Napoleon's troops were wending their way through northern
Germany. Already the army of Italy, having crossed the mountains
of the Tyrol, was heading for Warsaw. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Corps
commanded by Davout, Oudinot and Ney, were passing through
Prussia on their march to the Vistula. The states comprising the
confederation of the Rhine had supplied their contingents, as had
Austria and Prussia; it was noticeable, however that although the
Austrian generals were happy to unite their flags with ours, the
junior officers and the soldiers were reluctant to attack Russia,
while the situation was reversed in the Prussian army, where the
generals and Colonels felt humiliated by being compelled to serve
under the command of their conqueror, while officers of lower
rank and the soldiers, were pleased to have the opportunity of
fighting alongside the French, and hoped to show that if they
were defeated at Jena, it was not through any lack of courage on
their part, but due to poor leadership by their superiors.
Napoleon had not only taken into the "Grande Armee" the troops of
Austria and Prussia, but he had lowered the morale of the French
forces by intermingling them with foreign contingents, so that
the various Corps commanded by his marshals contained bodies of
men from every part of Europe, Italians, Poles, Spaniards,
Portuguese, Germans and Croatians. This admixture of races with
different languages, cultures and interests, worked very poorly,
and often hindered the efforts of the French troops. It was one
of the principal causes of the reversals which we suffered.
Chap. 5.
Having left Dresden on the 29th of May, the Emperor made his way
towards Poland via Danzig and the old Prussia, through which his
troops were passing, whom he reviewed whenever he encountered
them.
The army was now organised so that the 23rd mounted Chasseurs
were brigaded with the 24th. This brigade was commanded by
General Castex and formed part of the 2nd Army Corps, commanded
by Marshal Oudinet. I had known General Castex for a long time,
an excellent officer, who treated me very well throughout the
campaign. Marshal Oudinet had seen me at the siege of Genoa when
I was with my father and also in Austria when I was aide-de-camp
to Marshal Lannes, and was well disposed towards me.
On the 20th June, 2nd Corps was given the order to stop at
Insterberg in order to be reviewed by the Emperor. These military
ceremonies were awaited with impatience by those people who hoped
to benefit from the awards distributed on the occasion by
Napoleon. I was among this number. I felt sure that I would be
promoted to the command of the regiment of which I was the acting
commander, for apart from the promises given me by the Emperor,
General Castex and Marshal Oudinet had told me that they intended
to propose me officially, and that Colonel Nougarede was to be
placed, as general, in command of one of the huge remount depots,
which would have to be set up in the rear of the army; but the
bad luck which had, a few months earlier delayed my promotion to
major, also held up my promotion to colonel.
At these reviews, the commanders of regiments were subjected to a
rigourous cross-examination by the Emperor, particularly on the
eve of a campaign; for apart from the usual questions about their
strength in men and horses, their arms etc., he would suddenly
ask a number which were unforeseen and not always easy to answer.
For example: "How many men from such and such a department have
you received in the last two years? How many of your carbines
come from Tulle and how many from Charleville? How many of your
horses are from Normandy, from Brittany, from Germany? What is
the average age of your men, your officers, your horses? How many
men in this company have long-service chevrons? etc...etc."
These questions, which were always posed in an abrupt and
demanding manner, and accompanied by a piercing look,
disconcerted many colonels; but woe to him who hesitated to
reply, he went into Napoleon's bad books. I was so well briefed
that I was able to reply to all his questions, and, after
complementing me on the fine turnout of the regiment, it looked
as if the Emperor was going to promote me to colonel and M. de La
Nougarede to general, when the latter, who with his limbs wrapped
in flannel, had been hoisted onto horseback to follow from afar
the movements of his regiment, which I commanded, hearing himself
called for, came to Napoleon and unwisely angered him by making a
request on behalf of an officer, a member of his family who was
wholly undeserving. This roused a storm of which I suffered the
consequences. The Emperor flew into a rage and ordered the
Gendarmerie to clear the officer in question out of the army, and
leaving M. de La Nougarede in dismay, he went off at the gallop.
