Episode 266 – Mikhail Kutuzov – Military Genius & Napoleon’s Nemesis – Part Two

Last time, we talked about the early life of Mikhail Kutuzov up until the spring of 1772. Today, we take up the story with an incident that would almost cost Mikhail his life.

The Peace Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca had been signed between the Ottomans and the Russians on July 21, 1774, supposedly ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74. Unfortunately for Kutuzov, his men, and a large contingent of Ottoman soldiers, no one bothered to tell them about the treaty signing. On August 4th, Led by Lieutenant General Valentin Musin-Pushkin, led his men, along with Kutuzov, against a well-fortified Ottoman position. 

The fighting was fierce, with the Turks showing surprising resistance. As Musin-Pushkin put it, As soon as our troops launched the attack, they encountered ferocious artillery and musket fire." Mikhail was leading the attack on the left flank with his men performing with "great discipline, composure, and gallantry under fire, and Kutuzov was later praised for having trained them to perform as well as veteran soldiers.”

As the men were advancing, Mikhail stood on the edge of a ditch when a musket ball struck him between his eye and left temple, exiting the side of his skull. He fell into the ditch, landing on dead and injured bodies. But, as Mikaberidze writes, "He was extremely lucky – the odds of surviving a half-inch lead projectile smashing the sphenoid or temporal bone, passing through the human cranium, and exiting on the other side are astonishingly small. He was also fortunate that as the troops pushed forward to secure victory, some grenadiers carried their unconscious and bleeding commander off the battlefield and to the care of the physicians, who rushed to tend to him as well as they could, considering the circumstances and critical nature of the injury."

As a British surgeon of the Napoleonic Era noted, "Injuries of the head, are difficult of distinction, doubtful in their character, treacherous in their course, and for the most part fatal in their results." Despite all odds, Kutuzov survived the gunshot wound, having been sent to a hospital in St. Petersburg. Amazingly, he did not lose his eye, but his eyesight was affected. Kutuzov would make a slow recovery, and by March 1775, he asked for a furlough to continue healing his wound. Empress Catherine would tell her confidants, "We must look after Kutuzov. He is destined to by my great general." She would give him 1,000 gold rubles, pay for all his medical expenses, and award him the Order of St. George, fourth class for gallantry in action.

For the next year and a half, Kutuzov would travel through Europe, going to Prussia, Austria, the Dutch Republic, and Italy. Due to the amazing nature of his recovery, he became a celebrity everywhere he went. For example, on one trip to Leiden in the Netherlands, a surgeon lectured on how it would be impossible for Mikhail to have survived the gunshot wound, not knowing he was in the audience. Legend has it that Kutuzov stood up after the lecture and pronounced, "Dear professor, here I am, and I can see you without a problem."

While he would recover from the injury, it would plague him with recurring headaches, dizziness, lethargy, and sensitivity to light for the rest of his life. More than physically, the injury changed his personality, which we now know was because of the effect of the musket shot on his prefrontal cortex. Kutuzov went from being a cheerful and gregarious person to being morose, suspicious, and evasive. 

By spring 1775, Mikhail was transferred to the Tulski Infantry Regiment. This would last for about two years before he was reassigned to the staff of our old friend, Grigori Potemkin. Because of his incredible talent, Potemkin would use Kutuzov to help train new hussar and lancer regiments. This would promote him to colonel and the command of the Pikineer Lance Regiment.

Knowing that he had a safe career ahead of him, Kutuzov decided to find a mate and start a family. He would come across an old acquaintance of his, Ekaterina Ilyinchna Bibikova. Her family and the Kutuzovs were old friends and welcomed the pairing. While Mikhail was never handsome and now had a disfiguring injury, he wondered why a beautiful woman like Ekaterina would marry him. Finally, however, she did so on April 27, 1778. She would bear him six children, five daughters, and one son. 

