Rapp took command.
“Grape shot, grape shot--nothing but grape shot!” cried Belliard to
the artillery, as a heavy column of Russians poured down to resist
the attack. Within sixty minutes Rapp was hit four times, the fourth
time on the left hip--the twenty-second wound received in his exciting
career; and while Poniatowski struggled with his weak corps among the
pine-trees on the Russian left, Delzon advanced with drums beating, on
the village of Borodino, where Plauzonne was killed at the head of the
116th, and where the 30th had to fight its way out, leaving General
Bonnomy badly wounded, Morand’s eighty guns tearing the dense mass
before him, and Ney seizing the heights of Chewarino.
The fiercest conflict raged about the redoubts. Two were retaken by
the Russians, and the third was in danger, when Murat dismounted and,
waving his plumed cap with one hand, laid about him with a private’s
musket.
So terrible was the carnage that one colonel ordered his men to retire,
and Murat, seizing him by the collar, demanded what he was doing.
“We can stay here no longer,” said the colonel, pointing to half his
regiment dead on the trampled ground.
“I can stay here very well myself,” exclaimed Murat.
“_Eh bien_,” replied the officer, looking steadily at him:
“soldiers, face to the foe--_to be slain_!”
Rapp, carried wounded before the Emperor, had said to him, “The Guard
is required to finish it,” but Napoleon shook his head, saying, “No, I
will not have that destroyed--I will gain the battle without it.”
[Illustration: Battle of BORODINO. 1812.
(Sept. 7. 5 a.m.)]
It was noon, and though the Russian left had been forced, they still
stood their ground obstinately. Murat sent four times for the Guard,
but Napoleon paced slowly up and down, always returning to his chair,
some cannon shot rolling almost to his feet; and it was obvious that he
was not himself, he saying repeatedly during the day that “he did not
see the moves clearly on his chess board,” the old activity of mind and
body having apparently forsaken the greatest warrior that Europe has
ever produced.
The thunder of a thousand guns boomed and echoed far and near, the
French alone firing ninety thousand rounds and many _millions_ of
ball cartridge.
The Russians re-formed for the third time, and General Montbrun, at the
head of the heavy cavalry, was killed by a ball from the great redoubt.
“Do not weep,” said Auguste Caulaincourt, who took command, to
Montbrun’s aides. “Follow me, and avenge him!” and crying to Murat,
“You shall see me there immediately, dead or alive!” he placed himself
at the head of the 5th Cuirassiers, whose long swords gleamed in the
bright sunshine, and turning to the left, entered by a gorge, and took
the work, falling mortally wounded at the moment of victory, and dying
within an hour. He was only thirty, and had left Paris to join the army
on his wedding day.
Dense smoke clouded the heights, rolling into the ravines to shroud the
wretched wounded; flames showed where villages were blazing, the crash
of muskets and the shouts of 250,000 men only diminishing as they fell
by thousands to redden the soil, or to crawl shrieking to the rear,
where the surgeons, under Baron Larrey, were busy from morning until
long after darkness came.
Kutusoff had made so sure of victory that he was feasting with his
staff well out of danger, the bulletin announcing a French defeat
already written, when officers came crying for reinforcements, the
conceited old man at first refusing to listen to any details that
differed from his own idea of what _ought_ to be taking place,
his long pigtail wagging incredulously the while. But the reports were
true. The French had won the plain, and were battling for the heights
with irresistible fury.
Eugène improved Caulaincourt’s success; Belliard shattered the last
Russian attack with the concentrated fire of thirty guns; Lauriston
galloped up the reserve artillery, and did tremendous execution;
and Grouchy--so well known in after years from the undeserved abuse
showered on his brave head--had swept the high road and the plain
beside it. The Russians, beaten in detail, retired to a second range
of heights, from which the army was too exhausted to dislodge them
without the assistance of the Guard, and night saw the two battered and
bleeding forces still facing each other amid a fearful _débris_ of
slain.
On the French side Davout had been hit three times; Generals Montbrun,
Caulaincourt, Plauzonne, Huard, Compere, Marion, and Lepel were killed;
Nansouty, Grouchy, Rapp, Cempans, Dessaix, Morand, Lahoussaye, and many
more--some forty in all--had been hit; and of the soldiers 35,000 lay
dead and wounded, mangled by the showers of grape and the large musket
balls used by the Russians.
