THE INVASION OF RUSSIA--BORODINO[42]
[Footnote 42: References: Tatistcheff: Alexandre Ier et
Napoleon. Czartoryski: Memoirs. De Chambray: Oeuvres. Segur:
La campagne de Russie. Labaume: Relation circonstanciee de la
campagne de Russie. Wilson: A Narrative of the Campaign in
Russia during the Year 1812. Du Casse: Memoires et
Correspondance du Prince Eugene. Rapp: Memoires. Bausset:
Memoires. Davout: Correspondance (ed. Mazade, 1885), Vol.
III. Lossberg, V., Briefe in die Heimat geschrieben waehrend
d. Feldzugs 1812 in Russland. Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon
als Feldherr. Stoltyk: Napoleon en Russie.]
Success and Failure -- The Struggle with Summer Heat -- Napoleon
at Vitebsk -- The Russians Over-confident -- The Fight at
Smolensk -- Technical Victory and Real Defeat -- Napoleon's Fatal
Decision -- The Russians at Borodino -- The Battle Array --
Napoleon's Victory -- Russian Efforts to Burn Moscow.
When Napoleon left Dresden his force was so disposed that the Russians
could not tell whether he meant to strike from north or south, and
accordingly they divided theirs, Barclay de Tolly, with a hundred and
twenty-seven thousand men, standing before Vilna; Bagration, with
sixty-six thousand, ensconcing himself behind the swamps of the upper
Pripet in Volhynia. Barclay, hoping to strike a sharp, swift blow, and
open the campaign with a moral victory, was soon convinced of the
danger, and called in Bagration, who was to be replaced by an
auxiliary force. But before the long Russian line could be drawn
together Napoleon struck the first decisive blow. Disposing his army
in echelon, with beautiful precision he suddenly turned against the
enemy's right, crossed the Niemen, and seized Vilna. This turned the
Russian flank, and Barclay fell back to the fortified camp which had
been established at Drissa in order to cover St. Petersburg. If, then,
Jerome's division had promptly advanced from Grodno, Bagration would
have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed, partly because
Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because
Davout did not cooeperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly
through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration
turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond
pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney and
Eugene against Barclay, but the former had pushed on to seize
Duenaburg, and was out of reach. This scheme, like the other, came to
naught; Bagration, by a long, painful detour, was able to establish
communication with Drissa, and seemed likely to effect a junction with
Barclay on the road to Smolensk. As in these movements both the
Russian commanders had lost many men, there would be only a hundred
and twenty thousand in their united force, a beggarly showing in view
of the two years' preparation necessary to bring it together.
Consternation reigned in the Russian camp. The Czar could raise no
money, Drissa was painfully inadequate as a bulwark, and the people
grew desperate. The nation attributed its sorry plight to the bad
advice of the Czar's German counselors, and such was the
demoralization at the capital that Alexander was compelled to hasten
thither in order to avert complete disaster. In spite of his personal
unpopularity, he met with considerable success. The nobility and
burghers of both St. Petersburg and Moscow caught the war fever,
opened their coffers, equipped a numerous militia, and by the end of
July all Russia was hopeful and eager for battle.
This, too, was the earnest desire of Napoleon. The advance from the
Vistula to the Niemen and from the Niemen to the Dwina had been
successfully carried forward--but at what a cost! "Since we have
crossed the Niemen," wrote the artist Adam, who was at the viceroy's
headquarters, "the Emperor and his entire army are occupied by a
single thought, a single hope, a single wish--the thought of a great
battle." Men talked of a great battle as of a great festival. If the
Russian army in its own territory shriveled as it did before the
summer heat by sickness and desertion, it may be imagined how that of
the French dwindled. Their terrible sufferings could be ended only by
a battle. Heat, dust, and drought wrought havoc in their columns; the
pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting
power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and
oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned
huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but
flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time
Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day,
and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account for
the dilatoriness of Napoleon's movements in part; for the rest, his
imperial plans demanded that he should organize all the territories in
his rear, and he gave himself the utmost pains to do so. Besides, he
had never before had a task so heroic in all its dimensions, and every
detail of military and political procedure required time and care in
fullest measure, the more so when preparing for a decisive, uncommon
battle.
