Crossing the Russian border After two days of preparation, the invasion commenced on Wednesday, with Napoleon's army crossing the border. The army was split up into five columns: • The left wing under
Macdonald with the
X Corps of 30,000 men (half of them Prussians) crossed the Neman at
Tilsit on the 24th. He moved north in
Courland but did not succeed in
occupying Riga. Early August he occupied
Dunaburg; early September he returned to Riga with his entire force. On 18 December, a few days after the French left the Russian Empire, he drew back to Königsberg, followed by
Peter Wittgenstein. On 25 December one of his generals
Yorck von Wartenburg found himself isolated because the Russian army blocked the road. After five days he was urged by his officers (and in the presence of
Carl von Clausewitz), at least to
neutralization of his troops and an
armistice. Yorck's resolution had enormous consequences. • In the evening of 23 June,
Morand, accompanied by
sappers, occupied the other side of the Neman. Around noon, the next morning, Napoleon, followed by the
Imperial Guard (47,000), crossed the river on one of the three pontoon bridges nearby
Napoleon's Hill. Afterwards, Murat's cavalry and three corps crossed the river destined for Vilnius. Then they followed
Barclay de Tolly's
First Army of the West to
Drissa and Polotsk. • Cavalry corps of
Murat (32,000) advanced to Vilnius and Polotsk in the
vanguard. •
I Corps of
Davout (72,000), the strongest corps, left Vilnius on 1 July and occupied Minsk a week later. His goal was to cut off
Pyotr Bagration from Barclay de Tolly. He already had lost a third of his men but beat Bagration at
Mogilev and then went to Smolensk, where he joined the main army. •
II Corps of
Oudinot (37,000) crossed the Neman and the
Viliya to combat
Peter Wittgenstein, who protected the road to St Petersburg. Oudinot didn't succeed in joining up with Macdonald and joined the VIth corps. For two months these corps kept Wittgenstein at a distance until the
Second Battle of Polotsk. •
III Corps of
Ney (39,000) defended downstream the 4th pontoon bridge at
Aleksotas which could be used to escape; he then went to Polotsk. Second Central force crossed at Pilona 20 km upstream. •
IV Corps of
Beauharnais (45,000 Italians) crossed the Neman near
Piliuona. Napoleon's stepson had orders to avoid Vilnius on his way to Vitebsk. •
VI Corps of
St. Cyr (25,000 Bavarians) crossed at Pilona. He was to throw himself between the two Russian armies and cut off all communication between them. He followed the II Corps to Polotsk, forming the northern flank. Both corps never saw Moscow. With French forces moving through different routes in the direction of Polotsk and Vitebsk, the first major engagement took place on 25 July at the
Battle of Ostrowno. • Right flank force under Napoleon's brother
Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia (62,000). He crossed the Neman near
Grodno on 1 July, The
Battle of Mir was a tactical victory for the Russians; Jerome let Platov escape by deploying too few of
Józef Poniatowski's troops. Jérôme left the army after being criticised by Davout. He went home at the end of July, taking a small
battalion of guards with him. •
IV Cavalry Corps of
Latour Maubourg (8,000) joined Davout. •
V Corps (36,000 (Polish) soldiers) under Poniatowski joined Davout and went to Mogilev and Smolensk.
Polish legions, including Lithuanians formed the largest foreign contingent. •
VIII Corps (17,000 Westphalians) under
Vandamme who was sent home in early July. Jérôme Bonaparte took over but resigned on 15 July when he found out Davout had been secretly given the command. Early August the command was given to
Junot. In the
Battle of Smolensk (1812) Junot was sent to bypass the left flank of the Russian army, but he got lost and was unable to carry out this operation. Junot, a heavy drinker, was blamed for allowing the Russian army to retreat arriving too late at the
Battle of Valutino. After the
Battle of Borodino he had only 2,000 men left. In July 1813, Junot jumped out of a window; he died a few days later. • The right or southern wing under
Schwarzenberg with the
XII Corps of 34,000 men (Austrians) crossed the
Western Bug on a pontoon bridge at
Drohiczyn on 2 July.