So M. de La Nougarede was not made a general.
Marshal Oudinot followed the Emperor to find out what was to
happen to the 23rd, and was told "Major Marbot will continue to
command them." Before reaching the rank of colonel I was destined
to suffer yet another serious wound.
In fairness to M. de La Nougarede, I have to say that he
expressed the liveliest remorse at having been the involuntary
cause of the delay in my advancement. I was sorry for the
difficult position in which this worthy man found himself, for he
felt that he had forfeited the Emperor's confidence, and owing to
his disability he had little hope of restoring himself by his
conduct in the battles which were about to take place.
I was comforted by the fact that the Emperor, on the day of the
review, had awarded all the promotions and the decorations which
I had requested for the officers and other ranks of the 23rd, and
as the gratitude for these favours is always directed to the
commanding officer who has obtained them, the influence which I
was beginning to have in the regiment was greatly increased and
went some way to calm my regrets at not having been awarded
substantive rank for the position which I occupied.
At about this time, I received a letter from Marshal Massena and
another from his wife, the first recommending a M. Renique, and
the second her son, Prosper. I was touched by this double
approach and I responded by accepting the two captains into my
regiment. However, Madame Massena did not carry out her
intention, and Prosper Massena did not go to Russia. In any case
he would not have been able to stand the harsh climate.
The army was soon to reach the frontier of the Russian empire,
and see once more the river Nieman, where we had stopped in 1807.
The Emperor positioned his troops on the left bank of this river
as follows: on the extreme right was the Austrian Corps of Prince
Schwartzenberg, on the border of Galicia near Drogitchin. On
Schwartzenberg's left was King Jerome with two considerable army
corps, between Bialystok and Grodno. Next to them was Prince
Eugene de Beauharnais, with 80,000 men, at Prenn. The Emperor was
in the centre, facing Kovno, with 220,000 men commanded by Murat,
Oudinot, Ney, Lefebvre and Bessieres. The Guard formed part of
this immense body of troops. Finally, at Tilsit, Marshal
Macdonald with 35,000 Prussians formed the left wing. Across the
Nieman was the Russian army of about 400,000 men, commanded by
the Emperor Alexander , or rather by Benningsen, his
chief-of-staff. This force was divided into three parts,
commanded by Generals Bagration, Barclay de Tolly and
Wittgenstein.
Four historians have written about the campaign of 1812. The
first of these was Labaume, a topographer, that is to say,
belonging to a Corps which although part of the armed forces
never engaged in combat, and followed the army only to make maps.
Labaume had never commanded troops and knew nothing of the
practical side of war, so his judgements are almost always
ill-founded, and do an injustice to the French army. However the
work having appeared shortly after the peace of 1814 and the
re-establishment of Louis XVIII, partisan spirit and the desire
for information about the terrible events of the Russian campaign
gave it so much credence that no one tried to refute it, and the
public came to accept its contents as the veritable truth.
The second book to be published was written by Colonel
Boutourlin, an aide-de-camp to the Emperor Alexander. This,
although expressing the Russian point of view, contained some
worthwhile observations, and if there are some inaccuracies, it
is because he did not have access to certain documents, for he is
impartial and has done all he could to discover the truth. The
work is generally esteemed as that of an honest man.
Labaume's book had already been forgotten when in 1825, following
Napoleon's death, General de Segur published a third story of the
Russian campaign. The contents of this book distressed more than
one survivor of the campaign, and even the Russians stigmatised
it as a war novel. In spite of this, M. de Segur enjoyed a great
success, partly because of the purity and elegance of his style
and partly because of the welcome the book was given by the court
and the ultra-royalist party. The former officers of the imperial
army, finding themselves under attack, appointed General Gourgaud
to reply. He did so effectively, but with so much acerbity that
it gave rise to a duel between him and M. de Segur, in which M.
de Segur was wounded. One has to agree that if the latter was
less than charitable towards Napoleon and his army, General
Gourgaud accorded the Emperor too much praise and refused to
recognise any of his faults.
