Napoleon's Campaign in Russia, Anno 1812; Medico-Historical Part 8

Entering Wiasma at night, nothing in the way of provisions was found; the guard and the corps which had been there before the battle had devoured everything. No provisions were left of those taken along from Moscow. The army pa.s.sed a sombre and bitter cold night in a forest; great fires were lighted, horse meat was roasted, and the soldiers of Prince Eugene and of Marshal Davout, especially the latter who had been on their feet for three days, slept profoundly around great camp-fires. During two weeks they had been on duty to cover the retreat and during this time had lost more than one half of their number.

Napoleon arrived at Dorogobouge on November 5th., the Prince Eugene on the 6th., the other corps on the 7th. and 8th.

Until then the frost had been severe but not yet fatal. All of a sudden, on the 9th., the weather changed, and there was a terrible snow-storm.

On their way to Moscow the regiments had traversed Poland during a suffocating heat and had left their warm clothing in the magazines.

Some soldiers had taken furs with them from Moscow, but had sold them to their officers.

Well nourished, they could have stood the frost, but living on a little flour diluted with water, on horse meat roasted at the camp fire, sleeping on the ground without shelter, they suffered frightfully. We shall later on speak more in detail of the miserable clothing.

The first snow which had been falling after they had left Dorogobouge had seriously increased the general misery. Except among the soldiers of the rear guard which had been commanded with inflexible firmness by Davout, and which was now led by Ney, the sense of duty began to be lost by almost all soldiers.

As we have learned, all the wounded had to be left to their fate, and soldiers who had been charged to escort Russian prisoners relieved themselves of their charge by shooting these prisoners dead.

The horses had not been shod in Russian fas.h.i.+on for traveling on the ice.

The army had come during the summer without any idea of returning during the winter; the horses slipped on the ice, those of the artillery were too feeble to draw cannon even of small calibre, they were beaten unmercifully until they perished; not only cannons and ammunition had to be left, but the number of vehicles carrying necessities of life diminished from day to day. The soldiers lived on the fallen horses; when night came the dead animals were cut to pieces by means of the sabre, huge portions were roasted at immense fires, the men devoured them and went to sleep around the fires. If the Cossacks did not disturb their dearly bought sleep the men would awake; some half burnt, others finding themselves lying in the mud which had formed around them, and many would not rise any more. General von Kerner, of the Wuerttembergian troops had slept in a barn during the night from November 7th. to November 8th. Coming out at daybreak he saw his men in the plain as they had lain down around a fire the evening before, frozen and dead. The survivors would depart, hardly glancing at the unfortunates who had died or were dying, and for whom they could do nothing.

The snow would soon cover them, and small eminences marked the places where these brave soldiers had been sacrificed for a foolish enterprise.

It was under these circ.u.mstances that Ney, the man of the greatest energy and of a courage which could not be shaken by any kind of suffering, took command of the rear guard, relieving Davout whose inflexible firmness and sense of honor and duty were not less admirable than the excellent qualities of Ney. The bravest of the brave, as Napoleon had called Ney, had an iron const.i.tution, he never seemed to be tired nor suffering from any ailment; he pa.s.sed the night without shelter, slept or did not sleep, ate or did not eat, without ever being discouraged; most of the time he was on his feet in the midst of his soldiers; he did not find it beneath the dignity of a Marshal of France, when necessary, to gather 50 or 100 men about him and lead them, like a simple captain of infantry, against the enemy under fire of musketry, calm, serene, believing himself invulnerable and being apparently so indeed; he did not find it incompatible with his rank to take up the musket of a soldier who had fallen and to fire at the enemy like a private. There is a great painting in the gallery of Versailles representing him in such an action. He had never been wounded in battle. And this great hero was executed in the morning of December 7th., 1815, in the garden of the Luxembourg.

Louis XVIII, this miserable and insignificant man of legitimate royal blood who had never rendered any service to France, wanted revenge--Ney was arrested and condemned by the Chamber of Peers after the marshals had refused to condemn him. His wife pleaded in vain for his life, the king remained inflexible. Ney was simply shot by 12 poor soldiers commanded for the execution. After the marshal had sunk down, an Englishman suddenly rode up at a gallop and leaped over the fallen hero, to express the triumph of the victors. It was in as bad taste as everything that England contrived against Napoleon and his men. [Footnote: Brave men were condemned to deportation or were executed; derision and mocking of Napoleon's generals was the order of the day.]

