The Life of Napoleon I Part 40

This was, indeed, the gist of the whole question. Napoleon saw that Alexander was slipping out of the leading strings of Tilsit, and that he was likely to come off best from that bargain, which was intended to confirm the supremacy of the Western Empire. For both potentates that treaty had been, at bottom, nothing more than a truce. Napoleon saw in it a means of subjecting the Continent to his commercial code, and of preparing for a Franco-Russian part.i.tion of Turkey. The Czar hailed it as a breathing s.p.a.ce wherein he could reorganize his army, conquer Finland, and stride towards the Balkans. The Erfurt interview prolonged the truce; for Napoleon felt the supreme need of stamping out the Spanish Rising and of postponing the part.i.tion of Turkey which his ally was eager to begin. By the close of 1811 both potentates had exhausted all the benefits likely to accrue from their alliance.[251]

Napoleon flattered himself that the conquest of Spain was wellnigh a.s.sured, and that England was in her last agonies. On the other hand, Russia had recovered her military strength, had gained Finland and planted her foot on the Lower Danube, and now sought to shuffle off Napoleon's commercial decrees. In fine, the monarch, who at Tilsit had figured as mere clay in the hands of the Corsican potter, had proved himself to be his equal both in cunning and tenacity. The seeming dupe of 1807 now promised to be the victor in statecraft.

Then there was the open sore of Poland. The challenge, on this subject, was flung down by Napoleon at a diplomatic reception on his birthday, August 15th, 1811. Addressing the Russian envoy, he exclaimed: "I am not so stupid as to think that it is Oldenburg which troubles you. I see that Poland is the question: you attribute to me designs in favour of Poland. I begin to think that you wish to seize it. No: if your army were encamped on Montmartre, I would not cede an inch of the Warsaw territory, not a village, not a windmill." His fears as to Russia's designs were far-fetched. Alexander's sounding of the Poles was a defensive measure, seriously undertaken only after Napoleon's refusal to discourage the Polish nationalists. But it suited the French Emperor to aver that the quarrel was about Poland rather than the Continental System, and the scene just described is a good specimen of his habit of cool calculation even in seemingly chance outbursts of temper. His rhapsody gained him the ardent support of the Poles, and was vague enough to cause no great alarm to Austria and Prussia.[252]

On the next day Napoleon sketched to his Ministers the general plan of campaign against Russia. The whole of the Continent was to be embattled against her. On the Hapsburg alliance he might well rely.

But the conduct of Prussia gave him some concern. For a time she seemed about to risk a war _a outrance_, such as Stein, Fichte, and the staunch patriots of the Tugendbund ardently craved. Indeed, Napoleon's threats to this hapless realm seemed for a time to portend its annihilation. The King, therefore, sent Scharnhorst first to St.

Petersburg and then to Vienna with secret overtures for an alliance.

They were virtually refused. Prudence was in the ascendant at both capitals; and, as will presently appear, the more sagacious Prussians soon came to see that a war, in which Napoleon could be enticed into the heart of Russia, might deal a mortal blow at his overgrown Empire.

Certainly it was quite impossible for Prussia to stay the French advance. A guerilla warfare, such as throve in Spain, must surely be crushed in her open plains; and the diffident King returned Gneisenau's plan of a rising of the Prussian people against Napoleon with the chilling comment, "Very good as poetry."

Thus, when Napoleon wound up his diplomatic threats by an imperious summons to side with him or against him, Frederick William was fain to abide by his terms, sending 20,000 troops against Russia, granting free pa.s.sage to Napoleon's army, and furnis.h.i.+ng immense supplies of food and forage, the payment of which was to be settled by some future arrangement (February, 1812). These conditions seemed to thrust Prussia down to the lowest circle of the Napoleonic Inferno; and great was the indignation of her patriots. They saw not that only by stooping before the western blast could Prussia be saved. To this topic we shall recur presently, when we treat of the Russian plan of campaign.

