blows without a murmur or the least opposition, but without
desisting--even the men of the royal and imperial guards; for,
throughout the whole army, such were the scenes that occurred every
night. The unfortunate fellows kept silently but actively at work on the
wooden walls, which they pulled in pieces on every side at once, and
which, after vain efforts, their officers were obliged to relinquish to
them, for fear they would fall upon their own heads. It was an
extraordinary mixture of perseverance in their design and of respect for
the anger of their superiors.
Having kindled good fires, they spent the night in drying themselves,
amid the shouts, imprecations, and groans of those who were still
crossing the torrent, or who, slipping from its banks, were precipitated
into it and drowned.
Sec. 16. The Grand Army reaches Smolensk.
At length the army once more came in sight of Smolensk: it had reached
the goal so often announced to it of all its sufferings. The soldiers
exultingly pointed it out to each other. There was that land of promise
where their hunger was to find abundance, their fatigue rest; where
bivouacs in a cold of nineteen degrees would be forgotten in houses
warmed by good fires. There they would enjoy refreshing sleep; there
they might repair their apparel; there they would be furnished with new
shoes, and clothing adapted to the climate.
At this sight, the corps of picked men, the veteran regiments, and a few
other soldiers alone kept their ranks; the rest ran forward with all
possible speed. Thousands of men, chiefly unarmed, covered the two steep
banks of the Borysthenes: they crowded in masses around the lofty walls
and gates of the city; but this disorderly multitude, with their haggard
faces begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms, and the
grotesque habiliments which they had substituted in place of them: in
short, with their strange, hideous looks, and their impetuous ardor,
excited alarm. It was believed, that if the irruption of this crowd,
maddened with hunger, were not repelled, that a general pillage would be
the consequence, and the gates were closed against it.
It was also hoped that by exercising this rigor these men would be
forced again to rally about their standards. A horrible struggle between
order and disorder now commenced in the remnant of this unfortunate
army. In vain did they entreat, weep, threaten, strive to burst open the
gates, and even drop down dead at the feet of their comrades placed to
repel them; they found the latter inexorable, and were forced to wait
the arrival of the first troops that were still officered and in order.
These were the Old and the Young Guard; and it was not till after them
that the disbanded men were allowed to enter: the latter, and the other
corps which arrived in succession, from the 8th to the 14th, believed
that their admission had been delayed merely to give more rest and more
provisions to this favored guard. Their sufferings rendered them unjust:
they execrated it. "Were they, then, to be forever sacrificed to this
privileged class; fellows kept for mere parade, who were never foremost
but at reviews, festivals, and distributions? Was the army to put up
with their leavings, always to wait till they had glutted themselves?"
It was useless to tell them in reply, that to attempt to save all was
the way to lose all; that it was necessary to keep at least one corps
entire, and to give the preference to that which in the last extremity
would be capable of making the most powerful effort.
At length these poor creatures were admitted into that Smolensk for
which they had so long ardently wished, while the banks of the
Borysthenes were strewed with their expiring companions, the weakest of
whom impatience and several hours' waiting had brought to that state.
Others, again, were left on the icy steep, which they had to climb to
reach the upper town. The rest ran to the magazines, where many fell
exhausted while they beset the doors; for here also they were repulsed.
"Who were they?" it was asked. "To what corps did they belong? What had
they to prove it? The persons appointed to distribute the provisions
were responsible for them: they had orders to deliver them only to
authorized officers bringing receipts, for which alone they could
exchange the rations committed to their care." These poor famished
creatures had no officers, nor could they tell where their regiments
were: two-thirds of the army were in this predicament.
These miserable men then dispersed themselves through the streets,
having no longer any hope but in pillage. But horses dissected to the
very bones everywhere denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the
houses had been all broken and torn away to feed the fires of the
bivouacs; they found no shelter in them, no winter quarters prepared, no
wood. The sick and wounded were left in the streets, in the carts which
had brought them. It was again, it was always the same fatal high road,
passing through a town which was but an empty name: it was a new bivouac
among deceitful ruins, colder even than the forests they had just
quitted.
Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colors: they rejoined
them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread that could
be baked had been distributed; and there was no biscuit, no butcher's
meat. Rye flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were dealt out to them. It
required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the detachments of the
different corps from murdering each other at the doors of the magazines;
and when, after long formalities, their wretched fare was at last
delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their regiments;
they fell upon their sacks, snatched out of them a few pounds of flour,
and ran to secrete themselves till they had devoured it. The same was
the case with the spirits; and the next day the houses were found full
of the bodies of these miserable creatures.
In short, that Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to, as the
term of their sufferings, marked, as it were, only their commencement.
Inexpressible hardships still awaited us: we had yet to march forty days
under that yoke of iron. Some, already borne down by present miseries,
sank under the frightful prospect of those which were before them.
