§ 10. Departure from Moscow; the first battle.
On the southern side of Moscow, near one of its gates, is an extensive suburb, divided by two high roads; both run to Kaluga: that on the right is the more ancient, the other is quite new. It was on the first that Kutusoff had just beaten Murat. By the same road Napoleon left Moscow on the 19th of October, announcing to his officers his intention to return to the frontiers of Poland. One of them, Rapp, observed that "it was late, and that winter might overtake them by the way." The emperor replied "that he had been obliged to allow time to the soldiers to recruit themselves, and to the wounded collected at Moscow, and at other places, to move off towards Smolensk." Then, pointing to a still serene sky, he asked "if in that brilliant sun they did not recognize his star." But this appeal to his fortune, and the sinister expression of his looks, belied the security which he affected.
Napoleon entered Moscow with ninety thousandfighting men, and twenty thousand sick and wounded, and quitted it with more than a hundred thousand combatants. He left there with only twelve hundred sick. His stay, therefore, notwithstanding daily losses, had served to rest his infantry, to complete his stores, to augment his force by ten thousand men, and to protect the recovery or the retreat of a great part of his wounded. But on this very first day he could perceive that his cavalry and artillery might be said rather to crawl than to march.
A melancholy spectacle added to the gloomy presentiments of our chief. The army had, ever since the preceding day, been pouring out of Moscow without intermission. In this column of one hundred and forty thousand men and about fifty thousand horses of all kinds, the hundred thousand combatants marching at its head with their knapsacks and their arms, upward of five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and two thousand artillery wagons, still exhibited a formidable appearance, worthy of soldiers who had conquered the world. But the rest, whose numbers were in an alarming proportion, resembled a horde of Tartars after a successful invasion. They formed three or four files of almost infinite length, in which there was a confused mixture of chaises, ammunition wagons, handsome carriages, and, in short, vehicles of every kind. Here trophies of Russian, Turkish, and Persian colors, and the gigantic cross of Ivan the Great; there, long-bearded Russian peasants carrying or driving along our booty, of which they constituted a part; and some dragging even wheelbarrows filled with whatever they could remove. The fools were not likely to proceed in this manner till the conclusion of the first day, and yet their senseless avidity made them think nothing of battles and a march of two hundred leagues.
Among these followers of the army were particularly remarked a multitude of men of all nations, without uniform and without arms, and servants swearing in every language, and urging by dint of shouts and blows the progress of elegant carriages, drawn by pigmy horses harnessed with ropes. These were filled with provisions, or with booty saved from the flames. They carried, also, many French women with their children. Formerly these females had been happy inhabitants of Moscow; but they now fled from the hatred of the Muscovites, which the invasion had drawn upon their heads, and the army was their only asylum.
A few Russian girls, voluntary captives, also followed. It looked like a caravan, a wandering nation, or, rather, one of those armies of antiquity returning loaded with slaves and with spoils after a great devastation. It was inconceivable how the head of this column could draw and protect such a prodigious mass of equipages in so long a route.
Notwithstanding the width of the road and the shouts of his escort, Napoleon had great difficulty in obtaining a passage through this immense throng. No doubt the obstruction of a defile, a few forced marches, or a handful of Cossacks would have been sufficient to rid us all of this encumbrance; but fortune or the enemy had alone a right to lighten us in this manner. As for the emperor, he was fully sensible that he could neither deprive his soldiers of this fruit of so many toils, nor reproach them for securing it. Besides, provisions concealed the booty; and was it for him, who could not give his troops the subsistence he should have done, to forbid their carrying it along with them? Lastly, in case of the failure of militaryconveyances, these vehicles would be the only means of preservation for the sick and wounded.
Napoleon therefore extricated himself in silence from the immense train which he drew after him, and advanced on the old road leading to Kaluga. He pushed on in this direction for some hours, declaring that he would go and beat Kutusoff on the very field of his victory. But all at once, about midday, opposite to the castle of Krasnopachra, where he halted, he suddenly turned to the right with his army, and in three marches across the country gained the new road to Kaluga.
The rain, which overtook him in the midst of this manœuvre, spoiled the cross-roads, and obliged him to halt in them. This was a most unfortunate circumstance. It was with difficulty that our cannon were drawn out of the sloughs.
At any rate, the emperor had masked his movement by Ney's corps and the remnants of Murat's cavalry, which had remained behind the Motscha and at Woronowo. Kutusoff, deceived by this feint, was still waiting for the Grand Army on the old road, while, on the 23d of October, the whole of it had been transferred to the new one, and had but one march to make in order to pass quietly by him, and to get between him and Kaluga.
On the first day of this flanking march, a letter was sent from Berthier to Kutusoff, as a last attempt at peace, or perhaps merely as a ruse. No satisfactory answer was returned to it.
