‘Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March’
by Adam Zamoyski
HarperCollins, 672 pp., $29.95
Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia ranks as one of the greatest military disasters in history. The story has been told countless times and inspired Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”
But, according to “Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March,” much of that history has been politically distorted. Author Adam Zamoyski strives to set the record straight with an objective and comprehensive account of the ill-fated invasion. And what a story it is.
At war with England, Napoleonic France controlled virtually all of Europe, spreading the subversive egalitarianism of the French Revolution and the civilizing Napoleonic Code.
Russia, in 1812, could hardly have been more different. Controlled by Czar Alexander, Russia was a backward, feudal country whose leaders were threatened equally by foreign armies and peasant uprisings. Although allied with Napoleon, French trade restrictions devastated the Russian economy, forcing Alexander to confront Napoleon or face mounting discontent at home.
Napoleon had nothing to gain from invading Russia but felt compelled to teach it – and his many “allies” – a lesson. The midsummer invasion force was the largest army ever mustered. The French army, used to foraging for food and supplies, found precious little in the Russian countryside. Dysentery, starvation and dehydration wreaked havoc before the first shot was fired.
Although Soviet historians have characterized the Russian retreat as a clever strategic trap, Zamoyski painstakingly documents the incompetence of the Russians and their terror at facing the French. Indeed, the Russians retreated until forced to fight at Smolensk and Borodino, where 70,000 were slaughtered. It was a record that would not be matched for 100 years – until the Battle of Somme in 1916.
Napoleon continued his advance, forcing the Russians to surrender Moscow itself. On foot and horseback, Napoleon’s invasion force got further than Hitler’s mechanized war machine over a century later, but it had no greater success. Moscow harbored neither the czar nor his government and, indeed, was burned by the Russians themselves, leaving Napoleon a hollow victory. By any fair measure, he had won – prevailed in every battle, controlled sections of the country and seized the capital city. But the Russians refused to surrender, leaving Napoleon to ponder his circumstances as winter stealthily approached.
As late as the end of October, Napoleon ridiculed the Russian winter as a myth used to scare small children. Within days, the temperature had dropped below zero, the snow had begun to fall, and his error was manifest.
The retreat was almost unfathomably brutal. The French troops had no winter uniforms, and what clothing and boots they had were in tatters. With little food and burdened with looted Russian treasure, the retreat passed through lands already stripped clean of nourishment. And the temperature continued an inexorable fall, ultimately reaching 35 below zero Fahrenheit.
The starving men turned frantic – cutting chunks of meat off the back legs of living horses (the dead ones were too deeply frozen to cut). The horses, nearly frozen themselves, hardly noticed. The temperature was an implacable foe. Those who slept often never awoke. Soldiers were observed frozen in place standing, sitting or lying by fires. The Russian army, meanwhile, bungled several opportunities to destroy the French army. Napoleon was nearly caught at the River Berezina, which was held by Russians on both banks and circled by troops to his rear.
Napoleon sent a diversionary force south, then headed north where 400 Dutch pontooneers worked through the night to build two bridges over the river. Standing chest deep in icy water, dodging 2-meter chunks of ice, they worked as Napoleon sat on horseback and watched them die – and make progress. Although only eight of the pontooneers returned home, the bridges were completed and the French survived.
Of the more than 600,000 French soldiers who crossed into Russia, barely 150,000 made it out alive. About 160,000 horses perished during the invasion. Counting Russian losses, nearly 1 million people died during the course of the six-month invasion.
With Napoleon in retreat, the Russians followed and, just over a year later, occupied Paris. Napoleon was eventually overthrown and exiled to Alba. Although he returned, he was ultimately defeated by the British at Waterloo and exiled to St. Helena for the remainder of his life.
But the consequences of the 1812 invasion lived on. It is difficult to grasp the extent to which our world today has been shaped by the invasion and its failure. Napoleon’s disaster emboldened Russia to extend its reach into Europe and solidified German nationalism and militarism, with devastating consequences in the following century.
This is a towering history – a thoroughly enjoyable read that is worthy of the monumental scope of its subject. Zamoyski’s writing is vivid and, perhaps more important, he knows when to let his sources speak for themselves.
If one can complain, it is simply that Zamoyski gives short shrift to the consequences and enduring legacy of the 1812 invasion and its very real impact on the political geography of today.
When Napoleon died in 1840, his body was returned to Paris, where it awaited burial. In honor of the 1812 invasion, 400 veterans silently, but eloquently, saluted their fallen leader – by spending the night on the ground around the casket as the temperature plunged to below zero.