They, on their side, counted three generals, 1,500 officers, and 36,000
men killed and wounded, accounts varying greatly as to the number of
prisoners taken by the French, some making them 5,000, others 700 or
800 at the most.
Riding slowly across the battle-field, when the surgeons and the
burial-parties were doing their ghastly work, the hoof of Napoleon’s
charger brought a groan from a prostrate form, and one of the staff
remarked in his hearing, that “it was only a Russian”!
“After a victory,” exclaimed Napoleon severely, “none are enemies, all
are men.”
The army advanced and fought a sharp action at Mojaisk, where the
Emperor lay for three days, burnt up with fever, and compelled,
notwithstanding, to transact enormous arrears of business--dictating
to seven people at once, and, when his voice left him, explaining with
difficulty by writing and signs.
He left Mojaisk on the 12th of September to join the advance-guard
in that famous travelling-carriage which Londoners know so well, his
legions reduced to 198,000; and two days later, having mounted his
horse once more, he saw the goal of his ambition, the ancient capital
of Russia, glowing in the light of the afternoon sun.
In the centre of a vast plain, and built, like Rome, on seven hills,
the two hundred and ninety-five churches and countless magnificent
buildings of the “city of the gilded cupolas,” twenty miles in
circumference, with a river meandering through it, burst on the view of
the army as it crested the “Mount of Salvation,” and a shout went up
of “Moscow! Moscow!” as the soldiers cheered and clapped their hands;
whole regiments of Poles falling on their knees to thank the God of
Battles for delivering it into their grasp.
Fairy-like it stretched before them, dazzling with the green of
its copper domes and the minarets of yellow stone. Oriental in its
architecture, and constructed in Asiatic style with five enclosures one
within the other, it was like some fabled city of the Arabian Nights,
sparkling with brilliant colours, the famous Kremlin towering above the
palaces and gardens.
The advance-guard under Murat mingled with bands of Cossacks, who
applauded him for his known valour, and the King distributed his
jewellery and that of his staff among them; but an officer arrived from
Miloradowitch with a threat of burning the city if his rear-guard were
not allowed time to evacuate it.
Napoleon stayed his march therefore, and the day wore on. When Murat
at last entered by the Dorogomilow Gate, he found that Moscow was
deserted: the streets were empty, the houses closed, a few loathsome
wretches released from the prisons, and a handful of the lowest of
the low, alone surged round their horses near the Kremlin; but the
inhabitants were gone, in a cloud of dust that hid the retreating
Russian army, towards Voladimir. The gates of the Kremlin were battered
open by cannon shot, a convoy of provisions captured, some thousands of
stragglers were afterwards taken, but that was all; and on the gate of
the Governor’s mansion at Voronowo, the following notice was found in
French:--
“I have passed eight years in embellishing this retreat, in
which I have lived happily in the bosom of my family; the
inhabitants of this property, to the number of seventeen hundred
and twenty, quit it at your approach, and I set fire to my house
in order that it may not be defiled by your presence. Frenchmen,
I have abandoned to you my two houses in Moscow, with furniture
to the value of half a million of roubles. _Here_ you will
find nothing but ashes.--ROSTOPSCHIN.”
With the army singing the “Marseillaise” Napoleon entered at night,
and appointed Marshal Mortier governor, saying: “No pillage--your head
shall be responsible for it.” And though several French residents
acquainted him with the Russian intention of burning the city--that the
senate had agreed to it with only seven dissentient voices, that all
the engines had been removed, and they were treading on the brink of a
volcano--he refused to believe it, and tried in vain to sleep.
[Illustration: GENERAL JUNOT.]
At two o’clock in the morning they brought him news that Moscow was on
fire!
When daylight came he hurried to the spot to reprimand Mortier and
the Young Guard, but the marshal showed him that black smoke was
issuing from houses that had not been opened, and the whole affair had
evidently been carefully planned.
He went to the Kremlin--a vast structure, half palace, half castle,
surmounted by the great Cross of Ivan, and built on a hill--from which
he wrote overtures of peace to the Czar, overtures that received no
attention.
In spite of the efforts of the soldiers the flames spread, a ball of
fire had been let down into Prince Trubetskoi’s palace, the bazaar was
in a blaze, and the strong north wind blew towards the Kremlin itself,
which, report whispered, was undermined.
