§ 15. Defeat and entire dissolution of Prince Eugene's corps at the passage of the Wop.
On the 13th of November Ney was approaching that city, which he was not to enter till the ensuing day, and had faced about to beat off the enemy, when all at once the hills upon which he intended to support his left were seen covered with a multitude of fugitives. In their terror, these unfortunate wretches fell, and rolled down to where he was upon the frozen snow, which they stained with their blood. A band of Cossacks, which was soon perceived in the midst of them, sufficiently accounted for this disorder. The astonished marshal, having causedthis horde of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of Italy, returning completely stripped, without baggage and without cannon.
Platoff had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje.[169]Near that town Prince Eugene had quitted the high road, and, in order to proceed towards Witepsk, had taken that which, two months before, had brought him from Smolensk; but the Wop, which, when he had crossed it before, was a mere brook, and had scarcely been noticed, he now found swollen into a river. It ran over a muddy bed, and was bounded by two steep banks. It was found necessary to cut a passage in these precipitous and frozen banks, and to give orders for the demolition of the neighboring houses during the night, for the purpose of building a bridge with the materials. But those who had taken shelter in them opposed their being destroyed; and, as the viceroy was more beloved than feared, his instructions were not obeyed. The bridge-builders became disheartened, and when daylight, with the Cossacks, appeared, the bridge, after being twice broken down, was at last abandoned.
Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of disbanded men, the sick and wounded, upward of a hundred pieces of cannon, ammunition-wagons, and a multitude of vehicles of every kind, lined the bank and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford the river through the floating ice which was carried along by its current. The first guns that were attempted to be got over reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while at the same time the bedof the stream at the place of passage was continually deepened by the wheels and by the efforts of the horses. One carriage stuck fast, others did the same, and at length the stoppage became general.
Meanwhile the day was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in vain efforts: hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the viceroy finally found himself compelled to order his artillery and all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The owners were allowed scarcely a moment to part from their effects: while they were selecting from them such articles as they most needed, and loading their horses with them, a multitude of soldiers came rushing up: they fell in preference upon the vehicles of luxury; these they broke in pieces and rummaged every part, avenging their poverty on the wealth, and their privations on the superfluities they here found, and snatching them from the Cossacks, who were in the meantime looking on at a distance.
But it was provisions of which most of them were in quest. They threw aside embroidered clothes, pictures, ornaments of every kind, and gilt bronzes for a few handfuls of flour. In the evening it was a strange sight to behold the mingled riches of Paris and of Moscow, the luxuries of two of the largest cities in the world, lying scattered and despised on the snow of the desert.
At the same time, most of the artillerymen spiked their guns in despair, and scattered their powder about. Others laid a train with it as far as some ammunition-wagons, which had been left at a considerable distance behind our baggage. They waited till the most eager of the Cossacks had come up to them, and when a great number, greedy of plunder, had collected about them, they threw a brandfrom a bivouac upon the train. The fire ran, and in a moment reached its destination; the wagons were blown up, the shells exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not killed on the spot dispersed in dismay.
The army of Italy, thus completely dismantled, soaked in the waters of the Wop, without food, without shelter, passed the night on the snow near a village where its officers expected to find lodgings for themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on every habitation, profiting by the darkness, which prevented them from recognizing their officers or being known by them. They tore down everything, doors, windows, and even the woodwork of the roofs, feeling but little compunction in compelling others, be they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.
Their generals attempted in vain to drive them off: they took their blows without a murmur or the least opposition, but without desisting—even the men of the royal and imperial guards; for, throughout the whole army, such were the scenes that occurred every night. The unfortunate fellows kept silently but actively at work on the wooden walls, which they pulled in pieces on every side at once, and which, after vain efforts, their officers were obliged to relinquish to them, for fear they would fall upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in their design and of respect for the anger of their superiors.
Having kindled good fires, they spent the night in drying themselves, amid the shouts, imprecations, and groans of those who were still crossing the torrent, or who, slipping from its banks, were precipitated into it and drowned.
§ 16. The Grand Army reaches Smolensk.
At length the army once more came in sight of Smolensk: it had reached the goal so often announced to it of all its sufferings. The soldiers exultingly pointed it out to each other. There was that land of promise where their hunger was to find abundance, their fatigue rest; where bivouacs in a cold of nineteen degrees would be forgotten in houses warmed by good fires. There they would enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel; there they would be furnished with new shoes, and clothing adapted to the climate.
