Trophies, fame, all the blessings for which we sacrificed everything have become a burden to us; now it was not about how to decorate your life, but how to save it. In this great crash, the army, like a large ship smashed by a terrible storm, did not hesitate to throw into this sea of ice and snow everything that could impede and delay its movement(from the Notes of the Adjutant of Emperor Napoleon I Philippe Paul de Segur)
Napoleon's retreat from Russia
Jerzy KOSSAK
Napoleon's retreat from Russia (detail)
Jerzy KOSSAK
Trophies taken from Moscow were thrown into the waters of Lake Smelevskoye: cannons, ancient weapons, Kremlin decorations and a cross from the Ivan the Great bell tower were flooded.
A few words about what hardships befell the Napoleonic Great Army on the territory of Russia. It just so happened that the non-combat losses of the army exceeded the combat ones, which, however, happened quite often in those days. As we remember, in the first half of the campaign, a terrible heat, dust that covered the eyes and penetrated everywhere, and not only in the upper respiratory tract, endless intense marches, diseases tormented and mowed down the soldiers. People died from heat strokes, heart attacks, intestinal and lung infections, and simply from physical exhaustion.
Retreat after Smolensk
Adolph NORTERN
Road
Jan HELMINSKY
Hard road
Jan HELMINSKY
Literally a few days after the exodus of the French army from Moscow, interruptions in the supply of foodstuffs began, and the further, the worse.
In the evening, hunger began to be felt among those parts that had time to deplete their reserves. Until then, every time the soup was cooked, everyone gave his portion of flour, but when it was noticed that not everyone was participating in the pooling, many began to hide in order to eat what they had; they ate together only horse meat soup, which they began to cook in recent days.
Preparing for dinner
Alexander APSIT
They used not only the meat of fallen and specially slaughtered horses, but also birds, bears, everything that came across the path of hungry people:
- Since yesterday I have eaten only half of the crow I raised on the road, and a few tablespoons of cereal chowder, half with oat straw and rye, salted with gunpowder.
The flight of the French with their families from Russia.
Bogdan VILLEVALDE
Lost in thought. 1812 year
Wojzeck KOSSAK
Return
Jerzy Kossak
Two French hussars
Wojzeck KOSSAK
In addition, it was necessary to take care of the coming winter ahead of time, especially since on the way to Moscow some of the soldiers, exhausted from the intense heat, got rid of their warm uniforms. And from Moscow they did not take warm winter clothes with them and this became one of the fatal mistakes. As Dominique Pierre de la Vlyse, Assistant Surgeon General for the French Army and Imperial Guard, Jean-Dominique Larrey, wrote: ... our French did not seem to have foreseen it. The Poles, who are more shrewd, and even familiar with the region, in advance, back in Moscow, stocked up with fur coats they collected in stores and rows, since no one prevented them from doing this, and their vans were full of this good... He argued, and apparently had grounds for this, since he lived both in France and in Russia (after the Russian captivity he did not want to return to his homeland, remained in the Russian Empire, got married) that those who believe that , the French, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese who were in the army perished from the cold, as the inhabitants of the south were unaccustomed to it. On the contrary, the doctor believed that this Russian peasant, who had grown up in a warm, stuffy hut, was more sensitive to the cold than the French and Italians, accustomed to it in their unheated rooms; they tolerate frost 5-6 ° quite well in light clothing.
Departure of the French from Moscow
Januarius SUKHODOLSKY
The weather was good both near Maloyaroslavets and near Vyazma, but this did not help the French army to win the battles. A participant in the campaign, Henri Boyle (future writer Stendhal) wrote: It would be a mistake to think that winter came early in 1812; on the contrary, the weather was most beautiful in Moscow. When we set out from there on October 19, it was only three degrees below zero, and the sun was shining brightly... Although it should be noted that spending the night outdoors, even at low positive temperatures, high humidity, causing chills, are sometimes more dangerous than severe frosts.
Retreat from Russia
Theodore JERICO
They say that when leaving Moscow, Emperor Napoleon intended to send all the wounded in order to avoid Russian revenge, saying:
- I will give all the treasures of Russia for the life of one wounded ...
Dutch regiment during the retreat from Russia
Kate ROKKO
In fact, it turned out differently. Carriages full of wounded often got stuck on Russian roads, were left without help, despite the cries for help and the groans of the dying. Everyone passed by. At first, the order of Napoleon was executed, according to which everyone who had a carriage was obliged to seat one wounded man, each waitress had a sick or wounded person in the cart, but this did not last long. Later they were simply thrown onto the road.