Among the spectators there was also a Russian general in full uniform and on horseback. Tzar Alexander expelled him from the army after he had heard of it.

The Bourbons commenced a tromocraty which was called, in contrast to the terrorisms of the revolution, the white terror.

Much has been written about the fantastic costume of Murat, but I do not recollect having read the true explanation of it. All writers agree that he was the bravest, the greatest cavalry general. As such he meant to be distinguished from far and near in the midst of the battle where danger was greatest, so that the sight of his person, his exposure to the enemy, should encourage and inspire his soldiers. He rode a very n.o.ble white horse and wore a Polish kurtka of light blue velvet which reached down to the knees, embroidered with golden lace, dark red mameluke pantaloons with golden galloons, white gauntlets and a three-cornered general's hat with white plumes; the saddle was of red velvet and a caparison of the same stuff, all embroidered with gold. The neck of the king was bare, a large white scalloped collar fell over the collar of the kurtka. A strong black full beard gave a martial expression to his face with the fiery eyes and regular features. Sometimes he wore a biretta with a diamond agraffe and a high plume of heron feathers. Very seldom he appeared in the uniform of a marshal.

And this other great hero, who, like Ney, had never been wounded in battle, was executed by order of the court of Naples on October 13th., 1815, in the hall of castle Pizzo.

VOP

In order to give an idea of the great difficulties the soldiers had to face, and examples of their heroic behavior under trying circ.u.mstances, let us relate the disaster of Vop.

While Napoleon, with the imperial guard, the corps of Marshal Davout and a ma.s.s of stragglers, all escorted by Marshal Ney, was marching on the road to Smolensk, Prince Eugene had taken the road to Doukhowtchina. The prince had with him 6 or 7 thousand men under arms, including the Italian guard, some Bavarian cavalry which still had their horses and their artillery mounted, and also many stragglers, with these a number of families who had been following the Italian division.

At the end of the first day's journey--it was on November 8th.--near the castle Zazale, they hoped to find at this castle some provisions and an abode for the night. A great cold had set in, and when they came to a hill the road was so slippery that it was almost impossible to negotiate the elevation with even the lightest load. Detaching horses from the pieces in order to double and treble the teams they succeeded in scaling the height with cannons of small calibre, but they were forced to abandon the larger ones.

The men being exhausted as well as the horses they felt humiliated at being obliged to leave their best pieces. While they had exerted themselves with such sad results, Platow had followed them with his Cossacks and light cannons mounted on sleighs and incessantly fired into the French. The commander of the Italian artillery, General Anthouard, was severely wounded and was compelled to give up his command.

A gloomy night was pa.s.sed at the castle Zazale.

On the morning of the 9th. they left at an early hour to cross the Vop, a little rivulet during the summer but now quite a river, at least four feet deep and full of mud and ice.

The pontooneers of Prince Eugene had gone ahead, working during the night to construct a bridge, but frozen and hungry they had suspended their work for a few hours, to finish it after a short rest.

At daybreak those most anxious to cross went on the unfinished bridge which they thought was completed.

A heavy mist prevented them from recognizing their error until the first ones fell into the icy water emitting piercing cries. Finally horses and men waded through the water--some succeeded, other succ.u.mbed.

It would lead too far to give here a full description of the distressing scenes, the difficulty of pa.s.sing with artillery and the mostly vain attempts to bring over the baggage wagons. But, to cap the climax, there arrived 3 or 4 thousand Cossacks shouting savagely. With the greatest difficulty only was the rear guard able to keep them at a distance so that they could not come near enough to make use of their lances. Their artillery, however, caused veritable desolation.