On the 23d the imperial quarters were at Borowsk. That night was an agreeable one for the emperor: he was informed that, at six in the evening, Delzons with his division, who was four leagues in advance of him, hadfound the town of Malo-jaroslavetz and the woods which command it unoccupied: this was a strong position within reach of Kutusoff, and the only point where he could cut us off from the new road to Kaluga.
The emperor wished at first to secure that advantage by his presence: the order to march was even given, but shortly after withdrawn, we know not why. He passed the whole of that evening on horseback, not far from Borowsk, on the left of the road, the side on which he supposed Kutusoff to be. He reconnoitered the ground in the midst of a heavy rain, as if he anticipated that it might become a field of battle. Next day, the 24th, he learned that the Russians had disputed the possession of the town with Delzons. Either from confidence or uncertainty in his plans, this intelligence appeared to give him very little concern.
He quitted Borowsk, therefore, late and leisurely, when the noise of a very smart engagement reached where he was; he then became uneasy, hastened to an eminence and listened. "Had the Russians anticipated him? Was his manœuvre thwarted? Had he not used sufficient expedition in that march, the object of which was to pass the left flank of Kutusoff?"
The emperor was still listening: the noise increased. "Is it then a battle?" he exclaimed. Every discharge agitated him, for the chief point with him was no longer to conquer, but to preserve, and he urged on with all possible speed, Davoust accompanying him; but he and that marshal did not reach the field of battle till dark, when the firing was already subsiding, and the whole was over.
The emperor saw the close of the battle, but withoutbeing able to assist the viceroy.[161]A band of Cossacks from Twer had nearly captured one of his officers, who was only a very short distance from him.
At this time an officer, sent by Prince Eugene, came to him and explained the whole affair. "The troops had," he said, "in the first place, been obliged to cross the Louja at the foot of the town, at the bottom of an elbow which the river makes in its course, and then to climb a steep hill. It is on this precipitous declivity, broken by pointed crags, that the town is built. Beyond is an elevated plain, surrounded with woods, from which run three roads, one in front coming from Kaluga, and two on the left, from Lectazowo, the seat of the intrenched camp of Kutusoff."
After crossing the Louja by a narrow bridge, the high road from Kaluga runs along the bottom of a ravine which ascends to the town, and then enters it. The enemy in mass occupied this hollow way; Delzons and his Frenchmen rushed upon them pell-mell; the Russians were broken and overthrown; they gave way, and presently our bayonets glistened on the heights.
Delzons, conceiving himself sure of the victory, announced it as won. He had nothing but a pile of buildings to storm; but his soldiers hesitated. He himself advanced, and was encouraging them by his words, actions, and example, when a ball struck him in the forehead, and extended him on the ground. His brother threw himself upon him, covered him with his body, clasped him in his arms, and was striving to bear him out of the fire and the fray, when a second ball hit him also, and both expired together.
This loss left a great void, which required to be filled.Guilleminot succeeded Delzons, and the first thing he did was to throw a hundred men into a church and the yard around it, in the walls of which they made loopholes. This church stood on the left of the high road, which it commanded, and to its possession we owed the victory. Five times during the day was this post passed by the Russian columns as they were pursuing ours, and five times did its fire, seasonably poured upon their flank and rear, harass them and retard their progress: afterward, when we resumed the offensive, this position placed them between two fires, and ensured the success of our attacks.
Scarcely had that general made this disposition when he was assailed by a host of the enemy: he was driven back towards the bridge, where the viceroy had stationed himself in order to judge how to act and to prepare his reserves. At first the re-enforcements which he sent came up but slowly one after another; and, as is almost always the case where there is this tardy movement, being singly inadequate to any great effort, each was successively destroyed without result.
At length the whole of the 14th division was engaged; and the combat was carried for the third time to the heights. But when the French had passed the houses, advanced beyond the central point from which they had set out, and reached the plain where they were exposed, and where the circle expanded, they could advance no farther; overwhelmed by the fire of a whole Russian army, they were daunted and shaken; fresh columns incessantly came up: our thinned ranks gave way and were broken; the obstacles of the ground increased their confusion; and at length they retired precipitately, and abandoned everything.
Meanwhile, the shells having set fire to the wooden town behind them, in their retreat they were stopped by the conflagration: one fire drove them back upon another; the Russian recruits, wrought up to a pitch of fanatic fury, closely pursued them; our soldiers became enraged; they fought man to man; some were seen seizing each other with one hand and striking with the other, until both rolled down the precipices into the flames without quitting their hold. There the wounded expired, either suffocated by the smoke or consumed by the flames.
The 15th division was still left. The viceroy summoned it: as it advanced, it threw a brigade into the suburb on the left, and another into the town on the right. It consisted of Italians, recruits, who had never before been in action. They ascended, shouting enthusiastically, ignorant of the danger or despising it, from that singular disposition which renders life less dear in its flower than in its decline, either because while young we fear death less from the feeling of its distance, or because at that age, rich in years and lavish of everything, we are prodigal of life as the wealthy are of their fortune.