At this sight, the corps of picked men, the veteran regiments, and a few other soldiers alone kept their ranks; the rest ran forward with all possible speed. Thousands of men, chiefly unarmed, covered the two steep banks of the Borysthenes: they crowded in masses around the lofty walls and gates of the city; but this disorderly multitude, with their haggard faces begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms, and the grotesque habiliments which they had substituted in place of them: in short, with their strange, hideous looks, and their impetuous ardor, excited alarm. It was believed, that if the irruption of this crowd, maddened with hunger, were not repelled, that a general pillage would be the consequence, and the gates were closed against it.
It was also hoped that by exercising this rigor these men would be forced again to rally about their standards. A horrible struggle between order and disorder now commenced in the remnant of this unfortunate army. In vain did they entreat, weep, threaten, strive to burst open the gates, and even drop down dead at the feet of theircomrades placed to repel them; they found the latter inexorable, and were forced to wait the arrival of the first troops that were still officered and in order.
These were the Old and the Young Guard; and it was not till after them that the disbanded men were allowed to enter: the latter, and the other corps which arrived in succession, from the 8th to the 14th, believed that their admission had been delayed merely to give more rest and more provisions to this favored guard. Their sufferings rendered them unjust: they execrated it. "Were they, then, to be forever sacrificed to this privileged class; fellows kept for mere parade, who were never foremost but at reviews, festivals, and distributions? Was the army to put up with their leavings, always to wait till they had glutted themselves?" It was useless to tell them in reply, that to attempt to save all was the way to lose all; that it was necessary to keep at least one corps entire, and to give the preference to that which in the last extremity would be capable of making the most powerful effort.
At length these poor creatures were admitted into that Smolensk for which they had so long ardently wished, while the banks of the Borysthenes were strewed with their expiring companions, the weakest of whom impatience and several hours' waiting had brought to that state. Others, again, were left on the icy steep, which they had to climb to reach the upper town. The rest ran to the magazines, where many fell exhausted while they beset the doors; for here also they were repulsed. "Who were they?" it was asked. "To what corps did they belong? What had they to prove it? The persons appointed to distribute the provisions were responsible for them: they had orders to deliver them only to authorizedofficers bringing receipts, for which alone they could exchange the rations committed to their care." These poor famished creatures had no officers, nor could they tell where their regiments were: two-thirds of the army were in this predicament.
These miserable men then dispersed themselves through the streets, having no longer any hope but in pillage. But horses dissected to the very bones everywhere denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the houses had been all broken and torn away to feed the fires of the bivouacs; they found no shelter in them, no winter quarters prepared, no wood. The sick and wounded were left in the streets, in the carts which had brought them. It was again, it was always the same fatal high road, passing through a town which was but an empty name: it was a new bivouac among deceitful ruins, colder even than the forests they had just quitted.
Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colors: they rejoined them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread that could be baked had been distributed; and there was no biscuit, no butcher's meat. Rye flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were dealt out to them. It required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the detachments of the different corps from murdering each other at the doors of the magazines; and when, after long formalities, their wretched fare was at last delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their regiments; they fell upon their sacks, snatched out of them a few pounds of flour, and ran to secrete themselves till they had devoured it. The same was the case with the spirits; and the next day the houses were found full of the bodies of these miserable creatures.
In short, that Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to, as the term of their sufferings, marked, as it were, only their commencement. Inexpressible hardships still awaited us: we had yet to march forty days under that yoke of iron. Some, already borne down by present miseries, sank under the frightful prospect of those which were before them. Others sternly resolved to battle with their destiny; and, finding they had nothing to rely on but themselves, they determined to live at all hazards.
Thenceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the weaker, by violence or stealth they plundered their companions of their subsistence, of their garments, and of the gold with which they had filled their knapsacks instead of provisions. These wretches, whom despair had thus made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their infamous booty, profiting by the general confusion, an obscure name, a uniform no longer distinguishable, and night: in short, by every kind of concealment favorable to cowardice and guilt. If works already published had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have passed over in silence such terrible details; for atrocities so extreme were, after all, comparatively rare, and justice was dealt to the most criminal.