Return from Russia
Theodore JERICO
... many sick and wounded, who were not able to walk, were forced to leave on the road; among them were women and children, emaciated by hunger and prolonged walking. In vain they tried to persuade us to help them, but we did not have the means for that ... ... the wounded trudged as best they could, some on crutches, some with a bandaged hand or head; after taking a few steps, they sat down on the edge of the road.
The moment we left the battlefield was terrible and sad; our poor wounded, seeing that we were leaving them on the field of death, surrounded by the enemy - especially the soldiers of the 1st Voltizhorsk regiment, most of whose legs were crushed by buckshot - trudged behind us on their knees, staining the snow with their blood; they raised their hands to the sky, emitting heart-rending screams and pleading for help, but what could we do? After all, the same fate awaited us ourselves every minute; retreating, we were forced to leave to the mercy of fate all who fell in our ranks.(from Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne)
The return of the French army from Russia
J. RUSSO
Return of Napoleon from Russia in 1812
Marie Gaston Onfrey de BREVILLE
Retreating French
Kazimir PULATSKY
Hussar in the snow
Wojzeck KOSSAK
Russian frosts began in early November, very severe after Smolensk, they alternated with thaws, but did not play a decisive role in the defeat of the French, since the army was demoralized even before their onset. The daily endless transitions did not contribute to the strengthening of combat effectiveness. People were so weak, even tempered, that, having fallen down, they could not get up and froze; the whole road was strewn with corpses. Despair, hopelessness and fear that gripped many, contributed to an increase in losses, especially after Smolensk, when hopes for warm shelter and more or less decent food collapsed.
The main reason for the death of the French in the coming frosts was the lack of warm clothing, the lack of nutritious food and vodka, which one cannot do without, being constantly in the cold.(Napoleon's campaign to Russia in 1812, de la Fleese)
Backward
Vladimir ZVORYKIN
Backward
Alexander APSIT
Soon, chronic hunger and exhaustion led to the fact that many soldiers, obeying the instinct of self-preservation, began to disperse alone or in groups in search of food and shelter, to lag behind their columns. But in vain, everything in the area was devastated by them even during the invasion. The laggards were met by Cossacks, partisans or local peasants, who did not stand on ceremony with them, undressed them, drove them onto the Smolensk road, or even killed them altogether.
In 1812. Captive French
Illarion Pryanishnikov
As Leo Tolstoy aptly noted, The partisans destroyed the Great Army piece by piece. They picked up those fallen leaves that fell by themselves from a withered tree - the French army, and sometimes shook this tree ...
Partisans in ambush
Alexander APSIT
Partisans
Alexander APSIT
Alexander APSIT
Do not hide - let me pass!
Vasily Vereshchagin
The painting is dedicated to the peasant struggle against the enemy in 1812. In its center is a generalized image of the hero of the partisan movement in 1812, about which the artist learned from oral legends. In my search, I collected what I could from the oral folk legends of old people, such as the legend about the partisan, the head of one of the villages of the Mozhaisk district, Semyon Arkhipovich, whom I portrayed in the painting Do not hush - let me come!
The guerrillas are leading the captured French. Illustrations for the novel by Leo Tolstoy War and Peace
Dementy Shmarinov
It happened that the peasants themselves fell into the hands of the French, whom they also did not spare.
With weapons in hand - shoot
Vasily Vereshchagin
Napoleon condemns partisans to be shot
Alexander APSIT
Military execution. The execution of Lieutenant Colonel P.I. Engelhardt in October 1812.
Engraving by JAZE after the original by P. VINIERON
At the beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812, Pavel Ivanovich Engelhardt, a retired lieutenant colonel, lived in his estate Diaghilevo, Smolensk province. When the enemy occupied Smolensk, he, along with several other landowners, armed his peasants, organizing a people's detachment. Engelhardt's detachment inflicted quite serious damage on the enemy, robbing French convoys and attacking individual groups of the French, who were looting throughout the county.
The execution of Lieutenant Colonel P.I. Engelhardt in October 1812
Semyon KOZHIN
Engelgart's execution
Engraving by an unknown author
Later Pavel Ivanovich was taken prisoner, they say, his own peasants surrendered him. The French tried to persuade him to betray the Fatherland, go to their service, but to no avail. He was sentenced to be shot. In Smolensk, behind the Molokhov Gate, the execution took place. Courageously, not allowing himself to be blindfolded, he accepted death.