Murat, Eugène, and Berthier urged the Emperor to leave the city,
without success: he had come there, and there he would remain--a
conqueror in the very centre of the Russian empire. But the cry arose
that the Kremlin itself was on fire: a police-agent was discovered near
the burning tower, and bayoneted by the Old Guard almost in Napoleon’s
presence. There was no longer time for hesitation, or dreams of empty
glory, and passing down the northern staircase, where the massacre of
the Strelitzes took place under Peter the Great, he left the city for
the castle of Petrowsky, a league on the St. Petersburg road.
The army also marched out, encamping in the fields, eating their
horseflesh from silver dishes and swathing their wounds with costly
silks, the rain falling in torrents, and Moscow a sheet of fire for
four days.
Much has been written of Napoleon’s escape by a postern, of hurried
wanderings through burning lanes, past convoys of powder, which the
whirling sparks might have ignited at any moment, and various dramatic
situations dear to the French historian. In point of fact, he ran
little personal risk, and left the Kremlin by the great gate, returning
thither when the flames had abated, and ordering the Guard to occupy
the ruins of the city on the 20th and 21st.
[Illustration:
_By permission of the Council of the Manchester City Art
Gallery._|
THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW.
(_From the Painting by Adolphe Yvon._)]
About a tenth of the houses remained intact, especially in the
Kitaigorod, or Chinese quarter; many rich merchants’ dwellings, and
here and there a palace or church reared their barbaric forms amid
the general chaos; gay flower-beds still bloomed in the suburbs,
and the old red wall that surrounded the Kremlin was comparatively
unharmed; but the aspect of the place, which should have furnished
winter quarters for the _Grande Armée_, struck a chill into the
hearts of all, and caused the Emperor to say that “the commerce of
Russia was ruined for a century, and the nation had been put back fifty
years.” In _six_, however, a new Moscow had arisen and Napoleon
was a captive in St. Helena!
Six thousand Russian wounded are said to have been in the city when the
French entered: what became of them one dare not contemplate.
On the return of the troops universal pillage became the order of
the day, and readers of the early French editions of Labaume’s
narrative will understand why I pass much over in silence. Some of the
inhabitants had returned, others had been concealed in the vaults of
churches and the cellars of their homes; but the grenadiers routed them
out and committed unmentionable excesses.
In the camps and quarters all the wealth of the East lay scattered
about under foot: priceless carpets, velvet hangings, lamps of gold and
silver set with gems, ecclesiastical vestments and works of art, became
the prey of settlers and the riff-raff of Parisian slums; choice wines
and liqueurs flowed like water; lace, linen, and ladies’ jewellery were
taken from carved chests and coffers of exquisite workmanship, for the
household effects had been left untouched when the city was abandoned.
Drunken sappers lolled on sofas covered with costly satin, and muddy
boots were cleansed on rich furs and Cashmere shawls of enormous value:
seldom had an army, famed for its rapacity, had such an opportunity for
its gratification, while, with the Russian forces, white bread was six
shillings a loaf, sugar ten shillings a pound, and butter unprocurable
at any price.
In the midst of this disorder, the real originator of it all dated his
correspondence from the Kremlin Palace, and thought of pushing on to
St. Petersburg. A march of nine hundred leagues, with sixty conflicts
_en route_, had produced nothing, difficulties were increasing,
winter was coming fast. Still the Czar kept an ominous silence, and
although an armistice had been declared, the Russians daily cut off the
foraging parties, and the peasantry rose to arms.
“Take your three-pronged forks,” wrote Rostopschin in his proclamation
to them. “A Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of corn!”
Murat, always to the front, had followed Kutusoff in his circuitous
march round Moscow, and lay observing him between that city and
Kalouga, fighting two sharp but indecisive actions--Czerikowo and
Winkowo.
During the truce the Russian officers asked the French if they had not
corn, and air, and _graves_ enough in their own country; adding,
“In a fortnight the nails will drop from your fingers.”
The little pale-faced man grew visibly paler with anxiety, and went on
hoping against hope; discussing poetry just arrived from Paris, drawing
up regulations for the _Comédie Française_, and trying to reassure
himself that the winter was still far off by poring over the almanacks
for forty years back, and trusting to the hot sun that still shone in a
blue sky above him.
