Original subtitles

A French speaker can still use that phrase

today when a situation has fallen apart:

the plan has failed,

control is slipping away,

and there is no obvious route out.

The expression comes from a river in what is now Belarus and,

more specifically, from four days in November 1812,

when Napoleon's retreating army reached its banks.

There is an awkward fact behind the expression, though.

Napoleon was not destroyed at the Berezina.

He got away.

The Russians had a genuine chance to trap him there,

block the road west,

and complete what months of campaigning had already begun.

Instead, Napoleon found another crossing point,

misled part of the Russian command,

had two improvised bridges built,

and managed to move much of the organized

force that remained across the river.

That is why the Berezina is difficult

to describe simply as a defeat.

What happened there looked

catastrophic to those living through it,

and it was remembered that way afterward,

yet the central military fact remained:

the trap did not close.

By late November, the Grande Armée bore little

resemblance to the force that had entered Russia.

The condition of its cavalry makes the point clearly.

Napoleon still had cavalry generals.

The army increasingly did not have cavalry for them to command.

Most of the horses were dead,

abandoned, or too weak to carry a rider.

Napoleon gathered the mounted cavalry officers who remained

into a temporary formation called the Escadron sacré,

the Sacred Squadron.

Ségur described roughly five hundred

officers under Grouchy and Sebastiani,

with division generals filling places

normally occupied by men of much lower rank.

The titles and experienced commanders were still there,

but the material that made command effective was disappearing:

horses, food,

equipment, and healthy soldiers.

The Sacred Squadron showed that shortage

better than almost anything else.

Officers who had once directed regiments

and brigades were now grouped together

because no usable horse could be wasted.

Those still fit to fight moved in

the same column as wounded men,

soldiers separated from their units, servants,

civilians, and wagons.

Napoleon had to get this entire moving mass through a

narrowing opening before the Russian armies converged.

Geography was turning against him.

The road toward Vilna and relative safety

lay to the west, with the Berezina in between.

Admiral Pavel Chichagov's Russian army had come up from

the south and taken Borisov, the obvious crossing point.

Wittgenstein was approaching from the north,

while Kutuzov's main army remained behind the

French and continued pressing westward.

If the Russians could hold the principal crossings

long enough for those forces to come together,

the river itself would help close the trap.

The long bridge at Borisov had already been

damaged and burned in the fighting.

Rebuilding it under Russian

observation was not a practical option,

and other known crossings were being watched.

Every hour spent trying to force a passage gave

another Russian force more time to arrive.

Before Napoleon could think about winning anything,

he needed somewhere to cross.

According to Philippe-Paul de Ségur,

the first useful clue came from an

almost accidental observation.

General Jean-Baptiste Corbineau had been trying to make his way

back toward the French army after finding Borisov blocked.

He moved upstream along the Berezina

in search of another passage.

Near Studienka,

his men encountered a Lithuanian peasant,

and what caught their attention was

the condition of the man's horse.

The horse was wet,

as if it had just come through the river.

Corbineau took the man as a guide.

Ségur wrote that the general followed him across the ford,

confirmed that a passage existed near Studienka,

and then carried the information back toward Oudinot.

In Ségur's account,

a route that might save Napoleon's army was

revealed not by a map or a reconnaissance report,

but by a horse that appeared to have just crossed the Berezina.

Finding the ford only solved part of the problem.

The water had risen,

and infantry, guns, wagons,

wounded men, and stragglers could not

simply be pushed through it on foot.

Bridges were still needed.

Studienka would also remain useful only as long as Chichagov

believed the main French effort was taking place elsewhere.

The French therefore had to create both a

real crossing and a convincing false one.

Ségur describes about three hundred soldiers and several

hundred stragglers being sent downstream toward Oukholoda.

Their orders were to collect bridge materials

noisily enough to attract attention, while a cuirassier

division moved where the Russians could see it.

The intention was straightforward:

make Chichagov believe the French were

preparing to cross farther south.

The deception included local information as well.

Ségur says several local Jewish residents were deliberately

questioned about the lower ford and the road toward Minsk.

French officers made a show of being

satisfied with what they heard,

then allowed some of the men to pass beyond the outposts,

where the story could spread.

Before the real crossing began at the Berezina,

the Russians were given another crossing to watch.

Chichagov did shift his attention toward the lower river.

The ruse did not need to hold for days;

it only needed to buy enough time at Studienka.

That was the window General Jean-Baptiste

Eblé had to use.

Eblé arrived without a proper bridging train.

Much of the pontoon equipment had

already been destroyed or abandoned

because there were too few horses left to haul it.

Ségur records that Eblé reached

Studienka with two field forges,

two wagons of coal,

six wagons carrying tools and nails,

and several companies of pontonniers.

Earlier in the retreat,

he had insisted that his men keep

essential tools and pieces of iron.

Iron stripped from abandoned wagon

wheels came with them as well

and could be forged into clamps and

fittings for the bridge frames.

The road out of Russia would have to be

assembled from what was still available:

two blacksmith forges,

a limited set of tools,

timber taken from nearby buildings,

and iron salvaged from broken wheels.