Vitebsk and Smolensk occupy analogous positions on the rivers Dwina
and Dnieper, the former of which is to the westward and flows north;
the latter, farther inland, flows in the opposite direction into the
very heart of Russia. Barclay had planned to await Bagration at
Vitebsk, and Napoleon, arriving on July twenty-seventh, hoped for a
decisive battle there. But Davout's movements drove Bagration farther
eastward, and Barclay, instead of waiting, hurried to Smolensk, where
the junction was effected. This compulsory pursuit had, as
communications then were, thrown the extreme wings of Napoleon's army
virtually out of reach, the Prussians being near Riga, and the
Austrians in Volhynia. The long, thin line of his center must be,
therefore, drawn in for safety; and since the character of the country
had improved, he determined to concentrate near Vitebsk, and
recuperate his troops in the comparatively pleasant land which
environs that city. Both commander and officers were at first so
disheartened that they contemplated remaining for the season, Murat
alone remonstrating; but Napoleon said three years were necessary for
the Russian war. Such counsels did not long prevail; with new strength
came the old daring, and orders were sent both to Macdonald and the
Prussians on the left, and to the Austrians under Schwarzenberg on the
right, which were indicative of a great project. Napoleon's prestige
among the Poles had in fact shrunk along with his army. The latter he
could not recruit, but the former he must repair at any hazard; this
could be done only by what he designated to Jomini as a "good battle."
The success of the minor engagements to right and left, incident to
concentration, was encouraging for such a speedy and overwhelming
triumph.
The Russians at Smolensk were vainglorious at having outwitted
Napoleon, and longed to fight. Barclay alone was uneasy, but, in
deference to the prevalent sentiment, he advanced to offer battle, and
on August ninth there was a skirmish between pickets. Napoleon at
once set his army in motion, but as neither general was really well
informed or prepared, Barclay pushed on to the right, and the two
armies lost touch. Once aroused, the French spirit brooked no further
delay, and it was determined to seek the "good battle" before
Smolensk, which, lying on the right, or north, bank of the Dnieper,
could be reached only by crossing the stream. This manoeuver was
brilliantly executed. Barclay was a day's march distant on the south
bank when Ney and Murat deployed on the other side for action on
August sixteenth. Bagration, nearer at hand, threw one corps across
the river into the town, and then hurried his main force down-stream
to oppose its passage by the French.
Smolensk, called from its site the Key of Russia, and designated, from
its importance as a shrine, "The Sacred," was then a town of about
thirteen thousand inhabitants. Around the inner city was a line of
thick but dilapidated walls, and these were surrounded outside by
densely built faubourgs. The first attempt of Ney to storm the walls
failed, and a bombardment was ordered. By evening of the seventeenth
the French army were all drawn up on the north bank between the city
and the river; the Russians were opposite on the heights. During the
night of the seventeenth the Russian army began to cross the Dnieper
by the permanent bridge, which they held; a fresh garrison was thrown
into Smolensk, and at four in the morning of the eighteenth the van
began to retreat toward Moscow. Napoleon, foiled in his attempt to
carry Smolensk by storm, had hoped that Barclay would offer battle
under the walls of the town. He, therefore, waited until afternoon for
the expected appearance of his foe, but in vain. Puzzled and uneasy,
he then determined to force the fighting by a fresh assault. The
suburbs were captured late in the evening, but the walls were
impregnable. Barclay then set fire to the quarter opposite that
attacked by the French, and in the resulting confusion safely drew out
his garrison; the next morning saw his rear well beyond Napoleon's
reach, with the bridges destroyed behind it. On the twenty-third he
halted and drew up for battle behind the Uscha.
[Illustration: Map of the Russian Campaign 1812.]
