1812-1915

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 63, 11 September 1915, Page 13

1812-1915

TWO GREAT CAMPAIGNS THEIR FEATURES COMPARED. [-Contributed.] Almoet as-soon as it became clear that the Russian campaign was developing into a great retreat beyond tho Vistula, there arose a popular belief that th« Germans were about to be lured to the same destruction which awaited the Grand: Army of Napoleon. It was a most attractive theory that' the tragedy of 1812 — the greatest military catastrophe the world has ever 6een — should be repeated in 1915 on an even greater scale. It was so attractive that all who did not look into it clung to it, and still cling to it. Those who saw its weakness seemingly forbore to explain them. It even has the semi-official air that comes from inclusion in the cable news, which nine people out of ten take for gospel, although an enormous proportion of the cable news consists of speculation upon which -no dependence can be placed at all. In these circumstances it is more than interesting, it is important and valuable, to see why Napoleon met disaster in 1812, and in what way the German armies o£ to-day are prepared to avoid the dangers to which he had to succumb. Doing co it will be necessary to show 'the general nature of the present vast campaign, and to show in addition not only that the chances were all against Napoleon, but that they are now against .the Germans, in spite of their superiority to the Grand Army. First, as to Napoleon's army. He sot oat on his expedition for the conquering of Russia with a, total «of nearly 550,000 men — a fourth or » fifth of the Austro-German armies of to-day, but still the greatest force till then evenr gathered for one operation. He advanced into Russia (which did not then include Poland) from the Polish frontier. The frontiers were marked by the rivers Naemen (to Grodno), Bohr, and Bug, 4h« gap between the two las? being joined by » line drawn from near Bialystok south-west to the Bug. But the vast marshy basin of the Pripet, lyiiig eastward of Brest-Litovsk, formed his southern Kmit, since, although Napoleon's, army of mixed nationalities' included some Austrians, Russia had an undertaking from her- southern neighbour tha* she would not be invaded from Galicia. GREAT ROADS AND RIVERS. In those days three great roads led out of Poland into Russia ; one ran from Kovno through Vilna to Minsk ; one from Grodno in an easterly direction, joining, about a hundred miles to the east, at Baranowitschi, the great main road from Warsaw through Breet-Liiovsk, Minsk, and Smo)ensk, to Moscow, 600 miles away. The Kovno-Minsk and Warsaw^ Moscow roads are now represented by railways. It is a simple matter to find these routes on a map, and readers will find the trouble of laying them out weft repaid. These roads were Napoleon's only routes) for it must be realised at once that all his transport was horsedrawn, and therefore confined to roads. Nor were these roads good, except in favourable weather. he had to take with him the whole of the sup-plies^-food, fodder, clothing, and ammunition — required by his enormous armies ; and, in spite of the detailed care bestowed upon the arrangements, they did not perfectly survive even the first crossing of the Niemen, where the invasion began. The country, devastated by both armies, supplied Napoleon with little or nothing as -he marched^ In the absence of mountains, there are two things which, more than anything else, shape strategy. They are roads (rail or other) as routes, and waterways as obstacles. A moment's study of the" map, with Napoleon's roads marked on it, will show a singular fact. All the three roads join into one; and that one, from Minsk, passes through a narrow gap 45 miles wide, between the Dwina River and Dnieper. This gap, which is> flanked for a long distance by the upper waters of both streams, and contains the large city of Smolensk, was called by Thiers, the great French historian of the 1812 campaign, "Les Portes de l'Orient" (the Gates of the East). It. was through, this gap that Xapoleon. went to Moscow, through it that he returned. THE RECORD DISASTER. Space will not allow any description of what happened. It suffices to say that the Russian armies, partly by design, partly by the aspect of so huge an army which was not really so formidable as its numbers suggested, fell back as rapidly as they could to "Moscow itself. The city was evacuated by a mutual arrangement. , The French armies waited to allow it to be cleared, because they knew from past experience that otherwise, there would be nothing of it left for them to take. They occupied it, found it almost deserted. The next day a huge conflagration, the origiD of which has never been properly discovered, broke out) and enormous damage was done. Nevertheless, so much of the city was left that the invaders remained in more or less luxurious occupation for a month, and when they left they were embarrassed by the weight of their looted treasure. Napoleon left Moscow because the Russians did what one might have expected to have been done long before. They offered decisive battle with, superior forces. Napoleon's army of 95,000 at Moscow was menaced by 120,000 Russians; 30,000 men at Brest were outnumbered three to one ; at Drissa 17,000 men were facing 40,000 Russians. The Russians assumed the offensive, and when the French accepted the challenge at Maloyaroslavetz they were heavily defeated. The Russians, who had hitherto been merely harrying the troops guarding the enormous length of road behind the main French army, now threatened in earnest to cut off the enemy, and the retreat from Moscow began No mere paragraph can deal with a retreat about which alone there is a great literature. It broke down almost at once. Soni* great and bloody battles were fought by the hungry and ill-supplied troop 3as they marched west, notably one great fight for the crossing oi the Berezina, the only great stream which ci'ossed -the line of retreat. Napoleon's army, reduced by bloodshed, starvation, and the bitter deadly cold of the Russian winter to a mere handful compared with its original mass. While it is true that an enormous number of the Grand Army perished through the intense frosts of the winter, the defeat was not due to the weather, as. so many writers have declared. The retreat had become a rout almost from the first ; the army was utterly demoralised before the hard frosts set in, and fhey caught the tramping hosts, heartless and hungry, /but treasuring worthless loot, long after it had lost the semblance of a real army and had passed any hope of being reorganised. The invasion began on 24th June. Moscow was entered on 15th September, and left on 18th October ; and Murat, to whom Napoleon had handed over his command on returning to Paris, crossed the Niemen again on Bth December, the campaign having thus lasted about five months and a-half. WHY NAPOLEON FAILED. Such was the order of events. The rhief causes of this disaster may be briefly set out (though the opinion* of those who refuse to admit Napoleon"* fallibility differ) m follow* s The ftapossibility of atrryifls b.v liontd traffic