Others sternly resolved to battle with their destiny; and, finding they
had nothing to rely on but themselves, they determined to live at all
hazards.
Thenceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the
weaker, by violence or stealth they plundered their companions of their
subsistence, of their garments, and of the gold with which they had
filled their knapsacks instead of provisions. These wretches, whom
despair had thus made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their
infamous booty, profiting by the general confusion, an obscure name, a
uniform no longer distinguishable, and night: in short, by every kind of
concealment favorable to cowardice and guilt. If works already published
had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have passed over in silence
such terrible details; for atrocities so extreme were, after all,
comparatively rare, and justice was dealt to the most criminal.
On the 9th of November the emperor arrived amid this scene of
desolation. He shut himself up in one of the houses in the new square,
and never quitted it till the 14th to resume his retreat. He had
calculated upon fifteen days' provisions and forage for an army of one
hundred thousand men; but there was not more than half this quantity of
flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all. Cries of rage were now
directed against the principal individual appointed to provide these
supplies; and the commissary saved his life only by prostrating himself
on his knees at the feet of Napoleon, and remaining in that posture for
a long time. But the reasons which he assigned for his failure did more
for him than his supplications.
Many of these reasons were well founded. A chain of other magazines had
been formed from Smolensk to Minsk and Wilna. These two towns were, in a
still greater degree than Smolensk, centres of provisioning, of which
the fortresses of the Vistula formed the first line. The total quantity
of provisions, indeed, distributed over this space was incalculable; the
efforts for transporting them thither had been gigantic; while the
result was little better than nothing. Scattered over such a vast
extent, immense as they were, they were found wholly insufficient.
Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had
been surpassed: the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above
time, climate, and distance, had, as it were, lost itself in space;
great as was its measure, it had gone beyond it.
Napoleon had been at Smolensk for five days. It was known that Ney had
received orders to arrive there as late as possible, and Eugene to halt
for two days at a point near Smolensk. Then it was not the necessity of
waiting for the army of Italy which detained him! To what, then, must we
attribute this delay, in the midst of famine, disease, and when the
winter and three hostile armies were gradually surrounding us?
The emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches for five days
from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the appearance of
a slow and glorious retreat. In the same spirit, no doubt, he had
ordered the destruction of the towers which surrounded Smolensk, from
the wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its
walls! as if there were any idea of our returning to a place which we
were not even sure that we should ever get out of.
The emperor, however, made an effort that was not altogether fruitless.
This was to rally under one commander all that remained of the cavalry;
when it was found that of this force, thirty-seven thousand strong at
the passage of the Niemen, there now remained only eight hundred men on
horseback. He gave the command of these to Latour-Maubourg; and, whether
from the esteem felt for him, or from the general indifference, no one
objected to it.
This army, which left Moscow one hundred thousand strong, in
five-and-twenty days had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men, while
the artillery had lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon; and yet
these feeble remains continued as before to be divided into eight
armies, which were encumbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers,
and a long train of cannon and baggage.
Whether it was the encumbrance of so many men and carriages, or a
mistaken sense of security, which led the emperor to order a day's
interval between the departure of each marshal, is uncertain; but most
probably it was the latter. Be that, however, as it may, he, Eugene,
Davoust, and Ney, quitted Smolensk in succession; and Ney was not to
leave it till the 16th or 17th. He had orders to make the artillery
dismount the cannon left behind, and bury them; to destroy the
ammunition, to drive all the stragglers before him, and to blow up the
towers which surrounded the city.
Kutusoff, meanwhile, was waiting for us at some leagues' distance,
prepared to cut in pieces, one after the other, those remnants of corps
thus extended and parcelled out.
Sec. 17. Napoleon leaves Smolensk; battle of Krasnoe.
It was on the 14th of November, about five in the morning, that the
imperial column at last quitted Smolensk. Its march was still firm, but
gloomy and silent as night, like the mute and sombre aspect of the
country through which it was advancing.
This stillness was only interrupted by the cracking of the whips applied
to the horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met with
ravines, and when down these icy declivities, men, horses, and artillery
were rolling in the darkness one over the other. The first day they
advanced five leagues, and the artillery of the guard took twenty-two
hours to get over that distance.
Kutusoff, at the same time, with the bulk of his army, moved forward,
and took a position in the rear of these advanced corps, within reach of
them all, felicitating himself on the success of his manoeuvres, which,
after all, would inevitably have failed, owing to his tardiness, had it
not been for our want of foresight; for this was a contest of errors, in
which, ours being the greatest, we narrowly escaped total destruction.
Having made these dispositions, the Russian commander must have believed
that the French army was entirely in his power; but this belief saved
us. Kutusoff was wanting to himself at the moment of action; his old age
executed only half, and that badly, the plans which it had wisely
combined.