Tormasov's third army prevented him from joining up with Davout. When Tormasov occupied
Brest (Belarus) at the end of July, Schwarzenberg and Reynier were cut off from supplies. On 18 September the Austrians withdrew when
Pavel Chichagov arrived from the south and seized Minsk on 18 November. On 14 December 1812 Schwarzenberg crossed the border. •
VII Corps of
Reynier (17,000 Saxons) stayed in the Grodno region and cooperated with Schwarzenberg to protect the
Duchy of Warsaw against Tormasov. • During the campaign, reinforcements of 80,000 and the baggage trains with 30,000 men were sent on different dates. In November, the division of
Durutte assisted Reynier. In December
Loison was sent to help extricate the remnants of the Grand Army in its retreat. Within a few days many of Loison's unexperienced soldiers died of the extreme cold. Napoleon arrested him for not marching with his division to the front. •
IX Corps of
Victor (33,000). The majority was sent to Smolensk in early September; he took over the command from St. Cyr. At the end of October, he retreated, losing significant supplies in Vitebsk to Wittgenstein. Victor and
H.W. Daendels were ordered to cover the retreat to the Berezina. •
XI Corps of
Augereau was part of the reserve. It was created in the late summer. It contained an entire division of reformed deserters. This corps, based in Poland, did not participate in military operations in Russia until November/December. Augereau also had at his disposal a
Danish contingent of about 10,000 men under General
Ewald, intended for service with XI Corps during the Russian campaign, which remained in
Holstein for the duration of the campaign. Augereau never left Berlin; his younger brother general
Jean-Pierre and his troops were compelled to surrender to the partisans
Aleksandr Figner and
Denis Davydov on 9 November.
March on Vilna Napoleon initially met little resistance and moved quickly into the enemy's territory in spite of the difficulties in transporting more than 1,100 cannons, being opposed by the Russian armies with more than 900 cannons. But the roads in this area of
Lithuania proved to be little more than small dirt tracks and footpaths through areas of birched woodland and marshes. With wagons struggling to move over the uneven surface and the troops moving too quickly, food and drink were not properly distributed. On 25 June, Murat's reserve cavalry provided the vanguard with Napoleon, the Imperial guard and Davout's 1st Corps following behind. Napoleon spent the night and the next day in Kaunas, allowing only his guards, not even the generals to enter the city. The central group marched in two days. Ney's III Corps marched down the road to
Sudervė, with Oudinot marching on the other side of the
Viliya river. Since the end of April, the Russian headquarters was centred in Vilna but on June 24 couriers rushed news about the crossing of the Neman to Barclay de Tolley. Before the night had passed, orders were sent out to Bagration and Platov, who commanded the Cossacks, to take the offensive. Alexander left Vilna on June 26 and Barclay assumed overall command. crossing the Neman on 30 June 1812 Napoleon reached Vilna on 28 June with only light skirmishing but leaving more than 5,000 dead horses in his wake. The lack of horses to transport food supplies meant that he was forced to abandon up to 100 guns and up to 500 artillery wagons. Napoleon had supposed that Alexander would sue for peace at this point and was to be disappointed; it would not be his last disappointment.
Balashov demanded that the French return across the Neman before negotiations. Barclay continued to retreat to Drissa, deciding that the concentration of the 1st and 2nd armies was his priority. Several days after crossing the Neman, a number of soldiers began to develop high fevers and a red rash on their bodies. Typhus had made its appearance. On 29/30 June, a violent thunderstorm struck Lithuania during the night and continued for several hours or a day. The foraging in Lithuania proved hard as the land was mostly barren and forested. The supplies of forage were less than those of Poland, and two days of forced marching made a bad supply situation worse. Some 50,000 stragglers and deserters became a lawless mob warring with the local peasantry in all-out
guerrilla war, which further hindered supplies reaching the Grande Armée. Central to the problem were the expanding distances to supply magazines and the fact that no supply wagon could keep up with a forced-marched infantry column. A Lieutenant Mertens—a Württemberger serving with Ney's III Corps—reported in his diary that oppressive heat followed by cold nights and rain left them with dead horses and camping in swamp-like conditions with dysentery and fever raging through the ranks with hundreds in a field hospital that had to be set up for the purpose. He reported the times, dates and places of events, reporting new thunderstorms on 6 July and men dying of sunstroke a few days later. Napoleon's strategy proved to be a mistake: forced marches wore out the men and sapped their morale, leading to high rates of
suicide, desertion, and death. The inability of the wagon trains to keep pace meant that supplies were taken on a first-come basis, and many soldiers only had spoiled food and water taken from dirty rivers and ponds to sustain themselves. This poor diet, coupled with bad hygiene and poor weather, allowed contagious diseases to spread and kill hundreds of men.