By the way, you can listen to or read about the prisoners in the war of 1812 and their fates from the brilliant storyteller,
historian Alexei Kuznetsov
Retreat of the Grand Army
L. KRATKE
The army marched shrouded in cold fog ... It seemed as if the sky had descended and merged with this land and with this hostile people to end our death!
While our soldiers were struggling to make their way in the raging snow whirlwind, the wind blew up the snowdrifts. These snowdrifts hid from us ravines and potholes on a road unfamiliar to us; the soldiers fell through them, and the weakest of them found their own graves there.
A whirlwind of snow both from above and from below whipped them in the face; he seemed to rebel fiercely against their campaign. The Russian winter, in its new form, attacked them from all sides: it made its way through their light clothes and torn shoes. The wet dress froze on them; this ice shell bound and curled up the body; the harsh and fierce wind prevented breathing; beards and mustaches were covered with icicles. The unfortunate ones, shivering from the cold, were still dragging along until some fragment, a branch, or the corpse of one of their comrades made them slip and fall. Then they began to moan. In vain: they were immediately covered with snow; small mounds let know about them: here was their grave! The entire road was covered with these elevations, like a cemetery. Nature, like a shroud enveloped the army! The only objects that stood out from the darkness were spruces, these grave trees with their gloomy greenery, and the stately immobility of their dark trunks, their sad appearance complemented the spectacle of general mourning, wildlife and an army dying in the middle of dead nature! (from the Notes of the Adjutant of Emperor Napoleon I Philippe Paul de Segur)
Napoleon claimed that he never gave erroneous orders. But behind him are criminal orders, in particular an order worthy of a vandal: to blow up the Moscow Kremlin. This was a completely senseless act, dictated by only one low desire to destroy the cultural and historical heritage of the rebellious people.
Preparing to retreat from Moscow, Napoleon ordered to take away from the Kremlin all the valuables that could be taken away. Kremlin cathedrals were looted clean. They even removed the cross from the bell tower of Ivan the Great, believing that it was gold. The rest was doomed to destruction.
The execution of the barbaric action was entrusted to Marshal Mortier, who received all the artillery supplies that remained in Moscow after the departure of the French. For two days, Mortier was actively filling the Kremlin with gunpowder. On the night of October 22-23, the Marshal left Moscow and already from a distance with a cannon shot gave a signal to the sappers who remained in the city.
A series of monstrous explosions shook the sleeping capital. Ceilings and walls collapsed in the houses adjacent to the Kremlin, people were literally thrown out of their beds. Half-dressed, wounded by shards of glass and stones, Muscovites rushed about the streets in horror. But, despite the panic, many fled to the Kremlin to put out the fires that had begun.
Defending our national shrine, nameless Russian people - Muscovites and Cossacks who entered the city - gave their lives. An eyewitness, the French general Segur recalled: "They were destroyed, crushed, thrown into the air along with the walls of palaces ... then, mixed with the debris of walls and weapons, the torn off parts of their bodies fell far to the ground, like a terrible rain."
Fortunately, the destruction in the Kremlin was not as great as one might expect. Only parts of the eastern and southern walls with four towers were damaged. The bell tower of Ivan the Great cracked from top to bottom, but resisted. All the Kremlin palaces, cathedrals, churches and monasteries have also survived.
The reason for this is usually seen in the fact that the rain gushing during the explosions poured several mines and tunnels with 60 barrels of gunpowder, and the phrases were in too much haste to leave the city to engage in mining again. But there is also a testimony from the captured French officer Fezanzac that Marshal Mortier deliberately released unusable gunpowder for explosions, not wanting to be responsible for Napoleon's insane order. If this is true, then perhaps the devils in hell do not bother the marshal as much as the emperor himself.
To save the whole world, as Dostoevsky dreamed, beauty is probably beyond the power of beauty, but sometimes it can save at least itself.
In the afternoon, the first detachment of Russian troops entered Moscow. These were the Don Cossacks under the command of Major General Ilovaisky. The general urgently reported to his command two important news: “Moscow is empty! The French tried to destroy the Kremlin, but in spite of the destruction it resisted! "
Alas, today nothing in the Kremlin reminds of the self-sacrifice of those who, in the terrible 1812th, prevented its destruction.
P.S. The overall result of the stay of the French in Moscow was as follows: out of 9,158 stone and wooden houses, 2,626 remained, and out of 8,520 of the same stores, 1,368. Of the 290 churches, 12 were burnt, 115 were burnt, the rest were plundered. On the streets and squares there were 11,959 human and 12,576 horse corpses.
