Encumbered by a vast amount of booty, a host of camp-followers, and
a huge train of vehicles of all sorts, the Grand Army left Moscow,
upward of one hundred thousand strong and with some fifty thousand
horses. Neither men nor horses had been shod for a winter campaign. The
clothing worn by the troops was mostly that of summer. The movement
of the troops was slow, because of the enormous baggage. The Emperor
wished to retreat by the Kalouga road which would carry him over a
country able to support him with provisions. The Russians barred the
way, and at Malo-Yaroslavitz the French, under Eugène Beauharnais,
attacked and beat them. Falling back to a stronger position, the
Russians still barred the way. Military critics say that had not
Napoleon’s retreat been so sluggish, he would have outstripped these
Russians in their efforts to head him off. Had he burned all that
plunder which his army was carrying away, he might have saved his army.
Marshal Bessières and others, sent forward to reconnoitre, reported
that the enemy was too strongly intrenched to be dislodged; the army
must get back to the old road by which it had come. Napoleon hesitated,
listened to reports and advice, lost time, and finally gave the word
to retreat by the old route--a fatal decision. What Bessières had seen,
according to some authorities, was but a rear-guard: Kutusoff had
retreated, and the new route by Kalouga could have been taken by the
French.
With heavy heart the Emperor led the way to the other road--that which
had already been swept bare in the advance to Moscow.
The Russians did not press the pursuit with any great vigor, but the
Grand Army, nevertheless, melted like snow. Men and horses died of
starvation, demoralization set in, bands of stragglers were cut off by
Cossacks, so that after a battle at Wiasma, and previous to any snow or
severe cold, only fifty-five thousand men and twelve thousand horses
were fit for active service.
On November 6 the weather changed, and wintry horrors accumulated. The
snow, the freezing winds, the icy rains, the lack of food, the want
of shelter, the ferocity of pursuing foes, the inhumanity of comrades
and friends, the immense plains to be crossed, the deep rivers to be
bridged, the enormous burden of despair to be borne,--these were the
factors of the most hideous drama war ever presented.
The Grand Army reeled in tattered fragments toward home, fighting,
starving, freezing, meeting death in every shape known to man. The
French marched in four divisions, commanded by the Emperor, Eugène,
Davoust, and Ney. Terrible as was the daily loss by disease, death,
and straggling, each of these divisions held its formation, and never
failed to stand and fight when the Russians attacked. The unbending
courage shown by these commanders, the steadiness of subordinate
officers, the despairing gallantry of the remnants of the Grand Army,
stand out in bold relief to the general gloom of this mightiest of
shipwrecks. Much of the time Napoleon was on foot, clad in furs, staff
in hand to help him through the drifts, marching stolidly, silently,
with his men. Nothing that he could do was left undone; but that which
he could do had little influence on general results as they tramped
along. Until they reached Smolensk, he was almost as powerless as the
others; after that his superiority saved what was left of the army.
The hardships of the retreat increased after November 14, when Smolensk
was left behind. Men fell by the road exhausted, men were blinded by
the glare of the light on limitless fields of snow, men were maddened
by the intolerable anxieties and woes of the march. In the day the
ice cut their rag-covered or naked feet, the wind and freezing rain
tortured their hungry, tattered bodies. At night--nights of sixteen
fearful hours--bivouac fires were scant and insufficient, and when
morning dawned, the circle of sleeping forms around these dismal
bivouacs would sometimes remain forever unbroken--the sleep of the
soldier was the long one, the final one.
In October the Russian prisoners had said to the French, “In a
fortnight the nails will drop from your fingers; you will not be
able to hold your guns.” The cold was even worse; not only did nails
drop off, the hands dropped off. The time soon came when a benumbed
Frenchman, who had fallen into a ditch, and who had piteously begged a
passing comrade to lend a helping hand, was answered, “I haven’t any!”
There were only the stumps of the arms; the poor fellow’s hands had
been frozen off. “But here, catch hold of my cloak,” he continued, and
the man in the ditch having caught hold, was dragged to his feet.
Conditions like these made savages of the men. In the rush for food
and fire and shelter, the strong tramped down the weak. Frantic
with cold and hunger, they fought each other like wolves for place
and provisions. The weaker were shut out and died. Horse-flesh was
common diet; it is even said that cannibalism occurred. For warmth,
artillerymen could be seen holding their hands at the noses of their
horses; for food, a soldier was considered lucky who found a little
flour, half dirt and chaff, in the cracks of a floor. But in the
worst stages of this awful retreat there was human heroism; there was
human sympathy and unselfishness. There is nothing finer in the fine
character of Eugène Beauharnais than the gallantry with which he set
the good example of patience, courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.
From the time he beat Kutusoff in the first fight after Moscow, to
his taking the chief command, which Murat abandoned, his conduct was
heroic. Rugged Davoust, the best of the marshals now serving, who would
have saved his master at Borodino, and who did snatch him from the
burning streets of Moscow, was a tower of strength after the retreat
began.