While the relationship was happy, Kutuzov would rarely see his family as he was continually off on campaign. In addition, while not directly involved in the Crimean turmoil plaguing the peninsula at the time, he was now attached to the Mariupolsky Light Horse Regiment, which would eventually help suppress any resistance to the annexation of Crimea that would occur in 1783. 

On December 5, 1784, Kutuzov was given yet another promotion, this time as a major general. Potemkin would sign the order to appoint him to the head of the Bug Jager Corps. As Mikaberidze puts it. "This appointment is significant for what it tells us about Kutuzov's military career. Since graduating as an engineer from a military school, he had been employed successfully as a staff officer, quartermaster officer, and commander of the musketeer, grenadier, pikineer, light cavalry, and now light infantry units. The diversity of his employments is striking; few officers in any country could boast such a range. Time and again, his superiors turned to him to get things done. And he consistently rose to the occasion. He had survived a demotion that would have destroyed most careers and a wound that would have killed most people. Kutuzov had shown that, in Pushkin's expression, he was becoming part of "that lofty flock of Catherine's eagles."

With Mikhail now promoted into a relatively new army formation, the light infantry, he jumped into the project with both feet. His command of the Bug Jager Corps would take nine years, starting in 1777. Ultimately, he would produce the military treatise Remarks on Infantry Service in General and That of the Jagers in Particular, which was finished in June 1786. 

First, Kutuzov would have to determine the ideal soldier for the light infantry. His decision kind of surprised me, but it made all the sense in the world. Mikhail specified that the ideal man would be short "so that they could pose a smaller target for the enemy and easily navigate mountainous or wooded terrain – while demonstrating outstanding agility, fortitude, and marksmanship. The idea here was to train 4,000 men in a way that had never been attempted in Russian military history. Kutuzov was to prove he was up for the job.

At this time in European history, there was a philosophy that would be unheard of today, and that is the concept of Military Enlightenment or fighting a “Good War.” They believed that wars are “a fundamental facet of human existence and a critical instrument of sovereign states.”

Like his part-time mentor Suvorov, Kutuzov firmly believed in taking care of those soldiers under his command. He thought this should be followed throughout the Russian military. In his treatise On the Maintenance of a Soldier, Kutuzov writes, "The good care of a soldier being the utmost reason for the high quality and strength of any military unit. I, therefore, designate this issue to be the most important of subjects and the foremost concern of the battalion commanders."

He also believed that the soldier in service to his country was making a huge sacrifice and should be treated with that in mind. Kutuzov thought a soldier could not be "left unprepared for his duty and cannot feel anything but faithfulness and readiness to carry out service required from him." He further went on to write, "experience deficiencies that can undermine his health and, on some occasions, even endanger his life, and consequently cause an irreparable harm to military service." This meant that mistreating the soldiers by officers was pretty much a criminal act. This was opposed to how Russian soldiers would be treated during World War I and, in my opinion, today in the war in Ukraine.

One of the most critical things Kutuzov was adamant about teaching his soldiers was marksmanship. Mikaberidze writes, "…Kutuzov devised special firing ranges that featured eight-foot wooden boards with human silhouettes painted in black on them; these were placed in front of an earthen barrier, which made it easier to recover spent bullets. Jagers were required to shoot at these targets from various ranges and positions, starting at 100 paces and gradually increasing to 300 paces; 150 paces was optimal for aimed firing.”

Kutuzov's care for his men was apparent compared to other Russian army units. They had the lowest rates of sick or missing men, and as Potemkin put it, "there is not a single case of desertion in the corps while other corps have plenty of them." For example, the Bug Jager Corps had, in 1788, only a 9.1 percent unavailable for service level while the Taurida Jager Corps was at 15 percent, and the Ekaterinoslav Corps came in at a whopping 24.4 percent.

This preparation of the soldiers in the Russian army was necessary because there was always war in the air, especially against the Ottomans. What precipitated the next Russo-Turkish War was the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire. The Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca had created an independent Crimea, but Empress Catherine was having none of that. She wanted the peninsula under Russia’s control as well as a dominant position on the Black Sea.