According to the calculations of the French engineer Charles-Joseph Minard, made in 1869, at least 422 thousand soldiers invaded Russia. In the course of advancing across Russia, the size of the Great Army changed. According to Minar, only 10 thousand soldiers left our country
When I, as a teenager, came into contact with the Russian Napoleoniad, I, like many others, was amazed that many fundamental questions were not answered. One of these questions is where did the Great Army of Emperor Napoleon disappear to? 610 thousand soldiers crossed the Neman in June and only about 40-50 thousand returned from Russia in December. For six months, about 150 thousand died in battles, but where are the rest?
Recognized Napoleonologist Vladlen Sirotkin estimated the number of captured combatants of the Great Army at about 200 thousand. Russia tried to forget about this drama as soon as possible. The country was not ready to accept so many captives. Hunger, frost, epidemics, and massacres awaited them. And yet no less than one hundred thousand soldiers and officers remained in Russia two years later. Of these, at least 60 thousand became citizens of Russia - more than Napoleon brought out of the Russian campaign. This phenomenon, enormous in scope and significance, is hidden in the gloom of the bottomless Russian archives.
From time to time only faint traces of a huge army were visible. For example, on the outskirts of Samara in the first half of the 19th century, the toponym Frantsuzova Melnitsa existed. There really was a mill, and the prisoners of the French worked on it.
In the polar Ust-Sysolsk of the Vologda province (present-day Komi-capital Syktyvkar) there is still a suburb of Paris. It also seems to have been founded by the captives of 1812. Professor Sirotkin discovered in the Moscow archives a trace of one small Napoleonic community in Altai. In 1816, three French soldiers, Vincent, Cambrai and Louis, voluntarily moved to the Biysk district, to the taiga, where they received land and were assigned to the peasants.
Illarion Pryanishnikov depicted an episode of the 1812 war. Captured French in batches of several thousand were sent to different provinces. Many could not stand such a journey
A lot of French people settled in the Orenburg province. By the summer of 1814, about a thousand prisoners had already accumulated here, including already 30 imperial officers. A significant part were Germans, which is not surprising: according to the latest research, almost half of Napoleon's army in the Russian campaign were German units. Soldiers of the Württemberg 3rd Horse Jaeger Duke Ludwig Regiment, who had been in the Battle of Borodino, were mainly in Orenburg. The commander of this unit, Colonel Count Truchses von Waldburg-Würzach, and his adjutant, Captain Butz, were sent to Orenburg. Major Baron Kretschmar ended up in the district Buguruslan. It was easier for the people of Württemberg: they were taken care of by the Empress Dowager-Mother Maria Feodorovna, nee Princess of Württemberg. After Napoleon's abdication, all prisoners received permission to return to their homeland. The first to be sent from Orenburg were the Wurttemberg people. Their king, the uncle of Alexander I, has now become an ally of Russia. But by that time, some of the captured combatants had already passed into Russian citizenship, which the authorities did not put up any obstacles.
At the end of 1815, five prisoners of war in Verkhne-Uralsk filed petitions for Russian citizenship. Their names were Antoine Berg, Charles Joseph Bouchen, Jean Pierre Binelon, Antoine Vikler, Edouard Langlois. They were assigned to the Cossack estate in the Orenburg Host. A little later, another Frenchman was enrolled in the Cossacks, possibly a non-commissioned officer or even a junior officer - Jean Gendre. In Orenburg, a young officer from an old knightly family - Desiree d "Andeville took root. He became a teacher of the French language. When the Neplyuev Cossack military school was established in Orenburg in 1825, d" Andeville was admitted to the state and ranked among the Cossack class as a nobleman. In 1826 his son was born, already a Cossack by birth - Victor Dandeville.
Another prisoner officer, Jean de Macke, ended up in the village of Braeshevo in the Ufa district of the Orenburg province. He was taken out of Vyatka by Alexander Karlovich von Fock, the provincial chief forstmeister. And he appointed him as educators for his sons. In the 1820s, de Macke, according to the documents already Ivan Ivanovich, moved to Samara and opened a boarding house for girls. So the imperial officers became the ancestors of Russian families, whose family has not faded away to this day.
Five soldiers of the Great Army were settled in the village of Verkhnyaya Karmalka, Bugulma district. Their names are known. True, the scribes fiercely distorted foreign surnames: Philip Juncker, Vilir Sonin, Leonty Larzhints, Peter Bats, Ilya Auts. Most likely, these were the Württemberg horse rangers. They were assigned to the state peasants. All five married locals and had families.
