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By 29 October Napoleon’s headquarters were at Gzhatsk, back on the highway and 230 kilometres from Smolensk. After rejoining the Moscow–Smolensk road at Mozhaisk, his army passed the battlefield of Borodino and the Kolotskoe monastery, which had been turned into a hospital. Many hundreds of wounded men remained there, who should have been evacuated well before the army’s arrival. Instead Napoleon now tried to load them onto the carts of his baggage train, many of whose drivers took the first opportunity to tip them off into the ditches beside the road.36

The battlefield itself was a terrible sight. None of the bodies had been buried. Scores of thousands of corpses lay out in the fields or in great mounds around the Raevsky battery and other points where the fighting had been most fierce.

For fifty-two days they had lain as victims of the elements and the changing weather. Few still had a human look. Well before the frosts had arrived, maggots and putrefaction had made their mark. Other enemies had also appeared. Packs of wolves had come from every corner of Smolensk province. Birds of prey had flown from the nearby fields. Often the beasts of the forest and those of the air fought over the right to tear apart the corpses. The birds picked out the eyes, the wolves cleaned the bones of their flesh.37

As Napoleon’s army turned towards Smolensk along the highway, the closest Russian forces remained Matvei Platov’s Cossacks. Their orders were to harass the enemy day and night, allowing him little sleep and no chance to forage. By 1 November Miloradovich’s advance guard of Kutuzov’s army was also approaching. It was made up of two infantry corps and 3,500 regular cavalry. Kutuzov’s main body was still some way to the south, marching along country roads parallel to the highway. This line of march made clear Kutuzov’s intention not to fight a pitched battle with Napoleon. Food supply was also an incentive to keep well away from the highway and march through districts untouched by war.

Once Kutuzov’s army began to pursue Napoleon, problems of supply were inevitable. The army was moving away from its bases and into an impoverished war zone. Even in Smolensk province, let alone Belorussia and Lithuania, there was every likelihood that food would be impossible to find and that the army would have to feed itself from its own wagons. It required 850 carts to carry a day’s food and forage for an army of 120,000 men and 40,000 horses. To sustain itself for a long period would therefore require many thousands of carts. Even if they could be found, this would not necessarily solve the problem. The horses and drivers of the supply train had to feed themselves as well. In a vicious circle very familiar to pre-modern generals the army’s supply train could end up by eating all the food it was attempting to deliver. The longer it spent on the march, the likelier this was to happen. Moving thousands of carts along side roads in a Russian autumn was bound to be a very slow business, especially if they were travelling in the rear of a huge artillery train. These realities go a long way to explaining Kutuzov’s predicament in the autumn and winter of 1812.38

When the campaign began the men carried three days’ rations, and seven more days of ‘biscuit’ – in other words the dried black bread which was the staple of Russian regiments on the march – were in the regimental carts. This was what the regulations required and Kutuzov insisted that they were fully complied with. Large extra supplies were in the army’s wagon train to the rear of the marching columns. On 17 October the army’s chief victualling officer reported that he had sufficient biscuit to feed 120,000 men for twenty days – in other words until 6 November – and 20,000 quarters of oats for the horses.39

Well before the start of the autumn campaign Kutuzov had attempted to create a large mobile magazine to support the army’s advance. On 27 September orders had gone out to twelve provincial governors to form mobile magazines and send them to the army immediately,