Battle of Vitebsk (1812)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Vitebsk unfolded over two days in late July 1812, and it ended without the climactic collision either side had prepared for. Napoleon rode forward believing he had finally cornered the Russian army for the decisive engagement he had been chasing since the campaign began. The Russians, meanwhile, were already slipping away. What had appeared to be a massed enemy force ready to stand and fight was little more than a screen of cavalry and infantry keeping camp fires burning through the night to mask an empty battlefield. How did one of the most anticipated confrontations of the entire Russian campaign dissolve into a ghost battle? And who deserves credit for pulling it off?

• 2. A General Under Pressure

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  General Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly carried two burdens into Vitebsk: the weight of military reality and the fury of a court that could not accept retreat. For more than a month after the French invasion began, his Russian First Army had fallen back without accepting a major engagement. In Saint Petersburg, courtesans at the Imperial Court were openly questioning why vast territories were being handed over to the enemy without a fight. Barclay understood his chances at Vitebsk were poor at best, but he concentrated a large part of his forces there anyway. His motivation was partly political and partly about army morale, which had begun to erode after weeks of withdrawal. The ground at Vitebsk was a vast, flat plain, with the river Dvina separating the two sides, and the Russians held a slightly elevated position on the eastern bank. It was not a terrible defensive posture. But Barclay knew Napoleon commanded superior numbers, and the position was not strong enough to gamble the First Army's survival on a full engagement.

• 3. The Fight at Ostrovno

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  The first contact between the two sides came on the 25th of July at Ostrovno, the day before the main action at Vitebsk. Marshal Joachim Murat and General Etienne de Nansouty led a French force in an attempt to pin down a Russian column under General Alexander Ivanovich Ostermann-Tolstoy. The Russians suffered relatively high casualties in the exchange but managed to pull back in good order. Critically, they delayed the French long enough to allow significant Russian forces to concentrate around Vitebsk. Following the engagement, Ostermann-Tolstoy's IV Corps retreated seven kilometres to a village called Kakuviachino, where command of the rearguard passed to General Pyotr Konovnitsyn and his 3rd Infantry Division. Konovnitsyn was, in the source's description, extremely adept at leading rearguard actions. He blocked every French attempt to advance and delayed them for the entire day of the 26th of July, keeping the enemy from making contact with the bulk of the Russian army.

• 4. News from Saltanovka

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  At nightfall on the 26th of July, a courier named Prince Aleksandr Meshikov arrived at Barclay's headquarters. Meshikov served as aide-de-camp to General Pyotr Bagration, whose Second Army was supposed to link up with Barclay's First Army. The news Meshikov carried was alarming: Bagration's force had been defeated three days earlier at the Battle of Saltanovka, at the hands of Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout. With the Second Army beaten and unable to rendezvous as planned, Napoleon now had a real opportunity to drive a wedge between the two Russian armies and reach the strategically vital city of Smolensk before either of them. Even after receiving this intelligence, Barclay initially resisted changing course. He still wanted to fight the next day, and it took his advisers, pressing him late into the night of the 26th, to finally dissuade him. Only then did the commander issue orders for a retreat, knowing that Napoleon's proximity made any withdrawal extremely difficult to execute cleanly.

• 5. Pahlen's Delaying Action

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  On the morning of the 27th of July, Napoleon set his troops in motion with genuine optimism. From his position, he could see the steeples of Vitebsk, and the Russian forces appeared to be deploying for battle on the opposite bank of the Dvina. What he was actually watching was a rearguard under General Peter Graf von der Pahlen, tasked with buying enough time for the main Russian army to escape. Napoleon had only two infantry divisions immediately available, the 13th and 14th, drawn from Viceroy Eugene's Army of Italy, along with elements of Nansouty's First Cavalry Corps. He estimated the enemy at some 90,000 men. Aware he was outnumbered, he planned to pin the Russians in place rather than push them hard, intending to wait for reinforcements and renew the battle the following morning. General Pahlen exploited that caution ruthlessly. He opened by launching the Life Guard Cossacks and then the bulk of his cavalry at the leading French division under General Jean-Baptiste Broussier, harassing the infantry with repeated charges that traded ground for time. Broussier pushed back with divisional artillery, firing into the Russian horsemen, but without cavalry support of his own, he could not break through. Three hundred voltigeurs from the 9th Line regiment were caught in an exposed position by superior Russian forces but held their ground. Around 11:00, Napoleon halted the advance and went to reconnoiter in person. He saw Russians in battle positions and concluded they would fight again the next day. He praised the voltigeurs of the 9th Line for their gallantry, and his men bivouacked where they stood.

• 6. The Empty Battlefield

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  At around 16:00 on the 27th of July, while Napoleon was making arrangements for the next day's battle, the Russian army began to move. Pahlen's men crossed to the eastern bank of the small Luchenza river, where the main force had been waiting. Cossack parties stayed behind, keeping camp fires burning through the night to give the impression that the army had not moved. Napoleon spent the night believing he would renew a major engagement at dawn. He woke to an empty field. The Russian First Army had conducted a hasty but orderly retreat and reached Smolensk safely, exactly as Barclay had planned, where they were able to unite with Bagration's Second Army. Napoleon, for his part, was in no position to race them to Smolensk. His troops were exhausted, and he had no intelligence about which direction the Russians had taken. The departure had been so clean that it caught him entirely off guard.

• 7. Casualties and Consequences

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  Estimates of French casualties from the two days of fighting were disputed even at the time. One historian, Riehn, put the figure at 400 killed, 900 wounded, and 70 captured. Another, Bodart, estimated 3,400 killed and wounded with 300 captured. Among the French dead was Colonel Liedat, a distinguished officer who commanded the general staff of the army's military engineer corps. Russian losses amounted to roughly 3,000 men killed and wounded. French historians have tended to view the battle as a missed opportunity for Napoleon, who stopped his attack too early on the 27th, convinced the enemy would remain in place. That restraint allowed Pahlen to complete his delaying mission without ever being seriously threatened with a breakthrough. Barclay de Tolly, not a man given to easy praise, singled out General Pahlen for commendation. The successful retreat fed directly into what came next: when the two Russian armies finally united at Smolensk, the conditions were set for the Battle of Smolensk itself, a far larger and bloodier contest than anything that had happened at Vitebsk.