The county town of Verkhne-Uralsk in those years was a small fort, with it - a Cossack village. Here was the border not only of Russia, but of the whole of Europe. From the east and south, this borderland was disturbed by raids by Kazakh batyrs. In 1836, the construction of the New Line began: from Orsk to the village of Berezovskaya. A chain of new Cossack settlements arose - redoubts. A hasty increase in the number of the Orenburg Army began. Among others, all French Cossacks with their families were resettled to the New Line. In response, the famous batyr Kenesary Kasimov launched real hostilities. The war in the borderlands lasted for almost twelve years. And the gray-haired veterans of Napoleon again had to take up arms.
In 1842, new redoubts were founded. Fifteen of them were named after the battles in which the Orenburg Cossacks acted.
Four redoubts thus received French names: Fer-Champenoise, Arcy, Paris, Brienne. These names can be found on the map of the Chelyabinsk region today. To populate this section of the New Line, the authorities called on all retired soldiers and peasants of the inner districts of the Orenburg province to enroll in the Cossack estate. Among the volunteers, the elderly Napoleonic soldier Ilya Kondratyevich Auz moved from under Bugulma to the Arsi redoubt. With him was his wife, a native of Karmala, Tatyana Kharitonovna, and a large family. In 1843, all Auts were also enrolled in the Cossacks. Orenburg Cossack Ivan Ivanovich Zhandre, who was born of a Frenchman and a Cossack woman in 1824, rose to the rank of centurion and received land in the village of Kizilskaya in the Upper Ural district.
The lands of the Orenburg Cossack Host included another district - Troitsky. In the city of Troitsk in the 1850s, the governor was a retired captain Alexander Ivanovich de Makke, the son of a Napoleonic officer and an Ufa noblewoman. In 1833, Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl accidentally discovered a Cossack named Charles Bertu in the Urals.
Quite a lot of captured combatants of the Great Army ended up in the lands of the Tersk Cossack army. They were almost without exception Poles, but the locals also called them French. From February to November 1813, one after the other, nine parties of captured soldiers from the Polish corps of the Great Army were transported to Georgievsk (the main city of the Caucasian province). There were about a thousand prisoners in total. Several dozen prisoners from the troops of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw entered service in the fortress of the Caucasian line. And they were numbered among the Cossacks. Until recently, Polish surnames were often found in the North Caucasian villages.
The French-Cossack Victor Desiderievich Dandeville from the age of eighteen served in the military equestrian artillery, distinguished himself in the campaigns to the Aral and the Caspian Sea. In 1862, Colonel Dandeville was appointed to the post of order chieftain of the Ural Cossack army and for four years was chieftain in Uralsk. Subsequently - General of Infantry, commander of an army corps. Like his crusader ancestors, he spent a quarter of a century in wars against Muslims in the Kyrgyz Steppe, Turkestan, Serbia, Bulgaria.
In 1892, the Orenburg historian Pavel Lvovich Yudin published the first article about the French Cossacks in two issues of the Orenburg Provincial Gazette. Four years later, the article "Prisoners of 1812 in the Orenburg Territory" appeared in the thick Moscow magazine "Russian Archive". In 1898, a translation of this work was published as a separate brochure in the French city of Chateauden. During these years, the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of Napoleon's soldiers already lived in the Urals. Yudin counted that more than forty people descended from the Cossack Ilya Auts alone.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were about two hundred French Cossacks in the Orenburg army. In the village of Kizilskaya, the Cossack landowner Yakov Ivanovich Zhandr lived on the family estate. In Samara, served as an official on special assignments of the state property administration, court councilor Boris Alexandrovich de Makke, a native of Troitsk. The old General Victor Dandeville (died in 1907) sat on the Military Council. The son of the Ural chieftain and the grandson of a French officer, Mikhail Viktorovich Dandeville served in St. Petersburg, in the Life Dragoon Regiment of Courland. He compiled the history of his regiment.
In the twentieth century, the great-grandchildren of Napoleonic combatants survived the collapse of another Empire and the destruction of another great army - the Cossack Troops of Russia.
Rare mentions of the Orenburg French Cossacks are scattered throughout the scientific works. They are always written about them in passing, by the way, with links to Yudin's article more than a hundred years ago. Quite recently, I started looking for traces of the descendants of Napoleon's soldiers.
I found one of such representatives in April 2006 in Dolgoprudny. Zoya Vasilievna Auts is a native Cossack woman from the former redoubt of Ostrolenok. Many years ago she moved to the Moscow region. She told me definitely: "Yes, my father said: we were French." From childhood, she knew that all the other inhabitants of Ostrolenka were a little alienated from her paternal relatives. Something Auts differed, but what exactly is unclear.
