The Two Great Retreats of History Part 14

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."

Bessieres, 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 answerable to 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 Eckmuhl 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 Verea 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 embarra.s.sment, 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, Bessieres and Berthier interposed. As for the emperor, still absorbed and in the same att.i.tude, he appeared insensible to what was pa.s.sing. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 depots, 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 depots, 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 hara.s.sed 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 mora.s.ses 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 Verea,[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 antic.i.p.ations 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 sh.e.l.l 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 Verea, 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 which pervaded 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 Fominskoe, 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 a.r.s.enal, 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 aggravate the 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 dest.i.tute 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 pa.s.sage; 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 pa.s.sing 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 cuira.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sed 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 many companions 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 pa.s.sage. 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 enc.u.mbered 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 abandoning to 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 gla.s.s 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 Viazma he heard Marshal Ney, who should have a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.sage for themselves, and while, united with the viceroy, they were warmly engaged, Davoust with his column pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s.

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 manoeuvres, 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 found missing. 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 compa.s.s, 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.