I have no intention of writing another history of the campaign of
1812, but I think I should relate the principal events, since
they form an essential part of my life and times and several of
them have a bearing on what happened to me; but in this brief
resume I shall try to avoid the extremes embraced by Segur and
Gourgaud. I shall neither denigrate nor flatter, I shall be
truthful.
At a time when the two powerful European empires were about to
come to blows, England, a natural ally of Russia, had a duty to
make every effort to help her to repel the invasion projected by
Napoleon. By disbursing money to the Turkish ministers, the
English cabinet was able to arrange a peace between the Sultan
and Russia, which allowed the latter to recall the army which was
on the frontier of Turkey, an army which played a highly
important role in the war. The English had also contrived a peace
between the Emperor Alexander and Sweden, an ally of France, on
whose goodwill Napoleon counted, the more so because Bernadotte
had just been nominated as the heir apparent, and governed the
country for the King, his adoptive father.
I have already explained how, through a bizarre sequence of
events, Bernadotte was raised to the rank of heir presumptive to
the crown of Sweden. The new Swedish prince, after announcing
that he would always remain French at heart, allowed himself to
be seduced or intimidated by the English, who could have easily
overthrown him. He sacrificed the true interests of his adoptive
country by submitting to the domination of England and allying
himself with Russia in an interview with the Emperor Alexander.
This meeting took place in Abo, a little town in Finland. The
Russians had recently seized this province and they promised to
compensate Sweden by the gift of Norway, which they intended to
take from Denmark, which was a faithful ally of France. So
Bernadotte, far from relying on our army to restore to him his
provinces, accepted these Russian encroachments by ranging
himself with her allies.
If Bernadotte had been willing to support us, the geographical
position of Sweden could have been of great assistance to our
common cause. The new prince did not, however, openly state his
position, as he wanted to see who was going to be the victor, and
he did not declare himself until the following year. Deprived of
the aid of Turkey and Sweden, on whom he had relied to keep the
Russian army occupied, Napoleon's only possible allies in the
north were the Poles, but these turbulent people, whose
forefathers had been unable to agree when they were an
independent state, offered neither moral nor physical support.
In fact, Lithuania and the other provinces which formed more than
a third of the former Poland, having been in Russian hands for
almost forty years, had mostly forgotten their ancient
constitution and had for a long time thought of themselves as
Russian. The nobility sent their sons to join the army of the
Czar, to whom they were too much attached by long custom to
permit any hope that they would join the French. The same
considerations applied to other Poles who in various divisions of
their country had found themselves under the rule of Austria or
Prussia. They were willing to march against Russia, but it was
under the flags and under the command of their new sovereigns.
They had neither love nor enthusiasm for the Emperor Napoleon,
and feared to see their country devastated by war. The grand
duchy of Warsaw, ceded in 1807 to the King of Saxony under the
Treaty of Tilsit, was the only province of the ancient Poland
which retained a spark of national spirit and was somewhat
attached to France, but what was the use of this little state to
the Grande Armee of Napoleon?
Napoleon, however, full of confidence in his army and in his own
ability, decided to cross the Nieman, and so on the 23rd of June,
accompanied by General Haxo and dressed in the uniform of a
Polish soldier of his guard, he rode along its bank, and that
same evening at ten o'clock, set in motion the crossing of the
river by the pontoon bridges, the most important of which had
been laid across the river opposite the little Russian town of
Kovno, which our troops occupied without encountering any
resistance.
Chap. 6.
At sunrise on the 24th we witnessed a most impressive spectacle.
On the highest part of the left bank were the Emperor's tents.
Around them, on the slopes of the hills and in the valleys,
glittered the arms of a great concourse of men and horses. This
mass, consisting of 250,000 soldiers split into three huge
columns, streamed in perfect order towards the three bridges
which had been thrown across the river, over which the different
corps crossed to the right bank in a prearranged manner. On this
same day the Nieman was crossed by our troops at other points,
near Grodno, Pilony and Tilsit. I have seen a situation report,
covered by notes written in Napoleon's hand, which gives the
official strength of the force which crossed the Nieman as
325,000 men, of whom 155,400 were French and 170,000 allies,
accompanied by 940 guns.
