to the town, had re-formed on the promenade, a short distance
from the stream. The marshal sent word to me to bring them at the
gallop and we had hardly arrived before he ordered me to charge
the enemy battalions which were covering the bridge, then to
cross the bridge and pursue the fugitives on the open ground of
the opposite side. Experienced soldiers know how difficult it is
for cavalry to overcome infantry, who are determined to defend
themselves in the streets of a town. I was well aware of the
dangers of the task which I had been given, but it had to be
done, and without hesitation. I knew also that it is by his
conduct in his first action that a commanding officer gains a
good or a bad reputation amongst his men. My regiment was
composed of battle-hardened troopers: I raised them to the gallop
and, with me at their head, we fell on the Russian Grenadiers,
who stood firm behind their bayonets. They were, however,
overwhelmed by our first impetuous charge, and once their ranks
had been penetrated, my terrible chasseurs using the points of
their sabres inflicted a frightful slaughter. The enemy retreated
to the causeway of the bridge, where we followed them so closely
that, on reaching the other side, they were unable to re-form,
and our men got amongst them, killing all whom they could reach.
When the Russian colonel was killed, his regiment, without
leadership, lost heart, and seeing that the French skirmishers
had now reached the bridge, they surrendered. I lost seven men
killed and some twenty wounded, but captured a flag and two
thousand prisoners. After this action, we advanced onto the open
ground where we took a great number of fugitives, several guns
and many horses.
Marshal Oudinot had watched this action from a vantage point in
the town, and he came to congratulate the regiment, for which he
henceforth had a particular regard, which it well merited. I was
proud to be in command of such men and when the marshal told me
that he intended to recommend me for promotion to colonel, I was
afraid that the Emperor would go back on his original plan, and
post me to the first regiment which became vacant. How strange
are the twists of fortune! The successful action at Wilkomir,
where the 23rd earned such a fine reputation, nearly led on a
later occasion to its destruction, because the courage which it
had displayed at the time resulted in its being chosen to carry
out a mission which was virtually impossible, which I shall
describe shortly. Let us now return to Wilna, where the Emperor
was beginning to meet with some of the difficulties which were to
wreck his whole gigantic undertaking.
The first of these concerned the re-organisation of Lithuania,
which we had just conquered. This had to be carried out in away
which would please not only those provinces which were still
occupied by Russia, but also those of the duchies of Posen and
Galicia, which ancient treaties had incorporated into Prussia and
Austria, Napoleon's allies, whom, for the time being, it was
important not to offend.
The most committed of the noblemen who ruled the various parts of
Poland proposed to Napoleon that they would raise all the
provinces and place at his disposal more than 300,000 men on the
day that he announced officially that all the partitions to which
the country had been subjected were annulled, and that the
kingdom of Poland was reconstituted. The Emperor, although he was
aware of the benefits he would gain from such an armed uprising,
could not conceal from himself the fact that its first result
would be to involve him in war with Austria and Prussia, which,
rather than see themselves deprived of these huge and flourishing
provinces, would join their arms to those of Russia. Above all,
he doubted the constancy of the Poles, who, after dragging him
into war with the three most powerful of the northern nations,
might perhaps fail to deliver their promised support. The Emperor
therefore replied to these propositions that he would not
recognise the kingdom of Poland until the inhabitants of these
huge areas had shown themselves worthy of independence by rising
against their oppressors. This now created a vicious circle,
Napoleon would not recognise the kingdom of Poland until the
Poles took action, and the Poles would not take any action until
he did. An indication that Napoleon, in going to war with
Russia, had no intention other than to enforce the continental
blockade is the fact that he had not brought to the Nieman any
arms or uniforms for the men which the Poles might have supplied.
Be that as it may, some influential noblemen, in an attempt to
force Napoleon's hand, set up a National Diet in Warsaw, which
was attended by a small number of deputies. The first act of this
assembly was to proclaim the Reconstitution and Independence of
the Ancient Kingdom of Poland. The echo of this patriotic
declaration rang throughout all the provinces, whether Russian,
Prussian or Austrian, and for several days it was believed that
there would be an uprising which would probably favour Napoleon,
but this unthinking exaltation did not last long among the Poles,
of whom only a few hundred came to join us. The cooling off was
so rapid that the town of Wilna and its surroundings could
provide no more than twenty men to form a guard of honour for the
Emperor. If the Poles had displayed at this time a hundredth part
of the energy and enthusiasm which they displayed during the
insurrection of 1830-1831, they might have recovered their
independence and their liberty, but, far from coming to the aid
of the French troops, they denied them all necessities, and
during this campaign our soldiers often had to take by force the
food and forage which the inhabitants, and above all the nobles,
hid from us but handed over to the Russians, their persecutors.