On the 9th of November the emperor arrived amid this scene of desolation. He shut himself up in one of the houses in the new square, and never quitted it till the 14th to resume his retreat. He had calculated upon fifteen days' provisions and forage for an army of one hundred thousand men; but there was not more than half this quantity of flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all. Cries of rage were now directed against the principal individual appointed to provide these supplies; and thecommissary saved his life only by prostrating himself on his knees at the feet of Napoleon, and remaining in that posture for a long time. But the reasons which he assigned for his failure did more for him than his supplications.
Many of these reasons were well founded. A chain of other magazines had been formed from Smolensk to Minsk and Wilna. These two towns were, in a still greater degree than Smolensk, centres of provisioning, of which the fortresses of the Vistula formed the first line. The total quantity of provisions, indeed, distributed over this space was incalculable; the efforts for transporting them thither had been gigantic; while the result was little better than nothing. Scattered over such a vast extent, immense as they were, they were found wholly insufficient.
Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had been surpassed: the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above time, climate, and distance, had, as it were, lost itself in space; great as was its measure, it had gone beyond it.
Napoleon had been at Smolensk for five days. It was known that Ney had received orders to arrive there as late as possible, and Eugene to halt for two days at a point near Smolensk. Then it was not the necessity of waiting for the army of Italy which detained him! To what, then, must we attribute this delay, in the midst of famine, disease, and when the winter and three hostile armies were gradually surrounding us?
The emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches for five days from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the appearance of a slow and glorious retreat. In the same spirit, no doubt, he had ordered the destruction of the towers which surrounded Smolensk,from the wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its walls! as if there were any idea of our returning to a place which we were not even sure that we should ever get out of.
The emperor, however, made an effort that was not altogether fruitless. This was to rally under one commander all that remained of the cavalry; when it was found that of this force, thirty-seven thousand strong at the passage of the Niemen, there now remained only eight hundred men on horseback. He gave the command of these to Latour-Maubourg; and, whether from the esteem felt for him, or from the general indifference, no one objected to it.
This army, which left Moscow one hundred thousand strong, in five-and-twenty days had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men, while the artillery had lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon; and yet these feeble remains continued as before to be divided into eight armies, which were encumbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers, and a long train of cannon and baggage.
Whether it was the encumbrance of so many men and carriages, or a mistaken sense of security, which led the emperor to order a day's interval between the departure of each marshal, is uncertain; but most probably it was the latter. Be that, however, as it may, he, Eugene, Davoust, and Ney, quitted Smolensk in succession; and Ney was not to leave it till the 16th or 17th. He had orders to make the artillery dismount the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the ammunition, to drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the towers which surrounded the city.
Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues' distance, prepared to cut in pieces, one after the other, those remnants of corps thus extended and parcelled out.
§ 17. Napoleon leaves Smolensk; battle of Krasnoë.
It was on the 14th of November, about five in the morning, that the imperial column at last quitted Smolensk. Its march was still firm, but gloomy and silent as night, like the mute and sombre aspect of the country through which it was advancing.
This stillness was only interrupted by the cracking of the whips applied to the horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met with ravines, and when down these icy declivities, men, horses, and artillery were rolling in the darkness one over the other. The first day they advanced five leagues, and the artillery of the guard took twenty-two hours to get over that distance.
Kutusoff, at the same time, with the bulk of his army, moved forward, and took a position in the rear of these advanced corps, within reach of them all, felicitating himself on the success of his manœuvres, which, after all, would inevitably have failed, owing to his tardiness, had it not been for our want of foresight; for this was a contest of errors, in which, ours being the greatest, we narrowly escaped total destruction. Having made these dispositions, the Russian commander must have believed that the French army was entirely in his power; but this belief saved us. Kutusoff was wanting to himself at the moment of action; his old age executed only half, and that badly, the plans which it had wisely combined.
During the time that all these masses were arrangingthemselves round Napoleon, he remained perfectly tranquil in a miserable hut, the only one left standing in Korythnia, apparently quite unconscious of all these movements of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, which were surrounding him in all directions; at least he sent no orders to the three corps which had halted at Smolensk, to expedite their march, and he himself waited for daylight to proceed.