The shock was terrible: everything was reconquered for the fourth time, and speedily lost again in like manner. More eager to begin than their seniors, these young troops were sooner disheartened, and returned flying to the old battalions, which supported them, and were obliged to lead them back to danger.
The Russians, imboldened by their constantly increasing numbers and by success, descended by their right to gain possession of the bridge and to cut off our retreat. Prince Eugene had nothing left but his last reserve: he and his guard, therefore, now took part in the combat. Atthis sight, and in obedience to his call, the remains of the 13th, 14th, and 15th divisions resumed their courage: they made a last and desperate effort, and for the fifth time the combat was transferred to the heights.
At the same time, Colonel Peraldi and the Italian troops overthrew with their bayonets the Russians who were already approaching the left of the bridge: infuriated by the smoke and the fire through which they had passed, and encouraged by their success and the havoc which they made, they pushed forward without stopping on the elevated plain, and endeavored to make themselves masters of the enemy's cannon; but one of those deep clefts with which the soil of Russia is intersected stopped them in the midst of a destructive fire, their ranks opened, the enemy's cavalry attacked them, and they were driven back to the very gardens of the suburb. There they paused and rallied: all, both French and Italians, obstinately defended the upper avenues of the town, and the Russians, being at length repulsed, drew back and concentrated themselves on the road to Kaluga, between the woods and Malo-jaroslavetz.
In this manner did 18,000 Italians and French, crowded together at the bottom of a ravine, defeat 50,000 Russians, posted over their heads, and seconded by all the obstacles that a town built on a steep declivity is capable of presenting.
The army, however, surveyed with sorrow this field of battle, where seven generals and 4000 French and Italians had been killed or wounded. The sight of the enemy's loss afforded no consolation; it was not twice the amount of ours, and their wounded would be saved. It was moreover recollected, that in a similar situation, Peter I., insacrificing ten Russians for one Swede, thought that he was not sustaining merely an equal loss, but that he was gaining even by so terrible a bargain. But what caused the greatest pain was the reflection that this sanguinary conflict might have been spared.[162]
§ 11. Napoleon holds a council of war and decides to retreat northward.
Do you recollect, comrades, that fatal field? Can you still figure to yourselves the blood-stained ruins of that town, those deep ravines, and the woods which surround that elevated plain, and mark it, as it were, for a field of combat? On the one side were the French, quitting the north, from which they sought to fly; on the other, at the entrance of the wood, were the Russians, guarding the south, and striving to drive us back upon their all-subduing winter. In the midst of this plain, between the two armies, was Napoleon, his steps and his eyes wandering from south to west, along the roads to Kaluga and Medyn, both which were closed against him. On that to Kaluga were Kutusoff and one hundred and twenty thousand men, ready to dispute with him sixty miles of defiles; towards Medyn he beheld a numerous cavalry: it was Platoff and those same hordes which had just penetrated the flank of the army, traversed it through and through, and burst forth, laden with booty, to form again on his right flank, where re-enforcements and artillery were waiting for them. It wason that side that the eyes of the emperor were fixed the longest; it was principally in regard to it that he listened to reports of his officers, and consulted his maps: until, oppressed with regret and gloomy forebodings, he slowly returned to his headquarters.
Murat, Prince Eugene, Berthier, Davoust and Bessières followed him. This miserable habitation of an obscure artisan contained within it an emperor, two kings, and three generals. Here they were about to decide the fate of Europe, and of the army which had conquered it. Smolensk was the goal. Should they march thither by Kaluga, Medyn, or Mojaisk? Napoleon was seated at a table, his head supported by his hands, which concealed his features, as well as the anguish which they no doubt expressed.
A silence fraught with such imminent perils was for some time respected, until Murat, whose actions were always the result of impetuous feeling, became weary of this hesitation.
"Give him but the remnant of his cavalry and that of the Guard," he said, "and he would force his way into Russian forests and the Russian battalions, overthrow all before him, and open anew to the army the road to Kaluga."
Here Napoleon, raising his head, extinguished all his fire by saying that "we had exhibited temerity enough already; that we had done but too much for glory, and it was now high time to give up thinking of anything but how to save the rest of the army."
Bessières, either because his pride revolted at the idea of being put under the command of the King of Naples, or from a desire to preserve uninjured the cavalry of the Guard, which he had formed, for which he was answerableto Napoleon, and which he exclusively commanded, finding himself supported, then ventured to add, that "neither the army nor even the Guard had sufficient spirit left for such efforts." The marshal concluded by giving his opinion in favor of retreat, which the emperor approved by his silence.