Sweden was less tractable than Napoleon expected. He had hoped that the deposition of his personal enemy, Gustavus IV., the enthronement of a feeble old man, Charles XIII., and the choice of Bernadotte as heir to the Swedish crown, would bring that land back to its traditional alliance with France. But, on accepting his new dignity, Bernadotte showed his customary independence of thought by refusing to promise that he would never bear arms against France--a refusal that cost him his princ.i.p.ality of Ponte Corvo. He at once adopted a forward Scandinavian policy; and, as the Franco-Russian alliance waned, he offered Swedish succour to Napoleon if he would favour the acquisition of Norway by the Court of Stockholm.

The Emperor had himself mooted this project in 1802, but he now returned a stern refusal (February 25th, 1811), and bade Sweden enforce the Continental System under pain of the occupation of Swedish Pomerania by French troops. Even this threat failed to bend the will of Bernadotte, and the Swedes preferred to forego their troublesome German province rather than lose their foreign commerce. In the following January, Napoleon carried out his threat, thereby throwing Sweden into the arms of Russia. By the treaty of March-April, 1812, Bernadotte gained from Alexander the prospect of acquiring Norway, in return for the aid of Sweden in the forthcoming war against Napoleon.

This was the chief diplomatic success gained by Alexander; for though he came to terms with Turkey two months later (retaining Bessarabia), the treaty was ratified too late to enable him to concentrate all his forces against the Napoleonic host that was now flooding the plains of Prussia.[253]

The results of this understanding with the Court of Stockholm were seen in the Czar's note presented at Paris at the close of April. He required of Napoleon the evacuation of Swedish Pomerania by French troops and a friendly adjustment of Franco-Swedish disputes, the evacuation of Prussia by the French, the reduction of their large garrison at Danzig, and the recognition of Russia's right to trade with neutrals. If these terms were accorded by France, Alexander was ready to negotiate for an indemnity for the Duke of Oldenburg and a mitigation of the Russian customs dues on French goods.[254] The reception given by Napoleon to these reasonable terms was unpromising.

"You are a gentleman," he exclaimed to Prince Kurakin, "--and yet you dare to present to me such proposals?--You are acting as Prussia did before Jena." Alexander had already given up all hope of peace. A week before that scene, he had left St. Petersburg for the army, knowing full well that Napoleon's cast-iron will might be s.h.i.+vered by a mighty blow, but could never be bent by diplomacy.

On his side, Napoleon sought to overawe his eastern rival by a display of imposing force. Lord of a dominion that far excelled that of the Czar in material resources, suzerain of seven kingdoms and thirty princ.i.p.alities, he called his allies and va.s.sals about him at Dresden, and gave to the world the last vision of that imperial splendour which dazzled the imagination of men.

It was an idle display. In return for secret a.s.surances that he might eventually regain his Illyrian provinces, the Emperor Francis had pledged himself by treaty to send 30,000 men to guard Napoleon's flank in Volhynia. But everyone at St. Petersburg knew that this aid, along with that of Prussia, was forced and hollow.[255] The example of Spain and the cautious strategy of Wellington had dissolved the spell of French invincibility; and the Czar was resolved to trust to the toughness of his people and the defensive strength of his boundless plains. The time of the Macks, the Brunswicks, the Bennigsens was past: the day of Wellington and of truly national methods of warfare had dawned.

Yet the hosts now moving against Alexander bade fair to overwhelm the devotion of his myriad subjects and the awful solitudes of his steppes. It was as if Peter the Hermit had arisen to impel the peoples of Western and Central Europe once more against the immobile East.

Frenchmen to the number of 200,000 formed the kernel of this vast body: 147,000 Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine followed the new Charlemagne: nearly 80,000 Italians under Eugene formed an Army of Observation: 60,000 Poles stepped eagerly forth to wrest their nation's liberty from the Muscovite grasp; and Illyrians, Swiss, and Dutch, along with a few Spaniards and Portuguese, swelled the Grand Army to a total of 600,000 men. Nor was this all. Austria and Prussia sent their contingents, amounting in all to 50,000 men, to guard Napoleon's flanks on the side of Volhynia and Courland. And this mighty ma.s.s, driven on by Napoleon's will, gained a momentum which was to carry its main army to Moscow.

