by Yevgeny MEZENTSEV, Cand. Sc. (Hist.), Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences

Back in 1912, as our country was celebrating the centennial of her victory in the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon, a granite obelisk was put up near the village of Bukharino near Smolensk. It reads: "In 1812 troops of the Emperor of France Napoleon crossed here the old border of Russia on their victorious march on Moscow on August 2; on November 6 they crossed it back upon heavy defeat." Yet another century has gone by. Still, we cannot help but think back to battles fought there, at this important defense line. Many episodes are not yet clear in full, and controversial views are voiced in this context time and again.

With the French Grande Armée invading our country in the early summer of 1812, the First and Second Russian Armies deployed in the west had to fall back. The commander of the First Russian Army was Michael Barclay de Tolli, the War Minister and Commander-in-Chief; the commander of the Second Army was General Bagration*. On July 22, 1812, both armies, about 130,000 strong, joined on the approaches to Smolensk. Napoleon, meanwhile, who had mustered as many as 125,000 as his strike force, stayed on at Vitebsk for two weeks to give respite to his

Bicentennial of the war of 1812. An emblem.

* See: Ye. Mezentsev, "The Lion of Russian Army", Science in Russia. No. 5, 2012--Ed.

famished men, tired after forced marches. He deployed his units far apart so as to better replenish provisions and forage.

Bagration suggested taking advantage of the enemy's carelessness and strike at the disjointed enemy forces before their joining together again. However, Barclay de Tolli voiced his objections to the counterstrike, he intended to proceed with the retreat, though Czar Alexander I issued an express order to act in concert with Bagration and even engage the enemy in a decisive battle. As Eugene Tarlé*, an eminent Russian historian, saw it, that engagement was quite expedient at the moment.

Barclay de Tolli, Commander-in-Chief, believed the French had dispersed their regiments over large area advisedly so as entrap the Russians: lure them into attack and, striking at the flanks, catch them in a bag. Therefore he ordered Bagration to halt the Second Western Army and turned the First Army (that he, Barclay, was in command of) north, thinking that the troops led by Gen. Eugene Bauharnais, Vice-Roy of Italy, went thither so as to outflank the Russian troops from the right. Four days were lost thereby. In the meantime Napoleon pulled his forces toward Vitebsk and in the small hours of August 2, joining regiments of Marshal Davout and General Jean Juneau on the Dnieper's left bank, moved them on Smolensk. So he proceeded as Bagration had thought, warn in Barclay beforehand about such developments; the French were not going to move their bulk force to St. Petersburg, as the Commander-in-Chief maintained.

Stationed on the Dnieper's left bank were Russian outposts to keep a tab on Davout's proceedings--a patrol detachment under Major-General Yevgeny Olenin and close by, at the community of Krasny, a division, 5,500 strong, led by Major-General Dmitry Neverovsky and sent thither by Bagration at the end of July. On August 2, at noon, Olenin noticed massive movements of French troops towards Smolensk; sending, right away, a message to Neverovsky, he rushed to join in. This bad news was dispatched to Smolensk, and to Bagration and Barclay, whose armies stood north of the city, 30 and 40 km respectively.

Staying in Smolensk was a peacetime homeguard battalion, a Vilno regiment and militiamen hurried in from neighboring districts. Local residents did not leave their home town upon learning about the advancing Grande Armée of Napoleon. Nothing had been done about their evacuation; but the governor, his clerks, and the bishop fled. By the morning of August 2, after a heroic battle fought against the superior enemy forces at Krasny, the Neverovsky division pulled back to Smolensk, where it joined hands with a corps captained by Lieutenant-General Rajewski.

The same day, at 17.00, the forward units of Marshal Joachim Murat and Michel Ney, 40,000 strong, approached Smolensk. Napoleon came on August 4, by 9.00 (or by 13.00 according to other tidings), dead certain he would capture the town without fighting; yet he was astonished to see the citadel guns belching forth violent fire at the advancing French units. That citadel, erected in 1602 (architect, Fyodor Koni) and reinforced, in 1698 to 1708, with earthwork bastions at the corners, was strong enough even in 1812: its walls were 12 to 19 m tall, and 5 to 6 m thick. Inside was an arsenal with weapons and ammunition, field guns and a large powder depot with lots of other things.

* See: V. Sirotkin. "Researcher of the Past--Hostage of the Present". Science in Russia, No. 5, 2005.--Ed.

La Grande Armée was approaching Smolensk step by step, unit by unit. On August 4 about 100,000 men were closing on the town. Meanwhile the vanguard of Bagration's Second Army showed up; by 17.00 it came in full force, to be followed by the First Army led by Barclay. The Russians mustered 135 to 145,000 men and 15,000 in homeguard units, that is much more than Napoleon had at his disposal. Had the Russian army units arrived but a day earlier, they would have been able to rout the advance En corps, about 40,000 strong, and tip the scales in their favor.

