Battle of Vyazma

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Battle of Vyazma
Battle vyazma.jpg
date November 3, 1812
place Vyazma , Russia
output Russian victory
Parties to the conflict

France 1804First empire France

Russian Empire 1721Russian Empire Russia

Commander

France 1804First empire Louis-Nicolas Davout Eugène de Beauharnais Józef Poniatowski Michel Ney
France 1804First empire
France 1804First empire
France 1804First empire

Russian Empire 1721Russian Empire Mikhail Miloradowitsch Matwei Platow
Russian Empire 1721Russian Empire

Troop strength
37,000 men 25,000 men
losses

6,500–8,000 dead, injured and prisoners

1,800 dead and injured

The Battle of Vyazma ( Russian Сражение под Вязьмой , French Bataille de Viazma ) took place on November 3, 1812 when Napoleon's troops withdrew from Russia near Vyazma . In it, the Grande Armée , which, due to previous defeats, had to take the Smolensk route, which had already been plundered during the invasion , was defeated by Russian troops under General Miloradowitsch .

prehistory

After the battle of Malo-Yaroslavets on October 24, 1812, Emperor Napoleon, surprised by the stubborn Russian resistance, ordered the retreat to the great road from Moscow to Smolensk, where the French army had large stores. This meant that the army not only had to make a major detour, but also had to march through areas that had been searched for food and fodder by French troops for weeks. With this order, the actual withdrawal from Russia began. On the way to Vyazma, the temperature reached freezing for the first time on the night of October 27. After marching through Moshaisk , the French army marched in a long column, which - not least because of the countless wagons with booty from Moscow - temporarily stretched to a length of 50 to 60 kilometers on the retreat road. When the French army left Moscow, they still had more than 600 pieces of artillery, as not a single one could be left behind on the express orders of the Emperor. Since many cavalry horses had to be used to pull the numerous cannons and wagons, they only had a few cavalry mounted for reconnaissance and to cover the flanks, so that the long column was easily attackable from both sides.

Without knowledge of the French withdrawal, the Russian headquarters, which the French army still believed to be stronger than it actually was, ordered the retreat towards Kaluga almost simultaneously on the day after the battle of Malo-Yaroslavets. As a result, the Russian army temporarily lost touch with the grand army, so that it was initially able to withdraw undisturbed. At the Russian headquarters they were at first very unsure where Napoleon was going to march. It was only after a few days that it became known that the French had completely evacuated Moscow and were marching west via Mozhaisk. Now the Russian commander-in-chief, Prince Kutuzov , who wanted to avoid a second battle with Napoleon as much as possible, decided on a “parallel pursuit”. Only the Russian avant-garde, two army corps under General Miloradowitsch, should seek “contact” with the French army and attack them when the opportunity arises, in order to prevent the French army from finding peace or even moving into permanent winter quarters. The Russian vanguard consisted of 16,000 infantry and 9,000 cavalry and was therefore 25,000 strong, including the associated artillery (the 3,000 Cossacks who took part in the battle under the Hetman of the Don Cossacks, General Platov , are in number the cavalry included).

battle

Battle of Vyazma (Europe)
Battle of Vyazma
Battle of Vyazma
Location of the battlefield

On October 31, Emperor Napoleon reached the city of Vyazma, where he stopped with his staff so that the army could regroup. On November 2nd he left the city again with the guards and followed the 8th Army Corps (Westphalia) under Junot towards Dorogobusch. He left Marshal Ney and the 3rd Army Corps to cover the city . There were still three army corps on the great road east of Vyazma. The French rearguard, then the 1st Army Corps under Marshal Davout , was back more than a day's march. Since Davout was hindered by the cover of the extensive entourage and the numerous civilians from Moscow, he marched only very carefully, Marshal Ney from Vyazma should take the rear guard. On that day, the French troops who were in the city or marching on the road east of Vyazma had a strength of about 37,500 men (of which 3,000 men were cavalry).

On the morning of November 3, the three French army corps that had bivouacked east of the city marched on the great road from Moscow to Smolensk in a long column in the direction of Vyazma. Shortly before the first troops of the 5th Army Corps under Prince Poniatowski reached the eastern outskirts - it was shortly after eight o'clock - the Russian vanguard under General Miloradowitsch attacked the column surprisingly. At this point, the marching column was widely spread out and covered, in the order of 5th, 4th and 1st Army Corps, the great road from Vyazma to behind Federovskoye (around 14 kilometers northeast of Vyazma), which had not yet been crossed. The premature attack by the Russian cavalry and Cossacks, who had rushed ahead, was primarily directed against the approximately three to four kilometer gap between the 4th and 1st Army Corps, which was largely filled with unarmed stragglers and numerous baggage vehicles. The advancing Russian infantry of the middle column soon reached the main street and thereby completely cut off the 1st Army Corps, which was meanwhile also being attacked by the right Russian column and the Cossacks from behind. Meanwhile, the left column of the Russian avant-garde attacked the 4th French Army Corps further west.