The Prince of Eckmühl then immediately said that, "as a retreat seemed decided upon, he proposed that it should be by Medyn and Smolensk." But Murat here interrupted him; and, whether from enmity, or from that discouragement which usually succeeds the rejection of a rash measure, he declared himself astonished "that any one should dare propose so imprudent a step to the emperor. Had Davoust sworn the destruction of the army? Would he have so long and heavy a column trail along in utter uncertainty, without guides, and on an unknown track, within reach of Kutusoff, presenting its flank to all the attacks of the enemy? Would he, Davoust, defend it? When in our rear Borowsk and Vereïa would lead us without danger to Mojaisk, why reject that safe route? There provisions must have been already collected, there everything was known to us, and we could not be misled by any traitor."
At these words, Davoust, burning with a rage which he could scarcely repress, replied that "he proposed a retreat through a fertile country, by an untouched, plentiful, and well supplied route, where the villages were still standing, and by the shortest road, that the enemy might not be able to cut us off, as on the route by Mojaisk to Smolensk, recommended by Murat. And what a route! a desert of sand and ashes, where convoys of wounded would increase our embarrassment, where we should meet with nothing but ruins, traces of blood, skeletons, and famine!
"Moreover, though he deemed it his duty to give his opinion when it was asked, he was ready to obey orders contrary to it with the same zeal as if they were consonant with his suggestions; but that the emperor alone had a right to impose silence on him, and not Murat, who was not his sovereign, and never should be!"
The quarrel growing warm, Bessières and Berthier interposed. As for the emperor, still absorbed and in the same attitude, he appeared insensible to what was passing. At length he broke up the council with the words, "Well, gentlemen, I will decide."
He decided on retreat, and by that road which would carry him most speedily to a distance from the enemy; but it required another desperate effort before he could bring himself to give an order of march so new to him. So painful, indeed, was this effort, that in the inward struggle which it produced he lost the use of his senses.
It is a remarkable fact, that he issued orders for this retreat northward at the very moment that Kutusoff and his Russians, dismayed at their defeat at Malo-jaroslavetz, were retiring towards the south.
From that moment Napoleon had nothing in his view but Paris, just as on leaving Paris he saw nothing but Moscow. It was on the 26th of October that the fatal movement of our retreat commenced. Davoust, with twenty-five thousand men, remained as a rear-guard. While by advancing a few paces, without being aware of it, he was spreading consternation among the Russians, the Grand Army, in astonishment, was turning its back on them. It marched with downcast eyes, as if ashamed and humbled. In the midst of it, its commander, gloomy and silent, seemed to be anxiously measuring his line of communication with the fortresses on the Vistula.
For the space of more than two hundred and fifty leagues it offered but two points where he could halt and rest, the first Smolensk, the second Minsk. He had made those towns his two great depôts, where immense magazines were established.
Napoleon, however, reckoned upon the Duke of Belluno and his thirty-six thousand fresh troops. That corps had been at Smolensk ever since the beginning of September. He relied also upon detachments being sent from his depôts, on the sick and wounded who had recovered, and on the stragglers, who would be rallied and formed at Wilna into marching battalions. All these would successively come into line, and fill up the chasms made in his ranks by the sword, famine, and disease. He should therefore have time to regain that position on the Dwina and the Borysthenes, where he wished it to be believed that his presence, added to that of Victor, Saint-Cyr, and Macdonald, would overawe Wittgenstein,[163]check Kutusoff, and threaten the Czar Alexander even in his second capital.
He accordingly announced that he was going to take post on the Dwina. But it was not in truth, upon that river and the Borysthenes that his thoughts rested: he was sensible that it was not with a harassed and reduced army that he could guard the interval between those two rivers and their courses, which the ice would speedily seal.
It was therefore a hundred leagues beyond Smolensk, in a more compact position, behind the morasses of the Berezina—to Minsk, that it was necessary to repair in search of winter quarters, from which he was then forty marches distant.
§ 12. Napoleon's attempt to destroy the Kremlin: view of the battle-field of Borodino.
Napoleon had arrived quite pensive at Vereïa,[164]when Mortier presented himself before him. But I here discover, that, hurried along in the relation just as we then were in reality, by the rapid succession of violent scenes and memorable events, my attention has been diverted from occurrences worthy of notice. On the 23d of October, at half past one in the morning, the air was shaken by a tremendous explosion, which for a moment startled both armies, though amid such mighty anticipations scarcely anything then much excited their astonishment.
Mortier had obeyed his orders: the Kremlin was no more.[165]Barrels of powder had been placed in all the halls of the palaces of the Czars, and one hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds under the vaults which supported them. The marshal, with eight thousand men, had remained on this volcano, which a single Russian shell might have exploded. Here he covered the march of the army upon Kaluga, and the retreat of our different convoys towards Mojaisk.
Among these eight thousand men there were scarcely two thousand on whom Mortier could rely; the others were dismounted cavalry, men of different countries and regiments, under new officers, with dissimilar habits, with no common recollections, in short, without any bond of union, forming a rabble rather than an organized body, and who could scarcely fail in a short time to disperse.