supplies for «o huge an army over one mail* road ; the extraordinary amount of superfluous transport (officers had private carriages, many had their -wives, and a host of civilian hangers-on of both sexes went with the army), the impossibility, even for such a super-man as hi» greatest admirers believed Napoleon to be, of perfectly co-ordinating so vast an enterprise, in the absence of telegraphic communication. Even the last-named causa would have wrecked the enterprise, for many, perhaps hundreds, of orders were lost by the stoppage of messengers, or were received too late to be acted upon or when changed circumstances had altered the need for them. The vast difficulties of organisation were increased, according to some historians, by the fact that Napoleon had passed his prime. H« was absurdly egotistic, and fashioned his views, not upon facts as they were, but upon what he believed his supreme will had compelled them to be ; and his orders were for that reason often utterly impossible of execution. Napoleon had, indeed, nothing in his favour on his own side. The adventur* was a mad one; a madder it would be hard to conceive. But it might have been a worse catastrophe had the Russian armies' been more aggressive. The fact seems ' to be, however, that from first to last they exaggerated the real fighting strength of the French forces they met; indeed, the error was mutual. They were content to let circumstances do their fighting far' them; bat it is plain in the beginning, when the strategy of retreat was planned, the dreadful denouement could not have been foreseen. WHAT THE KAISER. HAS. Having thus briefly sketched the course of Napoleon's disastrous invasion, how does it compare with the Kaiser's j scheme? We {will take the Germans* conditions in similar order to Napoleon's: strength of armies, routes of advance, obstacles, means of communication, military organisation; and in no particular do the two agree. So vastly different are they, in fact, that a mere description of the enemy's advantages seems, after reading the story of Napoleon's catastrophe, to be an enthusiastic eulogy of the enwny. Yet the facts are plain. The combined strength of the AnstroGerman forces arrayed against Russia has not been satisfactorily stated j but it is quite sufficient to say that it is many' times greater than that of the Grand Army. So much the worse for the adventure, if it were not for the tremendous advantages that outweigh its magnitude. The Germans (the leading spirits in the campaign) have studied the handling of great 'armies with a patience and with facilities at command that were never available to Napoleon. The mere weight of numbers is not to town »< great disadvantage. Having fhe .means to handle such forces, they could not undertake the task safely without them. Nor is there any good evidence to show that the Russians are in superior number, as they were against Napoleon. Their routes of advance are not limited to three roads, subsequently to become one. They are sweeping Russia in a long line, moving not lengthwise but broadway on; their fighting front extends from, the Baltic to the corner of Rumania, on which it pivots. They are not limited to roads, for they have their own railways in Germany and Austria, and the . Russian railways, reconstructed after the Russian destruction, behind them. They have a vastly more huge I problem of transport to supply their millions with munitions on a scale of j which Napoleon never dreamt ; but it is solved by means in which horses play a minor part. The coal mine and the oil well, the engineer and the chemist, supply the power. The obstacles alone remain as in Napoleon's days ; but they are reduced to a minimnm by other facts. Tba 'Germans and Austrians have teaped ( from river to river. Even the great Vistula and Namv line did no more than briefly check them, because, when they could not get across, they went round. They got round the south of the Vistula. They are now trying to get round the north end of the Dwina. Supposing that the Russians can hold the rivers and the enemy advance to the line of the Dwina and the Dnieper, the " Gates of the East" will ftill be their only road. But if they force the crossing of the Dwina, j south-east of Riga, in the great