_Chef d’escadron_ Marthod, with fifty Dragoons of the Guard--_his_
Guard, so seldom defeated--had been cut off while foraging. A slight
fall of snow lay white for a few hours on the plain--a foretaste of
what was coming. No message arrived from Alexander, and one day, to
crown all, while he was reviewing some troops, young Beranger galloped
in with the alarming news that Murat had been overthrown at Tarutina,
near Winkowo, two generals being killed, the King wounded, and the
advance guard almost destroyed.
It was clearly time to go, and dismissing the troops, Napoleon issued
orders for immediate departure, leaving Moscow late the same evening,
October 18th, or, as some say, before dawn on the 19th, Marshal Mortier
remaining behind with the Young Guard to cover the retreat and blow up
the Kremlin.
* * * * *
Where are the words that will paint that enormous and disorderly throng
moving in a ragged column over the plain to the south of the ruined
city? Coats and gaiters were patched and mended; shakoes assumed every
shape but the regulation one; brass no longer shone, and steel had
grown rusty, as the troops straggled onward, their knapsacks bulging
with plunder; bearskin-capped grenadiers pushing wheelbarrows full of
gold and silver plate, and the ambulance waggons creaking and groaning
with costly brocade, household furniture, pictures, statuary, and every
conceivable articles of value the pillagers could carry away.
Napoleon set the example; for the huge Cross of Ivan, torn down by
his orders, lumbered along with many other trophies, under a strong
escort, and miles of carts of every description thronged the road and
the fields on either side.
The French residents fled in the wake of the army; delicate ladies,
clad in thin dresses and stuff shoes, peering at the strange procession
from the windows of travelling-carriages; wounded soldiers jolted by,
lying on piles of loot, their aching limbs ill-tended amid the lavish
profusion of spoil, for never has man’s selfishness displayed itself
more forcibly than during that terrible retreat.
Night fell, and the host halted only a league from the city. With
the 103,000 men who marched, more than 500 guns were dragged by lean
horses, the Emperor insisting that they should not be abandoned; but
at the present moment the bulk of them are ranged in rows in the great
square of the Kremlin--a lasting memorial of that awful war.
Two roads led from Moscow to Kalouga, and Napoleon pushed along the old
one, on which Kutusoff awaited him; but at Krasno Pachra, the Emperor
turned off to the right and crossed the fields to the _new_ road,
in the rain, which hampered the artillery and lost much time; but once
on the causeway, which they gained on the 23rd, they set their faces
towards Kalouga again, trusting to pass Kutusoff undetected in one
day’s march.
Napoleon slept at Borowsk that night, and Delzons had occupied Malo
Jaroslavetz, four leagues in advance.
In the early morning, however, Doctoroff, with the 6th Corps of
Kutusoff’s army, came shouting out of the woods, drove Delzons down the
steep hill, and commenced one of the fiercest battles of the campaign.
At sunrise Delzons forced the town again, and the victory seemed won,
but a ball through the head slew him. His brother tried to carry him
out of the _mêlée_, and another ball laid _him_ lifeless.
Guilleminot placed a hundred grenadiers in the churchyard on the left
of the road, and for hours it became a mimic Hougoumont, the Russians
alternately charging past it and being driven up again, exposed to a
hot fire from the loopholed wall.
The whole of the 14th Division was engaged, and the fight surged along
the high road, now on the heights, now in the valley by the river;
the wooden town ignited by the howitzers, and burning the wounded,
while the guns, breasting the hill at a gallop, scrunched the charred
corpses, grinding the living and the dead into a sickening pulp.
The 15th Division, mostly Italians, attacked the burning town and
suburbs, and took it for the fourth time, but were driven back to the
foot of the slope, and as a last resource, Eugène advanced with his
Guard. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Divisions rallying, and Colonel Peraldi
charging bravely with the Italian Chasseurs, they gained the heights
for the last time, and the Russians, 50,000 strong (some say 90,000),
retired from their vantage ground before 18,000 men, who had fought
_uphill_ against the most stubborn resistance.
All the eye witnesses speak of the awful sight presented by the high
road and churchyard. The brothers Delzons were buried in one grave, and
the Grenadiers of the 35th fired a salute over General Fontane; while
Napoleon himself had a narrow escape as he hurried towards the sound of
the cannonading.
