History of Europe

Cossacks against Napoleon in the Russian Campaign (1812)

If there is a type of troop that highlights the uniqueness of the Russian army of the Napoleonic Wars, it is undoubtedly the Cossack cavalry , irregular troops from the steppes of southern Russia and Ukraine of heterogeneous origins (of Tatar, Slavic and even Polish descent) and strong identity of their own whose collaboration with the Russians dates back to the 14th century, when they fought the Golden Horde alongside Dmitri Donskoi. This relationship was not easy, and the independent nature of the Cossacks (kazaks ) was demonstrated in the multiple uprisings they joined.

However, during the eighteenth century they took carried out various initiatives to placate their unruly nature and by the beginning of the 19th century they were fully integrated into the army, to which they contributed proportionally more troops than any other community, a war effort to which they also contributed their own weapons, consisting of long spears between 3 and 4 m, various melee weapons (sabers, scimitars, war hammers) and firearms (carbines and pistols, usually two but sometimes up to six). To face the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, the Host (Voisko ) of the Gift organized a total of ninety polks (regiments, in turn divided into five or ten sotnias or squadrons, of a hundred Cossacks each) and two horse artillery batteries, those of the Black Sea and the Urals ten polks each, the Siberian ten polks and two artillery batteries, the Ukrainian Host four polks , Bug three and Orenburg one. In total, 69,600 Cossacks were recruited to march to the front.

As irregular troops, the Cossacks excelled at reconnaissance ("nothing eludes their hustle, escapes their insight, or surprises their vigilance," said General Wilson , British attache to the Russian army in 1812) or as a screen for their own troops, protecting the flanks and rear of the columns, staging reckless raids behind enemy lines, laying ambushes, etc. In the Battle of Mir (July 9, 1812), during the French advance, they displayed one of their favorite tactics, when a detachment of Cossacks lured a sizeable force of six regiments of Polish lancers by feigned flight to Mir, where the Polk of Sysoev. After violent charges and countercharges, once the enemy was fixed, another seven regiments, until then hidden, attacked the Poles by surprise, who in their retreat, found that two other sotnias , who had remained in the shelter of a copse, blocked their path. Of the 1,600 Poles who took part in the action, 600 were killed, while the Russians lost just 180 men. And in another of his tricks, the night of July 27, when everything seemed to indicate that the next day Napoleon would finally have his long-awaited battle in Vitebsk , he would be mocked once again by Barclay de Tolly and for his Cossacks, who kept the Russian camp fires alive as the army slipped through the Corsican's fingers once again.

However, its particular idiosyncrasy and scant interest Due to personal sacrifice, it was not very useful in pitched battles against formed units, as was demonstrated in the cavalry raid during the battle of Borodino , on September 7, when the Cossacks of a drunk (and not of glory) Hetman Platov they failed to advance until they reached their objectives in the French rear. Two days later, in a vanguard combat, Rafael de Llanza testified to this lack of spirit:

However, after Borodino the battered Russian army would have the opportunity to recompose itself, and once again it would be the Cossacks who would provide the most units to Kutúzov , with a total of 15,000 armed and equipped horsemen framed in 26 new regiments from the Don, in an unparalleled logistical effort that would not only erase the stain of his hetman Platov, but would earn him a county. Under normal circumstances, a contingent of this size would have seemed clearly excessive, but the circumstances in which the outcome of the 1812 campaign would take place would be far from normal.

The harassment of the French forces would begin during the same stay of the French forces in Moscow, where in the words of the Spanish Rafael de Llanza , commander of one of the four battalions of the José Napoleon Regiment, «the French army lacked food. The marauders or robbers, which is the same thing, instead of finding provisions for the campaign, used to try the spears of the Cossacks». Napoleon will try to open a route to the south, but will be defeated on October 24 at the battle of Maloyaroslavets . Sergeant Burgogne tells us in his memoirs the events of the next day:

Llanza narrates that same incident in a less poetic way, confessing that they lost “all the artillery at dawn on the 25th due to an ambush of two thousand Cossacks who, coming out of a forest, cut down the column, killed whatever they found, horribly disordered the whole convoy and in this situation the Emperor was passing through him, and it was a good game to put his foot down. His guard, three aides and a general were speared ». Since then, Napoleon would always carry around his neck a vial of opium, belladonna white hellebore, and at dawn on October 26, he would order the withdrawal of the Grande Armée.

It will be the French withdrawal from Moscow that will allow the Cossacks to earn their undying fame by making the most of their qualities in dire circumstances, in which any regular cavalry unit would have disintegrated. If the Wurttemberg Jakob Walter survived the withdrawal was thanks to getting a horse "from that country" that

During the harsh Russian winter, the Cossacks will not only tirelessly harass the French rearguard, but will also prevent the enemy columns from supplying supplies, killing any party of foragers that dares to separate from the bulk of the troops. According to Llanza «The word was spread that in Smolenks there was an army of 100,000 men with whom it would be easy for us to get rid of the Cossack tabardillos, that we constantly had them to the right and left of the road, without being able to move away at the shortest distance. without being speared.”

Breaking away from the column to seek the warmth of a burning town and again the "uncommon intelligence" of his horse allowed Walter to save his skin :

Framed in independent games or in the flying columns of seasoned officials like Chernyschev or Davydov , his audacity would be greater and greater, and by mid-October partisan and Polish troops were penetrating the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, wreaking havoc and forcing the invaders to start worrying about their rear.

In early 1813 Cossacks rode with impunity on the ground German, where they would become a real nightmare for the enemy, whose cavalry forces had been terribly diminished after the withdrawal from Russia, to the point that the constant harassment of the French lines of communication and the continuous interception of imperial couriers provided the Russian commanders –and allies after formation of the Sixth Coalition – the best possible intelligence on Napoleonic intentions. But friends didn't always come out unscathed either. After a series of fatal incidents, Allied officers, many of whom wore blue, began to wear white armbands to differentiate themselves from the French and thus avoid dangerous misunderstandings with the Cossacks, who in the following months demonstrated another of their vocations. , his voracity for others . "Men the most thieving in the world, crossing a multitude of Russian camps that have no less inclination to the virtues of Caco," Llanza said of the Cossacks after his capture at their hands. As the prayer "De cosaquibus Domine, libera nos" resounded throughout Germany, many Allied officers had to deal with them, and not always to avoid looting; some, like Colonel Löwenstern, who rivaled the Cossacks in rapacity, were unable to wheedle their share, accustomed to dividing the spoils equally. In a reckless coup, the Cossacks would break into the streets of Berlin. Shortly after, on March 4, the Prussian capital would fall into Russian hands. The Russian campaign had finished. The war for Germany began .