I was able to trace the paths of several Cossack families descending from the soldiers and officers of Napoleon. The descendants of Jean de Macke are in Samara, in Smolensk, in Ufa. The scions of the Dandeville military dynasty seem to have returned to the homeland of their ancestors - to France. And in Moscow now there are no less than a dozen families bearing Franco-Cossack surnames - Autsy, Junkerovs, Bushenevs, Zhandra. Undoubtedly, the French Cossacks remained in the lands of the New Line: now these are mainly the lands of the Nagaybaksky district of the Chelyabinsk region.
Now I can confidently assert that the French Cossacks not only did not disappear, but they still remember their origins.
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This year we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812. Now, thanks to feature films and books, that time seems incredibly romantic to many. Gallant Frenchmen, cavalry girls, sorry, madam, would you like to rendezvous with me? However, make no mistake. Contemporaries considered Napoleon the embodiment of the devil, and in his plans he had the purposeful destruction of the Russian people.
The war of 1812 was of a completely different type than all wars before it. In addition to the most powerful ideological and propaganda support through the press, books, fabricating rumors, visual agitation in pictures that were hung on fences for ordinary people, a kind of analogue of today's TV, a large-scale financial scam was carried out. A huge amount of counterfeit money was thrown into the economy of Napoleon's enemy - Russia, England and Austria. To destabilize the enemy's financial system, they were released earlier, but this is the first time this has taken on such a large-scale character. It was a real financial war.
The case was set up on a grand scale: there were two printing houses in Paris and two in Warsaw. They even equipped a special "dusty" room, in which fresh banknotes were carried across the dirty floor, giving them the appearance of being in circulation. During the occupation, a printing house for rubles was opened right in Moscow, at the Rogozhskaya Zastava, in the courtyard of the Old Believer Church.
The ruble began to burst at the seams. Some historians believe that in 1811-1812 up to 120 million counterfeit rubles were poured into the Russian economy. The Comptroller General of the Main Audit Office reported to Emperor Alexander I: "Your grandmother's wars were a plaything in comparison with the current ones ... You must stop the emission." For the war for the ruble banknotes were given 25 kopecks in silver.
In terms of the quality of workmanship, the French forgeries were superior to the originals - they were distinguished by a bluish tint of paper, a clearer watermark, deep relief embossing, and an even arrangement of letters. This, by the way, let the counterfeiters down: it was possible to distinguish them, if desired, precisely because of the quality of the work. However, the lack of knowledge of the Russian language by the French led to a funny confusion of letters: "state" instead of "state" and "good" instead of "walking". But the masses - the peasants and the nobles too - were mostly illiterate, so they got away with such mistakes.
This begs the question: how did the Russian economy survive after such a huge infusion of unsecured money? Very simple. Russia quickly won the war, and the fakes simply did not have time to spread sufficiently. On Christmas Day 1812, the last occupier was kicked out of Russia. Then one important factor played its role - natural relations reigned in the country, especially among the peasants. And they never saw paper money. At best, silver and copper. A cow - the main wealth of a peasant - cost from a ruble to two, a bucket of vodka - 30 kopecks, and Napoleon issued bills of 25, 50, 100 rubles. There was nowhere to exchange them either. By the way, he also paid his troops' salaries with counterfeit money, with which his army could not really buy anything. By the way, the same thing happened in 1941. In the collective farm USSR, where natural-economic relations reigned, the fakes printed by Hitler also did not succeed.
But back to the Napoleonic counterfeit scam. Even those peasants who agreed to sell food, and there were few of them, refused to take paper money of this denomination. French soldiers who received a salary could not spend it. During the retreat, the bonfires of the freezing invaders were often kindled with counterfeit banknotes. Millions burned out. But some still remained in the country. After the victory, in order to restore the economy, the ministers proposed to carry out a reform, issue new money and thus cut off fakes. After much deliberation, Alexander I abandoned this plan. I chose the most expensive, but also the most humane way. He said: “For some of my poor subjects, a piece of paper of 50 or 100 rubles that fell into their hands is a fortune. And I cannot deprive them of it. " The emperor equated the circulation of counterfeit and real money, withdrawing it only through banks. Only by 1824 was a decree issued that basically all counterfeit money was withdrawn. But they came across until the end of the 1840s. Russia withstood not only the invasion, but also the economic provocation.