The French were shelling Smolensk from 150 field guns, or twice as many as the Russians had; that shelling, however, did not do any significant damage to the fortress, though it caused fires in suburban villages built in wooden houses for the most part. Bracing himself for a decisive battle, Napoleon employed his forces sparingly, and at first pitted from 25 to 40,000 men, by different bits of avidence, against Smolensk: the Ney corps was attacking from the west, with the Murat Cavalry proceeding from the east. Rajewski was a brave general, ready to face danger. So much so that he took a greater part of the garrison out of town and engaged the enemy outside. The Ney men made two vigorous assaults at one of the bastions and came right to the city walls but in either case were beaten back by bayonet charges. Barclay had no faith in the success of the defense of Smolensk, he aimed to continue the retreat toward Moscow. But Bagration was jubilant at Rajewski's gallantry. On that day Rajewski lost from 1.2 to 4,000 men in killed, wounded or missing, not counting in the lossess sustained by the homeguard; the casualty list of the French ranged between 4 and 10 thousand. The

enemy failed to break into Smolensk through the southern gate. Bagration reinforced the garrison with Grenadiers under Major-General Mikhail Vorontsov, and the enemy had to pull back to his initial attack positions.

Late in the evening of August 4 a council of war was held. Barclay said the town had fulfilled its mission by halting enemy troops, one could leave it now and go on with the retreat. But Bagration and the other generals were against: given a convenient defense position like that, one could keep the enemy back for a few days at least and inflict tangible losses on him. Thereupon the Commander-in-Chief devised a stratagem by pulling back the Second Western Army on the pretext that Napoleon had supposedly sent a corps to circumvent Smolensk far to the east and thus cut the retreating Russian troops off from Moscow.

Yet actually small parties of French marauders and foragers scoured there, they did not pose any threat. Bagration obeyed the order and at midnight decamped with his army eastward, leaving a reargard 12 km east of Smolensk (commander, Lieutenant-General Prince Andrei Gorchakov) to keep in touch with Barclay de Tolli who pledged not to forsake Smolensk.

To keep this pledge at least nominally Barclay decided to hold defenses for another day. He stationed the corps of Major-General Dmitry Dokhturov within the citadel

reinforcing it with the divisions of Major-General Dmitry Neve rovsky and Lieutenant-General Peter Konovnitsyn; thereafter, during the engagement, he threw in another division captained by Prince Eugene of Wurtemberg, thus bringing the total strength of the units defending Smolensk to 20-30,000 men (some sources indicate as many as 38,000, counting in probably the militia that took no part in those skirmishes).

Encouraged by the withdrawal of the Bagration army, Napoleon built up a force pitted against Smolensk: out of the overall 150-180,000 troops, as many as 45,000 men, according to French sources (actually, over 70,000!) took part in the assault. "Poles, Smolensk is yours!", Napoleon exclaimed before the attack. Men and officers of the Polish corps under Jusef Poniatowski, rushed into battle, all too eager to sack and pillage, as the French had promised. Sustaining heavy losses, the Poles failed miserably. Davout and Ney, suffering heavy casualties, were beaten off as well. Our men, especially those from Siberia, fought tooth and nail; as often as not, they would rush into hand-to-hand fighting, and the commanders had to hold them back.

The French had lost two to three times as many men on August 5 as on the day before; in two days of stiff fighting, they lost from 12 to 20,000 men (including 1,300 prisoners). The Russian casualties ranged from 6 to 14,000. Our men had been holding their positions in the suburbs up until nightfall when, shelled from 300-500 field guns (we had only 180), they retreated into the citadel. The enemy artillery did not cause any damage to the walls of the fortress. Then Napoleon ordered to bombard the inner city, and that caused fires since most of the houses were of wood.

Barclay de Tolli (and many historians after him) argued in a bid to justify the premature surrender of Smolensk that the city was reduced to ashes, and it made no sense to hold the scorched earth in hand since one could not billet soldiers there. And yet the French, on moving in, found nearly half as many homes intact and, according to Colonel Robert Wilson, the British representative in the Russian army, three-quarters of the houses were whole, stone houses in particular: there was room enough for a French division stationed in Smolensk, with many premises remaining vacant.

Within fortress walls were casemates with catacombs and depots underneath built in the early 17th century. Two days of fighting showed that given a 15-to-20 thousand garrison, Smolensk could have offered resistance for a long time, if the army stood by and brought in supplies. The French field artillery was helpless against the citadel. The delivery of heavy assault guns would have taken yet another 2 or 3 months, and another 2 weeks would have been needed to breach the walls. Smolensk could have held out all that time.

Still and all, in the small hours of August 6 Barclay ordered a retreat eastward, towards Moscow. It was in vain that the generals expostulated with him: "Too little has been done yet", since those vantage positions allowed to hold the enemy back for another several days (incidentally, Napoleon was of the same opinion). Colonel Wilson suggested the Russians should sally forth at night and smash the poorly guarded French transports and artillery, a venture that could have deprived the starving enemy army of provisions, forage and ammunition, and rendered it incapable of pushing ahead with the offensive.