This partiality in favour of our enemies enraged our men and gave
rise to some unpleasant scenes which M. de Segur has stigmatised
as disgraceful pillage! It is however impossible to prevent the
weary and wretched soldiers who have received no issue of rations
from commandeering the bread and the livestock which they need
for their survival.
The need to maintain order in the provinces occupied by the army
led the Emperor, in spite of everything, to appoint prefects and
sub-prefects who were chosen from the most enlightened Poles, but
their administration was illusory and no help to the French army.
The main reason for the apathy of the Lithuanian Poles was the
self-interested attachment of the nobility to the Russian
government, which upheld their rights over their peasantry, to
whom they feared the French might award their freedom, for all
those Polish noblemen who talked unceasingly about freedom kept
their peasants in the most brutish serfdom.
Although the concentration of French troops on their frontiers
should have warned the Russians that hostilities were about to
commence, they were nonetheless taken by surprise by the crossing
of the Nieman, which they nowhere opposed. Their army began a
retreat towards the Duna (Dvina) on the left bank of which they
had prepared, at Drissa, an immense entrenched camp. From all
parts the different French Corps followed the Russian columns.
Prince Murat was in command of the cavalry of the advance-guard,
and every evening he caught up with the Russian rear-guard; but
after some skirmishing they made off during the night by forced
marches, without it being possible to bring them to a decisive
action.
Chap. 7.
During the first days of our invasion of Russia, the enemy had
made the very serious mistake of allowing Napoleon to split their
forces, so that the greater part of their army, led by the
Emperor Alexander and Marshal Barclay, had been driven back to
the Duna, while the remainder, commanded by Bagration, was on the
upper Nieman around Mir, eighty leagues from the main body. Cut
off in this way, Bagration tried to join the Emperor Alexander by
going through Minsk; but Napoleon had entrusted the protection of
Minsk to Marshal Davout, who vigourously repelled the Russians
and drove them back to Bobruisk, which he knew was supposed to be
guarded by Jerome Bonaparte, at the head of two corps, amounting
to 60,000 men. Bagration was about to be forced to surrender
when he was saved by the foolishness of Jerome, who had not
accepted the advice which Davout had given him, and failing to
recognise the superior wisdom of the experienced and successful
marshal, had decided to go his own way, whereupon he manoeuvred
his troops so ineptly that Bagration was able to escape from this
first danger. Davout, however, followed him with his usual
tenacity, and caught up with him on the road to Mohilew, where,
although he had no more than 12,000 men, he attacked the 36,000
Russians and defeated them, though admittedly the Russians were
surprised on an area of very broken ground which prevented them
from making the best use of their superior numbers. Bagration was
compelled to cross the Borysthenia much lower down at
Novoi-Bychow, and being now out of reach of Davout he was able to
rejoin the main Russian army at Smolensk.
During the marches and countermarches which Bagration undertook
in his efforts to evade Davout, he surprised the brigade of
French cavalry comannded by General Bordesoulle, and captured
from him the whole of the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs, whose
colonel was my friend Saint-Mars.
The elimination of Bagration's force would have been of
tremendous benefit to Napoleon, so his fury with King Jerome was
unbounded! He ordered him to quit the army immediately and return
to Westphalia, a rigourous but necessary measur, which had the
effect of greatly damaging King Jerome's reputation in the army.
However, one has to ask if he was entirely to blame? His major
mistake was to think that his dignity as a sovereign should not
permit him to accept the advice of a simple marshal, but Napoleon
knew perfectly well that the young prince had never in his life
commanded so much as a single battalion, nor taken part in the
most minor skirmish, and yet he confided to his care an army of
60,000 men, and this at a somewhat critical juncture. General
Junot, who replaced Jerome, was, before long, also guilty of a
serious blunder.
It was around this time that the Russian emperor sent one of his
ministers, Count Balachoff,to parley with Napoleon, who was still
in Wilna. The purpose of this discussion has never been entirely
clear; there were those who believed it was to arrange an
armistice, but they were quickly disabused by the departure of
the Count, and it appeared later that the English, who had a
tremendous influence in the Russian court and the army, had taken
umbrage at this mission, and fearing that Alexander might be
considering coming to terms with Napoleon, they had loudly
insisted that he should leave the army and return to St.
