Chichagov.
Figure 1-4. Moving towards the Berezina River. The terrain near Studianka undulates slightly (see figure 1-5).
At 13:00 on November 27, Napoleon and the Imperial Guard crossed the Berezina River. Heavy fighting on both sides of the river continued throughout the rest of the day (see figure 1-6). On the eastern bank, remaining French units and stragglers grouped around the bridgehead, as Wittgenstein closed in from the northeast in pursuit of Victor’s IX Corps. The 125th Line Infantry Regiment commanded by General Louis Partonneaux remained in the town of Stari Barysaw where, after a fierce battle, they were forced to surrender (see figure 1-7). Gerrit Janz Kraak numbered among the casualties. Most of Victor’s corps crossed the river by day’s end, however. Two days later, in the early morning of November 29, the French destroyed the bridges.
Figure 1-5. The terrain along the Berezina River between Barysaw and Studianka.
When Napoleon’s army crossed the Berezina, the main Russian force under Kutuzov was still several days’ march away. Slow communication among the three Russian armies certainly aided Napoleon’s escape, as did the long time it took Chichagov to realize that the French had crossed the river at Studianka. Napoleon did not cross over unscathed, however. He lost more than half of his remaining force, more than 25,000 men, which Minard’s map explains so starkly and eloquently (see chapter 2, figure 2-3c). In his extensive study of the crossing, Alexander Mikaberdze (2010) explains why: Cold, hunger, and disorder proved to be on the side of the Russians. Napoleon and the remnants of his Grand Army beat a hasty retreat toward Vilnius. When he reached the village of Smarhon on December 5, Napoleon left his army for Paris. On December 18, Marshal Ney was the last French soldier to cross the Neman back into Poland.
Figure 1-6 presents a set of maps that depicts each of the three days of the battle at the Berezina River. Breaking the event into a series of smaller “stills”—like frames in a piece of animation—helps to better explain what happened over time. Still, for both a single map (figure 1-5) and a set of maps (figure 1-6) one has to make arbitrary selections of the individual moments and time intervals to display, which can affect the viewer’s interpretation of troop positioning. What snapshot moment during this action-filled, three-day event is shown on the map in figure 1-5? Which moments are displayed on the three maps shown in figure 1-6? One might expect that the authors of these maps chose characteristic or decisive moments to represent, but their selections may simply have been circumscribed by the availability of data.
Figure 1-6. The situation at the Berezina River on November 26 (1-6a), November 27 (1-6b), and November 28 (1-6c). Small multiples with large maps like these have to be studied in order to understand the narrative they convey, especially when compared with the multiples in figure 5-28.
It is also possible to use a single map to depict the dynamics of an event. Figure 1-7 shows the path that Gerrit Janz Kraak took through Russia, supplemented with arrows and labels with dates that help to give the reader a sense of movement in time. Figure 1-8 shows a family tree indicating the relationship between Gerrit Janz Kraak and the author. In figure 1-9, the author uses a space-time cube to compare Napoleon’s crossing of the Berezina River with his own path though the region during his visit to the river two hundred years later. This cube plots time along the vertical axis and space along the horizontal plane, placing the 1812 map below and the 2012 map above. Annotations, pictures, and labels give substance to specific events and locations. Between the two horizontal maps, vertical orange lines connect the same locations in both times. Figure 1-11 presents scenes from two alternative dynamic representations of the event, namely, war games maps. Users of this media can experience an event by replaying it. The top game shows action, while the bottom game displays the hexagonal grid that typically belongs to these kinds of maps.
Figure 1-7. The map shows the path of the IX Corps during the Russian campaign. It did not enter Russia until September of 1812, when it advanced to support Napoleon’s retreat from Moskva. Gerrit Janz Kraak died in the Battle of Berezina on November 17, 1812. Below the map is an entry from the military records of the French army.
ABOUT GERRIT JANZ KRAAK
Gerrit Janz Kraak was born on February 27, 1790, in the city of Sneek in the north of the Netherlands. He was the son of Jan Gerritsz Kraak, a soldier in the garrison of Sneek, and Rintske Watzes Vollenhoof (Craeck 2002). After Napoleon incorporated the Netherlands into the French Empire, the Dutch had to serve in the army. A member of a company volunteers in the province of Friesland, Gerrit Kraak was conscripted in September 1809 and moved to Utrecht. In July 1810 he signed a contract (no. 2298) for five years and joined the 125th Line Infantry Regiment, a Dutch unit in the French army (Roulin 1890). He died in the Battle of Berezina on November 27, 1812.
Figure 1-8. Gerrit Janz Kraak, one of Napoleon’s soldiers who died in the Battle of Berezina, is an ancestor of the author, pictured here at the battle site’s monument commemorating French losses. Gerrit Janz Kraak had many brothers and sisters, most of whom died very young.
Figure 1-9. Comparing Berezina across two hundred years using a space-time cube. Below, the path that the French and Russians took during the crossing of the Berezina River in 1812, and, above, the path that the author took to visit the battlefield. The paths have been annotated with labels, pictures (1812), and photographs (2012). Vertical orange lines represent four prominent places.
Further reading
Napoleon’s 1812 campaign has been extensively studied, and many books and papers analyze myriad aspects of this ill-fated adventure in great detail. The works by George Nafziger (1988) and Paul Britten Austin (2000) are good places to start. In 1812: The Great Retreat, Austin describes Napoleon’s disaster using eyewitness reports found in archives and personal diaries. For Russian perspectives (written in English), both Laurence Spring (2009) and Dominic Lieven (2011) describe the campaign and Alexander Mikaberidze (2012) provides Russian eyewitness accounts. Faber du Faur (2001) offers an illustrated eyewitness report from the vantage of a lieutenant in Napoleon’s army in With Napoleon in Russia. Diaries of Eugène Labaume (2002) and Philippe-Paul de Ségur (1836, repr. 2005) provide vivid testimonies to the glory and horror of the march. Of course, Carl von Clausewitz’s report, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (1843, repr. 2007) and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869, repr. 2001) deserve mention as well.
Figure 1-10. Dutch infantry at the bridges over the Berezina in 1812. The troops try to hold off the Russian advance while others cross the bridges. Detail from a painting by Hoynck van Papendrecht in a series of posters specially prepared for Dutch history education at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Figure 1-11. War game maps: Top, Napoleon at Berezina. Bottom, Map of the Berezina 20 / Closing the Trap in Russia, 1812 Game.
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Minard’s map