His column was advancing without precaution, preceded by a crowd of stragglers, all eager to reach Krasnoë, when, at two leagues from that place, a line of Cossacks, extending from the heights on our left across the great road, appeared before them. Seized with astonishment, these stragglers instantly halted: they had looked for nothing of the kind, and with their first impressions were led to believe that relentless fate had traced upon the snow between them and Europe that long, black, and motionless line as the fatal term assigned to their hopes.
Suddenly a Russian battery began firing. Their balls crossed the road. The German corps became confused and made no attempt to meet this attack. But a wounded officer who chanced to be there assumed the command of the Germans, and the men obeyed him as if he had been their rightful leader. On seeing this advanced column of Germans march forward in such good order, the enemy confined himself to attacking it with his artillery, which it disregarded and soon left behind. When it came to the turn of the Old Guard to pass through this fire, they closed their ranks around Napoleon like a movable fortress, proud of the honor of protecting him. Their band of music expressed their satisfaction. When the danger was greatest, it played the well-known air, "Where can one behappier than in the bosom of his family?" But the emperor, whom nothing escaped, stopped them with the exclamation, "Rather play, 'Let us watch for the safety of the empire!'" words much better suited to the feelings which then occupied him, and to the general condition of affairs.
At the same time, the enemy's fire becoming troublesome, he gave orders to silence it, and in two hours he reached Krasnoë.
On the 17th, before daylight, Napoleon issued his orders, armed himself, and going out on foot at the head of his Old Guard, began his march. But it was not towards Poland, his ally, that he directed it, nor towards France, where he would still be received as the head of a new dynasty, and the Emperor of the West. His words on grasping his sword on this occasion were, "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is time I should become the general." He turned back upon eighty thousand of the enemy, plunging into the thickest of them, in order to draw all their efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favor of Davoust and Ney, and to rescue them from a country, the gates of which were closed against them.
Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on the one part the Russian battalions and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on our right, and in our rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other Napoleon, with his six thousand guards, advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to take his place in the centre of that terrible circle. At the same time, Mortier, a few yards in front of the emperor, deployed,[170]in the face of the whole Russian army, with the five thousand men still remaining to him.
Here, then, it was made evident that renown is something more than a vain shadow, that it is real strength, and doubly powerful from the inflexible pride which it imparts to its favorites, and the timid precautions it imposes on those who venture to attack it. The enemy had only to march forward without manœuvring, or even firing; their mass alone was sufficient to crush Napoleon with all his feeble battalions; still they did not dare come to close quarters with him. They were awed at the presence of the conqueror of Egypt and of Europe. The Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, a host of victories seemed to rise between him and the astounded Russians. Might we not also fancy that, in the eyes of that passive and superstitious people, a renown so extraordinary appeared like something supernatural? that they regarded it as wholly beyond their power, or, at least, believed that they could safely assail it only from a distance? and, in short, that against that Old Guard, that living fortress, that column of granite, as it had been called by its leader, human efforts were impotent, or that cannon alone could demolish it?
But every moment strengthened the enemy and weakened Napoleon. The noise of artillery, as well as Claparède, apprised him that in the rear of Krasnoë and his army Beningsen was proceeding to take possession of the road to Liady, and entirely cut off his retreat. The east, the west, and the south were flashing with the enemy's fires; one side alone remained open, that of the north and the Dnieper, towards an eminence, at the foot of which were the high road and the emperor. We fancied we saw the enemy already covering this eminence with his cannon. In that situation they would have been just over Napoleon'shead, and might have crushed him at a few yards' distance. He was apprised of his danger, cast his eyes for an instant towards the height, and uttered merely these words, "Very well, let one of my battalions take possession of it." Immediately afterward, without giving farther heed to it, his whole attention was directed to the perilous situation of Mortier.
Fortunately, some troops which Davoust had rallied and the appearance of another troop of his stragglers, attracted the enemy's attention. Mortier availed himself of it. He gave orders to the three thousand men he had still remaining to retreat slowly in the face of their fifty thousand enemies. "Do you hear, soldiers?" cried General Laborde, "the marshal orders ordinary time! Ordinary time, soldiers!" And this brave and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as deliberately from this field of carnage as they would have done from a field of manœuvre.
§ 18. Napoleon reaches Dombrowna and Orcha; he holds a council.