Petersburg. Alexander accepted this proposal, but ensured that
his brother, Constantine came with him. Left to themselves, and
egged on by the Englishman Wilson, the Russian generals sought to
wage war with a ferocity which might shake the French morale, so
they ordered their troops to lay waste the country behind them as
they withdrew, by burning all the houses and everything else
which they could not carry away.
While Napoleon, from the central point of Wilna, was directing
the various units of his army, the columns led by Murat, Ney,
Montbrun, Nansouty and Oudinot had, on the 15th of July, reached
the river Dvina. Oudinot, who had probably misunderstood the
Emperor's orders, took the unusual step of going down the left
bank of the river, while Wittgenstein and his men were going up
the river on the other side. He arrived opposite Dvinaburg, an
old walled town whose fortifications were in bad repair, where he
hoped to capture the bridge and, having crossed to the other
bank, to attack Wittgenstein from the rear. Wittgenstein,
however, on leaving Dvinaburg, had left behind a strong garrison
with numerous pieces of artillery. My regiment as usual
constituted the advance-guard, which on this day was led by
Marshal Oudinot himself.
The town of Dvinaburg is on the right bank of the river. We
arrived on the left bank, where there is a considerable
fortification which protects the bridge which links it to the
town, from which it is separated by the river, which is very wide
at this point. A quarter of a league from the fortifications,
which Marshal Oudinot claimed were not equipped with cannon, I
came on a Russian battalion whose left flank was protected by the
river, and whose front was covered by the planks and hutments of
an abandoned camp. In such a position the enemy was very
difficult for cavalry to attack; however the Marshal ordered me
to attack them. After I had left it to individual officers to
make their way through the gaps between the huts, I ordered the
charge, but the regiment had hardly gone a few paces amid a
shower of bullets from the Russian infantry when the artillery,
whose existence the Marshal had denied, thundered from the
battlements, to which we were so close that the canisters of
grape-shot were going over our heads before they had time to
burst. A stray ball from one of them went through a fisherman's
hut and broke the leg of the trumpeter who was sounding the
charge by my side!...I lost several men there.
Marshal Oudinot, who had made a serious mistake in attacking a
position which was protected by cannon, hoped to flush out the
Russian infantry by sending in a Portuguese battalion which was
ahead of our infantry; but these foreigners, former prisoners of
war, who had been enlisted somewhat unwillingly into the French
army, made little headway and we remained exposed. Seeing that
Oudinot bore the enemy fire with courage but without giving any
orders, I thought that if this state of affairs continued for a
few minutes more, my regiment was going to wiped out, so I told
my men to spread out and attack the enemy infantry in open order,
with the double aim of driving them out of their position and
preventing the gunners from firing for fear of hitting their own
men, who were intermingled with ours. Cut down by my troopers,
the defenders of the camp fled towards the bridgehead, but the
garrison of this outpost was composed of recent recruits, who,
fearing that we would follow the fugitives into the
fortifications, hurriedly closed the gates; which compelled them
to make for the pontoon bridge in an attempt to reach the other
bank and the shelter of the town of Dvinaburg itself.
The bridge had no guard-rail, the pontoons wobbled, the river was
deep and wide, and I could see the armed garrison on the other
side trying to close the gates! It seemed to me to be folly to
advance any further. Thinking that the regiment had done enough,
I had halted them when the Marshal arrived, shouting "Forward the
twenty-third! Do as you did at Wilkomir! Cross the bridge! Force
the gates! Seize the town!" General Lorencez tried, in vain, to
persuade him that the difficulties were too great, and that a
regiment of cavalry could not attack a fortress, however badly
defended, if to get there they had to cross, two abreast, a
third-rate pontoon bridge; but the Marshal persisted, "They will
be able to take advantage of the disorder and fears of the
enemy," he said, and repeated his order to me to attack the town.
