_Napoleon detaches Murat and other Generals in pursuit of the
Russians--Bloody, but indecisive Action, at Valoutina--Barclay de
Tolly's defensive system relinquished, and Koutousoff appointed to
the chief command of the Russian Army--Napoleon advances from
Smolensk--Battle of Borodino fought, on 5th September--Prince
Bagration slain--Koutousoff retreats upon Mojaisk, and thence upon
Moscow--Napoleon continues his advance on the 12th--Count
Rostopchin, Governor of Moscow--His Character--The Russians abandon
Moscow, which is evacuated by the Inhabitants--The Grand Russian
Army marches through Moscow--Last public Court of Justice held there
by Rostopchin, after which he follows the march of the Army._
Without communicating his purpose of advancing in person from Smolensk,
and completing, without any interval of delay, his great undertaking,
Napoleon failed not to detach Murat, Ney, Junot, and Davoust, in pursuit
of the Russians, as they retired from Smolensk. Either, however, his own
mind was not made up, or he did not wish his purpose of going onward to
be known. He represented this demonstration as arising merely out of the
desire of pressing the Russian retreat, though in fact it was
preliminary to his own advance.
Barclay de Tolly having performed the stern duty of burning Smolensk,
had retired for two or three miles along the road to St. Petersburgh,
which route he chose in order to avoid a cannonade from the left side of
the Dnieper. Having proceeded a little way in this direction, he turned
southward to regain the road to Moscow, which he would have taken at
first, but for its exposing him to loss from the enemy's artillery,
where it bordered on the river. The French could not for some time
determine on which route they were to pursue the Russians. At length,
finding the track, they overtook the rear-guard at a place called
Valoutina, encumbered as it was with guns and baggage. Here a desperate
action took place, the Russians reinforcing their rear-guard as fast as
the French brought new bodies to attack them. Both parties fought most
obstinately, and the distinguished French general Gudin was mortally
wounded. The French blamed Junot,[142] who having been despatched across
the Dnieper, showed no alertness in advancing to charge the enemy. There
was seen, indeed, in this affair of Valoutina, or Lombino, that the
marshals and the great officers who had been accustomed each to command
a separate corps d'armée, disdained to receive either orders, or even
advice or hints, from a brother of the same rank. Wherever there were
two or three of these dignitaries on the field, it was necessary
Buonaparte should be within reach, to issue the necessary orders; for
no voice save that of the Emperor was implicitly obeyed by all.[143]
[Sidenote: ACTION AT VALOUTINA.]
In the meantime, the bloody action of Valoutina had an unsatisfactory
result. The Russians, whose rear-guard had been attacked, had moved off
without losing either guns, prisoners, or baggage. They had lost equal
numbers with the French, but the time was fast approaching when they
must possess a numerical superiority, and when, of course, an equal loss
would tell in favour of the party which was nearest to its
resources.[144]
The plan of Barclay de Tolly had hitherto been scrupulously adhered to.
All general actions had been cautiously avoided; and while no means were
left unemployed to weaken the enemy in partial actions, and to draw him
on from swamp to swamp, from conflagration to conflagration, from one
wild and waste scene to another of equal sterility and disconsolation,
the end had been in a great measure attained, of undermining the force
and breaking the moral courage of the invading army, who wandered
forward like men in a dream, feeling on all hands a sense of oppressive
and stifling opposition, yet unable to encounter any thing substantial
which the slumberer can struggle with and overcome. Barclay de Tolly, if
he had made some faults by extending his line too much at the
commencement of the campaign, and afterwards by his false movements upon
Rudneia, had more than atoned for these errors by the dexterity with
which he had manœuvred before Smolensk, and the advantages which he
had gained over the enemy on various other occasions. But they were now
approaching Moscow the Grand, the Sanctified--and the military councils
of Russia were about to change their character.
The spirit of the Russians, especially of the new levies, was more and
more exasperated at the retreat, which seemed to have no end; and at the
style of defence, which seemed only to consist in inflicting on the
country, by the hands of Cossacks or Tartars, the very desolation which
was perhaps the worst evil they could experience from the French. The
natural zeal of the new levies, their confidence and their desire to be
led to fight in the cause for which they were enlisted, eagerly declared
against further retreat; and they demanded a halt, and a battle under a
Russian general, more interested, as they supposed such must be, in the
defence of the country, than a German stranger. The Emperor almost alone
continued to adhere to the opinion of Barclay de Tolly. But he could
not bid defiance to the united voice of his people and his military
council. The political causes which demanded a great battle in defence
of Moscow, were strong and numerous, and overcame the military reasons
which certainly recommended that a risk so tremendous should not be
incurred.
