russian troops and utilizing the Prussian administration.
16 There are any number of documents to this effect, but see e.g. Wittgenstein’s report to Kutuzov of 31 Dec. 1812/12 Jan. 1813 (Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 21, pp. 19–20) in which he states that the troops’ behaviour in Königsberg had been exemplary and the local population had greeted them as liberators and was providing food through local Prussian officials in the manner prescribed by Kutuzov’s orders.
17 E. Botzenhart (ed.), Freiherr vom Stein: Briefwechsel, Denkschriften und Aufzeichnungen, 8 vols., Berlin, 1957–70, vol. 4, Stein to Alexander I, 27 Feb./11 March 1813, pp. 234–6.
18 The discussion of Frederick William’s attitudes and policies in the following paragraphs owes much to T. Stamm-Kuhlmann, König in Preussens grosser Zeit, Berlin, 1992, pp. 365 ff.
19 W. Oncken, Österreich und Preussen in Befreiungskriege, 2 vols, Berlin, 1878: the discussion of the Knesebeck mission is in vol. 1, pp. 137–56, with the Knesebeck quotation on p. 166.
20 Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 33, 10/22 Jan. 1813, Chernyshev to Kutuzov, pp. 31–3.
21 Ibid., no. 48, 22 Jan./3 Feb. 1813, Chernyshev to Kutuzov, pp. 43–4.
22 On the battle on the Warthe, see Chernyshev’s journal: RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3386, fos. 6ii–7i, and his report to Wittgenstein of 31 Jan./11 Feb. 1813 in RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 2ii; on Benckendorff, see Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 80, 15/27 Feb. 1813, Wittgenstein to Kutuzov, pp. 80–81.
23 See e.g. Reboul, Campagne de 1813, vol. 2, ch. 5, and Gouvion Saint-Cyr, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire militaire sous le Directoire, le Consulat et l’Empire, vol. 4, Paris, 1831, ch. 1.
24 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3386, fo. 8.
25 See e.g. reports by Benckendorff to Repnin of 22 Feb. (10 Feb. OS) and of Chernyshev to Wittgenstein on the previous day: RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 8ii; Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 86, 20 Feb./4 March 1813, Wittgenstein to Kutuzov, p. 89.
26 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3416, fos. 1–2.
27 A. G. Tartakovskii (ed.), Voennye dnevniki, Moscow, 1990: A. I. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, pp. 319–20.
28 On the treaty, see Martens, Sobranie traktatov, vol. 7, pp. 62–82. For Stein’s views on Poland, see Botzenhart, Stein, vol. 4, Stein to Münster, 7/19 Nov. 1812, pp. 160–62.
29 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 1, pp. 359–60; vol. 2, p. 287. VPR, no. 50, Nesselrode to Stackelberg, 17/29 March 1813, pp. 118–22. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 131, Kutuzov to Winzengerode, 24 March/5 April 1813, p. 132.
30 The fullest source on Austrian policy remains Oncken’s two volumes, Österreich und Preussen. Apart from general works on the diplomacy of the period already cited, see E. K. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, vol. 1: The Contest with Napoleon 1799–1814, Princeton, 1963, and the essays in A. Drabek et al. (eds.), Russland und Österreich zur Zeit der Napoleonischen Kriege, Vienna, 1989.
31 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 1, p. 423: no. 19, Instructions for Lebzeltern, 8 Feb. 1813; vol. 2, pp. 323–4, conversation with Count Hardenberg, 30 May 1813. On military preparations, see the first two volumes of Geschichte der Kämpfe Österreichs: Kriege unter der Regierung des Kaisers Franz, Befreiungskrieg 1813 und 1814, vol. 1: O. Criste, Österreichs Beitritt zur Koalition, Vienna, 1913; vol. 2: W. Wlaschutz, Österreichs entscheidendes Machtaufgebot, Vienna, 1913.