March on Vitebsk and Minsk s at the
Battle of Mir leading a detachment of the
Russian Imperial Guard at the
Battle of Saltanovka Although Barclay wanted to give battle, he assessed it as a hopeless situation and ordered Vilna's magazines burned and its bridge dismantled. Wittgenstein moved his command to
Klaipėda, passing beyond Macdonald and Oudinot's operations with Wittgenstein's rear guard clashing with Oudinout's forward elements. Barclay continued his retreat and, with the exception of the occasional rearguard clash, remained unhindered in his movements ever further east. The operation intended to split Bagration's forces from Barclay's forces by driving to Vilna had cost the French forces 25,000 losses from all causes in a few days. Strong probing operations were advanced from Vilna towards
Nemenčinė,
Molėtai in the north and
Ashmyany in the east, the location of Bagration on his way to Minsk. Bagration ordered Platov and Dokhturov to distract the enemy. Murat advanced to Nemenčinė on July 1, running into elements of
Dmitry Dokhturov's III Russian Cavalry Corps. Napoleon assumed this was Bagration's 2nd Army and rushed out, before being told it was not. Napoleon then attempted to use Davout, Jerome, and Eugene out on his right in a
hammer and anvil to catch Bagration and to destroy the 2nd Army in an operation before reaching Minsk. This operation had failed to produce results on his left. Conflicting orders and lack of information had almost placed Bagration in a bind marching into Davout; however, Jerome could not arrive in time over the same mud tracks, supply problems, and weather that had so badly affected the rest of the Grande Armée. Command disputes between Jerome, Vandamme and Davout would not help the situation. In the first two weeks of July, the Grande Armée lost 100,000 men due to sickness and desertion. On 8 July,
Dirk van Hogendorp was appointed as Governor of Lithuania organizing hospitals for the wounded in Vilnius and supplies for the army; Louis Henri Loison was appointed in
Königsberg. The main problem was forage from East Prussia. For three weeks, the Dutch soldiers had hardly seen bread and only eaten soup. stopped the French offensive on St. Petersburg Davout had lost 10,000 men marching to Minsk, which he reached on the 8th and would not attack Bagration without Jerome joining him. He ordered Polish cavalry to search for the thousands of looting soldiers who stayed behind. Davout left the city after four days where a Polish governor was appointed;
Joseph Barbanègre had to organize the logistics. Davout crossed the Berezina and ran into the
Battle of Mogilev with Bagration; he went to Orsha, and crossed the
Dniepr on his way to Smolensk. Davout thought Bagration had some 60,000 men and Bagration thought Davout had 70,000. Bagration was getting orders from both Alexander's staff and Barclay (which Barclay didn't know) and left Bagration without a clear picture of what was expected of him and the general situation. This stream of confused orders to Bagration had him upset with Barclay, which would have repercussions later. After five weeks, the loss of troops from disease and desertion had reduced Napoleon's effective fighting strength to about half. Ney and his corps were given ten days to recover and search for food.