After reviewing his va.s.sals at Dresden, and hurrying on the arrangements for the transport of stores, Napoleon journeyed to the banks of the Niemen. On all sides were to be seen signs of the pa.s.sage of a mighty host, broken-down carts, dead horses, wrecked villages, and dense columns of troops that stripped Prussia wellnigh bare. Yet, despite these immense preparations, no hint of discouragement came from the Czar's headquarters. On arriving at the Niemen, Napoleon issued to the Grand Army a proclamation which was virtually a declaration of war. In it there occurred the fatalistic remark: "Russia is drawn on by fate: her destinies must be fulfilled."

Alexander's words to his troops breathed a different spirit: "G.o.d fights against the aggressor."

Much that is highly conjectural has been written about the plans of campaign of the two Emperors. That of Napoleon may be briefly stated: it was to find out the enemy's chief forces, divide them, or cut them from their communications, and beat them in detail. In other words, he never started with any set plan of campaign, other than the destruction of the chief opposing force. But, in the present instance, it may be questioned whether he had not sought by his exasperating provocations to drive Prussia into alliance with the Czar. In that case, Alexander would have been bound in honour to come to the aid of his ally. And if the Russians ventured across the Niemen, or the Vistula, as Napoleon at first believed they would,[256] his task would doubtless have been as easy as it proved at Friedland. Many Prussian officers, so m.u.f.fling a.s.serts, believed that this was the aim of French diplomacy in the early autumn of 1811, and that the best reply was an unconditional surrender. On the other hand, there is the fact that St. Marsan, Napoleon's amba.s.sador at Berlin, a.s.sured that Government, on October 29th, that his master did not wish to destroy Prussia, but laid much stress on the supplies which she could furnish him--a support that would enable the Grand Army to advance on the Niemen _like a rus.h.i.+ng stream_.

The metaphor was strangely imprudent. It almost invited Prussia to open wide her sluices and let the flood foam away on to the sandy wastes of Lithuania; and we may fancy that the more discerning minds at Berlin now saw the advantage of a policy which would entice the French into the wastes of Muscovy. It is strange that Napoleon's Syrian adage, "Never make war against a desert," did not now recur to his mind. But he gradually steeled himself to the conviction that war with Alexander was inevitable, and that the help of Austria and Prussia would enable him to beat back the Muscovite hordes into their eastern steppes. For a time he had unquestionably thought of destroying Prussia before he attacked the Czar; but he finally decided to postpone her fate until he had used her for the overthrow of Russia.[257]

After the experiences of Austerlitz and Friedland, the advantages of a defensive campaign could not escape the notice of the Czar. As early as October, 1811, when Scharnhorst was at St. Petersburg, he discussed these questions with him; and not all that officer's pleading for the cause of Prussian independence induced Alexander to offer armed help unless the French committed a wanton aggression on Konigsberg. Seeing that there was no hope of bringing the Russians far to the west, Scharnhorst seems finally to have counselled a Fabian strategy for the ensuing war; and, when at Vienna, he drew up a memoir in this sense for the guidance of the Czar.[258]

Alexander was certainly much in need of sound guidance. Though Scharnhorst had pointed out the way of salvation, a strategic tempter was soon at hand in the person of General von Phull, an uncompromising theorist who planned campaigns with an unquestioning devotion to abstract principles. Untaught by the catastrophes of the past, Alexander once more let his enthusiasm for theories and principles lead him to the brink of the abyss. Phull captivated him by setting forth the true plan of a defensive campaign which he had evolved from patient study of the Seven Years' War. Everything depended on the proper selection of defensive positions and the due disposition of the defending armies. There must be two armies of defence, and at least one great intrenched camp. One army must oppose the invader on a line near, or leading up to, the camp; while the other army must manoeuvre on his rear or flanks. And the camp must be so placed as to stretch its protecting influence over one, or more, important roads. It need not be on any one of them: in fact, it was better that it should be some distance away; for it thus fulfilled better the all-important function of a "flanking position."