As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasnoë between him and Beningsen, he was in safety.
The next day the march was resumed, though with reluctance. The impatient stragglers took the lead, and all of them got the start of Napoleon: he was on foot with a stick in his hand, walking slowly and hesitatingly, and halting every quarter of an hour, as if unwilling to tear himself away from that old Russia, whose frontier he was then passing, and in which he had left his unfortunate companions in arms.
In the evening he reached Dombrowna,[171]a wooden town, and inhabited as well as Liady: a novel sight for an army, which had for three months seen nothing but ruins. At last, then, we had emerged from Russia proper, and her deserts of snow and ashes, and were entering into a friendly and inhabited country, whose language we understood. The weather just then became milder, a thaw began, and we received some provisions.
Thus the winter, the enemy, solitude, and, with some, famine and bivouacs, all ceased at once; but it was too late. The emperor saw that his army was destroyed: every moment the name of Ney escaped from his lips, with expressions of the deepest grief. That night he was heard groaning and exclaiming "that the misery of his poor soldiers cut him to the heart, and yet that he could not succor them without establishing himself in some place: but where was it possible for him to stop without ammunition, provisions, or artillery? He was no longer strong enough to halt: he must reach Minsk as quickly as possible."
He had scarcely spoken the words, when a Polish officer arrived with the news that Minsk itself, his magazine, his retreat, his only hope, had just fallen into the hands of the Russians, Tchitchakoff having entered it on the 16th. Napoleon at first was mute, and completely overpowered by this last blow; but immediately afterward, elevating himself in proportion to his danger, he coolly replied, "Very well! we have now nothing to do but to clear ourselves a passage with our bayonets."
Napoleon then turned to his Old Guard, and, stopping infront of each battalion, "Grenadiers!"[172]said he, to them, "we are retreating without being conquered by the enemy; let us not be vanquished by ourselves! Set an example to the army. Several of you have already deserted your colors, and even thrown away your arms. I have no wish to have recourse to military laws to put a stop to this disorder, but appeal entirely to your sense of duty. Do justice to yourselves. To your own honor I commit the maintenance of your discipline!"
The other troops he addressed in a similar style. These few words were quite sufficient to the old grenadiers, who probably had no occasion for them. The others received them with acclamations; but an hour afterward, when the march was resumed, they were entirely forgotten. As to his rear guard, throwing the blame of this wild alarm mostly upon it, he sent an angry message to Davoust on the subject.
At Orcha we found rather an abundant supply of provisions, a bridge equipage of sixty boats, with all its appurtenances, which we burned, and thirty-six pieces of cannon, with their horses, which were distributed between Davoust, Eugene, and Latour-Maubourg.
Napoleon entered Orcha with six thousand guards, the remains of thirty-five thousand! Eugene, with eighteen hundred soldiers, the remains of forty-two thousand! and Davoust, with four thousand, the remains of seventy thousand!
This marshal had lost everything, was actually without linen, and emaciated with hunger. He seized upon a loaf,which was offered him by one of his comrades, and voraciously devoured it. A handkerchief was given him to wipe his face, which was white with frost. He exclaimed "that none but men with constitutions of iron could support such trials; that it was physically impossible to resist them; that there were limits to human strength, the utmost of which had been exceeded."
The emperor made fruitless efforts to check this general despondency. When alone, he was heard compassionating the sufferings of his soldiers; but in their presence, even upon that point, he wished to appear inflexible. He issued a proclamation, "ordering all who had deserted their ranks to return to them: if they did not, he would strip the officers of their commissions, and the soldiers should be shot."
A threat like this produced no impression whatever upon men who had become insensible, or were reduced to despair, fleeing not from danger, but from suffering, and caring as little for the death with which they were menaced as for the life that was offered them.
But Napoleon's confidence increased with his perils: in his eyes, this handful of men, in these deserts of snow and ice, was still the Grand Army! and himself the conqueror of Europe! nor was there any affectation in this firmness: we were certain of it, when in this very town, we saw him burn, with his own hands, everything belonging to him that might serve as a trophy to the enemy, in the event of his fall.
But everything was now changed: two hostile armies were opposing his retreat; and the question to be decided was, through which of them he should cut his way. As he knew nothing of the Lithuanian forests into whichhe was about penetrating, he summoned such of his officers as had been through them, in order to obtain information.