This marshal, therefore, was looked upon as a doomed man. The other chiefs, his old companions in glory, had left him with tears in their eyes, as well as the emperor himself, who said to him "that he relied on his good fortune; but still, in war, we must sometimes make part of a sacrifice." Mortier resigned himself without hesitation to his fate. His orders were to defend the Kremlin, and on retreating to blow it up, and to burn what still remained of the city. It was on the 21st of October, that Napoleon sent him his last commands. After executing them, the marshal was to march upon Vereïa, and to form the rear guard of the army.
In this letter Napoleon particularly recommended to him "to put the men still remaining in the hospitals into the carriages belonging to the young rear guard, those of the dismounted cavalry, and any others that he might find. The Romans," he added, "awarded a civic crown to him who had saved a citizen: so many soldiers as he should save, so many crowns would the Duke of Treviso deserve."
At length, after four days' resistance, the French bade a final adieu to that fatal city. They carried with them four hundred wounded, and, on retiring, deposited in a safe and secret place a firework, skilfully prepared, which was already slowly consuming: the rate of its burning had been minutely calculated, so that it was known precisely at what hour the fire would reach the immense collection of powder buried among the foundations of these devoted palaces.
Mortier hastened his flight; but as he was retiring, some greedy Cossacks and miserable-looking Muscovites, allured probably by the prospect of pillage, approached: they listened, and, imboldened by the apparent quiet whichpervaded the fortress, they ventured to penetrate into it: they ascended; and their greedy hands were already stretched forth to lay hold on their plunder, when in an instant they were all hurled into the air with the buildings they had come to pillage, and with thirty thousand stand of arms that had been left in them; and soon their mangled limbs, mingled with fragments of walls and shattered weapons, thrown to a great distance, descended in a horrible shower.
The earth shook under the feet of Mortier: at Fominskoé, thirty miles off, the emperor heard the explosion; and in that indignant tone in which he sometimes addressed Europe, he published the following day a bulletin, at Borowsk, announcing that "the Kremlin, the arsenal, the magazines, were all destroyed; that that ancient citadel, which dated from the origin of the monarchy, and was the first palace of the Czars, no longer existed; that Moscow was now but a heap of ruins, without importance either political or military. He had abandoned it to Russian beggars and plunderers, in order to march against Kutusoff, to throw himself on the left wing of that general, to drive him back, and then to proceed quietly to the banks of the Dwina, where he should take up his winter quarters." Then, apprehensive lest he should appear to be retreating, he added that "there he should be within eighty leagues of Wilna and of St. Petersburg, a double advantage; that is to say, twenty marches nearer to his resources and his object." By this remark he hoped to give to his retreat the air of an offensive movement.
It was on this occasion he declared that "he had refused to give orders for the entire destruction of the country which he was quitting: he felt a repugnance to aggravatethe miseries of its inhabitants. To punish the Russian incendiary, and a few wretches who made war like Tartars, he would not ruin nine thousand proprietors, and leave two hundred thousand serfs, innocent of all these barbarities, absolutely destitute of resources."
On the 28th of October we again beheld Mojaisk.[166]That town was still full of wounded: some were carried away, and the rest collected together and abandoned, as at Moscow, to the generosity of the Russians. Napoleon had proceeded but a short distance from that place when the winter began. Thus, after an obstinate combat, and ten days' marching and countermarching, the army, which had brought from Moscow only fifteen rations of flour per man, had advanced but three days' march on its retreat. It was in want of provisions, and now overtaken by the winter.
Some leagues from Mojaisk we had to cross the Kologa. It was but a large rivulet: two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks were sufficient to ensure the passage; but such was the confusion and inattention that the emperor was detained there. Several pieces of cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It seemed as if each corps was marching separately, as if there were no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing, in short, that bound them together. In fact, the elevation of the chiefs rendered them too independent of each other. The emperor himself had become so exceedingly great, that he was at an immeasurable distance from the details of his army; while Berthier, holding an intermediate place between him and officers, all of whom were kings, princes, or marshals, was obliged to act with a great deal of caution. He was, besides, incompetent to his situation.
The emperor, stopped by the frivolous obstacle of a broken bridge, confined himself to a gesture expressive of dissatisfaction and contempt, to which Berthier replied only by a look of resignation. On this particular point he had received no orders from the emperor: he therefore conceived that he was not to blame; for Berthier was a faithful echo, a mirror, and nothing more. Always ready, clear, and distinct, he, so to speak, exactly repeated the emperor, reflected him, but added nothing of his own; and what Napoleon forgot was never supplied.
After passing the Kologa we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some of us, raising our eyes, uttered a cry of horror. Each one instantly looked about him, and there lay stretched before us a plain trampled, bare, and devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface, and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared misshapen, and bore a striking resemblance to an extinguished volcano. The ground around us was everywhere covered with fragments of helmets and cuirasses, with broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms, and standards dyed with blood.