Even then, construction did not go smoothly.

The first bridge supports were too weak and had to be rebuilt.

At the same time,

the ford Corbineau had tested was

disappearing under rising water.

Engineers and pontonniers had to work in the

current while pieces of ice moved past them.

Ségur described men standing so deep that

the water rose almost to their mouths.

Sergeant Bourgogne,

who also witnessed the crossing,

remembered pontonniers working in the freezing river.

Their descriptions do not match in every detail,

but they agree on the essential point:

men repeatedly entered the icy water to place,

secure, and repair the supports by hand.

Some never recovered from the exposure.

The bridges were still unfinished,

but Russian forces were continuing to move.

The French therefore needed troops on the

western bank as early as possible.

Jacques-Alexandre-Bernard Law de Lauriston and other

officers took part in the crossing operations.

One episode, however, centers on Napoleon's

aide-de-camp, Jean-Baptiste Jacqueminot.

Ségur wrote that Jacqueminot and the Lithuanian Count

Predziecki were among the first to ride into the river.

Ice struck the horses as they pushed for the opposite bank.

Several dozen cavalrymen followed,

and some carried light infantrymen

behind them on the same mounts.

The shortage of horses had become so severe that a single animal

might be used to carry two soldiers across the Berezina.

Later accounts add another episode.

Napoleon wanted a Russian prisoner for questioning.

Jacqueminot had barely reached the far bank before helping

to obtain one and bringing him back through the river.

Most men were trying to make the crossing once.

Jacqueminot crossed,

helped secure a prisoner,

and then returned with another man on the horse.

By the afternoon of November 26,

the first bridge could be used.

A second and stronger bridge was

intended for artillery and wagons,

but it repeatedly failed under the

weight and had to be repaired.

Each failure sent Eblé's men back into the water

and left traffic building up on the bank.

There was now a road across the river,

but it never became a stable one.

It remained a working construction

site while an army moved over it.

Sergeant Bourgogne remembered this same

period through a much smaller problem:

he was hungry.

Near Studienka,

someone told him that a house used by

Napoleon had once served as a flour store.

The Russians had removed almost everything,

but Bourgogne went inside anyway.

Seeing gaps between the floorboards,

he began scraping them with his sword.

He spent more than an hour working at the cracks

and eventually collected roughly two pounds of material.

Some of it was flour;

the rest included dirt, straw,

and small pieces of wood.

Bourgogne still considered the find fortunate.

He mixed the flour into a paste,

made four small cakes,

and shared them.

Elsewhere in his memoir,

he remembered carrying money that had become nearly useless

and thinking he would gladly exchange

hundreds of francs for ordinary food.

Money had not disappeared at the Berezina,

but hunger had changed its value.

Flour scraped from a floor mattered more.

While Bourgogne ate,

the organized army continued to cross.

Infantry went first.

Artillery and wagons followed when

the heavier bridge was passable.

Napoleon crossed with the Guard.

Once on the western bank,

French troops had to secure enough space for the

column to keep moving away from the river.

The deception, meanwhile, was running out of time.

Chichagov realized that the real

crossing was at Studienka and turned back.

Wittgenstein was also closing from the east and north.

The fighting now developed on both banks at once.

Oudinot, and then Ney, had to keep

Chichagov away from the western exit.

On the eastern bank,

Victor had to hold Wittgenstein far enough from

the bridges for the crossing to continue.

A failure on either side could stop the movement behind them.

For Marshal Michel Ney,

it was another rear-guard emergency in

a retreat already full of them.

Only days earlier at Krasnoi,

Ney had been cut off from the main army.

He refused a demand to surrender,

crossed the Dnieper with what remained of his force,

and eventually rejoined Napoleon,

who had believed him lost.

At the Berezina,

the army needed him again.

Ney reached the western side while the

bridgehead was still being secured.

Oudinot had led the first fighting there,

but after he was wounded,

more of the burden shifted to Ney

just as Chichagov was correcting his earlier mistake and

sending Russian troops back toward the real crossing.

By November 28,

the fighting on the western bank had become serious.

Russian pressure threatened the road

leading away from the bridges.

The French were no longer fighting for ground

that had political or symbolic value;

they needed enough space to keep the exit open

for the people still crossing behind them.

Ségur describes a moment when Russian troops pressed

hard enough to put the French position in danger.

Ney committed what cavalry could still be gathered,

including Doumerc's cuirassiers.

Their charge struck the Russian formation,

helped stabilize the line,

and produced prisoners.

Chichagov's attack was checked for the time being.

That was enough for Ney's immediate purpose.

He did not need a textbook battlefield victory.

He needed exhausted troops to keep the

western road open a little longer.

Swiss soldiers were among the troops involved in this fighting,

and their memory of the Berezina later

became part of Swiss national history.

Around thirteen hundred Swiss are

traditionally associated with the defense

on November 28,

with only a few hundred surviving the ordeal.

Officer Thomas Legler later became connected with the

account of soldiers singing before or during the battle.

The singing has historical roots,

although the famous Beresinalied known today

was shaped and popularized much later.