Jakob Walter describes his foraging experience during Russia's
scorched earth tactics:Finally we arrived at Polotsk, a large city on the other side of the
Western Dvina River. In this region I once left the bivouac to seek provisions. There were eight of us, and we came to a very distant village. Here we searched all the houses. There were no peasants left. I later realized how heedless I had been, since each one ran into a house alone, broke open everything that was covered, and searched all the floors and still nothing was found. Finally, when we assembled and were ready to leave, I once more inspected a little hut somewhat removed from the village. Around it from top to bottom were heaped bundles of hemp and shives, which I tore down; and, as I worked my way to the ground, sacks full of flour appeared. Now I joyfully called all my comrades so that we might dispose of the booty. In the village we saw sieves; these we took to sift the flour mixed with chaff an inch long; and, after that, we refilled the sacks. ... Then the question of carrying and dividing the grain arose, but it occurred to me that I had seen a horse in one of the houses. Everyone immediately hurried to find the horse. We found two instead of one, but unfortunately they were both colts, and one could not be used at all. We took the largest, placed two sacks on it, and started out very slowly. While we were marching there, the Russians saw us from a distance with this booty; and at the same moment we saw a troop of peasants in the valley, about fifty. These ran toward us. What could we do but shoot at them?
March on Smolensk '' by
Jean-Charles Langlois. Napoleon and
Poniatowski with the burning city of Smolensk was 6.5 kilometres, with a height of up to 19 metres and a width of up to 5.2 metres, and a total of 38 watchtowers. The Kremlin lost nine towers because of the bombardment and fire. Exactly at midnight, on July 16, Napoleon left Vilnius. On 19 July the Tsar left the army in Polotsk and headed for Moscow, taking the discredited
Von Phull with him. Barclay, the Russian commander-in-chief, refused to fight despite Bagration's urgings. Several times he attempted to establish a strong defensive position, but each time the French advance was too quick for him to finish preparations, and he was forced to retreat once more. When the French Army progressed further (under conditions of extreme heat and drought, rivers and wells filled with
carrion) it encountered serious problems in foraging, aggravated by the
scorched earth tactics of the Russian forces.From Smolensk to Moshaisk, the war displayed its horrible work of destruction: all the roads, fields, and woods lay as though sown with people, horses, wagons, burned villages and cities; everything looked like the complete ruin of all that lived. In particular, we saw ten dead Russians to one of our men, although every day our numbers fell off considerably. In order to pass throughAfter the
battle of Vitebsk Napoleon discovered that the Russians were able to slip away during the night. The city, at the intersection of important trade routes, and the palace of
Alexander of Württemberg would be his base for the next two weeks. His army needed to recover and rest, but Napoleon asked himself what to do next. According to
Antoine-Henri Jomini, Napoleon planned not to go further than Smolensk and make Vilnius his headquarters for the winter. However, he could not go back at the end of July. His position was unfavourable according to
Adam Zamoyski. There was the heat—also at night—and the lack of supplies. He had lost a third of his army due to sickness and straggling. The
Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812) had come to an end as Kutuzov signed the
Treaty of Bucharest and the Russian general Pavel Chichagov headed north-west. His former ally
Bernadotte broke off relations with France and entered into an alliance with Russia (
Treaty of Örebro). Mid-July Napoleon's brother Jérome resigned and decided to go home. (For Napoleon he lost the opportunity to keep the army under Bagration separated in the south.) On 14 August, the army crossed the Dniepr; Ney and Murat won the
first Battle of Krasnoi. The next day Napoleon celebrated his 43rd birthday with a review of the army. In the morning of 16th Murat's cavalry and Ney's infantry closed up to the western side of Smolensk. The main body of the army did not come up until in the late afternoon. The corps of Barclay and Bagration finally succeeded to unite in Smolensk and held a council of war. Under pressure, Barclay de Tolly decided to launch an offensive. on 19 August 1812 The
Battle of Smolensk (1812) on August 16–18 became the first real confrontation. Napoleon surrounded the southern bank of the Dniepr, while the northern bank was guarded by Barclay's army. When Bagration moved further east, to prevent the French from crossing the river and attacking the Russians from behind, Napoleon began the attack on the
Smolensk Kremlin in the evening. In the middle of the night Barclay de Tolly withdrew his troops from the burning city to avoid a large confrontation with no chance of victory. When the French army moved in the Russians left on the east side. Ney, Junot and Oudinot tried to halt their army. The
