Meanwhile the French and Russian preparations for war were actively pursued, though more rapidly and effectively by Napoleon than by his antagonist, who had to contend with far greater difficulties. On February 8th Napoleon ordered Prince Eugène with the Army of Italy and the Bavarians to advance upon Glogau, where they would arrive about April 1st. Davout’s six divisions were advanced stage by stage from the Elbe to the Vistula, while the 2nd Corps (Oudinot) and the 3rd (Ney) followed in support. The Poles (5th Corps) were concentrated on the Vistula about Warsaw, Modlin and Plock; and the Saxons (7th Corps) and Westphalians (8th Corps) directed also upon Warsaw. Two corps of cavalry reserves—22,000 lances and sabres—and gunners of horse artillery were in the north; a third, 10,000 strong, with Eugène; and a fourth, not yet completely formed, was to accompany the 5th, 7th and 8th Corps. The Prussian contingent was assembling at Königsberg, the Austrian at Lemberg. Finally the Imperial Guard, horse and foot, was advancing from Paris to form the general reserve. Over and above all these formations, which composed the actual army of invasion, various reserve divisions, French, Polish and German, were being organised, some of which were later combined into a 9th Army Corps under Marshal Victor. The refractory conscripts, who were being trained in their island prison-camps, were formed into fresh regiments of infantry. The conscripts of the year, who were collecting at the depôts, were organised as soon as sufficiently trained into Regiments de Marche which were pushed forward into and through Germany to feed the fighting line. Out of these an 11th Corps was formed, the composition of which was constantly changing as the advanced troops were pushed across the Russian frontier, to be replaced by others at the rearward stages, while these were in their turn relieved by new conscripts from France. A division of King Joachim’s Neapolitans was marching from Italy to form part of this great reserve corps. The King of Denmark also, at Napoleon’s request, concentrated a division of 10,000 troops in Holstein. Napoleon did not believe that Britain could seriously molest his rear owing to her preoccupation with the Peninsular War, but he took no risks. In March, 1812, a Senatus-Consultum formed the entire male population of the empire into three bans, and of the first ban, comprising men from twenty to twenty-six years of age, a hundred battalions or “cohorts” were immediately called out for home defence. They actually produced a force of about 80,000 men, who by June had received a fair amount of training. Apart from them there were left for the defence of the empire 2 regiments of the Young Guard, 24 line battalions in 8 regiments of infantry, 8 foreign battalions, 8 squadrons of cavalry and 48 batteries of artillery. There were also 156 3rd, 4th and 5th battalions of regiments already on foreign service, the seamen, marines, coast-guards and veterans, and finally the depôts of the whole army.
At the beginning of 1812, when Napoleon was preparing to concentrate on the Oder, the Russian forces, exclusive of the isolated armies of Turkey and Finland, lay dispersed in cantonments from Courland to Podolia, over a line of some six hundred miles. During March and April, as the French offensive on the Vistula became pronounced, Alexander drew in his scattered forces and organised them in two armies, calling up reinforcements from the Turkish frontier. The first army, under the War-Minister Barclay de Tolly, had its head-quarters at Vilna. The second, commanded by the fiery Georgian Prince Peter Bagration, was cantoned about Lutsk. Napoleon interpreted this to mean that Russia intended to invade the Grand Duchy of Warsaw with Bagration’s army, while Barclay covered the road to St. Petersburg. It is indeed probable, if not certain, that had their preparations been more forward the Russians would have attempted something of the kind; Bagration was eager to advance on Warsaw. The plans discussed at the Russian head-quarters all appear to be based upon the the hypothesis of being able to meet the French near the frontier on fairly equal terms. Napoleon’s overwhelming strength was not yet appreciated.
On April 17th Napoleon wrote to Davout, laying down the plan of action which he proposed in view of a Russian advance on Warsaw. The 60,000 men of the Saxon and Polish armies would, if possible, hold the line of the Vistula about Warsaw, but if overmatched must retreat on Glogau, where Davout would be able to come into line with them, while the main body of the Grand Army came up to the relief in two columns. He showed his confidence in his lieutenant by inviting him to examine and criticise the proposed plan.
At this date the French forces were approximately stationed as follows, left to right. The Prussians were about Königsberg, and Davout’s six infantry divisions and a cavalry corps between Danzig and Thorn, all these forming what General Bonnal calls the Strategic Advanced Guard, under Davout. The 5th Corps was between Plock and Warsaw, the 7th Corps near Kalisch, 140 miles west of Warsaw, the 8th Corps between Glogau and Kalisch. The Bavarians (6th Corps) were marching from Glogau to Posen; the Army of Italy (4th Corps) was spread out over 100 miles of road in rear of Glogau; Ney was with the 3rd Corps about Frankfort on the Oder, eighty miles north-west of Glogau, and Oudinot with the 2nd about Berlin. As Bagration at Lutsk was some 250 miles from Warsaw, a study of the map will show that an offensive movement on his part could be opposed by at least equal numbers (the 5th, 7th and 8th Corps) in any case, apart from the 4th and 6th, which could be diverted on Warsaw, while a mass of over 200,000 men (Davout, Prussians, 2nd Corps, 3rd Corps and 2 cavalry corps) could oppose Barclay, besides the Guard.