Such a position Phull had discovered at Drissa in a curve of the River Dwina. It was sufficiently far from the roads leading from the Niemen to St. Petersburg and to Moscow efficiently to protect them both.

There, accordingly, he suggested that vast earthworks should be prepared; for there, at that artificial Torres Vedras, Russia's chief force might await the Grand Army, while the other force hara.s.sed its flank or rear.[259]

Napoleon had not probed this absurdity to its inmost depths: but he early found out that the Russians were in two widely separated armies; and this sufficed to decide his movements and the early part of the campaign. Having learnt that one army was near Vilna, and the other in front of the marshes of the Pripet, he sought to hold them apart by a rapid irruption into the intervening s.p.a.ce, and thereafter to destroy them piecemeal. Never was a visionary theory threatened by a more terrible realism. For Napoleon at midsummer was mustering a third of a million of men on the banks of the Niemen, while the Russians, with little more than half those numbers as yet available for the fighting-line, had them spread out over an immense s.p.a.ce, so as to facilitate those flanking operations on which Phull set such store.[260]

On the morn of June 23rd, three immense French columns wound their way to the pontoon bridges hastily thrown over the Niemen near Kovno; and loud shouts of triumph greeted the great leader as the vanguard set foot on Lithuanian soil. No Russians were seen except a few light hors.e.m.e.n, who galloped up, inquired of the engineers why they were building the bridges, and then rode hastily away. During three days the Grand Army filed over the river and melted away into the sandy wastes. No foe at first contested their march, but neither were they met by the crowds of downtrodden natives whom their fancy pictured as thronging to welcome the liberators. In truth, the peasants of Lithuania had no very close racial affinity to the Poles, whose offshoots were found chiefly among the n.o.bles and the wealthier townsfolk. Solitude, the sultry heat of a Russian mid-summer, and drenching thunderstorms depressed the spirits of the invaders. The miserable cart tracks were at once cut up by the pa.s.sage of the host, and 10,000 horses perished of fatigue or of disease caused by the rank gra.s.s, in the fifty miles' march from the Niemen to Vilna.

The difficulties of the transport service began at once, and they were to increase with every day's march. With his usual foresight, Napoleon had ordered the collection of immense stores of all kinds at Danzig, his chief base of supplies. Two million pairs of boots were required for the wear and tear of a long campaign, and all preparations were on the same colossal scale. In this connection it is noteworthy that no small proportion of the cloaks and boots came from England, as the industrial resources of the Continent were wholly unequal to supplying the crusaders of the Continental System.

A great part of those stores never reached the troops in Russia. The wherries sent from Danzig to the Niemen were often snapped up by British cruisers, and the carriage of stores from the Niemen entailed so frightful a waste of horseflesh that only the most absolute necessaries could keep pace with the army in its rapid advance. The men were thus left without food except such as marauding could extort.

In this art Napoleon's troops were experts. Many miles of country were scoured on either side of the line of march, and the Emperor, on reaching Vilna, had to order Ney to send out cavalry patrols to gather in the stragglers, who were committing "horrible devastations" and would "fall into the hands of the Cossacks."

At Vilna the Grand Army met with a more cheering reception than heretofore. Deftly placing his Polish regiments in front and chasing the retiring Russians beyond the town, Napoleon then returned to find a welcome in the old Lithuanian capital. The old men came forth clad in the national garb, and it seemed that that province, once a part of the great Polish monarchy, would break away from the empire of the Czars and extend Napoleon's influence to within a few miles of Smolensk.[261] The newly-formed Diet at Warsaw also favoured this project: it const.i.tuted itself into a general confederation, declared the Kingdom of Poland to be restored, and sent a deputation to Napoleon at Vilna begging him to utter the creative words: "Let the Kingdom of Poland exist." The Emperor gave a guarded answer. He declared that he loved the Poles, he commended them for their patriotism, which was "the first duty of civilized man," but added that only by a unanimous effort could they now compel their enemies to recognize their rights; and that, having guaranteed the integrity of the Austrian Empire, he could not sanction any movement which would disturb its remaining Polish provinces.