In compliance, therefore, with the necessity of the case, the Emperor
sacrificed his own opinion. General Koutousoff, an officer high in
military esteem among the Russians, was sent for from the corps which
had been employed on the Danube against the Turks, to take the chief
command of the grand army; and it was to Barclay's great honour, that,
thus superseded, he continued to serve with the utmost zeal and good
faith in a subordinate situation.
The French were not long of learning that their enemy's system of war
was to be changed, and that the new Russian general was to give them
battle, the object which they had so long panted for. Buonaparte, who
had halted six days at Smolensk, moved from thence on the 24th August,
and now pressed forward to join the advanced guard of his army at Gjatz.
In this place his followers found a Frenchman who had dwelt long in
Russia. They learned from this man the promotion of Koutousoff to the
chief command of the army opposed to them, and that he was placed there
for the express purpose of giving battle to the French army. The news
were confirmed by the manner of a Russian officer, who arrived under
some pretext with a flag of truce, but probably to espy the state of the
invader's army. There was defiance in the look of this man; and when he
was asked by a French general what they would find between Wiazma and
Moscow, he answered sternly, "Pultowa." There was, therefore, no doubt,
that battle was approaching.[145]
But the confusion of Buonaparte's troops was still such, that he was
obliged to halt two days at Gjatz,[146] in order to collect and repose
his army. He arrived at the destined field of battle, an elevated plain,
called Borodino, which the Russians had secured with lines and
batteries.
[Sidenote: BATTLE OF BORODINO.]
The French army were opposed to them on the 5th September, having
consumed seventeen days in marching 280 wersts. Their first operation
was a successful attack upon a redoubt in the Russian front, but
which--a great error in war--was situated too distant from it to be
effectually supported. The French gained it and kept it. The armies lay
in presence of each other all the next day, preparing for the
approaching contest. Upon a position naturally strong, the Russians had
raised very formidable fieldworks. Their right flank rested on a wood,
which was covered by some detached intrenchments. A brook, occupying in
its course a deep ravine, covered the front of the right wing and the
centre of the position as far as the river of Borodino; from that
village the left extended down to another village, called Semoneskoie,
which is more open, yet protected by ravines and thickets in front.
This, as the most accessible point, was anxiously secured by redoubts
and batteries; and in the centre of the position, upon a gentle
elevation, arose a sort of double battery, like a citadel, for the
protection of the whole line.
In this strong position was stationed the Russian army, equal now in
numbers to the French, as each army might be about 120,000 men. They
were commanded by a veteran, slow, cautious, tenacious of his purpose,
wily, too, as Napoleon afterwards found to his cost, but perhaps not
otherwise eminent as a military leader. The army he led were of one
nation and language, all conscious that this battle had been granted to
their own ardent wishes, and determined to make good the eagerness with
which they had called for it.
The French army, again, consisted of various nations; but they were the
_élite_, and seasoned soldiers who had survived the distresses of a most
calamitous march; they were the veterans of the victors of Europe; they
were headed by Napoleon in person, and under his immediate command by
those marshals, whose names in arms were only inferior to his own.
Besides a consciousness of their superiority in action, of which, from
the manner in which they had covered themselves in intrenchments, the
enemy seemed aware, the French had before them the prospect of utter
destruction, if they should sustain a defeat in a country so difficult
that they could hardly advance even as a successful army, and certainly
could never hope to retreat as a routed one. Buonaparte's address to his
troops[147] had less of the tinsel of oratory than he generally used on
such occasions. "Soldiers," he said, "here is the battle you have longed
for; it is necessary, for it brings us plenty, good winter-quarters, and
a safe return to France. Behave yourselves so that posterity may say of
each of you, 'He was in that great battle under the walls of
Moscow.'"[148]
In the Russian camp was a scene of a different kind, calculated to
awaken feelings to which France had long ceased to appeal. The Greek
clergy showed themselves to the troops, arrayed in their rich vestments,
and displaying for general worship the images of their holiest saints.
They told their countrymen of the wrongs which had been offered by the
invaders to earth as well as Heaven, and exhorted them to merit a place
in paradise by their behaviour in that day's battle. The Russians
answered with shouts.