On this desolate spot[167]lay thirty thousand half-devoured corpses; while a pile of skeletons on the summit of one of the hills overlooked the whole. It seemed as though Death had here fixed his throne. Presently the cry was heard, "It is the field of the great battle!" forming a long and doleful murmur. The emperor passed quickly by. No one stopped. Cold, hunger, and the enemy were urging us on: we merely turned our faces as we marched along to take a last melancholy look at the vast grave of so manycompanions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whose remains we were obliged to leave behind, unheeded and uninterred.
§ 13. Napoleon reaches Viazma. Battle near that place.
At length the emperor reached Viazma.[168]He here halted to wait for Prince Eugene and Davoust, and to reconnoitre the road to Medyn and Yucknow, which at this place unites with the high road to Smolensk. It was this cross-road which might possibly bring the Russian army from Malo-jaroslavetz on his passage. But on the first of November, after waiting thirty-six hours and seeing no indications of that army, he again set out, wavering between the hope that Kutusoff had fallen asleep, and the fear lest he might have left Viazma on his right, and proceeded two marches farther to cut off his retreat. He left Ney, however, at Viazma to collect the first and fourth corps, and to relieve, by forming the rear guard, Davoust, whom he judged to be fatigued.
He complained of the tardiness of the latter, and wrote to reproach him with being still five marches behind, when he ought to have been no more than three: the genius of that marshal he considered too methodical to direct, in a suitable manner, so irregular a march.
But this delay was accounted for by the fact that Davoust had found a marsh without a bridge, and completely encumbered with wagons. He had dragged them out of the slough in sight of the enemy, and so near them that their fires lighted his labors, and the sound of their drums mingled with that of his own voice. For the marshal and his generals could not yet resolve on abandoningto the enemy so many trophies; nor did they make up their minds to it until after fruitless exertions, and in the last extremity.
The road they were traversing was crossed at short intervals by marshy hollows. A slope, slippery as glass with the ice, hurried the carriages into them, and there they stuck fast: to draw them out it was necessary to climb on the opposite side a similar slope, where the horses, whose shoes were worn entirely smooth, could obtain no footing, and where every moment they and their drivers dropped down exhausted together. The famished soldiers immediately fell upon these luckless animals and tore them to pieces; then at fires, kindled with the remains of their carriages, they broiled the yet bleeding flesh, and devoured it.
Meanwhile the artillerymen, a chosen corps, and their officers, all brought up in the first military school in the world, kept off these unfortunate wretches whenever they could, and took the horses from their own carriages and wagons, which they abandoned to save the guns. To these they harnessed their horses, nay, even themselves; while the Cossacks, observing their disasters from a distance, though they dared not attack, with their light pieces mounted on sledges, threw their balls among these disorderly groups, and increased the confusion.
On the 3d of November, Prince Eugene was advancing towards Viazma, preceded by his equipages and his artillery, when the first light of day all at once discovered to him his retreat threatened by an army on his left, behind him his rear guard cut off, and on his left the plain covered with stragglers and scattered vehicles, fleeing before the lances of the enemy. At the same time, towards Viazmahe heard Marshal Ney, who should have assisted him, fighting for his own preservation.
At the same time, Compans, one of Davoust's generals, joined the Italian rear guard with his division. These cleared a passage for themselves, and while, united with the viceroy, they were warmly engaged, Davoust with his column passed rapidly behind them, along the left side of the high road, then crossing it, as soon as he had got beyond them, he claimed his place in the order of battle, took the right wing, and found himself between Viazma and the Russians. Prince Eugene gave up to him the ground which he had been defending, and crossed to the other side of the road. The enemy then began to extend himself in front of them, and endeavored to outflank their wings.
Miloradovitch, the Russian general, left to himself, now tried to break the French line of battle; but he could penetrate it by his fire alone, which made dreadful havoc in our ranks. Eugene and Davoust were growing weak; and, as they heard another action in the rear of their right, they imagined that the rest of the Russian army was approaching Viazma by the Yuknof road, the outlet of which Ney was defending.
It was only, however, an advanced guard: but they were alarmed at the noise of this engagement in the rear of their own, threatening their retreat. The action had now continued ever since seven in the morning, and night was approaching: the baggage must by this time have got away, and the French generals began to retire.
This retrograde movement increased the ardor of the enemy, and but for a memorable effort of the 25th, 57th, and 85th regiments, and the protection of a ravine,Davoust's corps would have been broken, turned by its right, and destroyed. Prince Eugene, who was not so briskly attacked, was able to effect his retreat more rapidly through Viazma; but the Russians followed him thither, and had penetrated into the town at the very time when Davoust, pursued by 20,000 men, and overwhelmed by eighty pieces of cannon, in his turn attempted to pass.