Other marshals did not love Davoust; they quarrelled with him, said he
was slow, and accused him of not maintaining discipline. On the retreat
Ney, whom Davoust had left behind, charged him with something like
treachery. But Napoleon knew the value of Davoust, and history knows
it. To the careful student of this eventful epoch the conclusion comes
home, irresistibly, that Napoleon might have remained till his death
the mightiest monarch of the world had he listened to two men,--in
civil affairs, Cambacérès; in military matters, Davoust.
As to Murat, he fought all along the front with such conspicuous
gallantry, superbly mounted and gorgeously dressed, that he extorted
the admiration of the Russians themselves. The Cossacks, especially,
looked upon him as the bravest, the most martial of men. Murat fought
the cavalry till the horses were all dead, and then he spent most of
his time in Napoleon’s carriage.
But Ney, rugged, lionlike Ney, surpassed them all, winning in this
campaign the Emperor’s proud title, “The brave of the braves.” Such
grandeur of courage, such steadiness, such loyalty, the world never
surpassed. Separated from Davoust, beset by overwhelming numbers, he
seemed a lost man. The Emperor, hard pressed himself, but determined
to make a final effort to save his marshals, halted at Krasnoi, facing
sixty thousand Russians with six thousand French. Nothing in Napoleon’s
own career is finer than this. Russian shells began to fly, screaming
through the air and along the snow. Lebrun spoke of it as of something
unusually terrible. “Bah!” said the Emperor with contempt; “balls
have been whistling about our legs these twenty years.” His desperate
courage in standing at bay so impressed Kutusoff that he drew back,
and Davoust came through. But Ney was still behind, and in the face of
the tremendous odds the French were forced onward. In deep grief for
his marshal, the Emperor reproached himself for having exposed Ney too
much. From time to time he would inquire if any one had heard from him.
On the 20th of November General Gourgand came in haste to announce that
Ney was only a few leagues away and would soon join. With a cry of joy,
Napoleon exclaimed, “Is it true?” When Gourgand explained how Ney had
marched and fought: how he had defied a beleaguring host ten times his
own number; how, summoned to surrender, he had replied, “A marshal of
France has never surrendered!” and how he had, partly by stratagem, and
partly by force, escaped with a small remnant of his command, Napoleon
was delighted. “There are 200,000,000 francs in my vaults in the
Tuileries, and I would give them all to have Ney at my side!”
When the heroic survivors of this column joined the main army, there
were shouts and tears of joy.
It was Ney who held the Cossacks at bay toward the final stages of the
retreat; it was Ney who fired the last shot of the war as he recrossed
the Niemen: it was Ney who became almost literally the rear-guard of
the Grand Army.
Well might the Bourbon Duchess of Angoulême say, in 1815, when told the
story of this man’s antique heroism in the Russian campaign, “Had we
known all that, we would not have had him shot!”
In the disorder, savagery, elemental chaos of this historic retreat,
human nature flew to the extremes. There were soldiers who slew each
other in struggles for food, and soldiers who risked starvation to
share with others. In some instances comradeship was mocked, in some
it was stronger than ever. There were instances where the strong
laughed at the weak who pleaded for aid. There were cases where the
strong braved all to save the weak. Wounded officers were seen drawn
on sledges to which their comrades had harnessed themselves, brother
officers taking the place of horses. A child, abandoned by its mother,
was saved by Marshal Ney, and escaped all the hardships of the
retreat. Another mother drowning in the Beresina held her babe aloft in
her arms, the child alive, the mother as good as dead.
One of the most touching and purely unselfish acts of devotion was that
of the Hessian contingent in its protection of their hereditary prince.
The people of Hesse had little cause to reverence their rulers--petty
tyrants who had sold them into military servitude at so much a head to
England, and who had misgoverned them with the worst of feudal methods.
But on the coldest night of the retreat, when it seemed that the young
Prince Emil would freeze to death, the remnant of the Hessians closed
around him, “wrapped in their great white cloaks pressed tightly
against one another, protecting him from wind and cold. The next
morning three-fourths of them were dead, and buried beneath the snow.”
By the time the French came near the Beresina, the two Russian armies,
which had been released by the treaties the Czar had made with Turkey
and Sweden, had reached the scene of war, and threatened the line of
retreat. Kutusoff in overwhelming force in the rear, Wittgenstein and
Tchitchagoff in front and flank, the French seemed doomed. When the
Russians were driven by Oudinot from Borissow, they burnt the bridge
over the Beresina. The ice had melted, the river was swollen, it was
wide and deep, and the Russians were on the opposite bank ready to
dispute the passage. To bridge and cross the river in the face of these
Russians--such was the French necessity: either that or surrender, for
Kutusoff was close behind.
