Napoleon Bonaparte's retreat from Moscow, 1812

18^th October 1812 was the day on which Napoleon Bonaparte began his retreat from Moscow, realising for the first time that his dream of dominating the whole of Europe was not going to come true. There were two great turning points in the fortunes of Napoleon’s Empire – the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 had shown that France would no longer rule the roost at sea; the Retreat from Moscow made it clear that the same now applied on land.

Napoleon had marched his army 500 miles into Russian territory from the relative safety of Vilnius (in Lithuania). It had taken twelve weeks across territory laid waste by the Russian peasants who had destroyed anything of use to the French before they abandoned their farms and moved elsewhere.

When the French eventually reached Moscow they found that the same policy had been adopted. This had been a thriving city with a population of 250,000 but now only 15,000 remained. The Russians had set fire to much of the city before leaving, and Napoleon was now the conqueror of piles of smoking ruins that contained very little food or anything else of value.

Napoleon sought to do a deal for a truce with the Russian Tsar, Alexander I, but the latter would not even reply to Napoleon’s letter. After 35 days in Moscow, Napoleon had no choice but to order a retreat. The whole Russian campaign had been a complete waste of time, resources and lives.

The Retreat was worse than the advance because Napoleon’s demoralised army now had to march through the devastated Russian territories in the depths of winter. They also came under attack from marauding Cossacks and gangs of guerrillas who were properly equipped for the conditions, which the French were not. Every fresh raid was another defeat.

The men and horses that died, whether from cold, starvation or enemy action, were left where they fell, their bodies becoming food for wolves.

90,000 men began the Retreat from Moscow but only 20,000 returned to Vilnius. Napoleon could only comment that it was but a short step from the sublime to the ridiculous. He had been defeated not so much by the Russians as by Russia.

© John Welford

The Battle of Borodino, 1812

7^th September is the anniversary of the Battle of Borodino in 1812, which marked the beginning of the end of the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte as the most powerful man in Europe.

Napoleon had marched east into Russia at the head of an army of 530,000 men, but by the time he was within a day’s march of Moscow that number had been reduced to 130,000. The Russians refused to face him in battle until he reached the village of Borodino, to the west of Moscow.

The battle lasted all day, by the end of which the Russians had lost 45,000 of their original force of 120,000, but these were numbers that could always be replaced. On the other hand, the French losses of 30,000 were irreplaceable, as they were 1,500 miles from where they started.

The Russians retreated, but this was a French victory only on paper. Moscow had been evacuated and largely destroyed by the Russians, so there was nothing left for the French to capture and no supplies to be looted. There was nothing for it but to head for home.

The retreat from Moscow, through countryside that had been laid waste so as to offer nothing to the French, and in the depths of winter, made clear to Napoleon that Borodino was his greatest defeat. 

Out of more than half a million men that set out on this venture, no more than 10,000 returned.

7^th September is therefore a very important date in European history.

© John Welford

Napoleon Bonaparte's whiff of grapeshot, 1795

On 5^th October 1795 an ambitious young man named Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a massacre that would start his rise to fame as one of the dominant figures of European history.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s early service to France

Napoleon Bonaparte, who was born in 1769 on the French island of Corsica, had distinguished himself from a young age as a military commander by defending the French Revolutionary government against internal and external threats. In particular, in 1793 Colonel Bonaparte successfully lifted the siege of the port of Toulon by the British Navy. For this service he was promoted to Brigadier General.

The National Convention

From 20^th September 1792 the government of France was in the hands of the National Convention, which was an assembly elected by universal male suffrage. This body underwent a number of changes during its three-year existence and a major change was proposed in 1795 that would create a second chamber and a system of checks and balances.

A rule was proposed which meant that two-thirds of the current deputies must be returned to the new assembly. This was presumably to ensure a degree of continuity in that the new Convention would contain a good number of experienced people who knew how to get things done. However, the move did not prove popular in Paris, where an unlikely assemblage of hard-line monarchists and equally hard-line left-wing revolutionaries formed a mob of around 30,000 people who threatened to march on the Tuileries, the former royal palace that was now the home of the Convention.

Bonaparte to the rescue

The commander of the Army of the Interior and the police was Paul Barras, who was responsible for the security of the Convention. He called upon Napoleon Bonaparte, who was otherwise unemployed, to organise a military defence. Bonaparte’s strength was in artillery, so he ordered Major Joachim Murat to gather 40 cannon and spread them around the outside of the building.

The rabble approached the Tuileries on the afternoon of 5^th October (or 13^th Vendemaire, Year 4, according to the new Revolutionary calendar). When the crowd was within close range Bonaparte announced “We’ll give them a whiff of grapeshot” and ordered the cannons to fire. More than 200 protestors were killed and twice as many were injured.

The aftermath

There were no more such threats to the Convention, although it did not last much longer. After a period known as the “Directory” during which real power was held by five men, a coup d’etat in 1799 resulted in ultimate power belonging to just one man, a certain Napoleon Bonaparte.

The whiff of grapeshot produced some other interesting consequences. Paul Barras, who brought Bonaparte to the fore and invited him to his home, had a mistress named Josephine de Beauharnais who was to become Bonaparte’s wife within a year, and Barras, as the leading Director, would eventually be sent into exile by Bonaparte.

However, better fortune befell Major Murat who would become one of Bonaparte’s greatest generals and eventually acquire the title of King of Naples.

© John Welford