Battle of Valutino could have been decisive but the Russians succeeded to escape via a diversion on the road to Moscow. The French discussed their options or prepare for a new attack after winter. Napoleon pressed his army on after the Russians. Murat implored him to stop, but Napoleon could see nothing but Moscow. On 24 August, the Grande Armée marched out on the
Old Smolensk Road, 30 feet wide; Eugene on the left, Poniatowski on the right and Murat in the centre, with the Emperor, the Guard, I Corps and III Corps in the second line. Joseph Barbanègre was appointed commander of the devastated city and had to organise new supplies. ; Kutuzov in command Meanwhile, Wittgenstein was forced to retreat to the north after the
First Battle of Polotsk. Bagration asked
Aleksey Arakcheyev to organize the militia, as Barclay had led the French right into the capital. When the village of Mozhaysk was captured by the French on the 9th, the Grande Armée rested for two days to recover. Napoleon asked
Berthier to send reinforcements from Smolensk to Moscow and from Minsk to Smolensk. The French Army began to move out on September 10 with the still ill Napoleon not leaving until the 12th. Some 18,000 men were ordered in from Smolensk, and Marshal Victor's corps supplied another 25,000.
Capture of Moscow in September 1812 On 10 September, the main quarter of the Russian Army was situated at
Bolshiye Vyazyomy. Kutuzov settled in a Vyazyomy Manor on the high road to Moscow. The owner was
Dmitry Golitsyn, who entered military service again. The next day Tsar Alexander signed a document that Kutuzov was promoted
General Field Marshal, the
highest military rank of the Imperial Russian Army. Russian sources suggest Kutuzov wrote a number of orders and letters to Rostopchin, the Moscow military governor, about saving the city or the army. On , the main forces of Kutuzov departed from the village, now
Golitsyno and camped near
Odintsovo, 20 km to the west, followed by
Mortier and
Joachim Murat's vanguard. Napoleon, who suffered from a cold and lost his voice, spent the night at Vyazyomy Manor (on the same sofa in the library) within 24 hours. On Sunday afternoon the Russian military
council at Fili discussed the risks and agreed to abandon Moscow without fighting.
Leo Tolstoy wrote
Fyodor Rostopchin was invited also and explained the difficult decision in quite a few remarkable chapters in his book
War and Peace. This came at the price of
losing Moscow, whose population was evacuated.
Miloradovich would not give up his rearguard duties until September 14, allowing Moscow to be evacuated. Miloradovich finally retreated under a flag of truce. Kutuzov withdrew to the southeast of Moscow. On 14 September 1812, Napoleon moved into Moscow. However, he was surprised to have received no delegation from the city. Before the order was received to evacuate Moscow, the city had a population of approximately 270,000 people. 48 hours later three quarters of
Moscow was reduced to ashes by arson. A French Army foot soldier recalled: On the march into the city or rather on the march toward it, from a hill in a forest an hour and a half away, we saw the huge city lying before us. Clouds of fire, red smoke, great gilded crosses of the church towers glittered, shimmered, and billowed up toward us from the city... there were broad streets, long straight alleys, tall buildings massively built of brick, church towers with burned roofs and half-melted bells, and copper roofs which had rolled from the buildings; everything was uninhabited and uninhabitable. Although Saint Petersburg was the political capital at that time, Moscow, which Napoleon had successfully occupied, was considered to be Russia's spiritual capital. The occupation led Alexander I to decide there was no way for France and Russia to peacefully coexist. On 19 September, Murat lost sight of Kutuzov who changed direction and turned west to
Podolsk and
Tarutino where he would be more protected by the surrounding hills and the Nara river. On 3 October Kutuzov and his entire staff arrived at Tarutino and camped there for two weeks. He controlled the three-pronged roads from
Obninsk to Kaluga and Medyn so that Napoleon could not turn south or southwest. This position not only allowed him to harass the French lines of communication but also stay in contact with the Russian forces under Tormasov and Chichagov, commander of the
Army of the Danube. He was also well placed to watch over the workshops and arms factories in nearby
Tula and
Briansk. Kutuzov avoided frontal battles involving large masses of troops in order to reinforce his army and to wait there
for Napoleon's retreat. This tactic was sharply criticised by Chief of Staff
Bennigsen and others, but also by Tsar Alexander. Barclay de Tolly interrupted his service for five months and settled in
Nizhny Novgorod. Each side avoided the other and seemed no longer to wish to get into a fight. On 5 October, on order of Napoleon, the French ambassador
Jacques Lauriston left Moscow to meet Kutuzov at his headquarters. Kutuzov agreed to meet, despite the orders of the Tsar. On 10 October, Murat complained to
Belliard about the lack of food and fodder; each day he lost 200 men captured by Russians. On 18 October, at dawn during breakfast, Murat's camp in a forest was surprised by an attack by forces led by Bennigsen, known as
Battle of Winkovo. Bennigsen was supported by Kutuzov from his headquarters at distance. Bennigsen asked Kutuzov to provide troops for the pursuit. However, Kutuzov refused.