Two deeply interesting circumstances occurred to Napoleon the day before
the battle. An officer brought him a portrait of his boy, the King of
Rome, which he displayed on the outside of the tent, not only to satisfy
the officers, but the soldiers, who crowded to look upon the son of
their Emperor. The other was the arrival of an officer from Spain with
despatches, giving Napoleon news of the loss of the battle of Salamanca.
He bore the evil tidings with temper and firmness, and soon turned his
thoughts alike from domestic enjoyments and foreign defeats, to forming
the necessary plans for the action before him.[149]
Davoust proposed a plan for turning the left of the enemy's intrenched
line, by following the old road from Smolensk to Moscow, and placing
35,000 men in the flank and rear of that part of the Russian position.
This operation was partly to be accomplished by a night march, partly on
the morning, while the rest of the army was engaging the enemy's
attention in front. The ground to which this road would have conducted
Davoust and his troops, forms the highest land in the neighbourhood, as
appears from the rivulets taking their source there. Upon this
commanding position the attacking corps might have been formed in the
rear of the Russian line. Such a movement on that point must have cut
off the Russians from their point of retreat on Mojaisk and Moscow, and
Davoust might have come down their line, driving every thing before him,
advancing from redoubt to redoubt, and dispersing reserve after reserve,
till the Russians should no longer have the semblance of an army.
Perhaps Napoleon considered this plan as too hazardous, as it implied a
great weakening of his front line, which, in that case, might have been
attacked and broken before the corps d'armée under Davoust had attained
the desired position.[150]
The Emperor therefore determined that Poniatowski, with not more than
5000 men, should make a demonstration, that should commence upon their
left, in the direction proposed by Davoust, and that then a general
attack should commence on the Russian right and centre. Foreseeing an
obstinate resistance, he had ordered as much artillery as possible to be
brought into line, and the guns on each side are said to have amounted
to a thousand.[151] The battle began about seven o'clock, by Ney's
attacking the bastioned redoubt on the Russian centre, with the greatest
violence, while Prince Eugene made equal efforts to dislodge the enemy
from the village of Semoneskoie, and the adjoining fortifications. No
action was ever more keenly debated, nor at such a wasteful expenditure
of human life. The fury of the French onset at length carried the
redoubts, but the Russians rallied under the very line of their enemy's
fire, and advanced again to the combat, to recover their intrenchments.
Regiments of peasants, who till that day had never seen war, and who
still had no other uniform than their grey jackets, formed with the
steadiness of veterans, crossed their brows, and having uttered their
national exclamation--"_Gospodee pomiloui nas!_--God have mercy upon
us!"--rushed into the thickest of the battle, where the survivors,
without feeling fear or astonishment, closed their ranks over their
comrades as they fell, while, supported at once by enthusiasm for their
cause, and by a religious sense of predestination, life and death seemed
alike indifferent to them.
The fate of the day seemed more than once so critical, that Napoleon was
strongly urged on more than one occasion to bring up the Young Guard,
whom he had in reserve, as the last means of deciding the contest. He
was censured by some of those around him for not having done so; and it
has been imputed to illness, as he had passed a bad night, and seemed
unusually languid during the whole of the day. But the secret of his
refusal seems to be contained in his reply to Berthier, when he urged
him on the subject--"And if there is another battle to-morrow, where is
my army?"[152] The fact is, that this body of 10,000 household troops
were his last reserve. They had been spared as far as possible in the
march, and had, of course, retained their discipline in a proportional
degree; and had they sustained any considerable loss, which, from the
obstinate resistance and repeated efforts of the Russians, was to be
apprehended, Buonaparte, whom even victory must leave in a perilous
condition, would in that case have lost the only corps upon whom, in the
general disorganisation of his army, he could thoroughly depend. The
compromising the last reserve is an expedient reluctantly resorted to by
prudent generals; and perhaps, if Napoleon had been as circumspect on
that subject at Waterloo as at Borodino, his retreat from that bloody
field might have been less calamitous than it proved.
The Russians, whose desperate efforts to recover their line of redoubts
had exposed them to so much loss, were at length commanded to retreat;
and although the victory was certainly with the French, yet their
enemies might be said rather to desist from fighting, than to have
suffered a defeat. Indeed, it was the French who, after the battle, drew
off to their original ground, and left the Russians in possession of the
bloody field of battle, where they buried their dead, and carried off
their wounded, at their leisure. Their cavalry even alarmed the French
camp on the very night of their victory.