During the time that all these masses were arranging themselves round
Napoleon, he remained perfectly tranquil in a miserable hut, the only
one left standing in Korythnia, apparently quite unconscious of all
these movements of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, which were
surrounding him in all directions; at least he sent no orders to the
three corps which had halted at Smolensk, to expedite their march, and
he himself waited for daylight to proceed.
His column was advancing without precaution, preceded by a crowd of
stragglers, all eager to reach Krasnoe, when, at two leagues from that
place, a line of Cossacks, extending from the heights on our left across
the great road, appeared before them. Seized with astonishment, these
stragglers instantly halted: they had looked for nothing of the kind,
and with their first impressions were led to believe that relentless
fate had traced upon the snow between them and Europe that long, black,
and motionless line as the fatal term assigned to their hopes.
Suddenly a Russian battery began firing. Their balls crossed the road.
The German corps became confused and made no attempt to meet this
attack. But a wounded officer who chanced to be there assumed the
command of the Germans, and the men obeyed him as if he had been their
rightful leader. On seeing this advanced column of Germans march forward
in such good order, the enemy confined himself to attacking it with his
artillery, which it disregarded and soon left behind. When it came to
the turn of the Old Guard to pass through this fire, they closed their
ranks around Napoleon like a movable fortress, proud of the honor of
protecting him. Their band of music expressed their satisfaction. When
the danger was greatest, it played the well-known air, "_Where can one
be happier than in the bosom of his family?_" But the emperor, whom
nothing escaped, stopped them with the exclamation, "Rather play, '_Let
us watch for the safety of the empire!_'" words much better suited to
the feelings which then occupied him, and to the general condition of
affairs.
At the same time, the enemy's fire becoming troublesome, he gave orders
to silence it, and in two hours he reached Krasnoe.
On the 17th, before daylight, Napoleon issued his orders, armed himself,
and going out on foot at the head of his Old Guard, began his march. But
it was not towards Poland, his ally, that he directed it, nor towards
France, where he would still be received as the head of a new dynasty,
and the Emperor of the West. His words on grasping his sword on this
occasion were, "I have sufficiently acted the emperor; it is time I
should become the general." He turned back upon eighty thousand of the
enemy, plunging into the thickest of them, in order to draw all their
efforts against himself, to make a diversion in favor of Davoust and
Ney, and to rescue them from a country, the gates of which were closed
against them.
Daylight at last appeared, exhibiting on the one part the Russian
battalions and batteries, which on three sides, in front, on our right,
and in our rear, bounded the horizon, and on the other Napoleon, with
his six thousand guards, advancing with a firm step, and proceeding to
take his place in the centre of that terrible circle. At the same time,
Mortier, a few yards in front of the emperor, deployed,[170] in the face
of the whole Russian army, with the five thousand men still remaining to
him.
Here, then, it was made evident that renown is something more than a
vain shadow, that it is real strength, and doubly powerful from the
inflexible pride which it imparts to its favorites, and the timid
precautions it imposes on those who venture to attack it. The enemy had
only to march forward without manoeuvring, or even firing; their mass
alone was sufficient to crush Napoleon with all his feeble battalions;
still they did not dare come to close quarters with him. They were awed
at the presence of the conqueror of Egypt and of Europe. The Pyramids,
Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, a host of victories seemed to rise
between him and the astounded Russians. Might we not also fancy that, in
the eyes of that passive and superstitious people, a renown so
extraordinary appeared like something supernatural? that they regarded
it as wholly beyond their power, or, at least, believed that they could
safely assail it only from a distance? and, in short, that against that
Old Guard, that living fortress, that column of granite, as it had been
called by its leader, human efforts were impotent, or that cannon alone
could demolish it?
But every moment strengthened the enemy and weakened Napoleon. The noise
of artillery, as well as Claparede, apprised him that in the rear of
Krasnoe and his army Beningsen was proceeding to take possession of the
road to Liady, and entirely cut off his retreat. The east, the west, and
the south were flashing with the enemy's fires; one side alone remained
open, that of the north and the Dnieper, towards an eminence, at the
foot of which were the high road and the emperor. We fancied we saw the
enemy already covering this eminence with his cannon. In that situation
they would have been just over Napoleon's head, and might have crushed
him at a few yards' distance. He was apprised of his danger, cast his
eyes for an instant towards the height, and uttered merely these words,
"Very well, let one of my battalions take possession of it." Immediately
afterward, without giving farther heed to it, his whole attention was
directed to the perilous situation of Mortier.
Fortunately, some troops which Davoust had rallied and the appearance of
another troop of his stragglers, attracted the enemy's attention.