Retreat on 3 November 1812 '' by
Peter von Hess, 1844.
Kalmyks and
Bashkirs attacking French troops at the
Berezina As the Tsar refused to respond, and encouraged because the weather remained fine and warm into October, Napoleon stayed too long. On 19 October, after five weeks of occupation, the French Army left Moscow. Napoleon forces still numbered 108,000 men, but his cavalry had been nearly destroyed. With horses exhausted or dead, commanders redirected cavalrymen into infantry units, leaving French forces helpless against Cossack fighters intensifying the
guerilla warfare. With little direction or supplies, the army turned to leave the region, struggling on toward worse disaster. Napoleon journeyed along the Old Kaluga road, venturing southward in pursuit of untouched, prosperous regions within
Galicia. His aim was to steer clear of the devastated path created by his army's eastward march, instead favoring alternative routes, notably the westward path through
Medyn. Avoiding Kutuzov became Napoleon's primary objective, yet his progress faced an obstacle at
Maloyaroslavets. The
Battle of Maloyaroslavets, showcasing Kutuzov's strategic maneuvering, compelled the French Army to return to the same Smolensk road they had previously traveled eastward. To further thwart any southern retreat by the French, Kutuzov implemented
partisan strategies repeatedly striking at vulnerable points in their supply lines. As the retreating French formation fragmented and dispersed, bands of Cossacks (under
Matvei Platov,
Vasily Orlov-Denisov and
Denis Davydov) and nimble Russian cavalry launched assaults on isolated foraging French units. Fully supplying the army became an insurmountable challenge due to the uninterrupted stretches of forests. The absence of grazing fields and fodder took a toll on the surviving horses, leading to the demise of nearly all due to either starvation or their use as sustenance by starving soldiers. The French cavalry, bereft of horses, faced dissolution, forcing generals and cavalrymen to traverse on foot. The scarcity of horses necessitated abandoning numerous cannons and wagons, a loss that significantly weakened Napoleon's armies throughout subsequent campaigns. Starvation and disease plagued the troops, exacerbating the dire circumstances. In early November 1812, when Napoleon arrived at
Dorogobuzh, he learned that
General Claude de Malet had attempted a
coup d'état in France. Badly weakened by these circumstances, the French military position collapsed. Further, defeats were inflicted on elements of the Grande Armée at
Vyazma,
Polotsk and
Krasny. Napoleon faced dire circumstances when extreme weather trapped his forces, resulting in the loss of a significant portion of his cavalry and artillery amidst the snow. Russian armies captured the French supply depots at Polotsk, Vitebsk and Minsk, inflicting a logistical disaster on Napoleon's fast collapsing Russian operation. However, the union with Victor, Oudinot and
Dombrowski at the
Bobr brought the numerical strength of the Grande Armée back up to some 49,000 French combatants as well as about 40,000 stragglers. All the French corps went on to Borisov where a strategic bridge to cross the Berezina was destroyed by the Russian army. The crossing of the river Berezina was a
final French calamity: two Russian armies inflicted heavy casualties on the remnants of the Grande Armée. Because of an incursion of thaw the ice on the Berezina river started to melt during the last major battle of the campaign. In military terms, the escape can be considered as a French
strategic victory. It was a missed opportunity for the Russians who blamed Pavel Chichagov. . Dutch officer
Jean-François Dumonceau, who served as captain in the
2nd Lancers Regiment of the Imperial Guard during the campaign, gave a vivid description of the desperate crossing at the Berezina in his memoirs: On 3 December, Napoleon published the 29th Bulletin in which he informed the outside world for the first time of the catastrophic state of his army. He abandoned the army on 5 December and returned home on a
sled, leaving the sick Murat in command. In the following weeks, the Grande Armée shrank further, and on 14 December 1812, it left Russian territory.