What really riled the Ottomans up was the tour of Crimea that Catherine, Potemkin, and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. This is where the supposed Potemkin Villages were created, although modern historical research suggests that the villages Potemkin created were fully operational, real, and not merely props. The Ottoman leader, Sultan Abdulhamid I, demanded that the Russians leave Crimea immediately, and when they refused, he declared war on August 19, 1787. 

Knowing that war was imminent, Potemkin had forces from the Russian army heading south toward the border weeks before the declaration. Kutuzov had orders to head to a new camp on the south side of the Dnieper River. This meant moving 4,000 crack troops on a ninety-mile march with full gear and everything needed to build a new camp. 

The first significant engagement of the war was at the “Russian fortress at Kinburn, on the western end of the long and narrow Kinburn peninsula, which extended into the Black Sea on the western side of the Crimea and protected the approaches to Kherson. Field Marshal Suvorov was the overall commander of the fortress's defense and the entire Crimean peninsula. Kutuzov would help win the day after the Ottomans pounded the stronghold with artillery for three days and then landed a large force. Finally, after fierce fighting for hours on October 12, 1777, the Turks were pushed back to the sea.

Both sides decided to halt winter combat, allowing Kutuzov to continue training his men on marksmanship and formations. The main threat from the Ottomans was their cavalry, and Kutuzov knew it. As he put it, "Square is an indispensable formation when facing our enemy. We must therefore teach troops how to form it rapidly from any type of column… and to practice moving while in square formation in any direction." 

This would come in handy when the big battle for the Ottoman Fortress at Ochakov commenced in June of 1788. Leading the naval contingent of the Russian military were two foreigners, French-born Prince Charles Heinrich von Nassau-Siegen and a name familiar to American history buffs, John Paul Jones, who would become one of the heroes of the American-British conflict known as the War of 1812. They would meet in two engagements, the first being a stalemate with the second being a total rout of the Turks. 

Known as the Second Battle of Liman, the Ottoman fleet lost more than a dozen warships and suffered over 3,500 casualties. Even more important, it removed the naval threat and allowed Potemkin to begin the siege of Ochakov. Kutuzov would join the fray in late July.

While the siege was a grind for both sides. But what makes this particular battle so important is not the outcome, which went to the Russians, but who was involved and the relationships they built there. Those in attendance included Prince Nassau-Zigen, Charles de Ligne, Roger de Damas, John Paul Jones, Victor Amadeus Anhalt and members of the future opponents to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Levin Bennigsen, Peter Bagration, Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, and Matvei Platov.

Kutuzov was injured twice in the siege, once being hit by a bullet in the neck which infuriated Potemkin. He would reprimand Mikhail by saying, "soldiers are not so cheap that one can sacrifice them so easily." The second wound came in the same area as Kutuzov's first injury. However, this time, instead of entering near the temple and exiting above the left eye, it entered about the eye and exited near the temple. Incredibly, Kutuzov survived yet again. As French physician, Jean Massot said, "Providence seems to be preparing General Kutuzov for something extraordinary because he survived two wounds that, by the rules of medical science, should have been fatal.

Even more incredible is that Kutuzov was back, ready to serve on active duty in six months. Since the Russians had already taken Ochakov, Mikhail was allowed to return home for a while, where he witnessed the birth of his fifth daughter, Darya, on January 2, 1789.

The following year was uneventful for Kutuzov despite now being named commander of the Bug River contingent of the Russian army facing the Ottoman border. He would lead a number of regiments in action against the Turks. Time after time, the Russians, with Kutuzov leading the way, would beat back their enemies, eventually taking the important fortresses at Ackerman and Bender. On another front, Suvorov was doing the same. The Ottomans were in a precarious position but refused to give up.

Unfortunately for the Russians, 1790 was going to start really poorly. The Austrian emperor, Joseph II, died, the Ottomans made a pact with the Prussians, a long-time enemy of the Austrians. This eventually took the Austrians out of the war leaving Russia to fight the Turks on their own. 