Year: 2004
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‘Moscow 1812’: An overture to massive wars of modern times
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Memoirs of a Breton Peasant’ Countryside to battlefield: a French peasant’s life
‘Memoirs of a Breton Peasant’
by Jean-Marie Dguignet, translated by Linda Asher
Seven Stories, 431 pp., $27.95
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New biography of William Clark exposes his involvement in the displacement of Native Americans
‘William Clark and the Shaping of the West’
by Landon Y. Jones
Hill and Wang, 394 pp., $25
There are few more revered figures in American history than William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, explorers of the American West. Although Lewis died within three years of his return from the Lewis and Clark expedition, Clark lived a long life in military service to the United States. In “William Clark and the Shaping of the West,” Landon Jones delivers a revealing portrait of Clark’s entire life, not just the famous journey.
Jones, a former managing editor at People magazine and contributor to Life, Time and Money, is on the board of the National Council of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. But his fascination for the expedition notwithstanding, Jones’ work is an unflinching and frankly unflattering portrait of a beloved American hero.
Clark was born in 1770 and was raised in a country still struggling with its newfound independence. Joining the American military when he was just 19, Clark served the federal government for several decades, securing outposts in the West, leading men into the wilderness and, above all, fighting the Indians.
Jones’ masterful biography brings to life the gritty and brutal existence of life on the American frontier. Arriving pioneers found fertile land abounded as they pushed westward, but with the land came the Native American tribes who resented the arrival of white settlers, particularly when it was “guaranteed” by earlier treaties that the settlers refrain from further encroachment. The weak national government was unable to control the settlers, who moved far beyond treaty-established boundaries. When the inevitable hostilities arose, it was the Indians who were blamed as “savages” and were attacked by the military – including at times Clark himself – and then guaranteed peace only in exchange for land and resettlement further west.
The story, familiar as it is, is difficult to read without disgust. Jones’ narrative is superb at bringing the conflict to life: American soldiers digging up Indian corpses to scalp or burn them, pregnant Indian women hung and mutilated, and enormous fields of Indian corn burned to starve the tribes into submission (the same tactic used by the British during the Revolutionary War and decried as “barbaric” by the colonies). While Jones does not attribute any of these incidents to Clark himself, Clark plainly was deeply involved in the conflict throughout his military career and could not have been unaware of them. To modern Americans, it seems almost absurd to question that the young United States would bridge the continent. But, from Clark’s perspective, the outcome was far from certain. French, English and Spanish armies maneuvered and manipulated Native American tribes, shifting alliances to balance power in the unsettled West.
Clark was 33 years old when he was invited by Meriwether Lewis to join him on an expedition to explore the Western interior. The Lewis and Clark expedition has been the subject of scores of books, but Jones manages to cover it in a brisk 30 pages, drawing heavily from the expedition’s journals and correspondence.
Upon his return from the expedition, Clark married 15-year-old Julia Hancock, was appointed principal Indian agent for the U.S. government and settled in the former French city of St. Louis. In his remaining years, Clark acted as the federal representative in negotiating countless treaties with vanishing Native American tribes as they were pushed inexorably westward and toward oblivion.
In 1831, a band of Sauks attempted to return to their tribal homeland on the east bank of the Mississippi in what is now Illinois. As the conflict escalated, the Sauks tried to escape back west but, unable to negotiate peace terms because the pursuing Americans had no interpreters, the Sauks “put up little resistance, as most were attempting to find shelter or help the women and children scramble across the river’s mud flats and small islands. … The carnage was terrible; men, women, and children were shot indiscriminately, and their blood-streaked bodies floated downriver.”
The few who escaped were hunted and killed. Clark – at the time the Indian superintendent for the West – was delighted to hear the “glorious news.”
Clark died in 1838 at age 68. He outlived Lewis by more than 29 years. By the time of his death, Clark had personally signed 37 separate Indian treaties, more than anyone in American history, and supervised the removal of 81,282 Indians from the East. As Clark lay dying, the U.S. Army began moving the 17,000 Cherokee Indians west, on a thousand-mile forced march known as the “Trail of Tears.” Four thousand of them died. It was the culmination of a process started, facilitated and enforced by William Clark.
Clark’s many contributions, including the Lewis and Clark expedition itself, will not soon be forgotten. But this thoughtful biography suggests that Clark’s entire life was a more complex, and decidedly less heroic, affair.