Among the poor fugitives from Moscow there were a number of Italian and French women; these unfortunates stood at the border of the river, crying and embracing their children, but not daring to wade through it. Brave soldiers, full of humanity, took the little ones in their arms and pa.s.sed with them, some repeating this two and three times, in order to bring all the children safely over. These desolate families, not being able to save their vehicles, lost with them the means of subsistence brought from Moscow. All the baggage, the entire artillery with the exception of seven or eight pieces, had been lost, and a thousand men had been killed by the fire of the Cossacks.

This dreadful event on the retreat from Moscow is called the disaster of Vop and was the precursor of another disaster of the same nature, but a hundred times more frightful, the disaster of the Beresina.

There was another cause of death of which we have not spoken yet: this was the action of the heat at the campfires. Anxious to warm themselves, most of the soldiers hastened to bring their limbs near the flame; but this sudden exposure to extreme heat, after having suffered from the other extreme--cold--was acting on the feeble circulation in the tissues and produced gangraene of the feet, the hands, even of the face, causing paralysis either partial, of the extremities, or general, of the whole body.

Only those were saved who had been able to keep up their circulation by means of hot drinks or other stimulants and who, noticing numbness, had rubbed the affected parts with snow. Those who did not or could not resort to these precautions found themselves paralyzed, or stricken with sudden gangraene, in the morning when the camp broke up.

The hospitals of Koenigsberg admitted about 10 thousand soldiers of Napoleon's army, only a small number of whom had been wounded, most of them with frozen extremities, who had, as the physicians of that time called it, a pest, the fever of congelation which was terribly contagious.

The heroic Larrey although exhausted from fatigue had come to these hospitals to take care of the sick, but he became infected with the contagion himself and was taken sick.

A great calamity was the want of shoes; we have seen that this was already felt in Moscow, before they set out on the endless march over ice and snow.

The soldiers had their feet wrapped in rags, pieces of felt or leather, and when a man had fallen on the road some of his comrades would cut off his feet and carry them to the next camp fire to remover the rags--for their own use.

But the general appearance of the emaciated soldiers with long beards, and faces blackened by the smoke of camp-fires, the body wrapped in dirty rags of wearing apparel brought from Moscow, was such that it was difficult to recognize them as soldiers.

And the vermin! Carpon, a surgeon-major of the grand army, in describing the days of Wilna which were almost as frightful as the disaster of the Beresina, speaks on this subject. It is revolting. Strange to say, it is hardly ever mentioned in the medical history of wars, although every one who has been in the field is quite familiar with it.

At last I have found--in Holzhausen's book--a description of the most revolting lice plague (phtheiriasis) from which, according to his valet, Constant, even the emperor was not exempted. As a matter of course under the circ.u.mstances--impossibility of bodily cleanliness--this vermin developed in a way which baffles description. Suckow, a Wuerttembergian first lieutenant, speaks of it as causing intolerable distress, disturbing the sleep at the campfire. Johann von Borcke became alarmed when he discovered that his whole body was eaten up by these insects. A French colonel relates that in scratching himself he tore a piece of flesh from the neck, but that the pain caused by this wound produced a sensation of relief.

SMOLENSK

All the corps marched to Smolensk where they expected to reach the end of all their misery and to find repose, food, shelter; in fact, all they were longing for.

Napoleon entered the city with his guards and kept the rest of the army, including the stragglers, out of doors until arrangements could have been made for the regular distribution of rations and quarters. But together with the stragglers the ma.s.s of the army became unmanageable and resorted to violence.

Seeing that the guards were given the preference they broke out in revolt, entered by force and pillaged the magazines. "The magazines are pillaged!"

was the general cry of terror and despair. Every one was running to grasp something to eat.

Finally, something like order was established to save some of the provisions for the corps of Prince Eugene and Marshal Ney who arrived after fighting constantly to protect the city from the troops of the enemy. They received in their turn eatables and a little rest, not under shelter but in the streets, where they were protected, not from the frost, but from the enemy.

There were no longer any illusions. The army having hoped to find shelter and protection, subsistence, clothes and, above all, shoes, at Smolensk, they found nothing of all this and learned that they had to leave, perhaps the next day, to recommence the interminable march without abode for the night, without bread to eat and constantly righting while exhausted, with the cruel certainty that if wounded they would be the prey of wolves and vultures.