POLISH EYEWITNESSES TO NAPOLEON’S 1812 CAMPAIGN ADVANCE & RETREAT IN RUSSIA
A COLLECTION OF NEVER-BEFORE TRANSLATED POLISH EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OFFERS MANY NEW INSIGHTS INTO NAPOLEON’S DISASTROUS 1812 CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA
Authors: Marek Tadeusz Lalowski & Jonathan North Publisher: Pen and Sword Price: £25
Amid the news onslaught at the start of 2021, a discovery dating back to 1812 made headlines: the remains of 120 soldiers, three women and three adolescents, all thought to have fallen in the of Battle of Vyazma, were ceremoniously reburied in Russia. The Napoleonic Wars and the allure of Bonaparte himself still holds Europe under its spell – perhaps nowhere more so than in Poland, where the Napoleonic Wars will forever be intertwined with Poland’s own struggle for independence. With their country partitioned by Austria, Prussia and Russia, many Poles pledged their support for Napoleon, who had proclaimed the constitution of The Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 and hoped their continued loyalty would in time bring the full restoration of the Polish Kingdom. The Polish Legions were first formed by General Jan Henryk Dabrowski and served with the French Army, seeing combat in most of Napoleon’s campaigns throughout Italy, Egypt, the West Indies and later Spain. Although morale fell when it became ever more apparent that they were sacrificed in theatres of war which had no direct affect on the resurrection of Poland, veterans of these campaigns would come to form the core of the Duchy’s army raised under Prince Józef Poniatowski. The Polish contingent stood at an astonishing 100,000-strong when Napoleon’s Grande Armée gathered in the spring of 1812.
Yet the Poles often find themselves excluded from Western narratives of the Napoleonic Wars, where Adam Zamoyski’s 1812,
Henrich von Brandt’s In The Legions Of Napoleon and Dezydery Chlapowski’s Memoirs Of A Polish Lancer prove to be excellent, yet far too few exceptions. This makes Marek Lalowski and Jonathan North’s Polish Eyewitnesses To Napoleon’s 1812 Campaign a most welcome new addition. Albeit short, it gives a broad range of accounts selected from diaries, letters and memoirs, many of which have never before been translated into English. We learn about what happened after the gathering of ‘the greatest army the world had ever seen’, such as the march through Russia, the battles of Smolensk and Borodino, the burning of Moscow, the winter retreat and the crossing of the treacherous Berezina River.
These personal accounts give us a vivid and immediate impression of what happened. In one such testimony, Captain
Prot Lelewel, V Corps, recalls: “Our march resembled a funeral procession. I dragged myself along with others, not knowing if I was asleep or awake as I went. The cold and hungry skeletons covered in all possible kinds of dress wanted food and fire, and often met only death. We ringed the campfires, and sleep was easy, but when the fire was extinguished some woke from the cold, while the others slept for ever. My head often rested on one who would not rise again, and I used to stand up and leave with indifference. Despite him being a stranger, I had also forgotten that he was a man.”
The Polish perspective also offers many valuable insights into the failures and strategic blunders of the campaign, one of which remains intrinsically linked to the very question of Poland’s independence. As Ignacy Pradzynski on General Dabrowski’s staff summarised after defeat, a significant error lay in Napoleon’s aim to complete the war in a single campaign instead of first establishing the lines of Old Poland and utilising the subsequent winter truce to enlarge his army with troops from these liberated lands.
As the Grande Armée fell apart, so did Poland’s hope for independence. Yet in the years to follow, as new uprisings would erupt, the legend of the Polish Legions lived on. The unrivalled splendour of their uniforms still glistened in the collective Polish memory and with time the Song Of The Polish Legions In Italy became the national anthem of Poland: “March, march Dabrowski…”