32 Count A. de Nesselrode (ed.), Lettres et papiers du Chancelier Comte de Nesselrode 1760–1850, Paris, n.d., vol. 5, e.g. Gentz to Nesselrode, 16 Jan. 1813, pp. 12–21; 28 Jan. 1813, pp. 27–31; 10 March 1813, pp. 35–44; 12 March 1813, pp. 44–7; 17 March 1813, pp. 48–51; 18 March 1813, pp. 51–5; Nesselrode to Gentz, 14/26 March 1813, pp. 58–60; Gentz to Nesselrode, 11 April 1813, pp. 64–70; 16 April 1813, pp. 70–78; 2 May 1813, pp. 83–90; 16 May 1813, pp. 96–101; 13 June 1813, pp. 104–7; 23 July 1813, pp. 122–4. On Gentz’s position in Vienna, see Helmut Rumpler, Österreichische Geschichte 1804–1914, Vienna, 1997, pp. 78–80.
33 Most of the later negotiations were conducted by Fabian von der Osten-Sacken and the relevant documents are in his journal of outgoing correspondence: RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3403. The Austrians passed on considerable information about Polish movements. The text of the original armistice is in Martens, Sobranie traktatov, vol. 3, no. 67, pp. 70–91. Subsequent agreements are in VPR, 7, p. 118, and no. 74, pp. 184–5.
34 Kutuzov, vol. 5, no. 320, Order of the Day, 16 Feb. 1813 (OS), pp. 282–4. N.S. Pestreikov, Istoriia, leib-gvardii Moskovskago polka, SPB, 1903, vol. 1, pp. 115–19.
35 Pestreikov, Istoriia, vol. 1, p. 115; on the Kexholm Regiment, see B. Adamovich, Sbornik voenno-istoricheskikh materialov leib-gvardii Keksgol’mskago imperatora Avstriiskago polka, vol. 3, SPB, 1910, p. 300.
36 On the Iaroslavl Regiment, see RGVIA, Fond 489, Opis 1, Delo 1098, fos. 46–71.
37 Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 59, Tettenborn to Alexander, 31 Jan. 1813, pp. 54–6. For his reports to Wittgenstein, see RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905: the two reports cited are Tettenborn to Wittgenstein, 9 March 1813 (OS) (fos. 22ii–23i) and 11 March 1813 (OS) (fos. 24ii–25i).
38 Londonderry, Narrative, p. 63.
39 J. von Pflugk-Harttung, Das Befreiungsjahr 1813: Aus dem Geheimen Staatsarchivs, Berlin, 1913, no. 136, conversation of Bernadotte with Pozzo and Suchtelen, June 1813, pp. 175–7.
40 R. von Friederich, Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815, vol. 1: Der Frühjahrsfeldzug 1813, Berlin, 1911, pp. 196–7; C. Rousset, La Grande Armée de 1813, Paris, 1871, pp. 96–7; A. Vallon, Cours d’hippologie, 2 vols., Paris, 1863, vol. 2, p. 473. I am grateful to Professor Thierry Lentz for bringing Vallon’s work to my attention.
41 A. Uffindell, Napoleon’s Immortals, Stroud, 2007, pp. 76, 88–90.
42 The two key sources here are Rousset, Grande Armée, chs. I–XII; Friederich, Frühjahrsfeldzug, pp. 162–80. Friederich states that Napoleon withdrew about 40,000 veterans from Spain: Scott Bowden writes that ‘the Army of Spain immediately provided 20,000 proven veterans for Napoleon’s new Grande Armée’, so the difference between the figures may be a question of the precise period involved. S. Bowden, Napoleon’s Grande Armée of 1813, Chicago, 1990, p. 29.
43 Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, p. 190.
44 Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 141, Kutuzov to Golenishchev-Kutuzov, 28 March/9 April 1813, p. 142.
45 Ibid., no. 131, Kutuzov to Winzengerode, 24 March/5 April 1813, p. 132.
46 Tartakovskii, Voennye dnevniki, p. 329: this is an extract from Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky’s diary for 1813. Beskrovnyi (ed.), Pokhod, no. 105, Kutuzov to Wittgenstein, 8/20 March 1813, pp. 107–8; no. 123, Kutuzov to Wittgenstein, 17/29 March 1813, pp. 125–6; no. 94, Wittgenstein to Kutuzov, 26 Feb./10 March 1813, pp. 95–6; no. 150, Volkonsky to d’Auvray, 8/20 April 1813, pp. 151–2.
