brilliant cavalryman, Lieutenant Colonel Denis Davydov. In August, just a month before Borodino, Davydov had proposed the creation of a long-range raiding force of one thousand riders who would strike at French logistics and communications. They would also be employed to link up with the peasants, most of whom were eager to fight the French and their allies after the rape, pillage, and general brutality the invaders had visited upon them.
Davydov took this proposal to one of his immediate superiors, General Pëtr Bagration, whom he had come to know after serving as his aide-de-camp. For his part, Bagration respected Davydov as a fighter and for his many intellectual gifts. In addition to his skill in the saddle, Davydov wrote popular poetry that idealized the hussar’s life of courage in battle and the pursuit of excess in every other area. Leo Tolstoy in fact used Davydov as his model in later crafting dynamic characters like Denisov and Dolohov for WAR AND PEACE . Alexander Pushkin, who knew him well, wrote of Davydov in a beautiful poem as “my marvelous rider.”
In any event, Bagration was impressed and took the plan to Kutuzov. A veteran commander whose record had been besmirched by Russia’s humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, Kutuzov was ill disposed toward the notion of setting loose a thousand horsemen at a time when he needed every musket and saber close at hand for the looming battle with Napoleon. But he was prevailed upon to give the plan at least a tentative try, and in a fateful moment a bureaucratic compromise was reached: Davydov would be given a force of fifty regular hussars and eighty Cossacks with which to conduct an irregular raiding and insurgent campaign against the French. He took them and immediately rode off to strike swiftly at the enemy—but also to be already gone in the event Kutuzov had a change of heart.
Within a few weeks of Davydov’s setting out, he learned of his mentor Bagration’s death in battle while commanding the Russian army’s center at Borodino. Davydov and his men, operating far inside French-occupied territory, were filled with sadness and rage. They determined to strike the enemy immediately in retaliation for the loss of their beloved leader. Soon a scout came with word of an approaching French infantry column of some four hundred soldiers. An ambush was laid, then sprung by Davydov’s smaller force. Some of the French were killed and the rest, about three hundred, sought to surrender. For a brief moment the lust for revenge competed with Davydov’s military code of conduct, then the Frenchmen were taken prisoner. As Davydov wrote in his memoirs, he was “convinced that the greatest tribute I could show to the memory of my heroic benefactor was to be merciful.” 5 He held a memorial service for Bagration later that day.
Over the next ninety days the “hussar poet” mounted a whirlwind campaign with his irregular forces, which Tolstoy would label Davydov’s “terrible weapon.” It was a weapon destined to play a crucial role in the ultimate, utter destruction of the invading army. The impact of this relatively junior officer on such a major campaign impels us to ask, “Who was Davydov?”
*
Born in 1784, Denis Davydov was a career military officer whose family background and apparently liberal leanings made his authority-loving superiors suspicious of him. His father, also a serving officer, had been compelled to resign his commission under a cloud of pending charges, the family suffering financially and in loss of reputation. Denis himself briefly left the service in 1804 but returned two years later and fought bravely in the campaigns leading to the climactic struggle for Russia. Just before Eylau, he first tested his light cavalry skills in rearguard actions against the French, almost losing his life in the process. 6 But he learned a lesson about the need for a defensive rearguard sometimes to take the tactical offensive, moving
Davydov took this proposal to one of his immediate superiors, General Pëtr Bagration, whom he had come to know after serving as his aide-de-camp. For his part, Bagration respected Davydov as a fighter and for his many intellectual gifts. In addition to his skill in the saddle, Davydov wrote popular poetry that idealized the hussar’s life of courage in battle and the pursuit of excess in every other area. Leo Tolstoy in fact used Davydov as his model in later crafting dynamic characters like Denisov and Dolohov for WAR AND PEACE . Alexander Pushkin, who knew him well, wrote of Davydov in a beautiful poem as “my marvelous rider.”
In any event, Bagration was impressed and took the plan to Kutuzov. A veteran commander whose record had been besmirched by Russia’s humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, Kutuzov was ill disposed toward the notion of setting loose a thousand horsemen at a time when he needed every musket and saber close at hand for the looming battle with Napoleon. But he was prevailed upon to give the plan at least a tentative try, and in a fateful moment a bureaucratic compromise was reached: Davydov would be given a force of fifty regular hussars and eighty Cossacks with which to conduct an irregular raiding and insurgent campaign against the French. He took them and immediately rode off to strike swiftly at the enemy—but also to be already gone in the event Kutuzov had a change of heart.
Within a few weeks of Davydov’s setting out, he learned of his mentor Bagration’s death in battle while commanding the Russian army’s center at Borodino. Davydov and his men, operating far inside French-occupied territory, were filled with sadness and rage. They determined to strike the enemy immediately in retaliation for the loss of their beloved leader. Soon a scout came with word of an approaching French infantry column of some four hundred soldiers. An ambush was laid, then sprung by Davydov’s smaller force. Some of the French were killed and the rest, about three hundred, sought to surrender. For a brief moment the lust for revenge competed with Davydov’s military code of conduct, then the Frenchmen were taken prisoner. As Davydov wrote in his memoirs, he was “convinced that the greatest tribute I could show to the memory of my heroic benefactor was to be merciful.” 5 He held a memorial service for Bagration later that day.
Over the next ninety days the “hussar poet” mounted a whirlwind campaign with his irregular forces, which Tolstoy would label Davydov’s “terrible weapon.” It was a weapon destined to play a crucial role in the ultimate, utter destruction of the invading army. The impact of this relatively junior officer on such a major campaign impels us to ask, “Who was Davydov?”
*
Born in 1784, Denis Davydov was a career military officer whose family background and apparently liberal leanings made his authority-loving superiors suspicious of him. His father, also a serving officer, had been compelled to resign his commission under a cloud of pending charges, the family suffering financially and in loss of reputation. Denis himself briefly left the service in 1804 but returned two years later and fought bravely in the campaigns leading to the climactic struggle for Russia. Just before Eylau, he first tested his light cavalry skills in rearguard actions against the French, almost losing his life in the process. 6 But he learned a lesson about the need for a defensive rearguard sometimes to take the tactical offensive, moving
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