Technically Napoleon had won, since an important frontier fortress was
captured; but he had not fought his great battle, nor had he cut off
his enemy's retreat. Ney and Murat were despatched in pursuit, but it
is charged on good authority that they acted recklessly, without
concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined
later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary
circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive
victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic
politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a
wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach
a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon
perfectly understood. He could either summon back the patience he had
vaunted first at Dresden, then at Vitebsk, or he could yield to his
impulse for swift action and go on to Moscow in the hope, before
entering the capital, of fighting the "good battle" for which he so
longed. The older officers with long memories compared the Russian
Smolensk with the Syrian Acre. Murat had foreseen that an affair at
Smolensk would amount to nothing, and had begged Napoleon to avoid a
conflict. Rapp came in after the victory, and recalled the scenes of
distress which had marked every step of his long journey from the
Niemen: the numerous victims of dysentery and typhus who lay dying
along the roadsides, the desperate bands of marauders and deserters
who were eking out a doubtful existence by ravaging the villages, the
maddened hordes of peasants and tradespeople who were shooting or
striking down the enfeebled stragglers from the army like bullocks in
the shambles. Recounting all these horrors, he pleaded with the
Emperor to desist. But Napoleon remembered that his transport barges
had been wrecked on the river bars, and that his wagon-trains were
without horses or oxen to draw them. The counterfeit paper money he
had brought from Paris would no longer pass; where was he to find
sustenance for his still numerous force of a hundred and eighty-five
thousand men at least? Only by pressing on to some populous city; and
on the twenty-fourth his army was in motion eastward. If Alexander
could be brought to terms, he would yield more quickly with one of his
capitals in the enemy's grasp. In the attempt to form a calm judgment
concerning this conclusion it must be remembered that the French base
was secure; there were garrisons of about fourteen thousand men each
in Vitebsk, Orscha, and Mohileff; another was left at Smolensk. The
line from the Niemen to Moscow was very long, yet Schwarzenberg was on
the right to prevent Tormassoff from breaking through, and Napoleon
felt sure that Wittgenstein on the left was too weak to be a menace.
If the great captain had halted at Smolensk and strengthened himself
on the double line of the Dwina and Dnieper, as was perhaps possible
in spite of all difficulties, he would have been quite as strong in a
military way as before Austerlitz or Eylau. But had Russia learned
nothing from these two experiences, and would she come on again a
third time as on those two occasions to certain defeat? To have acted
on the affirmative hypothesis would have been to expect much. The Czar
would rather take time to raise the whole nation; if need be, to
organize, discipline, and drill his numerous levies; to wear out the
patience of the invaders and strike when the advantage was his, not
theirs. Making all allowance for troops to be left in garrison,
Napoleon would still have a hundred and fifty-seven thousand men,
hardened veterans who, though murmuring and grumbling after the
soldier's manner, were nevertheless altogether trustworthy, and would
turn sulky if compelled to retreat.
If this were Napoleon's reasoning, it proved to be fallacious, because
the Russians were constantly increasing their strength, while that of
the French, both on the base of operations and on the line of march,
was diminishing. The Austrian troops, moreover, behaved toward Russia
as the Russian soldiers had behaved toward Austria in the last
campaign; that is, as a friendly exploring guard, and not as hostile
invaders. It is now easy to say that to lengthen the French line of
operation was a military blunder. It was certainly wrong. The reasons
are, however, not altogether strategic; they are chiefly moral, and
were not so clearly discernible then. In the face of national feeling,
before the march of national regeneration, a single man,
world-conqueror though he may have been during a period of national
disorganization, is an object of microscopic size. The French emperor
did not know the strength of Russian feeling, the great revolutionist
was ignorant of the Europe he had unconsciously regenerated. If he
blundered as a strategist in not confessing defeat at Smolensk, he
behaved like a tyro in statesmanship when he courted an overthrow at
Moscow.
Barclay was charged by the old Russians with being too German in
feeling, with manoeuvering timidly when he ought to fight,
and--sacrilege of sacrileges!--with leaving the sacred image of the
Virgin at Smolensk to fall into hostile hands. Yielding to the storm
of popular feeling, Alexander appointed in his stead Kutusoff, the
darling of the conservative Slavonic party; but Barclay was persuaded
to remain as adviser, and his policy was sustained. The Russians
withdrew before the French advance, until, on September third, their
van halted on the right bank of the Kalatscha, opposite Borodino, to
strike the decisive blow in defense of Moscow. On the fourth
Napoleon's van attacked and drove before it the Russian rear, which
was just closing in. He had a hundred and twenty-eight thousand men at
hand, and six thousand more within reach. That night he issued a
ringing address: recalling Austerlitz, he summoned the soldiers to
behave so that future generations would say of each, "He was in that
great battle under the walls of Moscow." Next morning a courier
arrived, bringing a portrait of the little King of Rome. The Emperor
hung it before his tent, and invited his officers to admire it. But at
night the sinister news of Marmont's defeat at Salamanca arrived.