47 K. von Clausewitz, Der Feldzug in Russland und die Befreiungskriege von 1813–15, Berlin, 1906, pp. 196–202.
48 Pflugk-Harttung, Befreiungsjahr, no. 82, Blücher to Wittgenstein, c. 20 April 1813, pp. 106–7: no. 45, Scharnhorst to Volkonsky, 22 March 1813, pp. 62–5.
49 P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, pp. 220–21.
50 I. Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski artillerista s 1812 po 1816 god, 3 vols., Moscow, 1835, vol. 2, pp. 22–5.
51 S. G. Volkonskii, Zapiski Sergeia Grigorovicha Volkonskogo (dekabrista), SPB, 1902, p. 232: there are many similar comments, e.g. by young staff officers, as a group the best educated men in the army.
52 Tartakovskii, Voennye dnevniki, pp. 333, 345.
53 Hon. George Cathcart, Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany in 1812 and 1813, London, 1850, pp. 122–30. J. P. Riley, Napoleon and the World War of 1813, London, 2000, pp. 79–89 (the description of the villages is on p. 80).
54 Clausewitz, Feldzug, p. 209.
55 On this, see Botzenhart, Stein, vol. 4, memorandums and correspondence with Scharnhorst, Hardenberg and Nesselrode in April 1813, pp. 274–6, 289–90, 293–4, 299–300, 304–6.
56 VPR, no. 102, Alexander to Bernadotte, 26 May/7 June 1813, pp. 238–42; Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, no. 46, Stadion to Metternich, 3 June 1813, pp. 660–63.
57 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, nos. 33 and 34, Metternich to Lebzeltern, 29 April 1813, pp. 630–34.
58 Ibid., vol. 2, no. 38, Instructions for Stadion, 7 May 1813, pp. 640–44.
59 VPR, no. 80, Nesselrode to Alexander, 1/13 May 1813, pp. 196–7.
60 VPR, no. 101, Nesselrode to Alexander, 24 May/5 June 1813, pp. 236–7.
61 Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 169–78. Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 3, p. 39.
62 In addition to the basic texts already cited (Bogdanovich, Friederich, Chandler, Riley and Hofschroer), Baron Müffling’s memoirs are a vital source on this, but his figure of 5,000 for Barclay’s corps should be discounted since Langeron, who commanded this unit, states that 8,000 men were present that day: Baron Karl von Müffling, The Memoirs of Baron von Müffling: A Prussian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars, London, 1997, pp. 36–8.
63 Langeron, Mémoires, p. 189. Baron von Odeleben, A Circumstantial Narrative of the Campaign in Saxony in the Year 1813, 2 vols., London, 1820, vol. 1, p. 95.
64 Odeleben, Narrative, vol. 1, p. 103.
65 Oncken, Österreich, vol. 2, pp. 323–4, and no. 46, Stadion to Metternich, 3 June 1813, pp. 660–63.
66 For Alexander’s view on Schweidnitz, see RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 51ii, Volkonsky to Wittgenstein, 11 May 1813 (OS); Müffling, Memoirs, pp. 44–9.
67 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, Delo 34, fo. 18, Kankrin to Barclay de Tolly, 23 May 1813; RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 17, fos. 158–9, Barclay to Wittgenstein, 26 June 1813. Botzenhart, Stein, vol. 4, Kutuzov to Stein, 6/18 April 1813, p. 287.
68 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3905, fo. 55ii, Volkonsky to d’Auvray, 19 May 1813 (OS); Pflugk-Harttung, Befreiungsjahr, no. 135, L’Estocq to Hardenburg, 30 May 1813, pp. 171–5; M. I. Bogdanovich, Istoriia voiny 1813 g. za nezavisimost’ Germanii, 2 vols., SPB, 1863, vol. 1, pp. 299–301.