1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow. Adam Zamoyski
As he looked at all the nationalities making up the Grande Armée, one young Italian officer’s mind drifted to the days of ancient Rome, whose legions were equally made up of disparate elements, and he felt a great sense of pride at being part of it.14
The same could not be said for the Neapolitan contingent. This was a largely worthless force, poorly trained and undermined by the existence of numerous rival secret societies. Whenever the troops were moved out of barracks they deserted in large numbers and formed bands of brigands who would terrorise the surrounding countryside.
Most of the German troops in the Grande Armée were of high quality. The 24,000 Bavarians were Napoleon’s most reliable allies, having fought under his banner several times. The smaller Badenese forces, organised along French lines, had taken part in the campaign of 1805 against Austria and Russia, so they fitted relatively well into the composite army. The 20,000-strong Saxon contingent was disciplined and also marched quite comfortably in the ranks of the Grande Armée, to which it brought some of the best cavalry.15
The 17,000 men of the Westphalian contingent did not, according to Captain Johann von Borcke from Cassel, contain many Napoleonic enthusiasts. The Principal Minister of Westphalia reported that the men were loyal, but hated the idea of being sent far away more than they feared being killed. ‘An active resistance on their part seems impossible to me,’ he wrote to Maret in January 1812, ‘but the weight of their inertia could, in the first stages, cause trouble, mainly through large-scale desertion.’16
On the whole, the German contingents were loyal to Napoleon. Many of the troops were fired by the idea of rolling the Russians back out of Europe, and felt a strong urge to prove the valour of German arms. Even if they had no love for the French, they tended to be more antagonistic to Germans from other parts of the country, with most of the troops from the Confederation of the Rhine showing a marked dislike of the Prussians. Finally there was military honour. ‘I know that the war we are fighting is contrary to the interests of Prussia,’ Colonel Ziethen of the Prussian Hussars said to a Polish officer, ‘but I will, if necessary, let myself be hacked to pieces at your side, for military honour commands it.’17
The Prussians were brought into the Grande Armée under the terms of the treaty signed between Napoleon and Frederick William on 24 February 1812, and made up an auxiliary corps of 20,000 men. There was also an Austrian contingent, under Prince Karl von Schwarzenberg, made up of 35,000 men. Most of them had last seen action against the French and the Poles, and while soldiers fight when and whom they are ordered to, they were not enthusiastic allies. Because of the political stance of their ruler and their commander, they were to play an insignificant part in the campaign.
Amongst the lesser contingents the four Swiss regiments should be singled out as being of very high quality and well tempered by a couple of years’ service in Spain and Portugal. There were two battalions of Spanish volunteers from the Joseph-Napoléon Regiment, in distinctive white uniforms with green facings, which had spent the past year under Davout in Germany. They were commanded by Colonel Doreille, a Provençal who did not speak French. There were also many Spaniards, some three thousand of them, in the ranks of the second and third regiments of General d’Alorna’s Portuguese Legion, which numbered around five thousand men in total, uniformed in brown with red facings and English-style shakos. ‘The men, who are highly motivated, make up a fine unit, on which I believe we can count,’ General Clarke, Napoleon’s Minister of War reported. And finally there were two regiments of Croats, numbering just over 3500 men.18
The worth of all these troops was hugely enhanced by the presence of Napoleon. Not only because he lent them the value of his reputation as a military genius, but also because he had the gift of drawing the best out of them. He was masterly in his treatment of soldiers, whom he captivated with his bonhomie and his sometimes brusque lack of ceremony. He always knew which regiments had fought where, and when he reviewed them, he would walk up to older rankers and ask them if they remembered the Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, or wherever it was that particular unit had distinguished itself. They would swell with pride, feeling that he had recognised them, and they could feel the envy of the younger men all around them. With the younger soldiers Napoleon adopted a solicitous manner. He would enquire if they were eating enough, whether their equipment was up to scratch, sometimes asking to see the contents of their haversacks and engaging them in conversation. He was well known for tasting the soldiers’ stew and bread whenever he passed a camp kitchen, so they felt his interest was genuine.
During a review shortly before the campaign, Napoleon stopped in front of Lieutenant Calosso, a Piedmontese serving in the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval, and said a few words to him. ‘Before that, I admired Napoleon as the whole army admired him,’ he wrote. ‘From that day on, I devoted my life to him with a fanaticism which time has not weakened. I had only one regret, which was that I only had one life to place at his service.’ Such a level of devotion was by no means rare, and transcended nationality. But Napoleon could not be everywhere, and the larger the army, the more diluted his presence would be.19
Napoleon’s determination to assemble such a vast force was bound to have a negative effect on its quality. Louis François Lejeune, a senior officer on Berthier’s staff, was detailed to inspect the troops already on the Oder and the Vistula in March 1812, and was bombarded with complaints from the commanders of the units he visited that half of the recruits they were receiving were useless.
He mentioned this to General Dejean, who was organising the cavalry in the area. Dejean told him that up to a third of the horses he had been sent were too weak to carry their burden, while nearly half of the men were too puny to wield a sabre. ‘I was not happy with the way the cavalry was being organised,’ echoed Colonel de Saint-Chamans, commanding the 7th Chasseurs à Cheval. ‘Young recruits who had been sent from depots in France before they had learnt to ride a horse or any of the duties of a horseman on the march or on campaign, were mounted on arrival in Hanover on very fine horses which they were not capable of managing.’ The result was that by the time they reached Berlin, the majority of the horses were suffering from lameness or saddle sores induced by the riders’ bad posture or their failure to take care in saddling up. More than one officer noted that recruits were not taught about checking whether their saddle was rubbing or how to detect the early signs of saddle sores.20
Sergeant Auguste Thirion of the 2nd Cuirassiers had a rosier view. ‘Such fine cavalry has never been seen, never had regiments reached such high complements, and never had horsemen been so well mounted,’ he wrote, adding that their leisurely march through Germany had actually hardened the horses and men. But the cuirassiers were the élite of the French cavalry. And good horses could be a problem in themselves, according to Captain Antoine Augustin Pion des Loches of the Foot Artillery of the Guard. ‘Our teams were of the best, and the equipment left nothing to be desired, but everyone was agreed that the horses were too tall and too strongly built, and unsuited to supporting hardship and lack of abundant nourishment,’ he wrote on leaving the depot at La Fère on 2 March 1812.21
Napoleon was not particularly bothered by such a state of affairs. ‘When I put 40,000 men on horseback I know very well that I cannot hope for that number of good horsemen, but I am playing on the morale of the enemy, who learns through his spies, by rumour or through the newspapers that I have 40,000 cavalry,’ he told Dejean when the latter reported his findings. ‘Passing from mouth to mouth, this number and the supposed quality of my regiments, whose reputation is well known, are both rather exaggerated than diminished; and the day I launch my campaign I am preceded by a psychological force which supplements the actual force that I have been able to furnish for myself.’22
The real strength of the French army was that all the men, even the lower ranks, were free citizens with a