The weather is never neutral.

--Frunze Military Academy, Moscow

The French Army of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte that marched up to the Russian frontier in June of 1812 contained 611,858 men, but more than half of them were allied troops, and many of those allies were less than enthusiastic. The Russians, if they brought everyone into play, could field 623,000 men. Since the war was fought inside Russia, the Russians could always draft more men. The French could not.

The big killers of the French in Russia were the distances, the weather, and logistics. Napoleon’s troops were force-marched into Russia and then out of Russia to cover the vast distances. The Russian weather was unbelievably hot that summer. Tens of thousands of men and horses died of exhaustion on the march through that heat. Many more just dropped out of the line-of-march and walked away (or were slain by the less than friendly natives). Accustomed to living off the land in the rich lands of the Po Valley in Northern Italy, or the Danube Valley in Germany, Napoleon’s march to Moscow lay through less fertile and less densely cultivated areas. Then the Russians applied their time-honored scorched earth policies, and there was nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep. By the time Napoleon reached Smolensk on August 24, and having detached several corps to hold his flanks, he was down to 156,000 men. Before the bloody battle of Borodino on September 7, he had been reduced to 130,000 men. On September 14 he arrived in Moscow with 95,000 men. The Grand Army was less grand.

Then things really started to go wrong. Having captured the Czar’s capitol, Napoleon looked forward to the Czar’s surrender, but the Russians still had at least another thousand miles to retreat before they were backed up against the Pacific, and so the Czar didn’t surrender. Napoleon decided to winter in Moscow. The Russians had withdrawn all the fire engines, and then sent incendiaries to torch the place. Most of the city was destroyed. Wittgenstein from the North and Tshitshagov from the South now moved against Napoleon’s flanking corps, while Kutusov swung his 110,000 men around to the southwest to keep Napoleon from moving towards greener pastures.

Napoleon found himself master of a pile of charcoal, with enemy armies threatening his communications. He hadn’t enough food, and he was a long way from home. As Kutusov slipped off to the West to cut off his way back home, Napoleon began his retreat along the same route he had advanced. There was no food for the men, and worse, no fodder for the horses. Without the horses—which at least provided a bit of food when they died—there would be no cavalry and no artillery.

Then, at Vyazma on November 4, it started to snow. The muddy roads turned into rivers of ice. The snow covered the little grass the horses may have been able to eat to survive. Morale, which had been bad for a long time, began to collapse. Military cohesion disintegrated. Napoleon even had to personally address his Imperial Guard to check the rot. Everywhere there were guerilla strikes and Cossack raids, and Napoleon permitted his tiny army to stretch out over 60 miles of bad roads.

At Krasnoi, a combination of Kutusov’s timidity, matched by Napoleon’s intimidation, enabled the French to fight their way through what should have been a death trap. The battle cost Napoleon 6,000 effective troops, and approximately 26,000 stragglers, whom the Russians picked up after the French Army had fought its way through.

Not all of the stragglers were captured. General von Stockmayer noticed that a mob of stragglers that had been trailing the Guard was being cut off by swarms of mounted Cossacks. He road back, alone, and quickly organized them. In the gray light of a Russian dusk, the unarmed men picked up sticks and abandoned ramrods and dressed ranks. The few among them with muskets and a few officers with pistols acted as skirmishers and opened fire. Startled, the Cossacks permitted Stockmayer’s ‘battalion’ to march off unmolested.

The joy of having escaped the trap at Krasnoi was short-lived, once Napoleon realized that nobody had ordered Marshal Ney, with the few thousand men remaining of his III Corps, to retreat. As the rearguard, Ney had last been ordered to hold Smolensk until November 16, and hold it he did. Kutusov, who had been moving his army westward in an effort to cut off Napoleon’s line of retreat, had bypassed Smolensk, so Kutusov didn’t know Ney had been abandoned in the Russian rear. Platov and his Cossacks knew Ney was there. And yet, it is said that only three beings fear a Cossack; an unarmed straggler, a chicken, and the Army commander who knows he’s relying upon their intelligence reports. Platov never informed Kutusov.

Ney and his III Corps marched out of Smolensk on the night of November 16. Platov’s Cossacks were busily liberating the loot in Smolensk on the following day, and Platov sent Grekov off to follow Ney. In the late afternoon of November 18, Ney marched into Krasnoi expecting to link up with Napoleon. Instead, he and his 8,000 men and 12 cannon ran smack into Miloradovitch with 32,000 men and 96 cannon. The fiery redhead with the nickname of ‘the bravest of the brave’ was not about to surrender just because he was cut off, trapped, and outnumbered more than 4-1. He attacked, and fought until dark. Then, unable to defeat Miloradovitch’s masses, Ney withdrew his remaining 3,000 men.

That night, Ney’s men used the houses of a local village to make large bonfires with which to keep warm. Miloradovitch sat on Ney’s only way out, watched Ney’s campfires, and waited for Ney’s surrender and Miloradovitch’s victory on the morrow. After only a few hours rest, Ney roused his men and marched off into the night. Near Syrokorenie, he found a section of the Dnieper River that appeared frozen enough to cross. After getting 1,500 men across, the movement of the artillery broke up the ice. Ney marched on with what he had. With neither cavalry nor artillery, Ney led his men on foot, musket in hand. When pursuing Cossacks attacked, they would quickly form up and repulse them. Then they would march on again.