Both parties sustained a dreadful loss in this sanguinary battle. Among
that of the Russians, the death of the gallant Prince Bagration, whose
admirable retreat from Poland we have had occasion to commemorate, was
generally lamented. General Touczkoff also died of his wounds; and many
other Russian generals were wounded. Their loss amounted to the awful
sum total of 15,000 men killed, and more than 30,000 wounded. The French
were supposed to have at least 10,000 men killed, and double the number
wounded. Of these last few recovered, for the great convent of
Kolotskoi, which served them as an hospital, was very ill-provided with
any thing for their relief; and the medical attendants could not procure
a party to scour the neighbouring villages, to obtain lint and other
necessaries--for it seems even the necessaries of an hospital could, in
this ill-fated army, only be collected by marauding. Eight French
generals were slain, of whom Monbrun and Caulaincourt, brother of the
grand equerry, were men of distinguished reputation. About thirty other
generals were wounded. Neither party could make any boast of military
trophies, for the Russians made a thousand prisoners, and the French
scarce twice the number; and Koutousoff carried away ten pieces of
cannon belonging to the French, leaving in their hands thirteen guns of
his own. So slight, except in the numbers of slain, had been the
consequences of the battle, that it might have seemed to have been
fought, as in the games of chivalry, merely to ascertain which party had
the superior strength and courage.[153]
[Sidenote: MOJAISK.]
According to the Russian accounts, Koutousoff entertained thoughts of
giving battle again the next day; but the reports from various corps
having made him acquainted with the very large loss they had sustained,
he deemed the army too much exhausted to incur such a risk. He
retreated the next day upon Mojaisk, without leaving behind him a single
fragment to indicate that he had the day before sustained such an
immense loss. Upon the 9th September, the French arrived at Mojaisk, and
came again in sight of the Russian rear-guard, and made dispositions to
attack them. But on the 11th, they found that the Russian army had again
disappeared, by a retreat so well conducted, and so effectually masked
and concealed, as to leave Napoleon altogether uncertain whether they
had taken the road to Moscow, or to Kalouga. Owing to this uncertainty,
Napoleon was obliged to remain at Mojaisk till the 12th, when he
received positive intelligence that the Russian army had retreated upon
their capital.
It is impossible to avoid observing, how often the Russian army, though
large, and consisting of new levies, had, in the course of this
campaign, escaped from the front of the French, and left Napoleon at a
loss to conjecture whither they had gone. Besides the present occasion,
the same circumstance took place at Witepsk, and again before the walls
of Moscow. No doubt the Russians were in their own country, and
possessed clouds of Cossacks, by means of whom they might cover the
retreat of their main body; yet with all these advantages, we are led to
admire the natural spirit of obedience, and instinct of discipline, by
which they were brought to execute that movement with such steadiness,
that not a single straggler remained to betray their secret.
On the 12th September, Buonaparte resumed his march, the army having no
better guide than the direction of the high road, and the men no better
food than horse flesh and bruised wheat. Upon the previous day, Murat
and Mortier, who led the vanguard, found the Russians strongly posted
near Krymskoie, where the inconsiderate valour of the King of Naples
brought on an action, in which the French lost two thousand men. Still
Buonaparte pursued the traces of the Russians, because he could not
suppose it possible that they would resign their capital without a
second struggle. He was the more anxious to meet it, as two divisions of
the Italian army, under Laborde and Pino, had joined him from Smolensk,
which again carried his numbers, sore thinned after the battle of
Borodino, to upwards of one hundred thousand men.
A council of war, of the Russian generals, had been called to deliberate
on the awful question, whether they should expose the only army which
they had in the centre of Russia, to the consequences of a too probable
defeat, or whether they should abandon without a struggle, and as a prey
to the spoiler, the holy Moscow--the Jerusalem of Russia--the city
beloved of God and dear to man, with the name and existence of which so
many historical, patriotic, national, and individual feelings were now
involved. Reason spoke one language, pride and affection held another.