Napoleon said nothing, but was heard in self-communing to deplore the
barbarity of war. All night he seemed restless, fearing lest the
Russians should elude him as they had in other crises; but, rising at
five, and discerning their lines, he called aloud: "They are ours at
last! March on; let us open the gates of Moscow."
The Russians, roused by religious fervor, and elevated by a fatalistic
premonition of success, had thrown up trenches and redoubts at
advantageous points on their chosen battle-fields. In their first
onset they advanced like devotees, with the cry, "God have mercy upon
us!" and, as each forward rank went down before the relentless
invaders, those behind pressed onward over the bodies of their
comrades. But it was all in vain; throughout the fourth and fifth of
September one outpost after another was taken, until at ten in the
evening of the latter day the whole Russian force was thrown back on
its main position, stretching from the bank of the Moskwa on the
north, behind the Kalatscha, as far as Utizy on the south, such
portions as were not naturally sheltered being protected by strong
redoubts. There were a hundred and twenty thousand in all, of which
about seventeen thousand were ununiformed peasantry. Opposite stood
the French, Poniatowski on the right, Davout, with the guard, in the
rear, then Eugene; behind Davout, to the left, Ney; and farther
behind, in the same line, Junot. The orders were for an opening
cannonade, Poniatowski to surround the Russian left, Eugene to cross
the Kalatscha by three bridges thrown over during the night, and
attack the Russian right, while Morand and Gerard, his auxiliaries,
should move on the center, and storm the defenses erected there.
The battle was conducted almost to the letter of these orders, but
such was Russian valor that, instead of being a brilliant manoeuver,
it developed into a bloody face-to-face conflict, determined by sheer
force. At six in the morning the artillery opened. Poniatowski
advanced, was checked, but, supported by Ney, stood firm until Junot
came in; they two then stood together, while Ney and Davout dashed at
the enemy's center. Eugene having acted in perfect concert,
Poniatowski then advanced alone, and his task was completed by nine.
But he was so weakened by his terrific exertions that he could only
hold what he had gained. At ten Ney and Davout, reinforced by Friant,
seized the central redoubts; but they, too, were exhausted, and could
only hold the Russian line, which bent inward and stood without
breaking. Eugene then massed his whole division, and charged. The
resistance was stubborn, and the fighting terrific, but by three his
opponents yielded, his artillery opened, and he held his gains. About
the same time Junot reached Poniatowski, and their combined efforts
finally overpowered the Russian left. So superhuman had been the
exertions of both armies that they rested on their arms in these
relative positions all night, the Russians too exhausted to flee, the
French too weary to pursue. But early on the seventh the flight of
Kutusoff began, and the French started in pursuit.
Between the generals of the Russian rear and those of Napoleon's van
an agreement was made that if the former were left to pass through
Moscow unmolested, the latter should gain the city without a blow. The
contracting parties kept their pact; but the governor of Moscow
rendered the agreement void. Great crowds of the inhabitants joined
the Russian columns as, six days later, they marched between the rows
of inflammable wooden houses of which the suburbs were composed; and,
while they tramped sullenly onward, thin pillars of ascending smoke
began to appear here and there on the outer lines. But when, two hours
after the last Russian soldier had disappeared, the cavalry of Murat
clattered through the streets, the fires attracted little attention,
nor at the moment was Napoleon's contentment diminished by them, as,
from the "mount of salutation," whence pious pilgrims were wont to
greet the holy city, he ordered his guard to advance and occupy the
Kremlin, that fortress which enshrines all that is holiest in Russian
faith. Kutusoff, boasting that he had held his ground overnight, had
persuaded the inhabitants of Moscow, and even the Czar, that he had
been the victor, and that he was withdrawing merely to await the
arrival of the victorious and veteran legions from the Danube, when he
would choose his field and annihilate the invaders.