This diplomatic reply chilled his auditors. But what would have been their feelings had they known that the calling of the Diet at Warsaw, and the tone of its address to Napoleon; had all been sketched out five weeks before by the imperial stage manager himself? Yet such was the case.

The scene-s.h.i.+fter was the Abbe de Pradt, Archbishop of Malines, whom Napoleon sent as amba.s.sador to Warsaw, with elaborate instructions as to the summoning of the Diet, the whipping-up of Polish enthusiasm, the revolutionizing of Russian Poland, and the style of the address to him. Nay, his pa.s.sion for the regulation of details even led him to inform the amba.s.sador that the imperial reply would be one of praise of Polish patriotism and of warning that Polish liberty could only be won by their "zeal and their efforts." The trickery was like that which he had played upon the Poles shortly before Eylau. In effect, he said now, as then: "Pour out your blood for me first, and I will do something for you." But on this occasion the scenic setting was more impressive, the rush of the Poles to arms more ardent, the diplomatic reply more astutely postponed, and the finale more awful.[262]

Still, the Poles marched on; but their devotion became more questioning. The feelings of the Lithuanians were also ruffled by Napoleon's reply to the Polish deputies: nor were they consoled by his appointment of seven magnates to regulate the affairs of the districts of Lithuania, under the aegis of French commissioners, who proved to be the real governors. Worst of all was the marauding of Napoleon's troops, who, after their long habituation to the imperial maxim that "war must support war," could not now see the need of enduring the pangs of hunger in order that Lithuanian enthusiasm might not cool.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA]

Meanwhile the war had not progressed altogether as he desired. His aim had been to conceal his advance across the Niemen, to surprise the two chief Russian armies while far separated, and thus to end the war on Lithuanian soil by a blow such as he had dealt at Friedland. The Russian arrangements seemed to favour his plan. Their two chief arrays, that led by the Czar and by General Barclay de Tolly, some 125,000 strong north of Vilna, and that of Prince Bagration mustering now about 45,000 effectives, in the province of Volhynia, were labouring to carry out the strategy devised by Phull. The former was directly to oppose the march of Napoleon's main army, while the smaller Russian force was to operate on its flanks and rear. Such a plan could only have succeeded in the good old times when war was conducted according to ceremonious etiquette; it courted destruction from Napoleon. At Vilna the Emperor directed the movements that were to ensnare Bagration. Already he had urged on the march of Davoust, who was to circle round from the north, and the advance of Jerome Bonaparte's Westphalians, who were bidden to hurry on eastwards from the town of Grodno on the Upper Niemen. Their convergence would drive Bagration into the almost trackless marshes of the Pripet, whence his force would emerge, if at all, as helpless units.

Such was Napoleon's plan, and it would have succeeded but for a miscalculation in the time needed for Jerome's march. Napoleon underrated the difficulties of his advance or else overrated his brother's military capacity. The King of Westphalia was delayed a few days at Grodno by bad weather and other difficulties; thus Bagration, who had been ordered by the Czar to retire, was able to escape the meshes closing around him by a speedy retreat to Bobruisk, whence he moved northwards. Napoleon was enraged at this loss of a priceless opportunity, and addressed vehement reproaches to Jerome for his slowness and "small-mindedness." The youngest of the Bonapartes resented this rebuke which ignored the difficulties besetting a rapid advance. The prospect of being subjected to that prince of martinets, Davoust, chafed his pride; and, throwing up his command, he forthwith returned to the pleasures of Ca.s.sel.