After the start of the attacks, the Viceroy of Italy immediately had his troops, the 4th Army Corps, turn around and deploy in a line against the enemy. After some time they were supported by the Polish troops under Prince Poniatowski (5th Army Corps). Their joint action forced the attackers to clear the road so that Davout's troops could reconnect with the other army corps. However, instead of turning north from the road just before the French line and seeking cover behind the deployed troops, the hastily approaching battalions of the 1st Army Corps hurried straight ahead in front of their front and came into their field of fire. As a result, the French lines were temporarily in distress until the 1st Army Corps was finally able to form a closed line, as Marshal Ney had also sent troops to the city to support it. Since the French army had very little cavalry and the mobility of their artillery was limited due to the lack of draft horses, they had to endure the Russian attacks rather passively. In the absence of Napoleon, who had already hurried ahead with the Guards to Semlovo (20 kilometers west of Vyazma), there was no commander-in-chief among the French troops. Therefore, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the four corps commanders present decided in a council of war to retreat in the direction of Dorogobusch , which was then initiated shortly afterwards without breaking off the engagement. The 4th and 5th Army Corps then slowly withdrew through Vyazma, which largely went up in flames during the fierce rearguard skirmishes with the strongly advancing Russians, with the fire also covering most of the hospitals filled with wounded and sick. Marshal Davout and the 1st Army Corps crossed the Vyazma on a bridge that Ney's troops had built across the river one kilometer south of the city. After the three other army corps marched past him, Marshal Ney also retired that evening and now took the rear guard.

In the meantime the advance trunks of the Russian main army, two cuirassier divisions under General Uvarow, had arrived south of the river and the city, but without being able to disturb the withdrawal of the French army. The main Russian army (around 60,000 men) under Prince Kutuzov, which in the morning was still camped near Dubrovno (29 kilometers southeast of Vyazma), only reached the village of Bykowo (five kilometers south of the city) in the evening and was therefore unable to go into battle intervention.