Morand's division first entered the place: it was marching on with confidence, under the idea that the action was over, when the Russians, who were concealed by the windings of the streets, suddenly fell upon it. The surprise was complete, and the confusion great: Morand nevertheless rallied and encouraged his men, retrieved matters, and fought his way through.
It was Compans who put an end to the affair. He closed the march with his division. Finding himself too closely pressed by the bravest troops of Miloradovitch, he turned about, dashed in person at the most eager, overthrew them, and having thus made them fear him, he finished his retreat without farther molestation. This conflict, glorious to each, was in its result disastrous to all. It was, unhappily, without unity or order. There were troops enough to conquer had there not been too many commanders. It was not till near two o'clock that the latter met to concert their manœuvres, and these were even then executed without harmony.
When at length the river, the town of Viazma, night, mutual fatigue, and Marshal Ney had established a barrier between them and the enemy, the danger being adjourned and the bivouacs established, the numbers were counted. Several pieces of cannon which had been broken, the baggage, and four thousand killed or wounded were foundmissing. Many of the soldiers, too, had dispersed. Their honor had been saved, but there were immense gaps in their ranks. It was necessary to close them up, to bring everything within a narrower compass, to form what remained into a more compact whole. Each regiment scarcely composed a battalion, each battalion scarcely a platoon. The soldiers remaining had no longer their accustomed places, comrades, or officers.
This sad reorganization took place by the light of the conflagration of Viazma, and during the successive discharges of the cannon of Ney and Miloradovitch, the thunders of which were prolonged amid the double gloom of the night and of the forests. Several times the remnants of these brave battalions, conceiving they were attacked, crawled to their arms. The next morning, when they again fell into their ranks, they were astonished at the smallness of their numbers.
§ 14. Dreadful snow-storm on the 6th of November; its effects upon the troops.
The spirits of the troops were nevertheless still supported by the example of their leaders, by the hopes of finding all their wants supplied at Smolensk, and still more by the aspect of a yet brilliant sun, that universal source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict and deny the spectacles of despair and death that already encompassed us.
But on the 6th of November the heavens changed. Their azure disappeared. The army marched enveloped in a chilling mist. This mist became thicker, and presently a blinding storm of snow descended upon it. Itseemed as if the sky itself were falling, and uniting with the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. All objects rapidly changed their appearance, becoming utterly confounded, and not to be recognized any more: we proceeded without knowing where we were, without perceiving the point to which we were bound; everything was converted into an obstacle to stop our progress. While we were struggling with the tempest of wind and snow, the latter, driven by the storm, lodged and accumulated in every hollow, concealing unknown abysses, which perfidiously opened beneath our feet. There the soldiers were ingulfed, and the weakest, resigning themselves to their fate, found their grave in these treacherous pits.
Those who followed turned aside; but the tempest, driving into their faces the snow that was descending from the sky and that which it raised from the earth, seemed resolved to arrest their farther progress. The Russian winter, in this new form, attacked them at every point: it penetrated through their light garments, and their rent and worn-out shoes. Their wet clothes froze to their bodies: an icy envelope encased them, and stiffened all their limbs. A piercing and violent wind almost prevented respiration; and, seizing their breath the moment it was exhaled, converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards all about their mouths.
The miserable creatures still crawled shivering along, till the snow, gathering in balls on the soles of their shoes, or a fragment of some broken article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades, encountered in the way, caused them to stumble and fall. There their groans were unheeded; the snow soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spots where they lay: there was theironly grave. The road, like a cemetery, was thickly studded with these elevations; the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected; they passed quickly on with averted looks. But before them and around them there was nothing but snow; this immense and dismal uniformity extended farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded: it seemed a vast winding-sheet which Nature had thrown over the army. The only objects not enveloped by it were some gloomy pines, trees of the tombs, with their funereal verdure and their gigantic and motionless trunks completing the solemnity of a general mourning, and of an army dying amid nature already dead.
Everything, even to their very arms, still offensive at Malo-jaroslavetz, but since defensive only, now turned against our men. They seemed to their frozen limbs an insupportable weight. In the falls they experienced, they dropped almost unperceived from their hands, and were broken or buried in the snow. If they rose again it was without them: they had not thrown them away, but hunger and cold had wrested them from their grasp. The fingers of others were frozen to the muskets they still held, depriving them of the motion necessary to keep up some degree of warmth and of life.
We soon met with numbers of men belonging to all the different corps, sometimes singly, sometimes in troops. They had not basely deserted their colors: it was cold and exhaustion which had separated them from them. In this mortal struggle, at once general and individual, they had parted from each other, and there they were, disarmed, vanquished, defenceless, without leaders, obeying nothing but the most urgent instinct of self-preservation.