fighting now going on at and near Frie-driehstadt, the barrier will be of comparatively little" value. Of vast importance, too, is the fact that Germany's Toutes of supply are contained within the lines of 'the fighting forces. There is no" long road, of vast extent, liable to be cut by some army approaching unheralded. It is true that the whole of the territory that has been swept by the invaders has to be occupied to such an extent that damage cannot be done to the railways by rash adventurers ; but at least there are no marauding bands of Cossacks to fear. As long as the great front is unbroken, the enemy's lines of communication are safe. As to means of commnni. cation, lor the ordering of the vast operations into a co-ordinated scheme the Germans to-day have telegraphy, with and without wires, by which the actual conditions at all times and all places can be known, and orders drafted suited to the_ moment, and not to an imaginary condition. The day of galloping couriers, whose despatches come ' too late or never, m gone. Napoleon suffered partly because his army was cluttered up with drones and the baggage of drones. The German armies of to-day are purged of rubbish ; they are a fighting machine, armed to i the teeth, every element schooled for efficiency to the utmost degree possible. I Some of the fighting men are perhaps not of the best by now ; but there is no "rag-tag and bob-tail" about them. j Lastly, as to the coming winter — that deadly season which set the seal v upon the downfall of the Grand Army. Is it likely to do the same by the Germans and Austrians? It can only do so if, like Napoleon's armies, they fail in maintaining themselves as a fighting force. ' They have faced one winter without disaster. There cold may have its terrors, I but it will not vanquish an army well clothed and well fed, and sheltered in ! a proper way. The enemy need not fear j winter merely because of the weather. Indeed, in some respects the hard frosts ! of Russia will facilitate their transport, making it possible to move heavy guns and wagons over country impassable except when the ground is frozen hard, and even opening up vast marshes as battlefields. This is the array of advantages which the enemy has to support his belief that he can still advance into Russia, in the hope of, sooner or later, seizing the Russian armies at a disadvantage and crushing them by utter defeat. INVINCIBLE SPACES. The other side of the case is the strength of Russia. Like the Germans, they hare all the lessons that can be learned from the fiasco of 1812. They have- men in millions to replace the fallen ; they have the ephit of sacrifice that will enable them to retreat, not to Moscow, but beyond, if necessary, and the Napoleon of to-day has enemies else where to face. Russia, as well as Germany, has railways, automobiles, and telegiaphs. She has fighting implements equal in quality, if not quantity, to those of her enemies. She has one argument which, in the presence of her Allies, she can infallibly depend upon so Jong as her own armies are kept from disaster. There is a limit, not very far off, beyond which the German and Austrian troops cannot advance. They must, to secure the communications which are absolutely vital to her fighting power, occupy the whole oi the invaded territory, s-nd keep tbsif front covered, *ad thjLt invidod tmtjltow-bdadta the wholt

■of Poland. There is a limit to the" area and the length of front which can be held in this way, and provided with efficient 'railways ; and when that limit has been reached, little more than the fringe of Russia's vast territories will have been trodden by the foe. Russia's problem is a simple one in essence. She cannot yet hope to beat the enemy in battle; she has hardly more than begun her preparations in earnest. She mustj- at all costs, keep her armies as whole ac she can, fighting where it is safe to fight, bnt going back as the invader becomes dangerous. There will come an end to the retreat, but it must go on, either till the Russians stop it, or till the enemy cannot pursue. The second cause may operate before tie first. Nothing in its progress need cause dismay ; the longer it persists, the more successful it is, the surer in the end is the Allies' victory..