The emperor began by remarking that "too great familiarity with victory was often the precursor of great disasters, but that recrimination was now out of the question." He then mentioned the capture of Minsk, and, admitting the skilfulness of Kutusoff's persevering manœuvres on the right flank, he said that "it was his intention to abandon his line of operations on Minsk, unite with the Dukes of Belluno and Reggio, cut his way through Wittgenstein's army, and regain Wilna by turning the sources of the Berezina." Jomini combated this plan.
Finally Napoleon decided upon Borizoff.[173]But he said, "that it was cruel to retreat without fighting, to present the appearance of flight. Had he only a magazine, some point of support which would allow him to halt, he would prove to Europe that he still knew how to fight and how to conquer."
All these were mere illusions. At Smolensk, where he arrived first, and from which he was the first to depart, he had rather been informed of his disasters than witnessed them himself. At Krasnoë, where our miseries had been more fully unfolded before him, the peril by which we were surrounded had diverted his attention from them; but at Orcha he could contemplate, at one view and leisurely, the whole extent of his misfortunes.
At Smolensk, thirty-six thousand combatants, one hundred and fifty cannon, the army-chest, and the hope of life, and of breathing at liberty on the other side of theBerezina, still remained; here there were scarcely ten thousand soldiers, almost without clothing or shoes, entangled amid a crowd of dying men, with but a few cannon, and a plundered army-chest.
§ 19. Arrival of Marshal Ney.
Being at length, on the 20th of November, compelled to quit Orcha, he left there Eugene, Mortier, and Davoust, and halted after a march of six miles from that place, still inquiring for Marshal Ney, who was advancing by a different route, and still expecting him. The same feeling of grief pervaded the portion of the army remaining at Orcha. As soon as the most pressing wants allowed a moment's rest, the thoughts and looks of every one were directed towards the Russian bank. They listened for any warlike sounds which might announce the arrival of Ney, or, rather, his last desperate struggle with the foe; but nothing was to be seen but parties of the enemy, who were already menacing the bridges of the Borysthenes.
After exhausting all their conjectures, they had relapsed into a gloomy silence, when suddenly they heard the steps of horses, and then the joyful cry, "Marshal Ney is safe! here are some Polish cavalry come to announce his approach!" One of his officers now galloped in, and informed them that the marshal was advancing on the right bank of the Borysthenes, and had sent him to ask for assistance.
When the two corps, Eugene's and Ney's, fairly recognized each other, they could no longer be kept in their ranks. Soldiers, officers, generals, all rushed forward together. The soldiers of Eugene, eagerly grasping the hands of those of Ney, held them with a joyful mixture ofastonishment and curiosity, and embraced them with the tenderest sympathy. They lavished upon them the refreshments and brandy which they had just received, and overwhelmed them with questions. Then they proceeded in company towards Orcha, all burning with impatience, Eugene's soldiers to hear, and Ney's to relate, their story.
The officers of Ney stated that on the 17th of November they had quitted Smolensk with twelve cannon, six thousand infantry, and three hundred cavalry, leaving there five thousand sick to the mercy of the enemy; and that, had it not been for the noise of Platoff's artillery and the explosion of the mines, their marshal would never have been able to draw from the ruins of that city seven thousand unarmed stragglers who had taken shelter among them. They dwelt upon the attentions which their leader had shown to the wounded, and to the women and their children, proving upon this occasion that the bravest are also the most humane.
At the gates of the city an unnatural action struck them with a horror that they still felt in all its force. A mother abandoned her little son, only five years old: in spite of his cries and tears, she drove him away from her sledge, which was too heavily laden. She exclaimed, at the same time, with a distracted air, that "hehad never seen France!hewould not regret it! butsheknew France!shewas resolved to see France once more!" Twice did Ney himself replace the unfortunate child in the arms of his mother, and twice did she cast him from her on the frozen snow.
This solitary crime, amid a thousand instances of the most devoted and sublime tenderness, they did not leave unpunished. The unnatural parent was herself abandonedto the snow from which her infant was snatched, and intrusted to another mother: this little orphan was then in their ranks; he was afterward seen at the Berezina, then at Wilna, again at Kowno, and finally escaped from all the horrors of the retreat.
