Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [187]
In the first week of March, with Berlin and all Prussia liberated, and with Miloradovich’s and Wintzengerode’s corps of Kutuzov’s army positioned on the Polish border with Prussian Silesia, the first phase of the spring 1813 campaign was over. For the remainder of the month most of the Russian army was in quarters, resting after the winter campaign and attempting to feed itself and its horses, and to get its uniforms, muskets and equipment into some kind of order. Kutuzov issued detailed instructions to commanding officers about how to utilize this rest-period and they did their best to comply. While quartered near Kalicz, for example, the Lithuania (Litovsky) Guards Regiment trained every morning. All its muskets were repaired by skilled private craftsmen under the eagle eyes of the regiment’s NCOs. Its battered wagons were also repaired. A fifteen-day supply of flour was baked into bread and biscuit against future emergencies. The regiment could not replenish its ammunition because the ammunition parks were still stuck along the army’s line of communication, but each company built a Russian bath-house for itself. Material arrived for new uniforms and tailors’ shops were immediately set up to turn this into uniforms.34
Although the Lithuania Guards Regiment enjoyed a rest in these weeks it received almost no reinforcements. This was true of almost all units in Kutuzov’s and Wittgenstein’s armies. The new reserve forces which had formed in Russia over the winter had been summoned to the front but they would not arrive until late May at the earliest. A handful of men dribbled back to the ranks from hospital or detached duties but they merely filled the gaps left by men falling out through sickness or dispatched from the regiments on essential tasks. At Kalicz, the Lithuania Guards had 38 officers and 810 men in the ranks but the Guards were usually far stronger than the bulk of the army. The Kexholm Regiment, for example, was down to just 408 men in mid-March.35
As was typical of Osten-Sacken’s corps operating in south-west Poland, the Iaroslavl Regiment of Johann Lieven’s 10th Infantry Division was much stronger than most of the units in Kutuzov’s army. Even it, however, in mid-March had 5 officers and 170 men in hospital, and 14 officers and 129 men on detached duties. The latter included guarding the regimental baggage, helping the formation of reserves, escorting prisoners of war, collecting uniforms and equipment from the rear, and supervising the collection and dispatch of convalescents from hospitals. These detachments always required a disproportionate number of officers and were the inevitable consequence of a year’s campaigning which had now resulted in lines of communication stretching back for hundreds of kilometres. But they meant that when the campaign’s second phase began in April and the Russian forces advanced to meet Napoleon’s main army they would do so in a thoroughly reduced, even in some cases skeletal, condition.36
While much of the Russian army was resting in March 1813 its light forces were gaining new laurels. Among their new exploits was a brilliant little victory near Lüneburg on 2 April where Chernyshev’s and Dornberg’s Russian ‘flying columns’ united to annihilate a French division under General Morand.
The most spectacular exploit of the light forces in March and April was, however, Tettenborn’s seizure of Hamburg and Lübeck, amidst a popular insurrection against the French. In this region, whose prosperity depended on overseas trade, the Continental System and Napoleon’s empire were deeply hated. The arrival of Tettenborn’s cavalry and Cossacks was greeted with ecstasy by the population. Already on 31 January Tettenborn had written to Alexander to say that French rule was detested in north-west Germany and ‘I am firmly convinced that we could quickly