The event belongs to 1812;

part of the soundtrack through which

it is remembered came afterward.

By this stage,

the bridges had been open for roughly two days. Yet

one of the most difficult parts of the story

is that many people still had not crossed.

The familiar picture is of desperate fugitives fighting for

access to bridges that cannot carry them fast enough,

and that did happen.

Ségur and Bourgogne also describe something less intuitive:

for long periods,

many stragglers stayed near their fires instead of

crossing while the route was still available.

Some were exhausted beyond what a

rested observer can easily imagine.

Others remained with wagons holding food,

clothing, or the last possessions

they had carried across Russia.

Some apparently believed there was still time.

During the night of November 27 to 28,

the bridges were not used as fully as they might have been

because people settled around Studienka

and resisted leaving their bivouacs.

French officers tried to push them into moving.

Wagons were even burned in an effort to

make people abandon their baggage.

Still, not everyone went. For hours

the escape route remained open.

After weeks of hunger, cold,

fear, and broken sleep, however,

many people were no longer responding to danger

in the neat way a map makes seem obvious.

Crossing meant leaving the immediate warmth of a fire,

abandoning property carried for hundreds of miles,

standing on damaged feet,

and entering a moving crowd around a fragile wooden bridge.

During the night,

the Russian guns seemed distant.

The fire beside them was not. At dawn,

that balance changed quickly.

Victor prepared to meet Wittgenstein as artillery fire

became audible from both sides of the river.

The stragglers who had spent the night near Studienka

got up and moved toward the bridges almost at once.

A passage that had sometimes been underused became a crush.

People, horses, wagons,

wounded men, and soldiers without units

converged on entrances built for ordered traffic.

When the heavier bridge failed again and needed repairs,

the pressure grew worse.

Russian artillery eventually found the crowded approaches.

Bourgogne remembered carts blocking the crossing

while the river filled with ice and bodies.

Inside that chaos,

Ségur recorded a small incident.

A boat carrying a mother and two children overturned.

An artilleryman who had been struggling to cross left the crowd,

entered the river, and saved the younger child.

Ségur says the child cried for his mother,

and the artilleryman told him he had not pulled him

from the water only to leave him on the bank.

The crossing continued into the evening.

Victor's men were still holding off

Wittgenstein on the eastern bank.

They formed the last organized shield

between the Russians and the bridges.

Victor did not begin withdrawing

his own troops until after dark.

Bourgogne remembered the movement starting

between eight and nine in the evening.

Once the rear guard had crossed,

the problem changed again.

The bridges had served their military

purpose for the organized force.

Leaving them standing longer could save more stragglers,

but it also risked handing the pursuing

Russians a ready route across the river. Eblé,

whose men had kept the bridges usable,

now had to prepare to destroy them.

People were still on the eastern bank.

Warnings had been given repeatedly,

and the bridges remained available for some time,

but some of those gathered around the fires still did

not move until the danger was almost upon them.

On the morning of November 29,

with Russian forces approaching,

the decision could no longer be postponed.

The bridges at Studienka were set on fire.

Thousands were left behind with wagons,

guns, and baggage.

Some tried to cross through the river;

others were captured.

The structures that had saved the

organized army now had to be made impassable

so that the Russians could not use them in pursuit.

Napoleon had escaped the trap.

Ney's part in the retreat did not end at the Berezina.

The army continued west.

Napoleon eventually left it in

December and hurried toward Paris,

while Ney remained with the remnants and

again took responsibility in the rear.

He was still fighting

delaying actions at Vilna.

As the survivors approached the Niemen,

the river they had crossed at the beginning of the campaign,

Ney stayed behind with the rear guard.

French tradition later remembered Ney as the last

of Napoleon's soldiers to leave Russian soil,

crossing the Niemen only after one final rear-guard fight.

Whether a literal last man can be identified matters less

than the reason this memory became attached to him.

By then, Ney had come to represent the retreat's rear guard:

he had been cut off and returned,

fought at the Berezina, and continued

west after the bridges burned.

The image of him reaching the frontier while

still looking back toward the enemy fit the

role he had acquired during the retreat.

That memory brings the story back to the

French expression.

"C'est la Bérézina."

Judged only by Napoleon's immediate military objective,

the phrase can be misleading.

The Russians had a real opportunity to close the trap,

but they did not destroy the core of the Grande Armée. Napoleon,

the Guard, much of the remaining artillery,

and tens of thousands of soldiers reached the

western bank and continued toward Vilna.

No one near Studienka on November 28, however,

would have mistaken the scene for a clean victory.

Organized troops survived alongside crowds

that had lost nearly all organization.

Eblé's pontonniers kept the route open in freezing water,

and later Eblé had to burn the bridges while

people were still on the eastern side.

Both facts belong to the Berezina.

Napoleon avoided annihilation,

while the human cost of that escape became one of

the defining images of the Russian campaign.

Two centuries later,

French speakers still use the river's name for a

situation that has gone disastrously wrong.

The irony is that the real Berezina may have been Napoleon's

last successful military operation of the retreat.

He escaped, because others kept the bridges open behind

him long enough for that escape to happen.