Towards the end of April Napoleon obtained fairly accurate information of the Russian emplacements. Six Army Corps and 3 divisions of reserve cavalry were extended from near Shavli in Courland to Slonim in Lithuania—a distance of nearly 250 miles. At Lutsk, over 200 miles from Slonim, and separated from it by the huge barrier of the Pinsk Marshes, were 2 Corps under Bagration, while slowly converging upon Lutsk were 5 divisions of infantry and 2 of cavalry. He could therefore calculate with sufficient certainty that his strategic deployment along the Vistula would not be interrupted. By May 15th the bulk of his forces were on the Vistula from Danzig to Warsaw. The Prussians were at Königsberg, the Austrians at Lemberg, the 4th Corps in reserve at Kalisch, the Imperial Guards marching in detachments across Germany. The whole mass, exclusive of non-combatants, amounted to nearly 450,000 men, of whom 80,000 were cavalry. It had with it, including its reserve parks, 1146 guns and howitzers, nearly 200,000 horses and draft animals, and probably 25,000 vehicles.
The extent of the suffering entailed by the passage of this gigantic host through Germany may be imagined. The mere supplying it with food was enough to exhaust the country, but it was but a part of what had to be endured. The peasants were robbed of horses, vehicles and implements for the service of the troops, and forced themselves to accompany the columns to drive their carts laden with baggage or their own plundered crops. Honourable men in the French army saw such proceedings with shame and regret. De Fezensac tells with ill-suppressed indignation how he met German peasants fifty leagues from their homes acting as baggage drivers, and adds that they were fortunate if they reached their villages in a state of beggary. Testimony such as this is invaluable and damning. Organised plunder was rampant, and the French officers, brutalised and morally degraded by years of war maintaining war, were reckless of the misery inflicted. The Prussian official Schön tells how Davout, on entering Gumbinnen and finding supplies in his opinion not adequate, owing to the abject poverty to which Prussia had been reduced, coolly ordered his troops to pillage the town! The 1st Corps was the best administered in the army; and Davout is commonly held up to admiration by French writers as the pattern of honour and loyalty. But his execution of orders was commonly ruthless, and there were in Napoleon’s army but too many officers who lacked even Davout’s very limited sense of honour. Davout would sack a town remorselessly, as readily as Suchet massacred women and children at Lerida; but Suchet would hang a man who committed murder, and Davout, while subjecting people to every kind of officially ordered oppression, would sternly check private plunder or outrage. But other generals were less strict, and the bad characters who are found in every army had opportunities of committing all kinds of outrages. Napoleon himself at last complained of the misconduct of Ney’s 3rd Corps. Ney was a worse disciplinarian than Davout, though a humane and kindly tempered man, but neither Ney nor Davout can really be blamed. The troops, by Napoleon’s order, were to be supplied at the expense of the country, and the usual discipline of the French army was so shattered by years of organised brigandage that the rest naturally followed. The terrible misery inflicted upon Germany and other countries by Napoleonic warfare may be studied at length in reports and despatches, and furnishes a very grim commentary upon the moral value of military discipline.
Napoleon left Paris on the 9th of May, accompanied by the Empress, and reached Dresden on the 16th, where all his unwilling or willing allies and vassals were gathered to meet him. The details of his stay—how kings waited in his antechamber, how he made presents to them, how queens waited upon Maria Louisa—need not be repeated. The episode was a memorable example of pride preceding a fall.
Napoleon was not impatient. He had already told Davout that he should not commence operations until the grass had grown in order that he might therewith supplement his stores of forage; and he did not leave Dresden until the 30th of May. On that day the whole army was concentrated between Königsberg and Warsaw; the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th Corps were all in line, and the Guard was collecting at Posen. Napoleon in his orders for the advance on the Niemen, on May 26th, contemplates the army as three masses: the right, consisting of the 5th, 7th and 8th Corps, under Jerome; the centre, of the 4th and 6th, under Eugène; and the left, of the Guard, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and the new 10th Corps (Davout’s foreign division and the Prussians) which he would conduct in person. Two Reserve Cavalry Corps were allotted to the left, one to the centre, and one to the right.
Meanwhile, on the Russian side, the Emperor Alexander had arrived at Vilna on April 26th. As Emperor he nominally had the chief command, but unfortunately his motley following of German princes and relatives, military adventurers and theorists, had much more to suggest than the harassed sovereign, who must at times have been almost in despair at being called upon to decide between them. There were lengthy discussions and much drafting of strategic schemes, few of them at all applicable to the situation and resulting in little but waste of time. Barclay was practically superseded by the Emperor’s following, and being naturally a man of diffident and retiring nature, and unused to supreme command, he did not sufficiently assert himself. Among the officers who appeared in Alexander’s suite was old General Bennigsen, who had commanded not without credit against Napoleon in 1807, and probably hoped to induce the Tzar to give him an important command.
