Bennigsen was undoubtedly a talented soldier. In the eyes of some observers he was indeed the most skilful tactician among the senior Russian generals. On the other hand, he was a born intriguer and a man of great pride and ambition. He himself confessed in his memoirs to ‘ambition and a certain pride which cannot, indeed ought not, ever to be absent from a soldier’. He also admitted that this pride made him ‘feel repugnance at the thought of serving in a subordinate position having once been commander-in-chief against Napoleon’. He did not forget that Barclay had once upon a time been a mere major-general in his army. He was also much inclined to remind people that in 1806–7 he had held his ground for six months against Napoleon though outnumbered two to one. In the early stages of the campaign Bennigsen was merely a minor nuisance. In time, however, he was to contribute greatly to the conflicts and jealousies that wracked the Russian high command.13
When news arrived in Vilna late on 24 June that Napoleon’s advance guard had crossed the Russian border earlier that day Alexander was actually attending a ball in Bennigsen’s country house at Zakrent. The roof of a temporary ballroom erected for the occasion had collapsed and the guests danced beneath the stars. The emperor was not surprised by the timing of the invasion or by the place where Napoleon had chosen to cross the river Neman and enter the Russian Empire. Russian intelligence and French deserters had given ample warning of the attack in the previous two days. Russian intelligence also had an accurate sense of enemy numbers. Alexander and Barclay had long since agreed on the need for a strategic withdrawal to the camp at Drissa in the face of this overwhelming enemy force. Orders went out immediately to the Russian commanders to execute this planned move. Manifestos had already been printed in advance to prepare both the army and Alexander’s subjects for the forthcoming struggle.
In the two weeks between the French invasion and First Army’s arrival in Drissa most of Barclay’s units retreated in good order and without significant losses. From the perspective of the high command, things mostly went according to plan. As is always true in war, matters did not look so orderly and well managed to the officers and men at ground level. Though most stores were carried away or burned, inevitably some fell into enemy hands, though not remotely enough to satisfy the enormous demands of Napoleon’s horses and men. Barclay’s attempt to requisition local carts for his army’s ‘mobile food magazine’ was delayed by the foot-dragging of local – often Polish – officials and many of these carts were lost to Napoleon.14
For troops who had been in quarters for weeks the sudden need for forced marches could be quite a shock. Even the Guards, which had least far to march, suffered initially. On 30 June Captain Pavel Pushchin of the Semenovskys wrote in his diary that they had broken camp and marched for eleven hours in pouring rain. As a result, forty of the regiment’s Guardsmen had fallen ill and one had died. Further long marches followed amidst intermittent downpours and extreme heat. To Pushchin’s great indignation three Polish soldiers in his company deserted. Especially in the lancer regiments, mostly recruited from Poles, desertion rates were far higher than this. The basic point, however, is that, in comparison to the devastating losses of horses and men in Napoleon’s ranks during these days, the losses on the Russian side were pinpricks.15
Of Barclay’s units the ones most at risk in these first two weeks stood on his left flank where they were in danger of being cut off from the rest of First Army by Napoleon’s advance. The biggest single error made by the Russian high command in the war’s first days was Fourth Corps’s failure quickly to notify its advance guard deployed close to the river Neman that the French had crossed the river to their north. As a result, the 4,000 men commanded by Major-General Ivan Dorokhov were very nearly overwhelmed and only escaped by marching southward to join up with Bagration’s Second Army.
Dorokhov’s detachment comprised one hussar, two Cossack and two jaeger regiments, including the excellent 1st Jaegers. An officer of this regiment, Major Mikhail Petrov, wrote in his memoirs that the 1st Jaegers only escaped by dint of uninterrupted days and nights of forced marches which left some men dead and others near senseless from exhaustion. Petrov recalled that the officers dismounted, piled the men’s equipment on their horses and helped to carry the muskets of their soldiers. For the first but by no means the last time in the campaigns of 1812–14 Russian light infantry displayed phenomenal endurance as they kept up with light cavalry and horse artillery while serving in advance and rearguards.16