Already the Emperor had destroyed his papers and burned his eagles to
save them from capture; already had provided himself with poison,
resolved to die rather than be taken prisoner.
Standing up to their lips in the freezing current of the river,
soldiers worked all night, fixing the timbers for the bridge. It was a
terrible labor, and several lost their lives, drowned or frozen. Those
who toiled on, had to keep the masses of ice pushed away while they
worked.
The Emperor sat in a wretched hovel, waiting for day. Great tears
rolled down his cheeks. “Berthier, how are we to get out of this?”
Murat urged him to take an escort of a few Poles, cross the river
higher up, and escape. The Emperor silently shook his head, and Murat
said no more.
Suddenly came news that was almost too good for belief: the Russians
had disappeared! Tchitchagoff, deceived by Napoleon’s feint to cross
elsewhere, or misled by Kutusoff’s despatches, had led his army away.
The line of retreat was now open, the bridges were rapidly finished,
and with shouts of “Live the Emperor!” the jubilant French began to
cross. When in their hurry a jam occurred in the passage, and artillery
teams got blocked, Napoleon himself sprang on the bridge, caught the
horses, and helped to free the pieces.
The bridges, constructed under so many difficulties and in such haste,
were frail, the crush of the crowd in going over became greater and
greater. Finally the bridges gave way. They were repaired, but broke
again. Beginning with this, the tumult, the terror, the frantic
struggle for place, the loss of life, became frightful. The weak fell,
they were trampled by men and horses, and ground to pulp by wheels.
Some perished on the bridges, others were pushed off and drowned
in the river. There were no side-rails or ledges, nothing to keep
those on the outer edge from being crowded off--and they went over by
hundreds, by thousands. The Russians under Wittgenstein having come up,
a fierce battle ensued between them and the French rear-guard. Amid
wild confusion, the passage of the river continued, while a storm raged
and the cannon roared. In the evening the large bridge, crushed by the
weight upon it, gave way, and with a fearful cry, which rose above the
storm and the battle, the multitude that was crossing sank forever.
Next day the battle raged again, while the crossing continued. Early in
the night, Victor’s rear-guard began to cross, the Russians cannonading
the bridge, and covering it with the dead. Next morning the bridge was
burned, and all the thousands of stragglers and camp-followers were cut
off, and perished miserably.
Beyond the Beresina, the regulars of the Russian army did not press the
pursuit, but the Cossacks hung on, inflicting heavy losses. From cold,
from hunger, from disease, the French continued to lose fearfully; but
the broken remnant of the Grand Army was now comparatively safe from
the enemy.
Full details of the Malet conspiracy having reached Napoleon, he became
anxious and restless. He believed he could render greater service to
himself and the Empire by being in Paris. Turning over the command to
Murat, at Smorgoni, the Emperor entered a covered sleigh, and set out
for France.
Accompanied by Duroc, Caulaincourt and Lobau, Roustan the Mameluke,
and a Polish officer, the Emperor sped across the snow on his way
homeward. Almost captured by Cossacks, he reached Warsaw on the 15th
of December, 1812, where he put up at the English Hotel, and sent for
the Abbé de Pradt, his minister to the Grand Duchy. Here, in a small
room of the hotel, moving about restlessly, stamping his feet for
circulation while a servant girl bent over the hearth trying to make
a fire from green wood, he gave his instructions to his treacherous
minister, and announced that in the following spring he would be back
in the Niemen at the head of three hundred thousand men. Then he sped
onward toward Saxony.
Late at night, December 14, 1812, the sledge of the flying Emperor
reached Dresden, where there was a brief conference between Napoleon
and his faithful ally. Bitter beyond description must have been the
reflections of the lonely fugitive in hurrying through those streets,
where a few months before kings had crowded to his antechamber!
Escaping the conspiracies aimed at his life in Germany, he safely
entered France, and reached Paris, late at night, December 18, 1812,
arriving at the Tuileries almost alone, in a hackney coach.
There was an outburst of indignation in the Grand Army remnants when it
was known that the Emperor had gone. “The same trick he played us in
Egypt,” said one General to another. Murat had on his hands a thankless
task at best, and under his management the situation did not improve.
At Wilna the Cossack “Hourra!” stampeded the French, who fled, loosing
six thousand prisoners. At the steep hill, a few miles beyond, the
horses could not drag the artillery up the ice-covered road, and it was
abandoned.
Sick of such a responsibility, Murat bethought himself that he also
had a kingdom that might need his presence, and on January 16, 1813, he
made over the command to Eugène Beauharnais.
There were seventeen thousand men in the army when Murat left it;
Eugène increased its numbers until, by the 9th of March, 1813, it was
an effective force of forty thousand. Taking a strong position, his
line stretching from Magdeburg to Dresden, the loyal Eugène waited for
his Emperor to bring up reënforcements.