To hazard a second battle, was in a great measure to place the fate of
their grand army upon the issue; and this was too perilous an adventure,
even for the protection of the capital. The consideration seems to have
prevailed, that Napoleon being now in the centre of Russia, with an army
daily diminishing, and the hard season coming on, every hour during
which a decisive action could be delayed was a loss to France, and an
advantage to Russia. This was the rather the case, that Witgenstein, on
the northern frontier, being reinforced by Steingel with the army of
Finland; and, on the south, that of Moldavia being united to
Tormasoff--Lithuania, and Poland, which formed the base of Napoleon's
operations, were in hazard of being occupied by the Russians from both
flanks, an event which must endanger his supplies, magazines, reserves,
and communications of every kind, and put in peril at once his person
and his army. Besides, the Russian generals reflected, that by
evacuating Moscow, a measure which the inhabitants could more easily
accomplish than those of any other city in the civilized world, they
would diminish the prize to the victor, and leave him nothing to triumph
over save the senseless buildings. It was therefore determined, that the
preservation of the army was more essential to Russia than the defence
of Moscow, and it was agreed that the ancient capital of the Czars
should be abandoned to its fate.
Count Rostopchin, the governor of Moscow, was a man of worth and talent,
of wit also, as we have been informed, joined to a certain eccentricity.
He had, since the commencement of the war, kept up the spirits of the
citizens with favourable reports and loyal declarations, qualified to
infuse security into the public mind. After the fate of Smolensk,
however, and especially after the recommencement of Buonaparte's march
eastward, many of the wealthy inhabitants of Moscow removed or concealed
their most valuable effects, and left the city themselves. Rostopchin
continued, however, his assurances, and took various means to convince
the people that there was no danger. Among other contrivances, he
engaged a great number of females in the task of constructing a very
large balloon, from which he was to shower down fire, as the people
believed, upon the French army. Under this pretext, he is stated to have
collected a large quantity of fire-work and combustibles, actually
destined for a very different purpose.
[Sidenote: THE RUSSIANS ABANDON MOSCOW.]
As time passed on, however, the inhabitants became more and more
alarmed, and forming a dreadful idea of the French, and of the horrors
which would attend their entrance into the city, not only the nobility,
gentry, and those of the learned professions, but tradesmen, mechanics,
and the lower orders in general, left Moscow by thousands, while the
governor, though keeping up the language of defiance, did all he could
to superintend and encourage the emigration. The archives and the public
treasures were removed; the magazines, particularly those of provisions,
were emptied, as far as time permitted; and the roads, especially to
the south, were crowded with files of carriages, and long columns of
men, women, and children on foot, singing the hymns of their church, and
often turning their eyes back to the magnificent city, which was so soon
destined to be a pile of ruins.
The grand army of Moscow arrived in the position of Fili, near the
capital; not, it was now acknowledged, to defend the sacred city, but to
traverse its devoted streets, associating with their march the garrison,
and such of the citizens as were fit to bear arms, and so leave the
capital to its fate. On the 14th of September, the troops marched with
downcast looks, furled banners, and silent drums, through the streets of
the metropolis, and went out at the Kolomna gate. Their long columns of
retreat were followed by the greater part of the remaining population.
Meanwhile Rostopchin, ere departing, held a public court of justice. Two
men were brought before him, one a Russian, an enthusiast, who had
learned in Germany, and been foolish enough to express at Moscow, some
of the old French republican doctrines. The other was a Frenchman, whom
the near approach of his countrymen had emboldened to hold some
indiscreet political language. The father of the Russian delinquent was
present. He was expected to interfere. He did so; but it was to demand
his son's death. "I grant you," said the governor, "some moments to take
leave and to bless him."--"Shall I bless a rebel?" said this Scythian
Brutus. "Be my curse upon him that has betrayed his country!" The
criminal was hewed down on the spot. "Stranger," said Rostopchin to the
Frenchman, "thou hast been imprudent; yet it is but natural thou
shouldst desire the coming of thy countrymen. Be free, then, and go to
meet them. Tell them there was one traitor in Russia, and thou hast seen
him punished."
The governor then caused the jails to be opened, and the criminals to be
set at liberty; and, abandoning the desolate city to these banditti, and
a few of the lowest rabble, he mounted his horse, and putting himself at
the head of his retainers, followed the march of the army.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] "Napoleon, on the following day, visited the places where the
action had been fought, and gazing with an angry look on the position
which Junot had occupied, he exclaimed, 'It was there that the
Westphalians should have attacked! all the battle was there! what was
Junot about?' His irritation became so violent, that nothing could at
first allay it. He called Rapp, and told him to 'take the command from
the Duke of Abrantes:--he had lost his marshal's staff without retrieve!
this blunder would probably block the road to Moscow against them; that
to him, Rapp, he should intrust the Westphalians.' But Rapp refused the
place of his old companion in arms; he appeased the Emperor, whose anger
always subsided quickly, as soon as it had vented itself in
words."--SÉGUR, tom. i., p. 259; RAPP, p. 191.