One of Ney’s men had slipped through the enemy’s lines during the night, and caught up with Eugene’s Corps. He gave Eugene the intelligence that Ney was still alive. Eugene elected to stand his ground at Jakabovo, rather than retreat, and at midnight on November 20, Marshal Ney and his remaining 900 men rejoined the Grand Army.

Ney’s escape from certain death and return to the army raised army morale, even though there were only about 20,000 men left as effective troops. At least 10,000 additional men were without weapons, without units, and without hope, but continued to march along with the army, or lie down to freeze in the snow.

Napoleon, in an effort to increase speed and save as much of his artillery as possible, ordered all extra wagons abandoned and burned. Their horses would be used to pull the cannon. Napoleon even had much of his own property burned, so as to encourage the others.

With everything frozen, Napoleon then ordered his chief engineering officer, General Eble, to burn his two pontoon bridges and turn his horses over to the artillery. But just as it is difficult for a cavalryman to abandon his horse, or an artilleryman—and Napoleon had been an artilleryman—to abandon his cannon, it is difficult to get an engineer to abandon his tools. Somehow Eble held on to two field-forges, and eight wagons loaded with tools and coal for the forges. Each of his pontoniers had to shoulder a tool, and carry spikes and clamps as well.

As Napoleon and his army approached the frozen Berezina River with 20,000 effectives, Tshitshagov with 34,000 men moved to Borisov and secured the bridge that Oudinot’s II Corps was unable to hold. Wittgenstein was bearing down from the North with 30,000 men, pushing Victor’s IX Corps before him in an attempt to cut the road along which Napoleon was retreating. And behind Napoleon’s army of 20,000 men came Kutusov, lumbering along with 65,000 men. Napoleon was in trouble, but he could slip over the frozen Berezina at any point and escape over the frozen swamps.

Then came a sudden thaw. The swamps became impassible, the roads became rivers of mud, and the Berezina became a river of water again. Napoleon and his 20,000 men, having burned their bridges behind them, were trapped by a force of 129,000 Russians. The Emperor and his Empire were about to end, and with them, the Napoleonic Wars.

General Jean-Baptiste Corbineau was the commander of one of Oudinot’s cavalry brigades, but he had been on detached service with General Wrede’s VI Corps of Bavarians up North. Returning to Oudinot’s Corps, he discovered that the Russians held the bridge over the Berezina at Borisov. His men then convinced a local peasant to show them an alternative, and he pointed out a ford by the village of Studenka. At three to four feet deep, in spite of floating ice, it was still practicable for his cavalry. When he reached Oudinot, he informed him of his discovery.

Napoleon now had a ford, but he wouldn’t be able to get his artillery over, and the thousands of weakened stragglers wouldn’t be able to manage the depth of the icy water and the current. He needed one of the bridges he’d ordered Eble to destroy. Then it came to light that Eble had retained enough of his tools to be able to make Napoleon a bridge. Napoleon wanted two bridges to get the entire army over before Kutusov and Wittgenstein closed up and crushed his army against the Berezina. Eble disassembled Studenka, and used the wood to create two bridges.

Unfortunately, there were two additional problems. First, the marshy ground on the far bank would never support Napoleon’s artillery, and secondly, the Russians now had a division stationed in Brili, just across the river from Studenka. That day Oudinot feinted to the south, and this drew Tshitshagov’s attention to the south. Tshitshagov moved his division out of Brili, leaving only an observation force. The day was also very cold. It wasn’t cold enough to instantly freeze the river, but the swampy ground on the far side was rapidly becoming firm.

That night Oudinot marched his Corps back up river to Studenka and massed his guns to cover the crossing. At dawn, Oudinot’s Polish lancers, each of whom carried a voltigeur (light infantryman) on his horse behind him, road across the Berezina, to be quickly followed by three rafts carrying a total of 300 men. The race was on. Eble’s men had to work shoulder deep in the Berezina with chunks of ice floating by, but they built the bridges, and repaired them when they broke down. Oudinot’s troops gained the far bank, and deployed over the frozen marshes. Ney and what was left of his III Corps joined Oudinot. Tshitshagov finally realized what was afoot, and threw his entire army against them. Oudinot was wounded and carried off the field. Ney took command of his and Oudinot’s men, and even though he was outnumbered 3-1, defeated all of Tshitshagov’s assaults, and drove him back. The rest of the army, with the exception of one lost division under Partouneaux and a large number of stragglers who refused to cross the bridges until it was too late, crossed the Berezina and continued their retreat. Tshitshagov had originally destroyed the bridge at Borisov to keep Napoleon for taking it. Now Eble’s bridges were destroyed, thus trapping Wittgenstein and Kutusov on the far bank until they could build new bridges.

The remainder of the retreat back to Poland was relatively uneventful for the main column. On the flanks, the Austrians and Prussians—unenthusiastic to begin with—deserted. Marshal Ney led the army’s rearguard, and was last man to leave Russia.

The following were of particular help.

1. Chandler, David, The Campaigns of Napoleon.
2. Esposito, Vincent J., A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars.
3. Riehn, Richard K., 1812: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign