1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow. Adam Zamoyski
events covered by this book has been published and available for decades. It would be interesting, and possibly worthwhile, to investigate further areas such as the question of how the episode impacted on the structures of the Russian state, its economy and attitudes to authority. It might also be profitable to go back to the manuscript originals of some of the printed sources, particularly where these have been translated from French into Russian. But it is highly improbable that new documents of any significance will come to light, or that further detailed research in any ancillary field will throw up fresh evidence on the causes of the war, its conduct, the numbers involved, the extent of the losses or any of the other vital aspects.
The ground has therefore been thoroughly prepared, and now that the nationalist passions and the political imperatives have ebbed away, the task of writing about the events of 1812 should present a less daunting prospect. But it remains a formidable one. For this was not just any war. It was the climax in a protracted struggle between Napoleon and Alexander, between France and Russia, and between the ideological inheritance of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution on the one hand, and a reactionary combination of Christianity, monarchism and traditionalism on the other. It involved the whole of Europe, and its repercussions were therefore widespread as well as long-lasting. Its scale was unprecedented, and raised a number of issues hitherto unknown in military history. It was also the first modern war, in that the entire Russian people were forced by their own government to participate actively, and popular feeling became an element of military strategy. It is impossible to isolate any of these elements from the others, as the conflict does not make sense without at least an awareness of the depth and breadth of the issues involved.
To do justice to such a subject would take many years, and a book at least twice the length of this one, which is not intended to be in any way a definitive work. It is not a full record of the military operations, which involved dozens of engagements and ranged over a vast area. Nor does it aspire to be any more than an outline of the diplomatic relationship between France and Russia. My principal aim in writing this book has been to tell an extraordinary story, of which everyone has heard but very few have any real knowledge. I have attempted to place it in its wider context and to touch on its deeper significance. Above all, I have tried to convey what these events meant for those concerned, at every level – for this is par excellence a human story, of hubris and nemesis, of triumph and catastrophe, of glory and squalor, of joy and suffering.
I have therefore drawn heavily on the first-hand accounts of participants, of which there are a remarkable number. There is much variation between them, in terms of both accuracy and literary quality: some are original letters or diaries; others are memoirs written from diaries; memoirs written from memory, some of them composed within a year or two, others decades later; accounts based on personal experience and documentation; and regular histories written by participants, some of whom were in key positions, others only witnesses. I have taken these factors into account in making use of them, and I have avoided basing myself too heavily on, for instance, the much-quoted Ségur, who was not a central figure but who wrote as though he had been, and subjected his writing to exalted literary pretensions; I also avoid his main critic, Gourgaud, who was himself not as well placed to know what was going on as he suggests, and who subjects his account to uncritical worship of Napoleon.
I have been driven by the same desire to reproduce the human experience in my choice of illustrations, and in this I have been aided by another unique aspect of this war. This was the only campaign before the age of photography to have been graphically recorded by a number of participants, some of whom were distinguished artists. Not until the American Civil War, half a century later, would the realities of war be conveyed through such vivid insights. In view of this, I decided to dispense with the array of pompous and largely meaningless battle scenes that usually adorn this kind of book, and to concentrate on providing something more akin to a photographic record of life on campaign. Apart from the small number of portraits of the main protagonists, almost every image was drawn or painted by a participant, either on the spot or from memory, and the few exceptions to this were executed under the direction of participants.
Where I feel a quotation or a statement of fact needs it, I have given references to other first-hand accounts which support it. But in order to keep down the quantity of reference numbers on the page, I have often lumped together several quotations or a series of linked facts contained in a single paragraph under the same one. The translations are all mine, except in cases where the book was only available to me in another’s translation, and in the case of the translations from German, in which I was helped by others.
There are several methods of transliterating Russian words and names, none of which is, to my mind, completely satisfactory. This is mainly because they attempt consistency where none is possible, and also because every new scheme necessarily outlaws words based on previous methods that have already become familiar. I have therefore followed my own instinct and what I believe to be common sense. I realise that specialists may find this irritating.
I have transliterated Russian names as they are pronounced, preferring Yermolov to Ermolov, or as they have been known in the West for decades, sticking to Tolstoy rather than Tol’stoi, Galitzine rather than Golitsuin. I have stuck to the -sky ending for Russian names as opposed to the -skii, for the same reasons. But I have observed the universally accepted new spelling in the bibliography, since that is how the names appear in (most) library catalogues. In the cases of non-Russians serving in the Russian army, I use the original spelling, as I see no reason to turn a Wittgenstein into Vitgenshtain, a Czaplic into a Chaplits, or a Clausewitz into a Klausevits, except in the cases of Baggovut (Swedish Baggehuffwudt) and Miloradovich (Serbian Miloradovic), for purely pragmatic reasons.
Perhaps the most difficult question is that of place names. The action of the campaign unfolds over territories which had recently passed from one sovereignty to another, and sometimes back again, and which are now in entirely new countries. I have used German names for what was then East Prussia. I have used Russian names for Russia beyond Smolensk (except for St Petersburg and Moscow). I have used Polish forms and spellings for places in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and transliterated Polish names on the territory which had been Polish in the decades before 1812. I have done this because the French used these forms in their accounts (albeit with curious spellings). The Russian forms of these names hardly differ from the Polish, while the present-day Lithuanian or Belarussian ones would be confusing (I have enclosed a brief glossary of these names with their present-day forms, for purposes of identification). I have made an exception of the capital of Lithuania: the French mostly spelt it Wilna, the Russians called it Vilna, and the Polish Wilno would seem out of place, particularly if transliterated into Vilno – so I have opted for Vilna. For similar reasons, I have preferred the Russian Glubokoie to the Polish Głebokie, which would be transliterated as Gwembokie.
All dates are given in the new style, according to the Gregorian calendar.
I should like to thank Professors Isabel de Madariaga, Janet Hartley, Lindsey Hughes, Dominic Lieven and Alexander Martin for their advice and assistance. My thanks must also go to Mirja Kraemer and Andrea Ostermeier for reading a number of German texts for me, and to Galina Babkova for the speed and efficiency with which she ferreted out, copied and despatched to me whatever I required from libraries in Russia. I am grateful to Dr Dobrosława Platt, Laurence Kelly, Artemis Beevor and Jean de Fouquières for their help in tracking down illustrations. Shervie Price was, once again, a long-suffering reader and an invaluable critic of my typescript, and Robert Lacey was an exceptionally meticulous and sensitive editor. Trevor Mason deserves a medal for his patience with me over the maps and the diagram.
I should also like to thank Ambassador Stefan Meller for his assistance during my trip to the theatre of operations, and Mikolaj Radziwill for being such a good driver on the roads of Russia, Lithuania and Belarus, and companion in Vilnius, Orša and Smolensk, on the battlefield of Borodino and the banks of the Berezina.
Above all I want to thank my wife Emma, for everything.