Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [79]
For whatever reason, Barclay said nothing about what would happen if the defence line along the Dvina and Dnieper was breached. Nor did he venture an opinion as to whether 200,000 men would be sufficient. Only weeks into his new job, perhaps he felt that he had risked enough by advocating the abandonment of the whole of Belorussia and Lithuania in his first discussion of strategy with the monarch.45
For two years after Barclay wrote this memorandum Russian generals debated whether to adopt a defensive or offensive strategy in the face of the threat from Napoleon. Given the fact that the defensive strategy initially suggested by Barclay in March 1810 was the one which was finally adopted and which ultimately proved successful it might seem self-evident that this was the correct option. In fact this was far from clear at the time. A number of intelligent proposals for an offensive strategy were put forward by key generals. A point to note is that for much of the period between March 1810 and April 1812 both Barclay de Tolly and Aleksandr Chernyshev advocated at least a limited initial offensive into Prussia and the Duchy of Warsaw. The leading advocate of a purely defensive strategy was Lieutenant-General Karl von Pfühl, a former senior Prussian staff officer accepted into Russian service in December 1806. Pfühl’s chief assistant was Lieutenant-Colonel Ludwig von Wolzogen, who was responsible for choosing the position of the famous fortified camp at Drissa on which Pfühl’s defensive strategy rested. But in October 1811 even Wolzogen argued that an offensive strategy made more sense.46
The reasons for this were partly political. It was clear to everyone that unless the Russian army advanced at the beginning of the war there was no chance of keeping Prussia as an ally. Right down to the winter of 1811–12 this issue hung in the balance, with a Russo-Prussian convention pledging Russia to an offensive signed but ultimately never ratified by the Prussian side. Another vital political issue was the competition to secure Polish loyalty. As Bennigsen argued in February 1811, a Russian offensive into the Duchy of Warsaw would stymie Napoleon’s wish to mobilize Polish support in Russia’s western borderlands. If the moral effect of a Russian offensive was combined with attractive political concessions to the Poles, large sections of the Polish army might fight on the Russian side.47
There were also powerful military reasons for an offensive. Invading the Duchy of Warsaw meant that Polish rather than Russian soil would bear the costs of war. More important, if Napoleon was to invade Russia, the Duchy of Warsaw and East Prussia would be his key bases. Huge stores would need to be amassed well in advance to sustain the invading army. As this army made its way across Europe to take up position on the Russian border their stores and their sources of food and fodder in the Duchy would be vulnerable to a Russian preemptive strike. For a sensible invader, the campaigning season in Russia was short. It was lunacy to invade before early June, when there would be sufficient grass in the field to feed the horses. That allowed less than five months before the snows began to fall in November. At the very least, a Russian pre-emptive strike might delay Napoleon’s plans for an offensive and gain an additional year for Russian defensive preparations.
Above all, Russian generals advocated an offensive because they understood how very risky and difficult a purely defensive strategy would be. The western border was immensely long. If Russia was still at war with the Turks, French or Austrian troops could invade Bessarabia and threaten the entire Russian position on the north shore of the Black Sea, at the same time as Napoleon’s main army was tying most of the Russian forces down in Belorussia and Lithuania. In the spring of 1812 peace with the Ottomans