Bonaparte settled in Moscow and awaited for a message of surrender or at least discussion from Alexander. None came. By this time, the strength of the Grand Armée had greatly diminished, with troop numbers there fewer than 100,000. (About the same amount littered the Russian countryside along the way from Poland to Moscow.) Alexander was ensconced at St. Petersburg, and communications at that time of year through normal networks took a week in each direction. The tsar knew that Kutuzov had about 110,000 men just in the vicinity of Moscow and more scattered around the country. Napoleon waited a month without hearing from the tsar before deciding to leave. On October 19, French troops left the Russian capital, headed southwest–ostensibly back the way they came but on a different road, seeking different results.

Travel was slow at the best of times in that part of Russia, and it was even slower as winter set in. Initial calculations were that it would take the slowest elements of the French army 50 days to reach friendly territory.

The Russian army did not waste opportunities to harry the French movement. Bonaparte leaked supposed battle plans that called for further assaults elsewhere, but the main army headed back to Smolensk, along the way inexplicably wasting a week's travel in the harsh winter by retracing their steps and marching their way into a major battle just cross the Berezina River. The French army reached Smolensk on November 9, hoping to find the major supply depot intact. It was not, having been the victim of looting by the rear of the army, which had promptly turned around at the first orders of retreat. A frustrated, starving army looted the city and consumed the remaining rations at a frightening rate, in less than a week, eliminating what should have lasted two weeks. By this point, even more of the French force had been lost, through a combination of death, injury, and desertion.

Not long afterward, Russian troops took control of Minsk, where the French army had left 2 million rations. Then came two bits of goods news for Bonaparte. First was the reappearance of Marshal Michel Ney, who was thought to have been captured but had escaped with a fraction of his force across the frozen Dnieper River and fought his way back to what was left of the Grand Armée. It was at the end of November that the other piece of luck came France's way. A series of well timed maneuvers and the success of a diversion enabled the surviving French troops to not only cross the Berezina River–which, because of a sudden warm spell, had thawed enough to allow crossings–but also to escape the Russian army and move westward. By this time, the Russian forces were depleted and/or exhausted as well, and Kutuzov chose not to pursue the French.

Bonaparte and his surviving commanders had a council of war at Smorgoni on December 5. All agreed that the emperor should go ahead of the army and return to Paris with all possible speed. Left in charge of the army was Marshal Joachim Murat. During the next three days, the army suffered through the coldest temperatures yet. They were ill equipped for such travel in such weather, and 20,000 died en route to Vilna. The rest reached their destination on December 8 and, despite Murat's orders to the contrary, set about looting the city.

Murat was supposed to stay in Vilna and recover, but the looting convinced him to do otherwise and he ordered a further march. Two days later, the army struggled with the frozen hill of Ponarskaia, which most of the horses could not traverse. The troops staggered on, also leaving behind their few remaining guns and the royal treasury, which at that point still numbered 10 million francs. The men soldiered on, reduced to what they themselves could carry. They limped across the Niemen on December 14. Of the more than 650,000 soldiers who had marched with their emperor on the invasion of Russia, only 93,000 returned home. Russian troops captured a full 200,000 French soldiers. The other losses, numbering 370,000, were due to battle deaths and injuries or exposure to the deadly weather and/or diseases. Also of supreme significance for the later of the Napoleonic Wars, the French army had lost 200,000 horses.

The Russian Army wasn't finished, resuming its advance on Jan. 16, 1813. Murat went back to Naples, leaving the army in the hands of Prince Eugéne, who continued the retreat, reaching the Elbe River on March 6. Further conflict between the two nations occurred later, as part of a subsequent war.

The invasion devastated French army strength. Defending against that invasion decimated Russian army strength as well. Russian casualties topped 400,000, with conservative estimates of war dead topping 150,000. France had been thrown out but at great cost.

First page > Background to the Epic Confrontation > Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5