"Not always the Poles fought well." Topic

The consensus about the Polish troops under the command of Napoleon Army was that they were some of the best troops he could count in a battlefield.
Of course the Polish fought very bravely and they were the most succesfull foreign troops under the tricoleur, but not always…
"In the last week of October Chichagov set off for Belorussia, leaving almos half his army to hold off Schwarzemberg and Reyner Saxon troops. Since together the Austrians and Saxons numbered 38.000 men and were expecting reinforcements…
When Schwarzemberg set off in pursiuit of Chichagov in accordance with Napoleon instrucctions, Von Osten-Sacken with his 27.000 men surprice attack Reyner's Saxon forced him to turn back to his rescue. Subsequently, Sacken succeeded in slipping away from Schawarzemberg's attempst to catch him and in pinning down the Austrian and Saxon Corps for the rest of the campaign…
Chichagov moved swiftly. His advance guard was commanded by yet another French emigré, Count Charles de Lambert,who had joined the Russian army in 1793. Lambert's force comprised some 8.000 men, mostly cavalry and four jaeger regiments commanded by Prince Vasili Viazemsky…
Napoleon had ordered Victor to send one of his divisions to reinforce the garrison of Minsk but by the time the order arrived Victor's whole corps had already moved northwards to stop Wittgenstein, so the defense of the southern approaches to Belorussia was left to General Jan Dombrowski and his 6.000 poles.
Dombrowski could not have stopped Lambert but he might well have slowed him down. Instead he and his fellow Polish Generals made a number of crucial mistakes. The force sent to guard the key crossing over the river Neman allowed itself to be surrounded and captured south of the river,leaving the bridge to fall intact into Lambert's hands. So too did the immense stores of food and fodder in Minsk, which had been designed to sustain the Grande Armée for a month. From Minsk Lambert raced for Borisov and the vital bridge over the Berezina… storming the fortifications protecting the bridge at dawn on 21 November before the 5.500 polish troops in the neighbourhood of Borisov could concentrate to defend the vital river crossing…. Lambert's capture of the bridge at Borisov was for the Russians the hight point of the winter 1812 campaing…
From Lieven book.

This is an interesting case were a french emigrée, a class of officers which showed themself normally useful for the Allied, made a incredible good advance and tactical movement that almost managed to catch Napoleon and the rest of his Army and a force of Poles which performed bad in a moment of crisis.

How much could be different the history of that winter campaing of 1812 if Minsk never surrender to Count Lambert.!

Amicalement
Armand

I think you have to differentiate between the Polish soldiers and Polish leadership. When well led the Polish infantry and cavalry were the equal to anyone on the battlefield. From what I can tell Dombrowski's career did not suggest he should have been left with independent command and the diaster described can be laid on poor tactical judgement by Dombrowki rather than any battlefield performance by the Polish troops. It certainly is a shame that the loss of Minsk further doomed the French retreat.

db

I agree, might have been more of a leadership issue.