Mortier availed himself of it. He gave orders to the three thousand men
he had still remaining to retreat slowly in the face of their fifty
thousand enemies. "Do you hear, soldiers?" cried General Laborde, "the
marshal orders ordinary time! Ordinary time, soldiers!" And this brave
and unfortunate troop, dragging with them some of their wounded, under a
shower of balls and grape-shot, retired as deliberately from this field
of carnage as they would have done from a field of manoeuvre.
Sec. 18. Napoleon reaches Dombrowna and Orcha; he holds a council.
As soon as Mortier had succeeded in placing Krasnoe between him and
Beningsen, he was in safety.
The next day the march was resumed, though with reluctance. The
impatient stragglers took the lead, and all of them got the start of
Napoleon: he was on foot with a stick in his hand, walking slowly and
hesitatingly, and halting every quarter of an hour, as if unwilling to
tear himself away from that old Russia, whose frontier he was then
passing, and in which he had left his unfortunate companions in arms.
In the evening he reached Dombrowna,[171] a wooden town, and inhabited
as well as Liady: a novel sight for an army, which had for three months
seen nothing but ruins. At last, then, we had emerged from Russia
proper, and her deserts of snow and ashes, and were entering into a
friendly and inhabited country, whose language we understood. The
weather just then became milder, a thaw began, and we received some
provisions.
Thus the winter, the enemy, solitude, and, with some, famine and
bivouacs, all ceased at once; but it was too late. The emperor saw that
his army was destroyed: every moment the name of Ney escaped from his
lips, with expressions of the deepest grief. That night he was heard
groaning and exclaiming "that the misery of his poor soldiers cut him to
the heart, and yet that he could not succor them without establishing
himself in some place: but where was it possible for him to stop without
ammunition, provisions, or artillery? He was no longer strong enough to
halt: he must reach Minsk as quickly as possible."
He had scarcely spoken the words, when a Polish officer arrived with the
news that Minsk itself, his magazine, his retreat, his only hope, had
just fallen into the hands of the Russians, Tchitchakoff having entered
it on the 16th. Napoleon at first was mute, and completely overpowered
by this last blow; but immediately afterward, elevating himself in
proportion to his danger, he coolly replied, "Very well! we have now
nothing to do but to clear ourselves a passage with our bayonets."
Napoleon then turned to his Old Guard, and, stopping in front of each
battalion, "Grenadiers!"[172] said he, to them, "we are retreating
without being conquered by the enemy; let us not be vanquished by
ourselves! Set an example to the army. Several of you have already
deserted your colors, and even thrown away your arms. I have no wish to
have recourse to military laws to put a stop to this disorder, but
appeal entirely to your sense of duty. Do justice to yourselves. To your
own honor I commit the maintenance of your discipline!"
The other troops he addressed in a similar style. These few words were
quite sufficient to the old grenadiers, who probably had no occasion for
them. The others received them with acclamations; but an hour afterward,
when the march was resumed, they were entirely forgotten. As to his rear
guard, throwing the blame of this wild alarm mostly upon it, he sent an
angry message to Davoust on the subject.
At Orcha we found rather an abundant supply of provisions, a bridge
equipage of sixty boats, with all its appurtenances, which we burned,
and thirty-six pieces of cannon, with their horses, which were
distributed between Davoust, Eugene, and Latour-Maubourg.
Napoleon entered Orcha with six thousand guards, the remains of
thirty-five thousand! Eugene, with eighteen hundred soldiers, the
remains of forty-two thousand! and Davoust, with four thousand, the
remains of seventy thousand!
This marshal had lost everything, was actually without linen, and
emaciated with hunger. He seized upon a loaf, which was offered him by
one of his comrades, and voraciously devoured it. A handkerchief was
given him to wipe his face, which was white with frost. He exclaimed
"that none but men with constitutions of iron could support such trials;
that it was physically impossible to resist them; that there were limits
to human strength, the utmost of which had been exceeded."
The emperor made fruitless efforts to check this general despondency.
When alone, he was heard compassionating the sufferings of his soldiers;
but in their presence, even upon that point, he wished to appear
inflexible. He issued a proclamation, "ordering all who had deserted
their ranks to return to them: if they did not, he would strip the
officers of their commissions, and the soldiers should be shot."
A threat like this produced no impression whatever upon men who had
become insensible, or were reduced to despair, fleeing not from danger,
but from suffering, and caring as little for the death with which they
were menaced as for the life that was offered them.
But Napoleon's confidence increased with his perils: in his eyes, this
handful of men, in these deserts of snow and ice, was still the Grand
Army! and himself the conqueror of Europe! nor was there any affectation
in this firmness: we were certain of it, when in this very town, we saw
him burn, with his own hands, everything belonging to him that might
serve as a trophy to the enemy, in the event of his fall.