Letter to Karl Marx, September 10, 1857

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 September 1857


First published: the first paragraph in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929; the rest of the text in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 44, Moscow, 1977
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

[Ryde,] 10 September [1857,] Thursday

Dear Marx,

Herewith 'Bennigsen' and 'Barclay'.[2] I am taking a closer look at the Napoleonic generals, who will follow tomorrow or the day after. 'Army' ready shortly.

Your

F. E.

All that I know about Bennigsen is that in 1807, at the beginning of the campaign under Kamenski, he commanded the First Army (there were 2 of them, the 2nd under Buxhövden); on 26 December 1806, he was attacked by Lannes near Pultusk and, having the superiority in numbers, he held out (because Napoleon attacked the other army with the main force) and then, assuming himself to be the victor, wanted to attack in strength. He was soon given the supreme command and attacked Napoleon's winter quarters at the end of January 1807; was soon pressed hard and by mere chance evaded the trap which Napoleon had set for him; he fought at Eylau on 7 and 8 February. On the 7th Napoleon captured Eylau (Barclay de Tolly, who directed the defence, distinguishing himself), and on the 8th the main engagement took place, Bennigsen being obliged to give battle in order to evade hot pursuit by Napoleon, and being saved from total defeat only by the toughness of his troops, the arrival of the Prussians under Lestock and the slowness with which Napoleon's individual corps appeared on the battlefield. In the spring Bennigsen entrenched himself at Heilsberg, because he was the weaker; he did not attack Napoleon while part of the French army was absent, engaged in the siege of Danzig[3] ; but when Danzig had fallen and the French army was united, he attacked (!), let himself be held up by Napoleon's vanguard, which had only 1/3 the strength he had, and then be manoeuvred back into his entrenched camp by Napoleon. This Napoleon attacked without success on 10 [June]

with only 2 corps and several battalions of the Guard, but on the very next day he forced Bennigsen out of his camp and caused him to beat a hasty retreat; however, Bennigsen suddenly went over to the offensive without waiting for a corps of 28,000 men, which was already in Tilsit, occupied Friedland and established himself there, with his back to the river and therefore with only one line of retreat, the Friedland bridge (always wrong to give battle before a defile). Instead of advancing rapidly before Napoleon could concentrate his corps, he let himself be held up for 5-6 hours by Lannes and Mortier ('coupe-gorge dans lequel Bennigsen s'était engagé',[4] says Jomini of this position) until at about 5 o'clock[5] Napoleon was ready and gave the order for the attack. The Russians were thrown back to the river, Friedland was captured, the bridge having been destroyed by the Russians themselves while their whole right wing was still on the other side and escaped only over fords and with the loss of its artillery. 20,000 men lost. Bennigsen

'avait fait fautes sur fautes dans cette journée... il y eut dans sa conduite un mélange d'imprudence téméraire et d'irrésolution'.[6]

In 1812 he followed Russian headquarters around inveighing against Barclay in order to get his place, intriguing against him until Alexander relieved Bennigsen of his post. In 1813 he was ordered to lead the reserve army out of Russia into Bohemia, and when it arrived it was disbanded and Bennigsen disappeared.

Barclay de Tolly commanded a brigade at Eylau, etc. (see above); in 1812 commanded the First West Army and was War Minister; after Alexander's departure until Kutuzov's arrival was General-in-Chief, directed the retreat of the Russian army skilfully and had the great merit of resisting the clamourous demands of the Russians and of the whole headquarters to give battle. When he had to fight, as at Smolensk, he took up such a position that hë could not be involved in a decisive battle,[7] and when this could no longer be avoided—shortly before Moscow—he selected a position by Gzhatsk which was almost impregnable from the front and could be bypassed only by a very big detour. The army had already occupied this position when Kutuzov arrived, and natural- ly he would not agree to it because it was not he who had chosen it, and so the Russians had to fight in the unfavourable position at

Borodino.[8] In 1813 and 1814 Barclay commanded not an independent corps, but all the Russians in the Allied Army under Schwarzenberg, and as these were in separate corps and often split up, it was an administrative and diplomatic rather than a combatant position,[9] and he proved himself, as earlier, to be one of the better of the average generals—having bon sens[10] and staying power—and at any rate the best of the older generals that the Russians had.

  1. ↑ This letter was published in earlier editions without the notes on Bennigsen and Barclay which Engels made for Marx's biographical articles for The New American Cyclopaedia (see Note 165). The notes were first published—separately from the letter—in 1977, in Vol. 44 of the Second Russian Edition of the Works of Marx and Engels, under the editorial heading 'Bennigsen and Barclay'. In the present edition the letter is published in full with the notes for the first time.— 162
  2. ↑ The material that follows was used by Marx and Engels in their articles 'Bennigsen' and 'Barclay de Tolly'.
  3. ↑ The French laid siege to Danzig (Gdansk) in March 1807. The garrison, consisting of Prussian troops and a Russian detachment, offered stubborn resistance. The fortress surrendered to superior enemy forces at the end of May 1807.—162
  4. ↑ 'A robbers' den into which Bennigsen has ventured' (A. H. Jomini, Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon, t. 2, p. 414).
  5. ↑ 14 June 1807
  6. ↑ 'committed mistake after mistake on that day... his conduct was a mixture of rash imprudence and irresolution' (A. H. Jomini, op. cit., t. 2, p. 421).
  7. ↑ The battle of Smolensk, during the Patriotic War of Russia against Napoleon, took place on 16-18 August 1812. Units of the First and Second Russian armies (commanded by Barclay de Tolly and Bagration) which had joined up on 3 August rebuffed the attacks of Napoleon's troops to cover the withdrawal of the main forces. At the cost of heavy losses Napoleon captured the city, which was abandoned by the Russian rearguard after the main forces had withdrawn.—163
  8. ↑ This passage reflects the tendentious presentation of the events of the Patriotic War of Russia, 1812, in Jomini's Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon (Vols. 1-4, Paris, 1827) and other books (e.g. Bernhardi's Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben ... des Grafen von Toll, Vols. 1-4, Leipzig, 1856), which Engels used as sources. In particular, they contain inaccuracies in explaining why Mikhail Kutuzov, newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army, abandoned the position at Gzhatsk (more precisely at Tsarevo-Zaimishche), which it had occupied since 29 August 1812, and withdrew to Borodino. Kutuzov did so because he intended to give decisive batde with a more favourable balance of forces, for which it was necessary to win time and bring up reinforcements. The battle of Borodino was fought on 7 September. It brought about a turn in the war in Russia's favour, despite the forced but expedient abandonment of Moscow.—164
  9. ↑ In the final version of their article 'Barclay de Tolly' Marx and Engels gave a more accurate description of Barclay's role. There the remark concerning the predominance of administrative and diplomatic functions in Barclay's activities during the war of the Sixth Coalition (Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain, Spain, Sweden and other countries) against Napoleonic France, applied only to the 1814 campaign, and Barclay's role as military commander in a number of battles during the 1813 campaign is noted.—164
  10. ↑ common sense