So they always destroyed the faith, and stones, and churches, and manuscripts. To destroy the essence of the people. By the way, as a result of the invasion, the greatest work of the Russian people perished - "The Lay of Igor's Campaign", many chronicles. Moreover, the West always declares that it brings us its "high" civilization. Very funny. It’s just the same as the bombing of Belgrade or Tripoli implanted “human rights” and “universal human values”! Carrying the "torch of freedom", Napoleon was fanatical in our land no less than Hitler. He just had less time, only six months. There is a well-known phrase of this herald of European values: "For victory, it is necessary that a common soldier not only hate his opponents, but also despise them." To Napoleon's soldiers, officers retold agitation about the barbarity of the Slavic peoples. Since then, the idea of the Russians as a second-rate, wild nation has been consciously entrenched in the minds of Europeans.
So they despised us. Monasteries were destroyed, monuments of architecture were blown up. Altars of Moscow churches were deliberately turned into stables and latrines. With a cruel death, they killed priests who did not give away church relics, raped nuns, and used ancient icons to light up stoves. At the same time, the soldiers knew for sure that they had come to a barbaric wild country and that they were bringing into it the best culture in the world - the European one.
Taking Moscow, the brutal invaders staged mass executions
The real robbery and horror began on September 3, 1812 - the day after entering Moscow, when officially, by order, it was allowed to rob the city. Numerous Moscow monasteries were ravaged by her daughter. The soldiers tore off the silver frames from the icons, collected icon lamps and crosses. For convenience, they blew up the Church of St. John the Baptist, which stood next to the Novodevichy Convent. In the Vysokopetrovsky monastery, the invaders set up a slaughterhouse, and the cathedral church was turned into a butcher's shop. The entire monastery churchyard was covered with caked blood, and in the cathedral, chunks of meat and animal entrails hung from chandeliers and nails driven into the iconostasis. In the Andronievsky, Pokrovsky, Znamensky monasteries, French soldiers stabbed icons on firewood, the faces of the saints were used as targets for shooting.
In the Miracle Monastery, the French, putting on mitres and the vestments of the clergy on themselves and on their horses, rode around and laughed a lot. In the Danilov Monastery, the shrine of Prince Daniel was stripped off and the clothes from the thrones were stripped. In the Mozhaisky Luzhetsky Monastery, the icon of St.John the Baptist kept here has traces of a knife - the French used it as a cutting board, chopped meat on it. Almost nothing remains of the historical relics of the palace of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich that was located on the territory of the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery. The bed of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was burned, expensive chairs were stripped, mirrors were broken, stoves were broken, rare portraits of Peter the Great and Princess Sophia were stolen.
Hieromonk of the Znamensky Monastery Pavel and the priest of the St. George Monastery Ioann Alekseev were killed. The priest of the Forty Saints Church, Peter Velmyaninov, was beaten with rifle butts, stabbed with bayonets and sabers for not giving them the keys to the church. All night he lay in the street, bleeding, and in the morning a French officer passing by mercifully shot Father Peter. The monks of the Novospassky monastery buried the priest, but the French then dug his grave three times: when they saw the fresh earth, they thought that they had buried a treasure in this place. In the Epiphany Monastery, the treasurer of the Aaron Monastery was dragged by the French by the hair, pulled out his beard, and then carried loads on it, harnessing them to a cart.
However, some of the charges went off. The Vodovzvodnaya Tower was demolished to the ground, the Nikolskaya Tower was half destroyed. The Arsenal was partially destroyed, the Faceted Chamber, the Filaretov extension, the Commandant's house were damaged. The building of the Senate was damaged, and the bronze St. George the Victorious, which adorned the dome of the Round Hall, disappeared without a trace. According to one version, he, along with two other items that made up the pride of the Kremlin - an eagle from the Nikolsky Gate and a cross from the bell tower of Ivan the Great - was taken out in a wagon train of "civilized" invaders. Until now, these historical relics have not been found. Leaving Moscow, the French also tried to blow up the Novodevichy, Rozhdestvensky, Alekseevsky monasteries.
Here, too, a miracle happened: the monks managed to put out the fire in time and thereby save their monasteries.
These are just finishing touches to the behavior of the occupiers. The whole truth is even worse. What the doomed invaders were already doing, retreating, defies common sense at all. Depraved French officers forced peasant women into oral sex, which for many girls and women was then worse than death. Those who disagreed with the rules of the French kiss were killed, some deliberately went to death, gnawing their teeth into the flesh of the invaders. But despite this, the Russians treated the sick and wounded enemies with sympathy. In the Novodevichy Convent, sick French soldiers were treated, and in Rozhdestvensky they shared their food with the hungry invaders. Talking about this, one of the nuns explained: "Again, sorry for them, dear ones, they didn’t die of starvation, but they didn’t go against us of their own free will."