Frustrated in his plans Ney instead of advancing to join Napoleon was compelled to order his men to return towards Smolensk. At these words they were struck motionless with astonishment. Even his aid-de-camp could not believe his ears: he remained silent, like one who does not comprehend what he hears, and looked at his general in amazement. But the marshal briefly repeating the same order in a still more imperative tone, they were no longer at any loss, but all recognized in it resolution taken, a resource discovered, that self-confidence which inspires others with the same feeling, and a spirit which rises superior to its situation, however perilous it may be. They instantly obeyed, and, without the slightest hesitation, turned their backs on their own army, on the emperor, and on France. Once more they returned into that fatal Russia. Their retrograde march had lasted an hour: again they came to the field of battle marked by the remains of the army of Italy; there they halted, and the marshal, who had remained with the rear guard, then joined them.
Their eyes followed all his movements. What did he intend doing? and, whatever might be his plan, where would he direct his steps, without a guide, in an unknown country? But, while they were thus perplexing themselves, he, with his warlike instinct, had halted on the edge of a ravine of such depth as to make it evident that there was a stream at the bottom of it. By clearing awaythe snow and breaking the ice, this fact was soon established: and then, consulting his map, he exclaimed, "This is one of the streams which flow into the Dnieper: this must be our guide, and we must follow it; it will lead us to that river, which we must cross, and on the other side we shall be safe." Accordingly, he immediately proceeded in that direction.
A lame peasant was the only inhabitant they could discover; but even this was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. He told them that they were within the distance of a league from the Dnieper, but that it was not fordable there, and could not yet be frozen over. "It must be so," the marshal remarked; but when he was reminded that a thaw had just commenced, he added, "it does not signify; we must pass, as there is no other resource."
At last at about eight o'clock, after passing through a village, they soon came to the termination of the ravine, and the Russian, who walked before, halted and pointed out to them the river.
Finally, about midnight, the passage began; but the first persons who ventured on the ice called out that it was bending under them, that it was sinking, that they were up to their knees in water; and immediately after that frail support was heard cracking and splitting, as in the breaking up of a frost. All halted in consternation.
Ney ordered them to pass only one at a time: they proceeded with caution, not knowing sometimes in the dark whether they were placing their feet on the ice or into a chasm; for there were places where they were obliged to clear large fissures, and jump from one piece to another, at the risk of falling between them and disappearing forever. The first hesitated, but those who were behind kept calling to them to make more haste.
When at last, after several of these dreadful panics, they reached the opposite bank and fancied themselves safe, a perpendicular steep, slippery as glass, opposed their landing, and many were again thrown back upon the ice, either bruised by it, or breaking it in their fall. It would seem, indeed, as though this Russian river and its banks had contributed with regret, by surprise, and by compulsion, as it were, to their escape.
But what they spoke of as being the most painful of all, were the trouble and distraction of the females and of the sick, when it became necessary for them to abandon, along with the baggage, the remains of their fortune, their provisions, and, in short, all their resources both for the present and the future. They were seen stripping themselves, selecting, throwing away, taking up again, and falling at length through exhaustion and grief upon the frozen bank of the river. The narrators appeared to shudder again at the recollection of the horrible sight of so many men scattered over that abyss, of the continual noise of persons falling, of the cries of such as sank in, and, above all, of the wailing and despair of the wounded, who, from their carts, which could not be trusted to this weak support, stretched out their hands to their companions, and entreated them not to leave them behind.
Their leader at length determined to attempt the passage of several wagons, loaded with these poor creatures; but in the middle of the stream the ice sank down and separated. Then were heard proceeding from the gulf, first cries of anguish long and piercing, then stifled and feeble groans, quickly succeeded by an awful silence. All had disappeared!
But at length Ney had succeeded in reaching Orcha; from this time forward he was the hero of the retreat.
When Napoleon, who was two leagues farther on, heard that Ney had again made his appearance, he leaped and shouted for joy, exclaiming, "Then I have saved my honor! I would have given three hundred millions from my exchequer sooner than have lost such a man."
§ 20. Capture of Minsk by the Russians.
The army had thus for the third and last time repassed the Dnieper, a river half Russian and half Polish, but having its source in Russia. It runs from east to west as far as Orcha, where it appears as if it would penetrate into Poland; but there the high lands of Lithuania oppose its farther progress, and compel it to turn abruptly towards the south, and to become the frontier of the two countries.