By great good fortune, Bagration's force had escaped from the snares strewn in its path by the strategy of Phull and the counter-moves of Napoleon. The fickle G.o.ddess also favoured the rescue of the chief Russian army from imminent peril at Drissa. In pursuance of Phull's scheme, the Czar and Barclay de Tolly fell back with that army towards the intrenched camp on the Dwina. But doubts had already begun to haunt their minds as to the wisdom of Phull's plans. In fact, the bias of Barclay's nature was towards the proven and the practical. He came of a Scottish family which long ago had settled in Livonia, and had won prosperity and esteem in the trade of Riga. His ancestry and his early surroundings therefore disposed him to the careful weighing of evidence and distrust of vague theories. His thoroughness in military organization during the war in Finland and his unquestioned probity and open-mindedness, had recently brought him high into favour with the Czar, who made him War Minister. He had no wide acquaintance with the science of warfare, and has been judged altogether deficient in a wide outlook on events and in those masterly conceptions which mark the great warrior.[263] But nations are sometimes ruined by lofty genius, while at times they may be saved by humdrum prudence; and Barclay's common sense had no small share in saving Russia.

Two months before the Grand Army pa.s.sed the Niemen, he had expressed the hope that G.o.d would send retreat to the Russian armies; and we may safely attribute to his influence with the Czar the timely order to Bagration to desist from flanking tactics and beat a retreat while yet there was time. That portion of Phull's strategy having signally failed, Alexander naturally became more suspicious about the Drissa plan; and during the retirement from Vilna, he ordered a survey of the works to be made by Phull's adjutant, a young German named Clausewitz, who was destined to win a name as an authority in strategy. This officer was unable conscientiously to present a cheering report. He found the camp deficient in many respects. Nevertheless, Alexander still clung to the hope of checking the French advance before these great intrenchments.

On his arrival there, on July 8th, this hope also was dashed. Michaud, a young Sardinian engineer, pointed out several serious defects in their construction. Barclay also protested against shutting up a large part of the defending army in a camp which could easily be blockaded by Napoleon's vast forces. Finally, as the Russian reserves stationed there proved to be disappointingly weak both in numbers and efficiency, the Czar determined to evacuate the camp, intrust the sole command to Barclay, and retire to his northern capital. It is said that, before he left the army, the Grand Duke Constantine, a friend of the French cause, made a last effort to induce him to come to terms with Napoleon, now that the plan of campaign had failed. If so, Alexander repelled the attempt. Pride as a ruler and a just resentment against Napoleon prevented any compromise; and probably he now saw that safety for himself and ruin for his foe lay in the firm adoption of that Fabian policy of retreat and delay, which Scharnhorst had advocated and Barclay was now determined to carry out.

Though still hampered by the intrigues of Constantine, Bennigsen, and other generals, who hated him as a foreigner and feigned to despise him as a coward, Barclay at once took the step which he had long felt to be necessary; he ordered a retreat which would bring him into touch with Bagration. Accordingly, leaving Wittgenstein with 25,000 men to hold Oudinot's corps in check on the middle Dwina, he marched eastwards towards Vitepsk. True, he left St. Petersburg open to attack; but it was not likely that Napoleon, when the summer was far spent, would press so far north and forego his usual plan of striking at the enemy's chief forces. He would certainly seek to hinder the junction of the two Russian armies, as soon as he saw that this was Barclay's aim. Such proved to be the case. Napoleon soon penetrated his design, and strove to frustrate it by a rapid move from Vilna towards Polotsk on Barclay's flank, but he failed to cut into his line of march, and once more had to pursue.

Despite the heavy shrinkage in the Grand Army caused by a remorseless rush through a country wellnigh stripped of supplies, the Emperor sought to force on a general engagement. He hoped to catch Barclay at Vitepsk. "The whole Russian army is at Vitepsk--we are on the eve of great events," he writes on July 25th. But the Russians skilfully withdrew by night from their position in front of that town, which he entered on July 28th. Chagrined and perplexed, the chief stays a fortnight to organize supplies and stores, while his vanguard presses on to envelop the Russians at Smolensk. Again his hopes revive when he hears that Barclay and Bagration are about to join near that city. In fact, those leaders there concluded that strategic movement to the rear which was absolutely necessary if they were not to be overwhelmed singly. They viewed the retreat in a very different light. To the cautious Barclay it portended a triumph long deferred, but sure: while the more impulsive Muscovite looked upon the constant falling back as a national disgrace.

