1812. Adam Zamoyski
they were armed with swords, pistols, even carbines if they could lay hands on such a weapon. These bands often roamed far and boldly on the flank, and if they ever got back again, brought supplies for the troops. The work was dangerous and many lost their lives – in agony if they fell into the clutches of the infuriated peasants … This swarm of plunderers also formed a sort of flank patrol for the army, because if ever they bumped into enemy detachments they came flying back with great haste and loud shouts.’32
Such tactics liberated French commanders from the necessity of hauling heavy stores along with them, which gave them the edge of speed over their more traditionally organised enemies. They worked well in the rich, densely populated, fertile and commercially developed areas of northern Italy and southern Germany, where small distances, good roads, frequent towns and an abundance of every kind of resource meant that a comparatively large army could indeed move fast and provision itself as it went. It even worked in the less populous and more arid expanses of Spain. It could not work in Russia, where the distances were huge, the roads primitive, towns few and far between, the countryside thinly populated and poor in resources. Nobody saw this more clearly than Napoleon. ‘One can expect nothing of the country, and we shall have to carry everything with us,’ he warned Davout.33
The commissariat he had founded, under the command of General Matthieu Dumas, was methodically stockpiling arms, munitions, uniforms, shoes, saddles, as well as food rations on a vast scale. But the problem of how to move these supplies about represented a logistical nightmare. ‘The Polish war does not resemble the war in Austria at all; without means of transport, everything becomes worthless,’ Napoleon wrote to Prince Eugène in December.34
The French army’s supply system, such as it was, was in the hands of a transport corps, a military formation called le train, founded in 1807. In the course of 1811 and 1812 Napoleon gradually expanded the size of the train to twenty-six battalions, with 9336 wagons drawn by some 32,500 horses, with six thousand spare horses. He put in hand the construction of heavy ox-drawn wagons which could be used to haul flour to the front line, where the oxen would be consumed along with the flour. He realised that these heavy wagons, capable of carrying one and a half tons, would have difficulty in negotiating all but the best roads. He therefore equipped eight of the battalions with lighter wagons, but he was reluctant to increase the number of these, as that would only increase the number of horses needed: four horses could draw a heavy wagon laden with one and a half tons, but two horses could not manage a lighter wagon laden with three-quarters of a ton. And horses needed to be fed.
This detail was to be the crucial element in the forthcoming campaign. It even decided the timing of its start: as there could be no question of hauling fodder for the horses as well as supplies for the men along with the army, the horses would have to be fed on the new harvest of hay and oats (cavalrymen were issued with sickles for this purpose), and none of these crops would be ripe for harvesting before the end of June at the very earliest. This meant that while he had to begin moving up his troops in the inclement marching conditions of the winter and early spring, Napoleon could not open his campaign until the middle of the summer, which left him with very little time in which to achieve his victory.
On 1 January 1812 François Dumonceau, a Belgian officer in the Lancers of Berg, was on parade in the courtyard of the Tuileries. ‘The Imperial Guard, the Young and the Old, appeared more numerous and imposing than ever,’ he recalled. The band of the Polish Chevau-Légers played, led by a kettle drummer magnificently mounted, caparisoned, uniformed and plumed. There were also two Illyrian infantry regiments, ‘whose fine and robust bearing drew admiring looks’. They had just marched up from the Balkans so that they could see their Emperor before they joined the Grande Armée in Germany, and they were hosted and shown around Paris by the Grenadiers of the Old Guard. A few days later Dumonceau and his men set off from their regimental depot in Versailles, marching through Brussels, Maastricht, Osnabrück, Hanover, Brunswick, Magdeburg and Stettin to Danzig.35
Soon the whole of Germany was covered in troops marching eastwards and northwards. There were files of cavalry: cuirassiers in helmets and breastplates, chasseurs in green uniforms and bearskin kolpaks, lancers in blue and crimson with four-cornered Polish caps, dragoons in helmets and uniforms of every hue. There were long convoys of artillery, in lighter blue with black shakos. And above all, endless columns of infantry.
The French footsoldier wore a standard cutaway blue coat, white breeches or trousers, white or black gaiters and a shako or a bearskin bonnet. It was not a uniform designed for convenience, let alone comfort. ‘I have never understood why under Napoleon, when we were constantly at war, the soldier should have been forced to wear the ghastly breeches, which, by pressing in on the hams at the back of the knee, prevented him from walking easily,’ wrote Lieutenant Blaze de Bury. ‘On top of that, the knee, which was covered by a long buttoned-up gaiter, was further strangled by another garter which pressed on the garter of the breeches. Underneath, the long undergarment, held in place with a cord, further restricted the movement of the knee. It was, all in all, a conspiracy by three thicknesses of cloth, two rows of buttons one on top of the other, and three garters to paralyse the efforts of the bravest of marchers.’ He wore shoes with unfashionably square toes – to prevent theft or the resale of military shoes to civilians. These shoes were supposed to last for a thousand kilometres of march, but usually fell apart far sooner.36
Every footsoldier carried a heavy musket 1.54 metres long without its bayonet – taller than Napoleon. On a bandolier slung across his shoulder he carried his giberne, a stiff leather case containing two packets of cartridges, a phial of oil, a screwdriver and other gun-cleaning implements. On his back he carried a pack made of stiffened cowhide, in which he carried a couple of shirts, collars, kerchiefs, canvas gaiters, cotton stockings, a spare pair of shoes, a sewing kit, clothes brush, pipeclay and bootwax, as well as a supply of hard tack, flour and bread. His rolled-up overcoat and other items of kit were strapped to the top of the backpack.
Most of the ornamental features of the uniform were absent on the march. Shakos and bearskins disappeared into oilcloth covers and strapped to the backpack or hung off it, plumes were put away in waxed canvas containers which were strapped to the swordbelt or bandolier. In their place the men donned the bonnet de police, a flat forage cap with a tasselled bob hanging down the side. Breeches and gaiters were replaced by baggy canvas trousers, and the Old Guard wore long blue tunics instead of their white-faced uniforms.
The men marched at the pas ordinaire, of seventy-six steps a minute, or the pas accéléré, of a hundred steps a minute. A usual day’s march was between fifteen and thirty-five kilometres, but in a forced march they could cover anything up to fifty-five kilometres. Every unit, every horse, every man had a route prescribed for them, was instructed where to stop for the night and provided with food and accommodation. On arrival at a given stop, the unit’s farrier or some other non-commissioned officer would go to the local military commander or commissaire des guerres and collect a visa from him. He would then take this to the town hall, where he would be given a full list of billets for the men, and chits for forage and victuals. These chits were then taken to the appointed provisioning merchants, and the unit would collect its supplies for that evening and the next day. The system worked like clockwork in France and Germany, with the required supplies ready and waiting for the tired men when they reached their prescribed halt.37
There were nevertheless jams of horses, cannon and wagons of every description, of straggling men and single platoons as well as large units snaking along over several miles of road, of officers in private carriages hurrying to join their units, and couriers trying to gallop in both directions, particularly at the crossings over the Rhine, at Wesel, Cologne, Bonn, Coblenz and Mainz.
Those still in Paris tried to make the most of what was a particularly glittering carnival, and the Comte de Lignières, Lieutenant in the Chasseurs of the Guard, found his order to march out when he returned to barracks at four in the morning after a ball. The notaries of Paris were kept busy writing wills, and some followed the departing troops, along with wives and lovers who wanted to see their dear ones for a few days longer.38
The Army of Italy came over the Brenner pass and down into the valley of the Danube, where it met up with the contingent