The road was blocked by the baggage train; stragglers marched along in
safety in the midst of the army, when the Emperor, Rapp, Berthier, and
a few officers, having outstripped the escort, saw bands of Cossacks
darting out of the woods, between the rear of the advance-guard and the
head of the _Grande Armée_.
“Turn back!” shouted Rapp; “it is they!” and grasping the bridle, he
pulled the Emperor’s charger round.
Reining in by the roadside, Napoleon drew his sword, and they awaited
the attack, Rapp riding forward to shield his Emperor.
A Cossack’s lance penetrated six inches into the chest of Rapp’s horse
and brought him down, but the staff rescued him, and unconscious of the
prize within their reach, the Cossacks rode for the baggage waggons,
until the cavalry of the Guard came up and drove them into the woods
again. They were 6,000 of Platoff’s men, and Napoleon’s life had hung
in the balance!
That night, in a weaver’s hut, filthy beyond expression, an emperor,
two kings, and three marshals of France held a stormy council of
war, at which Murat and Davout quarrelled, as was their wont, and
which Napoleon broke up by saying, “It is well, messieurs--_I_
will decide,” electing eventually to retreat by the most difficult
road--that which the army had wasted on its advance.
It was the last time that they had any option in the matter. A few
days more, and the retreat became a disorderly rout--emperor, kings,
marshals, and men glad to seize the first road that led them from their
remorseless enemies.
On the 23rd, at half-past one in the morning, a hollow boom
had startled their ears, even those who were expecting it. The
_capitaine_ Ottone, of the Naval Artillery, had fired his train.
Mortier’s orders were executed, and the Kremlin had been partially
blown up by 180,000 lbs. of gunpowder, Mortier rejoining, to the
surprise of all, at Vereia with 8,000 men, mostly dismounted cavalry.
At Vereia there was another brush with Platoff, and his son, mounted on
a magnificent white Ukraine horse, was killed by a Polish trooper.
On a hill covered with sombre fir trees the Cossacks buried the dead
boy, riding slowly round him with lances lowered, uttering wild cries
of grief, and then filing silently away with vengeance in their hearts.
Every village at which the French halted was burned on their departure,
each succeeding corps helping to complete the devastation, so that the
route was marked by ruined homes, huge dogs from each hamlet following
the army until they increased to enormous packs, _living on the
dead_ who lined the road, and adding a new terror to the retreating
invaders.
At Mojaisk the sky lost its intense blue, and the landscape became
gloomy, the cold wind sobbing and wailing down the avenues of
melancholy pines, and the men drawing closer to each other as they
marched.
The columns debouched on to the field of Borodino, and sad memories
were aroused at every step; for, although thousands of bodies had
been burned by the Russians, the plain, the heights, and especially
the redoubts were littered with broken weapons and innumerable
accoutrements, the hands and feet of the hastily buried slain
protruding from the sandy soil in all directions.
[Illustration: “A MUTILATED SPECTRE CRAWLED TOWARDS THE
STARTLED SOLDIERS.”]
One ghastly incident, vouched for by the great majority of writers,
occurred as the head of the army traversed the field. Cries were heard,
and a mutilated spectre crawled towards the startled soldiers. It was
a Frenchman, whose legs had been broken during the battle more than
_seven weeks_ before, and who, unaided, had lived on the putrid
flesh around him, sleeping in the stinking carcase of a disembowelled
horse.
Taking him tenderly up, the army hurried on. The skeletons they were
leaving behind grinned silently as the straggling band passed by. A
little further on, the wounded at the abbey of Klotskoi held out their
hands beseechingly, and an order was issued that every vehicle should
carry at least _one_ of them, the weakest being left to the tender
mercies of the Russians.
Every now and again a dull explosion came from the line of march as
caisson after caisson was blown up when the horses became too weak to
drag them; and a few miles on the road to Gjatz a terrible outcry arose
as wounded men were found lying on the ground, having been thrown out
of the sutler’s carts in order that the vile wretches might save their
plunder--one sufferer, _a general_, living just long enough to
tell the tale.
[Illustration: SMOLENSK, FROM THE BANKS OF THE DNIEPER, IN
1812.
(_From a Contemporary Print._)]