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By Root 3658 0

to add the fact that Wittgenstein and Chichagov were separated by a swath of land in which no less than five full enemy corps and a number of smaller detachments were operating. At the very moment when Alexander was sending Chernyshev to Kutuzov, an additional 36,000 French reinforcements under Marshal Victor were entering Belorussia from the west. They reached Minsk on 15 September and Smolensk twelve days later.

Alexander’s plan assumed that his armies would defeat all these enemy forces and drive them out of Belorussia, though at the time he was concocting his plan the Russians were not yet numerically superior to their foes. Advancing into Belorussia in the middle of winter the Russian columns would certainly suffer heavy losses from sickness and exhaustion. Alexander instructed Wittgenstein and Chichagov to fortify the defiles and obstacles through which Napoleon’s army would have to retreat, but would they have the time or the manpower to do this? As the emperor himself acknowledged, the enemy could head for Minsk or Vilna and had the choice of at least three highways down which to make his escape. In the event, Alexander’s plan about two-thirds succeeded, which was more than one might have expected in the circumstances. In the second half of November, however, as Napoleon approached the river Berezina it appeared briefly as if the plan might succeed completely and might result in the total destruction of the French army and even in the capture of Napoleon himself. Because this did not happen, Russian accounts of the autumn campaign have always tended to combine triumph at the French debacle with regret that it was not even more complete.

Chernyshev himself had to do a big detour to the east of Moscow before finally reaching Kutuzov’s headquarters south of the city on 20 September. There he had discussions with Kutuzov and Bennigsen which showed his intimate knowledge of Alexander’s thinking and filled in many of the gaps in the emperor’s written proposals. On 22 September Chernyshev reported to Alexander that he had shown the necessary tact in urging the emperor’s ideas on the commander-in-chief and that both Kutuzov and Bennigsen had warmly endorsed the plan. He added that the fall of Moscow had not fundamentally changed ‘the enemy’s poor situation’ and that Napoleon would not be able to sustain himself in the Moscow region for long. There was every chance of destroying him ‘so long as the people here don’t again make serious mistakes before our armies have united in his rear’.3

Immediately afterwards Chernyshev set off for Chichagov’s headquarters in north-west Ukraine in order to inform the admiral of Alexander’s plan. In the autumn and winter of 1812 the dashing young colonel was to add to the laurels he had won in Paris and fully to justify Alexander’s confidence. In mid-October he led a large partisan raiding party of seven regular light cavalry squadrons, three Cossack regiments and one Kalmyk unit deep into the Duchy of Warsaw, destroying magazines, disrupting conscription and forcing Schwarzenberg to divert much of the Austrian cavalry back to the Duchy in order to track him down. Subsequently, Chernyshev took a Cossack regiment right through the French rear and linked up with Wittgenstein, bringing the latter his first clear sense of Chichagov’s movements and intentions. By happy accident, during this journey Chernyshev liberated Ferdinand Winzengerode and his aide-de-camp, Captain Lev Naryshkin, who had been captured in Moscow and were en route back to France. Since Winzengerode was one of Alexander’s favourite generals and Naryshkin was the son of the emperor’s mistress this was a great coup for Chernyshev. Wittgenstein praised Chernyshev’s achievements in glowing terms and Alexander promoted his 26-year-old aide-de-camp to the rank of major-general.4

While Chernyshev was carrying Alexander’s plans for a counter-offensive first to Kutuzov and then to Chichagov, a vicious ‘people’s war’, reminiscent of events in Spain, had spread across the Moscow region. Eugen of Württemberg wrote that the Russian