The regiment which I commanded formed part of 2nd Corps,
commanded by Marshal Oudinot, which having crossed the bridge at
Kovno headed immediately for Ianovo. The heat was overpowering.
This, close to nightfall, led to a tremendous storm, and
torrential rain, which drenched the roads and the countryside for
more than fifty leagues around. Happily the army did not see this
as a bad omen, as the soldiers considered violent thunderstorms
were something to be expected in summer. The Russians too, every
bit as superstitious as some of the French, had an unpropitious
omen, for during the night of 23rd-24th of June the Emperor
Alexander escaped with his life when, at a ball in Wilna, the
floor of a room collapsed under the chair on which he was
sitting, at the very hour when the first French boat, carrying a
detachment of Napoleon's troops, reached the right bank of the
Nieman and Russian soil. Be that as it may, the storm had made
the air much cooler and the horses in bivouac suffered from this
and also from eating wet grass and lying on muddy ground. So that
the army lost several thousand from acute colic.
Beyond Kovnow there runs a little river called the Vilia, the
bridge over which had been cut by the Russians. The storm had so
swollen this tributary of the Nieman that Oudinot's scouts were
held up. The Emperor arrived at the same moment as I did at the
head of my regiment. He ordered the Polish lancers to see if the
river was fordable, and in this process, one man was drowned; I
took his name, it was Tzcinski. I mention this because the losses
suffered by the Polish lancers in the crossing of the Vilia have
been grossly exaggerated.
The Russians, however, retreated without waiting for the French
army, which shortly occupied Wilna, the capital of Lithuania. It
was near here that there took place a cavalry encounter in which
Octave de Segur, who had been with me on Massena's staff, was
captured by the Russians while leading a squadron of the 8th
Hussars which he commanded, he was the elder brother of General
the Comte de Segur. On the same day that the Emperor entered
Wilna, Marshal Oudinot's troops came up against Wittgenstein's
Russians at Wilkomir, where the first serious engagement of the
campaign took place. I had not previously served under Oudinot,
and this debut confirmed the high opinion I had of his courage,
without convincing me of his intelligence.
One of the greatest faults of the French at war is to go, without
reason, from the most meticulous caution to limitless confidence.
Now, since the Russians had allowed us to cross the Nieman,
invade Lithuania and occupy Wilna without opposition, it had
become the done thing, amongst certain officers to say that the
enemy would always retreat and would never stand and fight.
Oudinot's staff and the marshal himself frequently stated this,
and treated as fairy tales the information given by the peasants
that there was a large body of Russian troops positioned in front
of the little town of Wilkomir. This incredulity nearly resulted
in disaster, as you will see.
The light cavalry, being the eyes of the army, while on the march
is always in front and on the flanks. My regiment, then, was less
than a league ahead of the infantry, when, having gone a little
way beyond Wilkomir without seeing any sign of the enemy, we were
confronted by a forest of huge pine trees, through which the
mounted men could move with ease but whose branches obscured the
distant view. Fearing an ambush, I sent a single squadron,
commanded by a very capable captain, to investigate. In about 15
minutes he came back and reported that he had seen an enemy army.
I went to the edge of the forest from where I could see, at about
a cannon shot from Wilkomir, behind a stream, a hill on which
drawn up in battle order were 25 to 30 thousand Russian infantry,
with cavalry and artillery.
You may be surprised that these troops did not have in front of
them any outposts or pickets or scouts, but that is how the
Russians operate when they are determined to defend a strong
position. They allow the enemy to approach without any warning of
the resistance they are about to meet, and it is only when the
main body of their opponents comes within range that they open a
ferocious fire with musketry and cannon, which can shatter the
columns of their adversaries. It is a method which has often
produced good results for the Russians; so General Wittgenstein
had prepared this welcome for us.
