On this: how much is true from the cliché that Revolutionary/Imperial French armies required extensive foraging to keep their ability to fight? Was it only done to maintain the pace, or the logistical train was patchy and it was a calculated risk as the plan was to occupy the enemy land anyway?
Could the Grande Armée make a winter quartier in Poland without devastating the land and/or losing its effective fighting ability? Was the Grande Armée a sustainable stuff at all or the drive to Moscow was dictated by the necessity of now or never?
Since I've already been digging into these books just now, here are some quotes about Poland and Russian logistics:
A Soldier for Napoleon by Franz Hausmann
pg 120
"Once in Silesia, however, the friendliness ceased and provisions diminished. The situation
grew worse as the corps shifted into Poland itself, spending the bulk of April around Posen
in miserable quarters. Supplies were drawn from magazines as the impoverished countryside was
incapable of sustaining the vast army now making its home between the Oder and the Vistula."
"There was not even enough straw for the troops to sleep on; they had to lie on the dirty and bare
floors in the miserable huts. Oppressive heat and bad water compounded the general misery. As Franz
noted, therefore, no one was reluctant to leave Poland."
pg 121
"The logistical situation grew increasingly difficult, exacerbated by a 5 June order for each
unit to stock a 10 to 14 day supply of provisions. The Bavarians, like most of the army, were
already receiving reduced rations for man and horse, and they quickly exhausted the readily available
resources of the regions where they were quartered. This additional requirement could only be met by pitiless
exactions from the local populace. Poland and East Prussia were stripped bare. Under these conditions, the
Bavarians made their way to the borders of the Tsar's realm through "an unlovely, often completely
barren region that became even more impoverished toward the Neman"
Though they marched in good order, the rigours of campaigning in Russia were already becoming evident,
"Heaps of dead horses showed us the way that IV Corps had taken, for hunger and fatigue felled them by
the hundreds"
pg 122
"Immediately on the right [eastern] bank, we found dozens of overturned and plundered wagons; even the finest
baggage wagons of the Italian and French Guards lay in the field next to their piles of horses, so that one
felt one was following a fleeing rather than an advancing army."
For the French Army, the peaceful move from the Vistula to the Neman, through barren regions,
was characterised by exhaustion and privation. The soldiers comforted themselves with the thought
of rich compensations in enemy territory. Once there, however, they found far and wide only a wasted
countryside whose inhabitants had fled. Another Bavarian officer noted "A bread shortage was already evident,
even though we had hardly set foot on enemy soil"
Major Ludwig Count von Seyboltstorff, commander of the II/1st Infantry noted:
"How will the army be able to live even in the case the war takes a favorable course with the quick pursuit
of the enemy and a rapid advance. By 12 July, the men had already gone nine days without bread and St Cyr
calculated that the corps had already lost 200 artillery horses. Poor quarters, short rations, foul water and
desolation remained the norm for man and beast."
pg 123
On 14 July, the corps departed Vilna. The marches were even worse than in Poland and Franz recorded that
"we are very often twelve hours on the road but have only covered a march of four hours owing to a new evil, the
complete absence of shoes...the greater part of the corps goes about with bare feet or wrapped their suffering feet
in cow hides"
St Cyr's comment was simple "Every day, the corps leaves behind a battalion's worth of men"
pg 162
Letter #12 Kowalewo 9 June 1812
I mention that I have used up the coffee, sugar and chocolate that I
already had, since there has been need of it. I thank you very much for all this.
The ham and mustard will serve me especially well, I would only wish that I could keep
it for when I will need it...we are situated at the home of a pensioned Polish colonel,
but the men are no longer getting all the necessities. For example, the bad drinking
water is notorious. Brandy is now also lacking, and, as I said before, there has been
a dearth of straw for a considerable time, and most of the the buildings have been
stripped of their thatch
Recollections of an Officer in Napoleon's Army by Captain Blaze
pg 63
In the campaign of Russia, the soldiers passed in front of the
treasury vans, abandoned on the road, without touching an ecus,
because there was no baker in the neighborhood. The great thing
in this world is bread, it is the stomach whose periodical demands
must always be listened to.
pg 77
A country in which were both very comfortable and the extreme opposite,
was Poland: The villages are frightfully filthy, in every peasant's house
there is an immense bed which serves for the entire family. The father,
mother, daughter, son-in-law all sleep there together, on straw and very
much as a litter of pigs. Go out of this hovel wherein you have left nature
in its primitive state, go to the chateau, you will find there all the
refinements of civilisation: a choice library, an agreeable conversation,
all the comforts it is possible to have in Poland. A voyage in that country
is a perpetual succession of antitheses. The Polish nobles make a ruinous
display and seek to re-establish the equilibrium of their finances by making
the peasants work.
pg 79
At Warsaw, one half of the inhabitants is composed of foreigners, and
especially Germans. The Polish Jews exclusively do business there; they are
inn-keepers, merchants, tailors, shoemakers; the Germans are doctors, surgeons,
lawyers; the Poles themselves are either nobles or peasants, slaves or lords; in
that country no intermediate class exists."
pg 80
The Poles speak nothing but French even among themselves; it is very bad form in
Warsaw to speak Polish, unless one addresses servants. The Polish language is
banished from good society as the Provencal patois is in Marseilles. They are
quite right in learning the languages of other people for no one, to my mind,
will be tempted to learn theirs. I have tried to do so, but how can one succeed
in pronouncing words which have four or five consonants one after the other? Still these
peasants, dirty, indolent, became very fit and brave soldiers. From beasts they become men,
proud, fit, intelligent, and they are not one bit inferior to the soldiers of the most
civilized nations.
pg 81
The Polish horses are small, they feed on anything given them, even old straw which
has seen service on the roofs of houses. They have been able to resist all the privations
that are experienced in war, while our handsome Norman horses were like skeletons when they
had gone without oats for two weeks.
pg 82
In Poland, the roads are not paved; the trouble has been taken of tracing
them through the forests, that is all. During the winter, and when the French
army tracked over that country in all directions, we encountered oceans of mud
which it was impossible to cross. The mud of Pultusk has become unhappily
celebrated: mounted men have been drowned in it with their horses.
pg 277
"The Poles, as soon as the coming of a detachment was announced,
deserted the villages and devoted their whole energy in concealing their provisions.
But practise in marauding enabled the troopers sounding the ground with their ram-rods
to find, even in the depths of the woods the Poles' best hiding-places.