French Invasion of Russia (1812): Napoleon's Grande Armée

The French invasion of Russia was Napoleon’s campaign of 1812 against the Russian Empire, which began when the Grande Armée crossed the Niemen river on 24 June and ended in December with the ruin of most of that army. Napoleon reached Moscow after the bloody Battle of Borodino, but the city burned, Tsar Alexander I refused to negotiate, and the retreat through autumn and winter became one of the great military disasters in history. In Russia it is remembered as the Patriotic War of 1812.

Background and causes

In 1807 Napoleon and Alexander I had made peace in the Treaties of Tilsit, dividing Europe into spheres of influence. Russia agreed to join the Continental System, Napoleon’s attempt to defeat Britain by closing European ports to British trade.

The alliance soon weakened. The blockade hurt Russian landowners and merchants, who depended on exports to Britain. On 31 December 1810 Alexander issued a decree opening Russian ports to neutral ships and raising duties on French goods. Russia also feared that Napoleon would restore a Polish state, since the Duchy of Warsaw he had created was expanded after the 1809 war with Austria. Napoleon’s annexation of the Duchy of Oldenburg, ruled by a relative of the tsar, and the failure of his plan to marry a Russian grand duchess before choosing Marie Louise of Austria, added to the mistrust.

By 1811 both sides were preparing for war. Napoleon believed that a quick victory near the frontier would force Alexander back into the alliance.

The Grande Armée

Napoleon assembled an army of unprecedented size in Germany and Poland. Including later reinforcements, it numbered roughly 600,000–685,000 men. Only about half were French; the rest came from allied and subject states, including Poland, the German states of the Confederation of the Rhine, Italy, Austria and Prussia. Austrian and Prussian corps operated on the flanks.

The army relied on supply convoys and depots, but the distances, poor roads and summer heat soon overwhelmed them. Horses died in tens of thousands, and soldiers foraged in a thinly populated land.

Napoleon’s plan was to fight and win a decisive battle within a few weeks of crossing the border, as he had done against Austria and Prussia. He did not intend to march deep into Russia, and he carried supplies for only a limited campaign. Russia, for its part, had around 200,000–250,000 troops on its western frontier at the start of the war, divided between several armies, and its commanders disagreed about whether to fight or retreat.

Course of the campaign

The advance to Moscow

On 24 June 1812 the main army crossed the Niemen near Kovno (modern Kaunas). Russia’s two western armies, under Michael Barclay de Tolly and Pyotr Bagration, were outnumbered and retreated eastward, avoiding the decisive battle Napoleon wanted. Napoleon entered Vilna (Vilnius) on 28 June but failed to trap either army.

Heat, dysentery and typhus caused enormous losses during the summer advance, and many soldiers deserted or fell behind. The two Russian armies joined near Smolensk, which the French captured after heavy fighting on 16–18 August, much of the city being burned.

Russian public opinion turned against the retreating Barclay, and Alexander appointed the veteran general Mikhail Kutuzov as commander-in-chief. Kutuzov chose to fight at Borodino, about 110 kilometres west of Moscow. On 7 September 1812 the two armies fought one of the bloodiest single-day battles of the era. The French held the field, but the Russian army withdrew intact.

Moscow

At a council of war at Fili on 13 September, Kutuzov decided to abandon Moscow to save the army. Most of the population left. Napoleon entered the city on 14 September, expecting a delegation to surrender the keys. None came.

That night fires broke out across Moscow and burned for several days, destroying roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the largely wooden city. The governor, Fyodor Rostopchin, had removed the fire-fighting equipment, and most historians think the fires were set deliberately, though looting and accidents also contributed.

Napoleon stayed in Moscow for over a month and sent peace proposals to Alexander, who did not reply. Meanwhile Kutuzov rebuilt his army to the south, and Cossacks and peasant partisans attacked French foraging parties.

The delay proved fatal. Discipline in the army broke down as soldiers looted the ruined city, and the cavalry, short of fodder, wasted away. Napoleon considered wintering in Moscow or marching on St Petersburg, but supply problems and the threat to his long lines of communication ruled out both. On 18 October Kutuzov attacked Murat’s cavalry screen at Tarutino, and the next day Napoleon ordered the evacuation.