The situation seemed to me to be so serious that to keep my
regiment out of sight, I ordered them to go back into the forest
while I myself hurried to warn Marshal Oudinot of the danger
which lay ahead.
I found him in some open country, where having dismounted and
halted his troops, he was peacefully eating his lunch in the
midst of his staff. I expected that my report would shake him out
of this false security, but he treated it with an air of
disbelief, and clapping me on the shoulder he called out "Let's
go! Marbot here has discovered thirty thousand men for us to
thump." General Lorencez, the marshal's son-in-law and his
chief-of-staff was the only one to take me seriously; he had once
been aide-de-camp to Augereau and he had known me for a long
time. He came to my defence saying that when the commander of a
unit says "I have seen" he should be believed, and that to take
no notice of information brought by an officer of the light
cavalry was to court disaster. These observations made by his
chief-of-staff caused the marshal to think, and he had started to
question me about the enemy presence, which he still seemed to
doubt, when a staff-captain by the name of Duplessis arrived, all
out of breath, and announced that he had searched the whole area
and had even been into the forest, and had seen not a single
Russian. At this the marshal and his staff began laughing at my
fears, which greatly upset me. Nevertheless, I kept my mouth
shut, certain that before very long, the truth would become
apparent.
Luncheon being over, the march got under way once more and I
returned to my regiment, which formed the advance-guard. I led
them through the trees as I had done previously, for I could see
what was going to happen the moment we emerged opposite the enemy
positions. In spite of what I had told him, the marshal decided
to go down a wide, dead straight road which ran through the
forest; but he had scarcely reached the edge of the trees when
the enemy, seeing the large group formed by his staff, opened a
running fire from their cannons, which placed opposite the road
could fire directly along it and threw into disorder the gilded
squadron, recently so full of themselves. Fortunately no one was
hit by this fire, but the marshal's horse was killed, as was that
of M. Duplessis and a number of others. I had been amply avenged,
and I must confess, to my shame, that I had difficulty in hiding
my satisfaction at seeing those who had scoffed at my report and
treated as fantasy what I had said about the enemy presence,
taking to their heels under a hail of shot and scrambling over
ditches as best they could to seek shelter behind the great pine
trees! The worthy General Lorencez, whom I had warned to stay in
the forest, laughed heartily at this scene. In fairness to
Oudinot, I must say that once remounted, he came and apologised
for for his behaviour at luncheon, and asked me to brief him on
the Russian positions, and point out a route through the forest
which the infantry might take without being too much exposed to
the enemy's guns.
Several officers of the 23rd who, like me, had been through the
woodland in the morning, were detailed to guide the infantry
divisions. Nevertheless, on their emerging from the trees they
were subjected to a terrible cannonade, which could have been
avoided if, having been warned of the Russian presence, there had
been an attempt to turn one of their flanks, instead of making a
frontal approach. As it was, we were now committed, once we
emerged from the wood, to attacking the most heavily defended
point and taking the bull by the horns.
However, our gallant soldiers engaged the enemy with such
determination that they drove them from all their positions, and
after two hours of fighting they began to retreat. This operation
was not without danger, for, to carry it out, they had to go
through the town and cross the bridge over a very steep-sided
stream. This manoeuvre, always difficult to execute under fire,
started off in an orderly fashion, but our light artillery,
having taken up a position on a height which overlooked the town,
soon, by means of its gunfire, produced disorder among the enemy
columns, which broke ranks and rushed to the bridge. Once they
had crossed the stream, instead of regrouping they fled
helter-skelter over the open ground of the opposite bank, where
the retreat soon became a rout! Only one regiment, that of Toula,
stood its ground on the town side of the bridge. Marshal Oudinot
very much wanted to force a passage across the bridge, to
complete his victory by pursuing the fugitives on the other side
of the stream; but our infantry had hardly reached the suburbs;
it would take them at least 15 minutes to reach the bridge, and
time was precious.