Napoleon On Facing Russia In The Winter

An excerpt from, “Napoleon On War” Edited By Bruno Colson, Translated By Gregory Elliott, Oxford University Press, 2015, Pg. 372 – 375:

At Vitebsk on 13 August 1812, Napoleon justified his invasion plan for Russia in a lengthy monologue reported by Baron Fain. The text takes up several ideas referred to in previous books: the drive and impatience of French troops, the political dimension of strategy, the ineluctability of risk-taking in war, seeking battle so as to avoid stalemate:

. . .Our troops are happily heading forward. They enjoy wars of invasion. But a stationary, prolonged defensive campaign is not in the French genius. To halt behind rivers, to remain there stationed in shacks, to manoeuvre every day in order only to be in the same place after eight months of privation and woes, is that how we are used to waging war?

The lines of defence presented to you today by the Dnieper and Danube are merely illusory. Once winter arrives, you will see them filled with ice and effaced under snow.

Winter does not only threaten us with its cold weather; it also threatens us with diplomatic intrigues that might brew up behind our backs. Shall we allow these allies whom we have just won over, and who are still utterly astonished to no longer be fighting us and glory in following us, time to reflect on the oddity of their new position?

And why halt here for eight months, when twenty days would suffice for us to achieve our objective? Let us anticipate winter and reflections! We must strike promptly, on pain of jeopardizing everything. We must be in Moscow in a month, on pain of never entering it!

In war, fortune counts for half in everything. If one always awaited a complete conjuction of favourable circumstances, one would never finish anything.

In short, my plan of campaign is a battle and my whole policy is success.

All of Napoleon is in this quotation, which is like a conclusion. In the final chapter of Von Kriege, Clausewitz devotes several paragraphs to the 1812 campaign in Russia. For Napoleon, it was the first to fail. The excessive character of the undertaking, in terms of the forces committed and the theatre of operations itself, represented the culminating point of the Napoleonic Wars. For Clausewitz, the Emperor’s failure did not stem from the fact that he advanced too rapidly or too far, as is generally believed. In essence, he could not have done differently. His campaign failed because the government of Russia remained firm and its people unshakeable. Napoleon was mistaken in his calculations. He did not assess his opponent correctly. 

. . .Napoleon had a proclamation written for the emancipation of the serfs, but kept it confidential as a form of possible intimidation. He did not want to cross certain boundaries and confided his desire to negotiate to Caulaincourt:

Hitherto, apart from the fact that Alexander burns his towns and cities so that we cannot live in them, we have fought a fairly good war. No disagreeable publications, no insults. He is wrong not to come to an agreement now that we have had a scrap. We would soon be in agreement and remain good friends.

To fight a ‘fairly good war’: Napoleon was still sufficiently marked by the age of Enlightenment not to desire a full unleashing of force. As we saw in Book I, he quipped that he regretted not having resorted to it, but he did not open Pandora’s Box. Such restraint was not due solely to the still relatively rudimentary state of technologies of destruction.

On several occasions, Napoleon sketched an analysis of Russian power, which frightened him:

Russia is a frightening power that seems to conquer Europe. With its Cossacks, Tartars, and Poles, it can put thousands of cavalry on horse everywhere. There would not be enough horses in Europe to withstand it. In the past, three powers opposed its expansion: Sweden, but it has not been able to do anything since the loss of Finland; Poland, but it now forms part of the Russian Empire; and the Turks, who are null.

Las Cases reports further considerations on Russia and, beyond it, on the future of Europe:

The Emperor passed on to what he called the admirable situation of Russia against the rest of Europe, to the immensity of its mass in the event of invasion. He depicted this power situated under the pole, sustained by eternal ice which, as and when necessary, rendered it inaccessible. It could be attacked, he said, only for three or four months, or one-quarter of the year, whereas it had the whole year—twelve months—against us. It offered attackers nothing but the harsh conditions, suffering, and privations of a desert land, a dead or inert nature, whereas its peoples launched themselves with zest towards the delight of our south.

In addition to these physical features, said the Emperor, joined to its sizeable, sedentary, brave, tough, devoted, passive population were enormous tribes, whose normal state was deprivation and vagabondage. ‘One cannot but tremble at the idea of such a mass, which can be attacked neither by the coasts nor in the rear; which floods over us with impunity, inundating everything if it triumphs or withdrawing into the ice, the heart of desolation, death, which have become its reserves if it is defeated; and all this with the ability to reemerge immediately if required. Is this not the hydra’s head, the Antaeus of the fable, who could be finished off only by grasping him bodily and suffocating him in one’s arms? But where is Hercules to be found? It only fell to us to dare to pretend to the role and, it must be admitted, our attempts were clumsy.’