In time sense prevailed and Bagration was ordered to retreat and to attempt to join up with First Army. By then, however, precious time had been wasted and Davout’s advancing columns were cutting across Bagration’s route to join Barclay. In these first weeks of the war Barclay’s First Army executed a planned and for most units safe withdrawal to Drissa. By contrast, the movements of Bagration’s Second Army had to be improvised and were more dangerous. For the next six weeks the Russians’ main aim was to unite their two main armies. Napoleon’s key goal was to stop them from doing so, to force Bagration southwards and, if possible, to crush Second Army between Davout’s corps to the north and Jérôme Bonaparte’s forces advancing from the west.
In the end the Russians won this competition. Jérôme’s troops, mostly Westphalians, had been held back well behind Napoleon’s first echelon, partly in the hope that Bagration would advance to attack them and thrust his head into a sack. Even after Bagration wasted a number of days before retreating, Jérôme still had ground to make up if he was to catch them. The Russians were on the whole superior troops and quicker on the march than Jérôme’s Westphalians. They were marching towards their own supply magazines and across still unravaged countryside. By contrast, Jérôme’s soldiers were advancing away from their supplies and into a region which the Russians had already stripped.
In addition, Jérôme was up against the formidable cavalry of Bagration’s rearguard. When Napoleon’s advance forced Platov to escape to the south-east he joined up with Second Army. On three successive days between 8 and 10 July near the village of Mir Platov ambushed and routed Jérôme’s advancing cavalry. The biggest victory came on the last day, when six regiments of Polish lancers were destroyed by a combination of Platov’s Cossacks and Major-General Ilarion Vasilchikov’s regular cavalry. This was the first time in the war that the French had encountered the full force of combined Russian regular and irregular light cavalry. It was also the first time they met Vasilchikov, one of the best Russian light cavalry generals. The superiority of the Russian light cavalry, established at the start of the 1812 campaign, was to grow ever more pronounced over the next two years of war. The Russian victory at Mir ensured that henceforth Jérôme’s advance guard kept a healthy distance behind Bagration.
Davout’s corps proved a tougher nut. They blocked Bagration’s efforts to push his way through to First Army via Minsk, forcing him to make a big detour to the south-east. At Saltanovka on 23 July Davout’s men defeated another attempt by Bagration to link up with Barclay, this time via Mogilev. Only on 3 August, having crossed the Dnieper, did Second Army finally join First Army near Smolensk. For the whole of July both Barclay and Bagration had been attempting to bring their two armies together. Each blamed the other for their failure to do so. In retrospect, however, it is possible to see that not merely was the failure to unite neither general’s fault, it also worked out to the Russians’ advantage.
This was partly because the attempt to cut off Bagration exhausted and depleted Napoleon’s army much more than the retreating Russians. Even by the time Davout reached Mogilev the result of hastening forward to catch Bagration through a ravaged countryside had cost him 30,000 of the 100,000 men with whom he had crossed the Neman. After Mogilev he gave up his attempt to pursue Second Army for fear of wrecking his corps. In addition, the fact that the Russian armies were split provided Barclay with a perfect reason to retreat and not to risk facing Napoleon in a pitched battle. Had the two armies been joined and the charismatic and very popular Bagration been on hand to lead the call to battle this would have been far more difficult. If the two Russian armies had fought Napoleon in early July the odds would have been worse than two to one. By early August they were closer to three to two. In that sense the strategy planned by Barclay and Alexander to wear down Napoleon had proved a triumphant success. But there was an element of good fortune in their ability to pursue this strategy as long as they did.