The retreat

On 19 October Napoleon left Moscow with around 100,000 men and a vast train of wagons loaded with loot. He tried to move south-west through regions untouched by war, but after the Battle of Maloyaroslavets on 24 October he turned back to the devastated road by which he had come.

The retreat became a disaster. Food ran out, horses died, and guns and wagons were abandoned. Russian forces attacked the columns at Vyazma (3 November) and Krasnoi (15–18 November), and Marshal Michel Ney’s rearguard fought a series of desperate actions. Severe frosts set in from early November, and temperatures later fell far below freezing.

In late November Russian armies converged to trap the French at the Berezina river. Engineers under General Jean-Baptiste Eblé built two bridges while standing in the icy water, and between 26 and 29 November much of the remaining army crossed. Thousands of stragglers and civilians were left behind when the bridges were burned.

On 5 December, at Smorgon, Napoleon left the army and hurried to Paris to raise new forces and secure his throne after an attempted coup there. The last organised remnants reached the Niemen around 14 December, with Ney reputedly among the last to leave Russian soil.

Key people

• Napoleon (1769–1821) – Emperor of the French, who led the invasion in person.
• Alexander I (1777–1825) – Tsar of Russia, whose refusal to negotiate decided the campaign.
• Mikhail Kutuzov (1745–1813) – Russian commander-in-chief from August 1812.
• Michael Barclay de Tolly (1761–1818) – Russian war minister and army commander, who began the strategy of retreat.
• Michel Ney (1769–1815) – French marshal famous for commanding the rearguard during the retreat.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

The popular idea that “General Winter” alone destroyed Napoleon’s army is misleading. The main army had already lost a large share of its strength before reaching Moscow, mostly to disease, exhaustion, hunger and desertion during the summer. Winter turned the retreat into a catastrophe, but the campaign had failed well before the snows.

Another common belief is that Napoleon’s army was overwhelmingly French. In fact, it was a multinational force in which Poles, Germans, Italians and others made up roughly half the strength. The story of the campaign was famously visualised in 1869 by the French engineer Charles Joseph Minard, whose chart of the army’s shrinking size is still studied as a classic of data graphics.

Consequences

The destruction of the Grande Armée changed the balance of power in Europe. On 30 December 1812 the Prussian general Ludwig Yorck signed the Convention of Tauroggen with the Russians, taking his corps out of the war, and in 1813 Prussia joined Russia against France. Austria, Sweden and others followed, forming the Sixth Coalition.

The human cost was immense on both sides. Russian towns and villages along the invasion route, including Smolensk and much of Moscow, were devastated, and civilians suffered from requisitioning, fighting and epidemics. Tens of thousands of French and allied prisoners died in captivity from cold, hunger and disease during the winter of 1812–1813.

Napoleon raised new armies but lacked trained soldiers, experienced officers and, above all, horses. He was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, and the allies entered Paris in March 1814, forcing his abdication.

Legacy

In Russia, 1812 became a central part of national identity. It inspired Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture of 1880. In the rest of Europe the retreat from Moscow became a lasting symbol of overreach. In 2001 a mass grave of several thousand soldiers of the Grande Armée was discovered in Vilnius, giving new evidence about their fate.

Timeline

• 1810, 31 December: Alexander I opens Russian ports to neutral shipping, breaking with the Continental System.
• 1812, 24 June: Grande Armée crosses the Niemen.
• 1812, 16–18 August: Battle of Smolensk.
• 1812, 7 September: Battle of Borodino.
• 1812, 14 September: French enter Moscow; the great fire begins.
• 1812, 19 October: Napoleon leaves Moscow.
• 1812, 24 October: Battle of Maloyaroslavets forces the retreat back along the Smolensk road.
• 1812, 26–29 November: Crossing of the Berezina.
• 1812, 5 December: Napoleon leaves the army for Paris.
• 1812, 14 December: Last French rearguard leaves Russian territory.

Why it matters

The invasion of Russia destroyed the army that had made Napoleon master of Europe and turned his allies into enemies. It marked the beginning of the end of his empire, and it remains one of history’s clearest examples of how distance, supply, disease and climate can defeat even the most powerful military force.