Napoleon's Nemesis

"Kutuzov

By Alexander Mikaberidze

Oxford, 789 pages, $34.95

In a recent poll ranking the world's top historical figures, Russians voted Mikhail Kutuzov No. 15, behind his enemy Napoleon (No. 14) and several places ahead of Mikhail Gorbachev (No. 20). Kutuzov was the general who saw off Napoleon's Grande Armee in 1812; in the West, he is chiefly known through Leo Tolstoy's portrayal in "War and Peace." Hence the subtitle of Alexander Mikaberidze's enthralling "Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace."

Tolstoy's blubbery Kutuzov falls asleep in front of the allied commander at the council of war on the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. Mr. Mikaberidze reveals how the novel's portrayal "cast a shadow that endures" and writes that he wishes to lift Kutuzov "out of Tolstoy's novel" and "place him in the world he helped to shape." And so he does. The reader sees Russia spooling by as Kutuzov stands, always, center stage.

Mikhail Illarionovich Golenischev-Kutuzov was born into nobility in 1747, probably on the family estate in the Pskov region of Russia's northwest. His father was an engineer and distinguished soldier. Young Mikhail passed his early years among what Ivan Turgenev calls "nests of gentlefolk," and was destined for military service: the family coat of arms depicts a shield and an eagle clasping a sword in its claws.

Mr. Mikaberidze, a professor of history at Louisiana State University Shreveport, has published a trilogy on Napoleon's invasion of Russia, as well as "The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History," which won two military-history awards. In "Kutuzov" he deftly marshals colossal amounts of primary material to chart his subject's path to glory.

Kutuzov was a 15-year-old freshly graduated ensign when Peter III lost his throne in a coup led by his wife, Catherine. As a general -- Gregory Potemkin, Empress Catherine's lover, supported the promotion -- Kutuzov emerged from the Russo-Ottoman wars a six-time decorated hero. He was twice seriously wounded, once when a musket ball smashed through his skull. Part One of Mr. Mikaberidze's substantial volume closes these wars, but it was not the end of Turkey for Kutuzov. In 1772 Catherine sent him to the Sublime Porte as ambassador. His entourage of more than 600 included 24 singers and five cobblers.

Upon Catherine's death in 1796, her son Paul ascended the throne. The new emperor was godfather to one of Kutuzov's grandsons; the younger of the general's five daughters were maids of honor at court. In 1801 Paul was assassinated, and his 23-year-old son Alexander became czar. Had Kutuzov been in on the murder plot? Mr. Mikaberidze concludes only that he "must have seen or heard something." The account of this imperial transition is gripping.

Onward and upward then, but with setbacks. Abruptly relieved of his command as military governor of St. Petersburg in 1802, amid the swirling instability of the new czar's court, Kutuzov spent three years in exile on his estates in western Ukraine. He owned 15,000 serfs and moaned constantly, in his letters, about money ("I am haunted by the fear of spending my old age in penury and want").

Napoleon, who glowers at the emotional heart of the book, enters around the turn of the century in Part Three as Kutuzov, by then serving as governor general of Lithuania, danced the mazurka in Vilna "till [his] head hurt." (You would have thought it would be his feet.) In 1805 Alexander selected Kutuzov to head the First Army in the looming war against France. Tolstoy depicts Kutuzov, after Napoleon's victory at Ulm, with wrinkles that "ran over his face like a wave." The famous campaign is thrilling, with its retreats, carnage and cavalry attacks as darkness descends. Defeat at Austerlitz casts a long shadow. (Mr. Mikaberidze shows that Kutuzov had not wanted to fight the battle.) Part Four begins with Kutuzov serving as the military governor of Kyiv during "The Wilderness Years, 1806-1808." "I am not happy here," he writes home.

The author calls his man "an inveterate womanizer." In Bucharest in 1811 a contemporary reported that a very young girl often sat on his lap "playing with his aiguillettes." His wife, Catherine, comes to life occasionally through her letters, but on the whole remains an indistinct figure. Mr. Mikaberidze mentions depressions and lassitude, but the inner Kutuzov never comes alive in these pages. It would be a lot to expect. This is more a work of military history, with Kutuzov at its center, than it is a biography. The prose is clear and the narrative drive never slows even when the fighting does.

Kutuzov negotiated a peace treaty with the Ottomans in May 1812, and three months later John Quincy Adams, then America's ambassador to Russia, watched as the czar honored the general at Kazan Cathedral. Part Five opens in June 1812, as Napoleon surveys his men marching across the Nieman River. Alexander appoints the 65-year-old Kutuzov ("much stouter" now) supreme commander of Russia's armed forces. Borodino beckons in a superb climax. The fabled battle does not constitute a Russian victory, but the French fail to achieve the outcome they had hoped for, and Mr. Mikaberidze, in a nuanced assessment, casts Borodino as an important step on the road to Napoleonic defeat. Kutuzov's subsequent decision to withdraw from Moscow and prepare to fight a war of attrition is among the most controversial military decisions ever made, and is described vividly in these pages.

Mr. Mikaberidze is a formidable researcher. Few will ever match his scholarship in a field he has made his own. He has mined Kutozov's voluminous papers, the diaries and correspondence of contemporaries, and archives in Lithuania and France. Diagrams and maps of battles and defenses help guide the reader through the fog of war as units and battalions disband and reform, theaters shift and chronic problems of logistics confound.

He teases historical truth from mythmaking and challenges Tolstoy's traditional image of Kutuzov as a morose and passive observer of historic events. Contemporaries often reckoned that Kutuzov shielded himself from outsiders with a small circle of officers, and many felt he had missed opportunities to defeat Napoleon outright. Soviet historiographers, on the other hand, lionized him. Stalin, we are told, "was instrumental in the amplification of the Kutuzovian legend." He was a tool of Soviet propaganda, notably during World War II.

The author is always quick to defend his subject. Kutuzov "was said to have done his best to rein in the pillaging" at the storming of Izmail, a victory that "conferred an aura of martial glory that followed him for the rest of his life." Mr. Mikaberidze concedes that there is "some truth" in the claims that Kutuzov's age and poor health "clouded his judgement" and that he "feared confronting Napoleon." But only one-tenth of a Grande Armee of 600,000 survived to recross the Nieman in December 1812.

Kutuzov died in his bed soon after, in April 1813. Most Russians at the time hailed him as "the Savior of the Nation." Others perceived the old soldier as "a relic of a bygone era." This book presents a thorough reassessment.

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Ms. Wheeler is the author, most recently, of "Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia With Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age."" [1]

1. REVIEW --- Books: Napoleon's Nemesis
Wheeler, Sara. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 27 Aug 2022: C.9.