Most of them, attracted by the sight of by-paths,dispersed themselves over the country in hopes of finding bread and shelter for the coming night; but on their first passage all had been laid waste to the extent of seven or eight leagues: they met only with Cossacks and an armed population, which gathered around them, wounded and stripped them naked, and then left them, with bursts of savage laughter, to perish in the snow. These people, who had risen at the call of Alexander and Kutusoff, and who had not then learned, as they since have, to avenge nobly a country which they had been unable to defend, hovered on both flanks of the army under favor of the woods. Those whom they did not despatch with their pikes and hatchets, they drove back to the fatal and all-devouring high road.
Night then came on: a night of sixteen hours! But on that snow, which covered everything, where were they to halt, where sit, where lie down, where find even a root to satisfy their hunger, or dry wood to kindle a fire? Fatigue, darkness, and repeated orders nevertheless stopped those whom their moral and physical strength and the efforts of their officers had still kept together. They strove to establish themselves; but the tempest, not yet subsided, dispersed the first preparations for bivouacs. The pines, laden with frost, obstinately resisted ignition; while the snow, which still continued to fall from the sky, and that on the ground, which melted with the effect of the first heat, extinguished their kindling fires, and, with them, the strength and spirits of the men.
When at length the flames gained the ascendancy, the officers and soldiers around them commenced preparing their wretched repast: it consisted of lean and ragged pieces of flesh torn from the horses that had given out,and at most a few spoonfuls of rye flour mixed with snow-water. The next morning circular ranges of soldiers extended lifeless marked the sites of the bivouacs, and the ground about them was strewed with the bodies of several thousand horses.
From that day we began to place less reliance on one another. In that vivacious army, susceptible of all impressions, and taught to reason by an advanced civilization, despondency and neglect of discipline rapidly spread, the imagination knowing no bounds in evil any more than in good. Henceforward, at every bivouac, at every difficult passage, nay, every moment, some portion separated from the yet organized lines and fell into disorder. There were some, however, who were proof against this widespread contagion of insubordination and despair. These were officers, non-commissioned officers, and the firmest among the soldiers. They were extraordinary men; they encouraged one another by repeating the name of Smolensk, which town they knew they were approaching, and where they had been promised that all their wants should be supplied.
It was thus, after this deluge of snow, and the increase of cold which it foreboded, that each one, whether officer or soldier, either preserved or lost his fortitude, according to his disposition, age, or constitution; while he who of all our leaders had hitherto been the most strict in enforcing discipline, now paid but little attention to it. Thrown out of his established ideas of regularity, order, and method, he was seized with despair at the sight of such universal confusion: and conceiving, before the rest, that all was lost, he felt himself ready to abandon all.
From this point for some distance, nothing remarkableoccurred in the imperial column except that it was found necessary to throw the spoils of Moscow into the Lake of Semlewo; cannon, Gothic armor, the ornaments of the Kremlin, and the cross of Ivan the Great, were all buried in its waters. Trophies, glory, those acquisitions to which we had sacrificed everything, all now became a burden to us: our object was no longer to embellish life, but to preserve it. In this vast wreck, the army, which might be compared to a mighty ship tossed by the most tremendous of tempests, threw without hesitation into that sea of ice and snow everything that could burden or impede its progress.
The attitude of Napoleon was the same that he retained throughout the whole of this dismal retreat. It was grave, silent, and resigned: suffering much less in body than others, but far more in mind, and brooding with speechless agony over his misfortunes. At that moment General Charpentier sent him from Smolensk a convoy of provisions. Bessières wished to take possession of them; but the emperor instantly ordered them to be forwarded to the Prince of Moskwa, saying that "those who were fighting must eat before the rest." At the same time, he sent word to Ney "to defend himself long enough to allow him some stay at Smolensk, where the army should eat, rest, and be reorganized."
The Russians, however, advanced under favor of a wood and of our forsaken carriages, whence they kept up a fire of musketry on Ney's troops. Half of the latter, whose icy arms froze their stiffened fingers, became discouraged; they gave way, excusing themselves by their want of firmness on the preceding day, and fleeing because they had before fled, which but for this, they would have consideredas impossible. But Ney, rushing in among them, seized one of their muskets, and led them back to action, which he was himself the first to renew; exposing his life like a private soldier, with a firelock in his hand, the same as though he had been neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor consideration; in short, as if he had still everything to gain, when in fact he had everything to lose. But, though he had again turned soldier, he ceased not to be general: he took advantage of the ground, supported himself against a height, and covered his approach by occupying a palisaded house. His generals and colonels, among whom he particularly remarked Fezenzac, strenuously seconded him; and the enemy, who had expected to pursue, was obliged to retreat.
By this action Ney afforded the army a respite of twenty-four hours; and it profited by it to proceed towards Smolensk. The next day, and every succeeding day, he displayed the same heroism. Between Viazma and Smolensk he fought ten whole days.