But Barclay was implacable. At 2 o'clock in the morning a Cossack detachment made the round of Smolensk and announced our troops were leaving it and those who wanted to go should made haste and get over the Dnieper, for the bridge was to be blasted soon, and the pontoons taken apart. Due to a hasty retreat like that our troops were unable to take out large depots of powder and munitions, sufficient enough for a few months of siege, and they had to be exploded so as not to be left to the enemy; even the gravely wounded, about 2,000, were not evacuated before daybreak. As to the local archives,

one forgot about them, and the precious documents on the history of the land from the 12th to the early 19th centuries perished in the flames (those records could have been hidden in the catacombs where they would have survived and recovered later). Why such haste? This is a headache to many historians: if Barclay did not intend to defend Smolensk for more than 2 days, why did he not begin evacuation on August 2?

At daybreak on August 6, 1812, as the first French regiments started moving into the deserted Smolensk, the last 4 Russian battalions of Gen. Konovnitsyn's division crossed onto the Dnieper's right bank and took positions in the Peterburg fauburg; they blasted the bridge after them. The First Artillery Company of Captain Glukhov took out one of the holies, the Icon of the Mother of God of Smolensk (Hodegitria), from the Annunciation Church. Meanwhile Barclay withdrew his army to the heights 2 or 3 km away from the bank as if challenging, as Robert Wilson deemed, the enemy to engagement. But Napoleon, tired after the two-day siege, was none too ready for a major battle.

The Russian Commander-in-Chief moved away from the bank to concentrate his units and go ahead with the retreat in the evening. In the Peterburg fauburg, all in flames after artillery shelling, he left only a small rearguard under Adjunct-General Baron Feodor Korf. Soon after, flushed with success, the French knocked it out. As good luck would have it, our army did not retreat too far yet: on his own initiative Konovnitsyn turned back two regiments and, making a bayonet charge, threw the enemy back into the Dnieper and regained the Peterburg fauburg. Two French battalions, pressed hard against the bank, laid down their arms and surrendered (with 8 staff officers).

Overrunning Smolensk, Napoleon uttered his famous phrase: "If I take St. Petersburg, I hall seize Russia by the head; if I capture Kiev, I shall catch her by the feet; but if I take Moscow, I shall hit her right in the heart!" After a bit of deliberation, he decided, according to his original plan, to push ahead to Moscow, the old Russian capital. But Barclay still kept thinking the French were about to swerve towards the young capital, St. Petersburg, and sought to cover the route there as good as possible.

That is why upon leaving Smolensk the Russian Commander-in-Chief with his First Western Army was moving north, towards St. Petersburg, not east, towards Moscow, in the footsteps of Bagration dispatched thither by his order. To support Bagration he sent a small force under Lieutenant-General Nikolai Tushkov by roundabout country roads. Only on seeing that just a small

French detachment was in pursuit, while the main forces were turning east, did Barclay realize his blunder and turned east as well.

Making a beeline to Moscow were the corps of Ney, Murat and Davout, while Juneau's units sat on the left flank of the Russian regiments covering the retreat of the main force. Learning about the situation, Napoleon exclaimed, "Barclay has gone made. We shall get his rearguard!" Yet thanks to the heroism of the rank-and-file soldiers, the good initiative of their commanders and personal gallantry of the Commander-in-Chief, ready to expiate his errors even at the cost of his life, were our troops able to avoid disaster and repulse the enemy by inflicting heavy losses on him.

And yet... Had a 15-20 thousand strong garrison stayed on in Smolensk, it would have weakened the French strike force (Robert Wilson shared this view, he examined various scenarios) by pinning down part of the enemy forces. Had the Smolensk defenders held out, say, for another fortnight, who knows, Napoleon's march on Moscow would not have taken place at all owing to the heavy losses, the approaching autumn with its sloshy roads and winter with its hard frosts. It was all-important to hold Smolensk in hand as long as possible, for it was "a key to Moscow".

In a letter to his sister Catherine Emperor Alexander I complained, "Barclay committed one folly after the other at Smolensk... there is strong embitterment against the war minister who, we should own it, is conducive to that by his irresolute mode of actions." As Barclay learned that he was to be replaced by Army General Mikhail Kutuzov,* he wrote to the czar that he, Barclay, would try to halt the French at Wyazma. "If so, why he had not done that at Smolensk which had a good fortress where would have been more convenient to rebuff the enemy," came the caustic reply.

On learning the news about Kutuzov's appointment as the new Commander-in-Chief, who had shown himself a cando commander during the war of the Third Coalition**, Napoleon mused, "Kutuzov would not have come to go on with the retreat."

* See: G. Gerasimova, "Great Soldier and Diplomat", Science in Russia, No. 2, 2008.--Ed.

** This war (the Russo-Austrian-French War of 1805) was waged between France, Spain, Bayern and Italy on the one side, and the Third Anti-French coalition of Austria, Russia, Britain, Sweden, Kingdom of Naples and Portugal, on the other--Ed.