[143] Jomini, tom. iv., p. 99; Ségur, tom. i., p. 255; Rapp, p. 192;
Fourteenth Bulletin of the Grand Army.
[144] "When Napoleon learned that his men had proceeded eight leagues
without overtaking the enemy, the spell was dissolved. In his return to
Smolensk, the jolting of his carriage over the relics of the fight, the
stoppages caused on the road by the long file of the wounded, who were
crawling or being carried back, and in Smolensk by the tumbrils of
amputated limbs going to be thrown away at a distance, in a word, all
that is horrible and odious out of fields of battle, completely disarmed
him. Smolensk was but one vast hospital, and the loud groans which
issued from it drowned the shout of glory which had just been raised on
the fields of Valoutina."--SÉGUR, tom. i., p. 264.
[145] Ségur, tom. i., p. 304.
[146] "Napoleon quietly employed himself in exploring the environs of
his headquarters. At the sight of the Gjatz, which pours its waters into
the Wolga, he who had conquered so many rivers, felt anew the first
emotions of his glory; he was heard to boast of being the master of
those waves destined to visit Asia--as if they were going to announce
his approach, and to open for him the way to that quarter of the
globe."--SÉGUR, tom. i., p. 308.
[147] Eighteenth Bulletin of the Grand Army.
[148] "I slept in Napoleon's tent. At three in the morning he called a
valet-de-chambre, and made him bring some punch; I had the honour of
taking some with him. He said, 'we shall have an affair to-day with this
famous Koutousoff. It was he who commanded at Braunau in the campaign of
Austerlitz. He remained three weeks in that place without leaving his
chamber once.' He took a glass of punch, read the reports, and added,
'Well, Rapp, do you think that we shall manage our concerns properly
to-day?'--'There is not the least doubt of it, Sire; we have exhausted
all our resources, we are obliged to conquer.' Napoleon continued his
discourse, and replied, 'Fortune is a liberal mistress; I have often
said so, and begin to experience it.' He sent for Prince Berthier, and
transacted business till half-past five. We mounted on horseback; the
trumpets sounded, the drums were beaten; and as soon as the troops knew
it, there was nothing but acclamations. 'It is the enthusiasm of
Austerlitz,' cried Napoleon, 'let the proclamation be read.'"--RAPP, p.
202.
[149] Ségur, tom. i., p. 328.
[150] "Davoust, from conviction, persisted in his point; he protested
that in another hour the greatest part of its effects would be produced.
Napoleon, impatient of contradiction, sharply replied, with this
exclamation, 'Ah! you are always for turning the enemy; it is too
dangerous a manœuvre!' The marshal, after this rebuff, said no more,
but returned to his post, murmuring against a prudence to which he was
not accustomed."--SÉGUR, tom. i., p. 321.
[151] "On General Caulaincourt's return from the conquered redoubt, as
no prisoners had fallen into our hands, Napoleon, surprised, kept asking
him repeatedly, 'Had not his cavalry then charged à propos? Were the
Russians determined to conquer or die?' The answer was, that 'being
fanaticised by their leaders, and accustomed to fight with the Turks,
who gave no quarter, they would be killed sooner than surrender!' The
Emperor then fell into a deep meditation; and judging that a battle of
artillery would be the most certain, he multiplied his orders to bring
up with speed all the parks which had not yet joined him."--SÉGUR, tom.
i., p. 314.
[152] "The Emperor said also to Bessières, 'that nothing was yet
sufficiently unravelled: that to make him give his reserves, he wanted
to see more clearly upon his chess-board.' This was his expression,
which he repeated several times, at the same time pointing to the great
redoubt, against which the efforts of Prince Eugene had been
ineffectual."--SÉGUR, tom. i., p. 342.
[153] "The day ended; 50,000 men lay on the field of battle. A multitude
of generals were killed and wounded: we had forty disabled. We made some
prisoners; took some pieces of cannon. This result did not compensate
for the losses which it had cost us."--RAPP, p. 208.