Kutusoff and his eighty thousand Russians halted before this feeble obstacle. Hitherto they had been rather the spectators than the authors of our calamities; but from this time we saw them no more, and were at last delivered from the punishment of their joy.
On the 22d of November the army had a disagreeable march from Orcha to Borizoff, on a wide road skirted by a double row of large birch-trees, the snow having melted, and the mud being very deep. The weakest here found their graves; and those of our wounded who, in expectation of a continuance of the frost, had exchanged their wagons for sleighs, were left behind, and fell into the hands of the Cossacks.
It was during the early part of the march to Borizoff that the news of the fall of Minsk[174]became generallyknown in the army. The leaders themselves now began to look around them with consternation; and, after witnessing such a succession of frightful spectacles their imagination depicted a still more fatal futurity. In their private conversation they did not hesitate to say that, "like Charles XII. in Russia, Napoleon had carried his army to Moscow only to destroy it."
Deploring, then, the rash obstinacy of the stay at Moscow, and the fatal hesitation at Malo-jaroslavetz, they proceeded to reckon up their losses. Since their departure from Moscow they had lost all their baggage, five hundred cannon, thirty-one standards, twenty-seven generals, forty thousand prisoners, and sixty thousand dead: all that remained were forty thousand unarmed stragglers and eight thousand effective soldiers.
With respect to the loss of Minsk the governor of that place had been negligently chosen. He was, it was said, one of those men who undertake everything, who promise everything, and who do nothing. On the 16th of November he lost that capital, and with it four thousand seven hundred sick, the warlike stores, and two million rations of provisions. It was five days since the news of this loss had reached Dombrowna, and the news of a still greater calamity came on the heels of it.
This same governor had retreated towards Borizoff. There he neglected to inform Oudinot, who was only at the distance of two marches, to come to his assistance; and failed to support Dombrowski, who made a hasty march thither: the result was that the latter was overpowered by the fire of the Russian artillery, which took him in flank, and, attacked by a force more than double his own, he was driven across the river, and out of the town as far as the Moscow road.
This disaster was wholly unexpected by Napoleon. Finally, when the emperor learned at Dombrowna the loss of Minsk, he had no suspicion that Borizoff was in such imminent danger, as when he passed the next day through Orcha he had the whole of his bridge-equipage burned.
It was on the day immediately subsequent to that fatal catastrophe, at the distance of three marches from Borizoff, and upon the high road, that an officer arrived and announced to Napoleon this fresh disaster. The emperor, striking the ground with his stick, and casting a furious look to heaven, pronounced these words: "Is it, then, written above that we shall now commit nothing but faults?"
Meanwhile Marshal Oudinot, who was already marching towards Minsk, totally ignorant of what had happened, halted on the 21st. In the middle of the night General Brownkowski arrived to announce to him his own defeat, as well as that of General Dombrowski;[175]that Borizoff was taken, and that the Russians were following close at his heels.
In fact, every disaster which Napoleon could anticipate had occurred; the melancholy conformity, therefore, of his situation with that of the Swedish conqueror, threw his mind into such a state of agitation that his health became still more seriously affected than it had been at Malo-jaroslavetz. Among the expressions he made use of, loud enough to be overheard, was this: "See what happens when we heap faults on faults!"
His orders, however, displayed decision. Oudinot had just sent to inform him of his determination to overthrow Lambert: this he approved of, and he also urged him to make himself master of a passage across the Berezina, eitherabove or below Borizoff. He was desirous that by the 24th the place for this passage should be fixed on and the preparations begun, and that he should be apprised of it, in order to make his march correspond. Far from thinking of making his escape through the midst of these three hostile armies, his only idea now was to beat Tchitchakoff and retake Minsk.
It is true that, eight hours afterward, in a second letter to the Duke of Reggio, he resigned himself to crossing the Berezina near Veselowo, and by retreating directly upon Wilna, by Vileika, to avoid the Russian admiral.
But on the 24th he learned that the passage could only be attempted near Studzianka; that at that spot the river was only fifty-four fathoms wide, and six feet deep; and that they would land on the opposite side in a marsh, under the fire of a commanding position strongly occupied by the enemy.