consequences

Due to the attack of the much weaker Russian vanguard, the four army corps of the Grande Army lost around 4,000 to 5,000 dead and wounded and around 2,000 to 3,000 prisoners near Vyazma. The losses on the Russian side amounted to 1,800 dead and wounded. After the battle, the Grande Army under Emperor Napoleon withdrew to Smolensk almost without a fight, only having to fend off attacks by Cossacks in small rearguard battles. The defeat of the French units at Vyazma led to a further decrease in their morale and thus accelerated the French withdrawal from Russia. The internal disintegration of the army returning from Moscow had already begun in the days before the battle. When the four army corps involved in Vyazma marched out of Moscow, they still numbered 73,000 men. Of these, only about 37,000 men arrived in Vyazma, i.e. about half. In the battle of Malo-Jaroslawetz the 4th Army Corps had lost around 6,000 men. The remainder, around 30,000 men, had either died of exhaustion within just a week or were now only running after the army as unarmed stragglers, looking for food on their own. The battle of Vyazma and the snowfall that followed shortly thereafter only revealed a process that had already started.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Chambray: Histoire de L'Expédition de Russie. Vol. 2, 1823, p. 14; Ségur: Napoleon and the Great Army in Russia. 1965, p. 252ff
  2. ↑ Between Smolensk and Moscow there were only small provisional magazines Dorogobusch, Vjasma and Gschatsk (today renamed Gagarin)
  3. ↑ Beitzke: History of the Russian War 1812. 1862, p. 307
  4. ↑ The Grande Army had practically no cannons on its advance to Moscow, but lost a great many people and horses, so that when they marched off they had a disproportionate number of guns and ammunition wagons
  5. ↑ Beitzke: History of the Russian War 1812. 1862, p. 299; Yorck v. Wartenburg: Napoleon as a General. vol. 2, p. 201; Bernhardi: Memories from the life of Count Toll. bd. II, 1856, p. 271
  6. ^ Technical term for indirect persecution, which keeps the persecuted army under pressure by constantly threatening to be “cut off” from its base of operations.
  7. ↑ it consisted of the 2nd and 4th Army Corps, the 2nd and 4th Cavalry Corps, a combined division of light infantry and nine Sotnia Cossacks; further information from E. v. Württemberg, Vol. 2, 208ff; Bernhardi: Memories from the life of Count Toll. II, 1856, p. 278; Bogdanowitsch: History of the campaign in 1812. Vol. 3, 1863, p. 64; the early French sources usually give higher numbers, up to 33,000 (as already in Chambray), but these numbers are based on the estimate of the enemy army by French officers involved in the battle. The information provided by E. v. Württemberg and von Bogdanowitsch took the “ordre de bataille” and the Russian inventory lists.
  8. ↑ Beitzke: History of the Russian War 1812. 1862, p. 309
  9. ↑ Many “foreigners” (i.e. non-Russians), primarily French, who had lived in Moscow until then and who feared the revenge of the returning population after the withdrawal of the Grande Army (A. Rose: Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812. 1913, p. 65)
  10. ↑ Chambray: Histoire de L'Expédition de Russie. T. 2 (Livre III), 1823, p. 133 (the information from Chambray based on official figures was later adopted by most of the authors); Bogdanowitsch: History of the campaign in 1812. Vol. 3, 1863, P. 64, 70f
  11. ↑ Chambray: Histoire de L'Expédition de Russie. T. 2 (Livre III), 1823, pp. 130ff; Anonymous "an eyewitness": The book from 1812. Vol. 3., 1844, p. 63ff, Bernhardi: Memories from the life of Count Toll. Vol. II, 1856, pp. 280ff, E. v. Württemberg: Memoirs. Vol. 2, p. 212ff; Fesenzac: A Journal of the Russian Campaign 1812. (English translation) 1852, pp. 79ff; Ségur: Napoleon and the Great Army in Russia. , 1965, pp. 274ff; Labaume: Campaign in Russia 1812. 1815, p. 259ff
  12. ↑ in French representations often called or written “Federowsky” (or similar)
  13. ↑ detailed description of the battle at E. v. Württemberg, who during the battle was the commander of the 4th Russian Infantry Division that led this attack; Memoirs. Vol. 2, 1862, pp. 198-233 (including a detailed discussion of the French authors of the battle); Bogdanowitsch, history of the campaign in 1812, 1863, vol. 3, 68ff
  14. ↑ General Miloradowitsch, who was afraid that his troops that had advanced far could be cut off, prematurely ordered the Duke of Württemberg as commander of the middle column to retreat, which he followed only reluctantly (Bogdanowitsch: Geschichte des Feldzuges in 1812, Vol. 3, 1863, p. 71f)
  15. ↑ the process is controversial, the French authors accuse each other of being biased; Bogdanovich, who relies on the diaries of Russian officers, presents the matter less dramatically
  16. ^ Pfister: From the camp of the Rheinbund 1812 and 1813. 1897, p. 137f
  17. ↑ Marshal Ney's report to Napoleon, partly printed in Chambray: Histoire de L'Expédition de Russie. Vol. 2 (Livre III), 1823, pp. 136f
  18. ↑ E. v. Württemberg: Memoirs. Vol. 2, 1862, pp. 227ff
  19. ↑ detailed “Ordre de Bataille” of the Russian army in mid-October 1812: Bogdanowitsch: Geschichte des Feldzuges in 1812. Vol. 3, 1863, p. 56; Riehn: 1812. Napoleon's Russian Campaign. 1991, p. 493
  20. ^ Bernhardi: Memories from the life of Count Toll. Vol. II, 1856, p. 285; Hamlet near Isakowo, Bernhardi gives the distance as 27 werst, i. H. around 29 kilometers; Bogdanowitsch: Geschichte des Feldzuges in 1812. Vol. 3, 1863, p. 67, writes "4 [German] miles", which also results in about 29 km
  21. ↑ on this in detail: Danilewski: Geschichte des Vaterländischen Krieg 1812. Bd. 3, 1840, S. 299ff
  22. ↑ (anonymous): Das Buch von 1812. Vol. 3, 1844, p. 65 (data after Chambray);
  23. ↑ Bogdanowitsch: History of the campaign in 1812. Vol. 3, 1863, p. 75
  24. ↑ Chambray: Histoire de L'Expédition de Russie. Vol. 2, 1823, p. 78; Riehn: 1812. Napoleon's Russian Campaign. 1991, p. 491
  25. ^ Bernhardi: Memories from the life of Count Toll. Vol. II, 1856, p. 277; Beitzke: History of the Russian War 1812. 1862, p. 303ff

literature

  • Николай Шефов: Битвы России. Военно-историческая библиотека. М., 2002.
  • Memoirs of Duke Eugene of Württemberg. Second part, reprint of the 2nd edition from 1862, Leipzig, 2006.