The feelings of the soldiery also forbade a spiritless abandonment of the holy city of the Upper Dnieper that stands as sentinel to Russia Proper. On these feelings Napoleon counted, and rightly. He was now in no haste to strike: the blow must be crus.h.i.+ng and final. At last he hears that Davoust, the leader whose devotion and methodical persistence merit his complete trust, has bridged the River Dnieper below the city, and has built ovens for supplying the host with bread.

And having now drawn up troops and supplies from the rear, he pushes on to end the campaign.

Barclay was still for retreat; but religious sentiment and patriotism bade the defenders stand firm behind those crumbling walls, while Bagration secured the line of retreat. The French, ranged around on the low hills which ring it on the south, looked for an easy triumph, and Napoleon seems to have felt an excess of confidence. At any rate, his dispositions were far from masterly. He made no serious effort to threaten the Russian communications with Moscow, nor did he wait for his artillery to overwhelm the ramparts and their defenders.

The corps of Ney, Davoust, and Poniatowski, with Murat's cavalry and the Imperial Guard posted in reserve, promised an easy victory, and the dense columns of foot moved eagerly to the a.s.sault. They were received with a terrific fire. Only after three hours' desperate fighting did they master the southern suburbs, and at nightfall the walls still defied their a.s.saults. Yet in the meantime Napoleon's cannon had done their work. The wooden houses were everywhere on fire; a speedy retreat alone could save the garrison from ruin; and amidst a whirlwind of flame and smoke Barclay drew off his men to join Bagration on the road to Moscow (August 17th).

Once more, then, the Russian army had slipped from Napoleon's grasp, though this time it dealt him a loss of 12,000 in killed or wounded.

And the momentous question faced him whether he should halt, now that summer was on the wane, or s.n.a.t.c.h under the walls of Moscow the triumph which Vilna, Vitepsk, and Smolensk had promised and denied. It is stated by that melodramatic narrator, Count Philip Segur, that on entering Vitepsk, the Emperor exclaimed: "The campaign of 1812 is ended, that of 1813 will do the rest." But the whole of Napoleon's "Correspondence" refutes the anecdote. Besides, it was not Napoleon's habit to go into winter quarters in July, or to rest before he had defeated the enemy's main army.[264]

At Smolensk the question wore another aspect. Napoleon told Metternich at Dresden that he would not in the present year advance beyond Smolensk, but would organize Lithuania during winter and advance again in the spring of 1813, adding: "My enterprise is one of those of which the solution is to be found in patience." A policy of masterly inactivity certainly commended itself to his Marshals. But the desire to crush the enemy's rear drew Ney and Murat into a sharp affair at Valutino or Lubino: the French lost heavily, but finally gained the position: and the hope that the foe were determined to fight the decisive battle at Dorogobuzh lured Napoleon on, despite his earlier decision.[265] Besides, his position seemed less hazardous than it was before Austerlitz. The Grand Army was decidedly superior to the united forces of Barclay and Bagration. On the Dwina, Oudinot held the Russians at bay; and when he was wounded, his successor, Gouvion St.

Cyr, displayed a tactical skill which enabled him easily to foil a mere fighter like Wittgenstein. On the French right flank, affairs were less promising; for the ending of the Russo-Turkish war now left the Russian army of the Pruth free to march into Volhynia. But, for the present, Napoleon was able to summon up strong reserves under Victor, and a.s.sure his rear.

With full confidence, then, he pressed onwards to wrest from Fortune one last favour. It was granted to him at Borodino. There the Russians made a determined stand. National jealousy of Barclay, inflamed by his protracted retreat, had at last led to his being superseded by Kutusoff; and, having about 110,000 troops, the old fighting general now turned fiercely to bay. His position on the low convex curve of hills that rise behind the village of Borodino was of great strength.

