Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [162]
With few exceptions the marshals did everything possible and the nobles volunteered the food and transport needed but the enemy was time and distance. Napoleon would have had to stay in Moscow for an extra month at least for mobile magazines from far-off Penza, Simbirsk and Saratov to arrive in time for the autumn campaign. In fact, however, the autumn campaign started even before the mobile magazines from less distant provinces could arrive. The first half of the Riazan mobile magazine, for instance, set off on 29 October, the first echelon of the Tambov mobile magazine on 7 November. Even these mobile magazines had a considerable journey to the army. Moreover they soon found themselves marching in its wake, behind its vast artillery train and through areas eaten out by the men and horses which had already passed. Soon the supply train began to eat its own food in order to stop men and horses from starving. Stuck in the rear with the supply train was also much of the winter clothing which Kutuzov had ordered the governors of nearby provinces to requisition for the army.41
In principle the mobile magazines should have been directed along march-routes which would intersect the advance of Kutuzov’s columns. Kutuzov did actually order the intendant-general of the combined First and Second armies, Vasili Lanskoy, to send all supplies from Tula towards the army’s line of march through the southern districts of Smolensk province. Just possibly if Barclay de Tolly and Georg Kankrin had been masterminding supply operations rather than Kutuzov, Konovnitsyn and Lanskoy the arrangements might have been more efficient but the task was difficult. Until the last week of October no one could know along which route Napoleon would retreat or Kutuzov would pursue him. Mobile magazines wrongly directed could fall into enemy hands. Once the campaign had begun the armies never stopped moving. Together with the distances involved, the pre-modern communications and the total inexperience of the noble inspectors who led the mobile magazines, this made coordination of army and supply column movements very hard.42
By 5 November Kutuzov acknowledged that ‘the rapid movement of the army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy means that the transport with food for the troops is falling behind and therefore the army is beginning to suffer a shortage of victuals’. As a result he issued detailed orders on where and how much to requisition from the local population, threatening anyone failing to cooperate with field courts martial. The problem, however, was that as the army approached Smolensk in mid-November it was entering an area ravaged by war and previously occupied by the enemy, where part of the population had fled to the forests, very many farms had been destroyed and there was no friendly local administration to help levy supplies. When they reached the area around the city of Smolensk many of Kutuzov’s troops began to go hungry for the first time in the campaign.43
The only major clash between regular Russian troops and Napoleon’s retreating army occurred at Viazma on 3 November. The various corps of Napoleon’s army retreating down the Smolensk highway were strung out over 50 kilometres. Miloradovich therefore attempted to cut off the French rearguard, commanded by Marshal Davout. The attempt failed, above all because Miloradovich was tightly constrained by Kutuzov’s cautious orders and the field-marshal refused to move up in his support with the army’s main body. The corps of Eugène de Beauharnais, Poniatowski