Cold weather Following the campaign, a saying arose that "General Winter" defeated Napoleon, alluding to the
Russian Winter. Minard's map shows that the opposite is true, as the French losses were highest in the summer and autumn due to inadequate preparation of logistics resulting in insufficient supplies, while many troops were also killed by disease. Thus, the outcome of the campaign was decided long before the cold weather became a factor. When winter arrived on 6 November with a
blizzard, the army was still equipped with summer clothing and did not have the means to protect themselves from the cold or snow. It had also failed to forge
caulkin shoes for the horses to enable them to traverse roads that had become iced over. The most devastating effect of the cold weather upon Napoleon's forces occurred during their retreat. Starvation and
gangrene coupled with
hypothermia led to the loss of tens of thousands of men. Heavy artillery pieces, loot, and wagons were abandoned as irreplaceable draft animals perished. The intense cold enfeebled the brains of those whose health had already suffered, especially of those who had had dysentery, but soon, while the cold increased daily, its pernicious effect was noticed in all. In his memoir, Napoleon's close adviser
Armand de Caulaincourt recounted scenes of massive loss, and offered a vivid description of mass death through hypothermia: This befell a Grande Armée that was ill-equipped for cold weather. The French deficiencies in equipment caused by the assumption that their campaign would be concluded before the cold weather set in were a large factor in the number of casualties they suffered. After a few days of thaw, the temperature dropped again 23 November. From the Berezina, the retreat was nothing but utter flight. The preservation of war materiel and military positions was no longer considered. When the night-time temperature dropped to minus 35 degrees Celsius it proved catastrophic for Loison's untried soldiers. Some suffered from
snow blindness. Within three days, his division of 15,000 soldiers lost 12,000 men without a battle.
Summary In ''Napoleon's Russian Campaign'', Riehn sums up the limitations of Napoleon's logistics as follows: The military machine Napoleon the artilleryman had created was perfectly suited to fight short, violent campaigns, but whenever a long-term sustained effort was in the offing, it tended to expose feet of clay. [...] In the end, the logistics of the French military machine proved wholly inadequate. The experiences of short campaigns had left the French supply services completed unprepared for [..] Russia, and this was despite the precautions Napoleon had taken. There was no quick remedy that might have repaired these inadequacies from one campaign to the next. [...] The limitations of horse-drawn transport and the road networks to support it were simply not up to the task. Indeed, modern militaries have long been in agreement that Napoleon's military machine at its apex, and the scale on which he attempted to operate with it in 1812 and 1813, had become an anachronism that could succeed only with the use of railroads and the telegraph. And these had not yet been invented. Napoleon lacked the apparatus to efficiently move so many troops across such large distances of hostile territory. The French supply depots established in the Russian interior failed in their purpose as supplies could not be distributed quickly enough. The French train battalions did their best, but the distances, the speed required, and the poor conditions they labored under meant that the demands Napoleon placed on them were too great. Napoleon's demand of a speedy advance by the Grande Armée over a network of dirt roads
that dissolved into deep mires further broke down his logistical network as weakened draft animals collapsed from overwork and vehicles that could not be repaired broke down. As the graph of
Charles Joseph Minard, given below, shows, the Grande Armée incurred the majority of its losses during the march to Moscow during the summer and autumn. ==Historical assessment==