On his right was the winding valley of the Kolotza, an affluent of the Moskwa, and before his centre and left the ground sloped down to a stream. On this more exposed side the Russians had hastily thrown up earthworks, that at the centre being known as the Great Redoubt, though it had no rear defences.

Napoleon halted for two days, until his gathering forces mustered some 125,000 men, and he now prepared to end the war at a blow. After surveying the Russian position, he saw Kutusoff's error in widely extending his lines to the north; and while making feints on that side, so as to prevent any concentration of the Muscovite array, he planned to overwhelm the more exposed centre and left, by the a.s.saults of Davoust and Poniatowski on the south, and of Ney's corps and Eugene's Italians on the redoubts at the centre. Davoust begged to be allowed to outflank the Russian left; but Napoleon refused, perhaps owing to a fear that the Russians might retreat early in the day, and decided on dealing direct blows at the left and centre. As the 7th of September dawned with all the splendour of a protracted summer, cannon began to thunder against the serried arrays ranged along the opposing slopes, and Napoleon's columns moved against the redoubts and woods that sheltered the Muscovite lines. The defence was most obstinate.

Time after time the smaller redoubts were taken and retaken; and while, on the French right centre, the tide of battle surged up and down the slope, the Great Redoubt dealt havoc among Eugene's Italians, who bravely but, as it seemed, hopelessly struggled up that fatal rise.

Then was seen a soul-stirring sight. Of a sudden, a ma.s.s of Cuira.s.siers rushed forth from the invaders' ranks, flung itself uphill, and girdled the grim earthwork with a stream of flas.h.i.+ng steel There, for a brief s.p.a.ce, it was stayed by the tough Muscovite lines, until another billow of hors.e.m.e.n, marshalled by Grouchy and Chastel, swept all before it, took the redoubt on its weak reverse, and overwhelmed its devoted defenders.[266] In vain did the Russian cavalry seek to save the day: Murat's hors.e.m.e.n were not to be denied, and Kutusoff was at last fain to draw back his mangled lines, but slowly and defiantly, under cover of a crus.h.i.+ng artillery fire.

Thus ended the bloodiest fight of the century. For several hours 800 cannon had dealt death among the opposing ma.s.ses; the Russians lost about 40,000 men, and, whatever Napoleon said in his bulletins, the rents in his array were probably nearly as great. He has been censured for not launching his Guard at the wavering foe at the climax of the fight; and the soldiery loudly blamed its commander, Bessieres, for dissuading his master from this step. But to have sacrificed those veterans to Russian cannon would have been a perilous act.[267] His Guard was the solid kernel of his army: on it he could always rely, even when French regulars dissolved, as often happened after long marches, into bands of unruly marauders; and its value was to be found out during the retreat. More fitly may Napoleon be blamed for not seeking earlier in the day to turn the Russian left, and roll that long line up on the river. Here, as at Smolensk, he resorted to a frontal attack, which could only yield success at a frightful cost.

The day brought little glory to the generals, except to Ney, Murat, and Grouchy. For his valour in the _melee_, Ney received the t.i.tle of Prince de la Moskwa.

A week before this Pyrrhic triumph, Napoleon had heard of a terrible reverse to French arms in Spain. His old friend, Marmont, who had won the Marshal's baton after Wagram, measured his strength with Wellington in the plains of Leon with brilliant success until a false move near Salamanca exposed him to a crus.h.i.+ng rejoinder, and sent his army flying back towards Burgos. Madrid was now uncovered and was occupied for a time by the English army (August 13th). Thus while Napoleon was gasping at Moscow, his brother was expelled from Madrid, until the recall of Soult from Andalusia gave the French a superiority in the centre of Spain which forced Wellington to retire to Ciudad Rodrigo. He lost the fruits of his victory, save that Andalusia was freed: but he saved his army for the triumphant campaign of 1813. Had Napoleon shown the like prudence by beating a timely retreat from Moscow, who can say that the next hard-fought fights in Silesia and Saxony would not have once more crowned his veterans with decisive triumph?