Kutuzov would brilliantly set up a network of reconnaissance agents to inform him where the enemies were gathering forces. It would help immensely in the coming offensive against the Ottoman positions. Then a ray of good news arrived, the Swedes were halting their aggressive actions against the Russians and accepted the peace treaty of Varala.

The new target was the fortress of Izmail which had been recently fortified with the help of French and German engineers. This was a position that the Ottomans could ill afford to lose. Because of all the surveillance that Kutuzov had worked on, the Russians had a lot of inside information that would be highly useful. They were well aware of the poor conditions at the fortress, the low morale, low supplies, and high desertion rates. They also knew where all of the troops were situated along with their numbers due to a defector just three days before the assault. Unfortunately for the Russians, they were unsuccessful, and the siege would start to drag out into the winter. This would lead to a precipitous drop in morale in the Russian camp. 

Because of dwindling supplies, the Russians were forced to abandon the siege after a war council meeting and move into winter quarters. But Potemkin had other ideas. He ordered Suvorov to take control, and he quickly countermanded the retreat. The assault on Izmail was horrific for both sides. But the charge of Kutuzov and his men, ordered by Suvorov, would allow for the eventual victory. 

The legend goes that Suvorov sent a message to Kutuzov stating that he was proud that Mikhail was able to take Izmail, which had not happened yet. Suvorov then wrote, "The courtier is already on his way to deliver the empress news that the fortress had been taken.” Kutuzov was confused at first and then realized that he had no choice but to take Izmail. When confronted with the odd choice of words after the siege, Suvorov commented, "I know Kutuzov, and Kutuzov knows me. I knew that Kutuzov would take Izmail at all costs. And that if Izmail is not taken, I would die by its wall, and so would Kutuzov."

The carnage that ensued was incredibly bloody. As one officer recounted, “It is no exaggeration to say that the gutters of the town were dyed with blood. Even women and children fell victims to the rage… it was the most unequalled butchery.” As Duc de Richelieu would write in his diary, “I will not attempt to paint the horror that froze al of my senses. The image of death and desolation presented itself everywhere I looked.” 

The fortress, which was once a very wealthy enclave, was pillaged, and many of the women and children who were not killed were enslaved. Kutuzov would be appointed commandant of Izmail, and it took everything in his power to stop the carnage. As the Duc de Richelieu would write, "Despite the strongest indiscretion that reigned among the Russian troops that day, that same evening order was restored as five battalions under General Kutuzov garrisoned the city."

As Suvorov put the aftermath, “We have gained a complete victory. The fortress of Izmail, so well-fortified, so vast and seemingly impregnable, has been taken by the frightful force of the Russian bayonets.”

While the losses on the defenders of Izmail were staggering, they lost 26,000 soldiers and thousands of civilians lost, and the Russians suffered massive casualties as well. It is estimated that 10,000 soldiers died, and 7 out of 10 officers also lost their lives. It would profoundly affect Kutuzov. He would write, "I will not see another such horrendous affair again if I live another hundred years. My hair stands on its end, just remembering it. Yesterday evening I felt cheerful because I was still alive, ad this dreadful city was in our hands. But returning to my quarters at night was like venturing into the wasteland… I spent the whole night alone, grieving.”

The war against the Ottomans would continue for another two years, with the Turks refusing to concede despite loss after loss. The Battle of Macin would be the death knell for the Turkish forces. Then, led by Kutuzov and General Repnin, would rout vastly larger forces forcing the Ottomans to come to the peace table. They would be forced to recognize the Russian's hold on Crimea and most of the northern Black Sea coast. Kutuzov gained huge praise from his fellow generals and elevated him to the highest position among Russian military commanders. 

Empress Catherine would praise him for “the diligent service and gallant and valiant exploits with which you distinguished yourself. The hero of Macin had arrived. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Join me next time as we continue the story of Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov.

So, until next time, Dasvidania eh Spasiba za Vineyamineya.