"Civilized French" arranged stables in Orthodox churches
The last soldier of that Great Army. He died surrounded by numerous offspring in 1894, having lived 126 years. He taught at the Saratov gymnasium for over 60 years. Until the end of his days, he retained a clear mind and remembered that one of his students was none other than Nikolai Chernyshevsky. He recalled a very characteristic episode, how he was captured by Platov's Cossacks. The flushed Platov immediately kicked him in the face, then ordered him to drink vodka so as not to freeze, to feed him and send him to a warm wagon train so that the prisoner would not catch a cold. And then he constantly inquired about his health. This was the attitude in Russia to the defeated enemy. Therefore, they remained in Russia in tens of thousands.
The partisan movement in the Patriotic War of 1812 significantly influenced the outcome of the campaign. The French met with fierce resistance from the local population. Demoralized, deprived of the opportunity to replenish their food supplies, the ragged and frozen army of Napoleon was brutally beaten by the flying and peasant partisan detachments of the Russians.
The highly stretched Napoleonic army, pursuing the retreating Russian troops, quickly became a convenient target for guerrilla attacks - the French were often far removed from the main forces. The command of the Russian army decided to create mobile detachments to carry out sabotage behind enemy lines and deprive him of food and fodder.
In World War II, there were two main types of such detachments: flying squadrons of army cavalrymen and Cossacks, formed by order of the commander-in-chief Mikhail Kutuzov, and a group of partisan peasants, which united spontaneously, without army leadership. In addition to sabotage actions, the flying detachments were also engaged in reconnaissance. The peasant self-defense forces mainly repulsed the enemy from their villages and villages.
Denis Davydov is the most famous commander of a partisan detachment in the Patriotic War of 1812. He himself drew up a plan of action for mobile partisan formations against the Napoleonic army and proposed it to Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration. The plan was simple: to annoy the enemy in his rear, capture or destroy enemy warehouses with food and fodder, beat small groups of the enemy.
Under the leadership of Davydov there were over one hundred and fifty hussars and Cossacks. Already in September 1812, they captured a French caravan of three dozen carts near the Smolensk village of Tsarevo-Zaymishche. Davydov's cavalrymen killed more than 100 Frenchmen from the escorting detachment, and captured another 100. This operation was followed by others, also successful.
Davydov and his team did not immediately find support from the local population: at first, the peasants took them for the French. The commander of the flying detachment even had to put on a peasant's caftan, hang an icon of St. Nicholas on his chest, let go of his beard and switch to the language of the Russian common people - otherwise the peasants would not believe him.
Over time, the detachment of Denis Davydov increased to 300 people. The cavalrymen attacked French units, sometimes having a fivefold numerical superiority, and smashed them, taking the carts and freeing prisoners, it even happened that they even captured the enemy's artillery.
After the abandonment of Moscow, by order of Kutuzov, flying partisan detachments were created everywhere. Mostly these were Cossack units, each numbering up to 500 sabers. At the end of September, Major General Ivan Dorokhov, who commanded such a unit, captured the town of Vereya near Moscow. The united partisan groups could resist the large military formations of Napoleon's army. So, at the end of October, during a battle in the region of the Smolensk village of Lyakhovo, four partisan detachments utterly defeated more than one and a half thousand brigade of General Jean-Pierre Augereau, capturing himself. For the French, this defeat was a terrible blow. On the contrary, the Russian troops, this success, encouraged and tuned in to further victories.
A significant contribution to the destruction and exhaustion of French units was made by the peasants who self-organize in combat detachments. Their partisan units began to form even before Kutuzov's instructions. While willingly helping the flying detachments and units of the regular Russian army with food and fodder, the peasants, at the same time, everywhere and in every possible way did harm to the French - they exterminated enemy foragers and marauders, often, when the enemy approached, they themselves burned their houses and went into the forests. Fierce local resistance intensified as the demoralized French army increasingly turned into a swarm of robbers and marauders.
One of these detachments was assembled by dragoons Ermolai Chetvertakov. He taught the peasants to use captured weapons, organized and successfully carried out many sabotage against the French, capturing dozens of enemy carts with food and livestock. At one time, Chetvertakov's compound included up to 4 thousand people. And such cases, when peasant partisans, led by cadre soldiers, noble landowners, successfully operated in the rear of the Napoleonic troops, were not isolated.
