Battle of Smolensk
Napoleon fought his way into Smolensk in August 1812 and found it burning and empty. The campaign had begun in June with some 600,000 men crossing the Niemen, the largest army assembled in Europe to that date, and the plan was to force a decisive battle near the frontier and dictate peace within a month. The Russians would not give one. Barclay de Tolly withdrew, and the two Russian armies under Barclay and Bagration retreated separately for six weeks, evading encirclement and joining at Smolensk. Everything east of the border was stripped or burned behind them, and the Grande Armée lost tens of thousands of men to heat, disease, desertion and starvation without a general engagement. Smolensk was an old walled city on the upper Dnieper, and the Russians decided to fight for it under enormous political pressure to stop retreating — and then withdrew again on the second night after a day of assaults on the suburbs that cost both sides perhaps 10,000 men each. They fired the city as they left. Napoleon had reached the strategic decision point. He could halt for the winter on a defensible line with supply he could organise, which several of his marshals urged, or continue to Moscow, 400 kilometres further, in pursuit of the battle he had not yet been given. He went on. Borodino followed in September and cost 70,000 casualties without deciding anything, Moscow burned, and the retreat began in October. Fewer than 100,000 came out. Barclay was replaced by Kutuzov shortly afterwards, largely because he was of Baltic German descent and had retreated for two months, and Kutuzov then continued to retreat. The strategy that destroyed the invasion was the one that nearly cost the man who chose it his command.
- Year: 1812 CE
- Category: Military