I obeyed; but I was scarcely on the first span of the bridge, at
the head of the leading section of my men, when the garrison,
having managed to close the gates which led to the river, mounted
the ramparts, from where they opened fire on us. The slender line
which we presented offered a poor target for these inadequately
trained men, so that their musket and cannon fire caused us fewer
casualties than I had feared, but on hearing the fortress firing
on us, the defenders of the bridgehead recovered their nerve and
joined in the fray. Oudinot, seeing the 23rd caught between two
fires, at the start of an unstable bridge across which it was
impossible to advance, conveyed to me the order to retreat. The
large gap which I had left between each section allowed them to
turn round without too much confusion, however, two men and their
horses fell into the river and were drowned. In order to regain
the left bank we had to pass once more under the ramparts of the
bridgehead, when we were exposed to a rolling fire which,
fortunately, was aimed by unskilled militia, for if we had been
up against trained marksmen, the regiment could have been wholly
destroyed.
This unsuccessful action, so imprudently undertaken, cost me
thirty men killed and many wounded, and it was to be hoped that
the Marshal would be content with this fruitless effort,
especially in view of the fact that the Emperor had not ordered
him to take Dvinaburg; but, as soon as the infantry had arrived,
he made a new assault on the bridgehead, which had now been
reinforced by a company of Grenadiers, who, at the sound of
firing had hurried from nearby billets, so that our troops were
once more repelled with much greater losses than those suffered
by the 23rd. When the Emperor heard of this abortive attack, he
placed the blame squarely on Marshal Oudinot.
At this time, my regiment was brigaded with the 24th Chasseurs,
and General Castex, who commanded this brigade, had instituted an
admirable routine in our method of operation. Each of the two
regiments took it in turn to form, for twenty-four hours, the
advance-guard if we were approaching the enemy, or the rear-guard
if we were retreating, and to provide all the sentries, pickets
and so on, while the other regiment marched peacefully along,
recovering from the fatigues of the day before and preparing for
those of the morrow, which did not prevent it from going to the
aid of the unit on duty if they came in contact with the enemy.
This system, which was not in the regulations, had the great
advantage of never separating the men from their officers or
their comrades, or placing them under the orders of unknown
commanders and mingling them with troopers of another regiment.
Moreover, during the night, half of the brigade slept, while the
other half watched over them. However, since no system is without
its shortcomings, it could so happen, by chance, that it was the
same regiment which was more often on duty when a serious
engagement occurred, as happened to the 23rd at Wilkomir and
Dvinaburg. It was the sort of luck which we had throughout the
campaign, but we never complained; we came out of all these
events well and were often envied by the 24th, who had fewer
occasions on which to distinguish themselves.
While Oudinot was making his assault on Dvinaburg, the corps
commanded by Ney, as well as the immense body of cavalry
commanded by Murat, were proceeding up the left bank of the Dvina
towards Polotsk, while Wittgenstein's Russian army followed the
same route on the right bank. Being separated from the enemy by
the river, our troops grew careless, and pitched their bivouacs
in the French manner, much too close to its bank. Wittgenstein
had noticed this and he allowed the bulk of the French force to
draw ahead. The last unit in the line of march was Sebastiani's
division, which had as its rear-guard the brigade commanded by
General Saint-Genies, who had served as an officer in the army of
Egypt, and who, although courageous, was not very bright. When he
had reached a some way beyond the little town of Drouia, General
Saint-Genies, on the orders of Sebastiani, put his troops into
bivouac some two hundred paces from the river, which was believed
to be uncrossable without boats. Wittgenstein, however, knew of a
ford, and during the night he made use of it to send across the
river a division of cavalry, which fell on the French troops and
captured almost the entire brigade, including General
Saint-Genies. This forced Sebastiani to hurry upstream with the
rest of his division to make contact with the Corps commanded by
Montbrun. After this swift raid, Wittgenstein recalled his troops
and continued his march up the Dvina. The affair did Sebastiani's
reputation a great deal of harm and drew down on his head the
reproaches of the Emperor.
Shortly after this regrettable incident, Oudinot having been
ordered to leave Dvinaburg and go up the river to rejoin Ney and
Montbrun, his army Corps took the same route as they had done,
and passed the town of Drouia. The Marshal intended to encamp his
force some three leagues further on, but he feared that the enemy
might use the ford to send across large parties of men to harass
the great convoy which trailed behind him, so he decided that
while he made off into the distance, with the main body of the
troops, he would leave behind a regiment of General Castex's
brigade, in the position which had been occupied by General
Saint-Genies, to watch the ford. As my regiment was on duty,
there fell to it the dangerous task of remaining behind at
Drouia, on their own, until the following morning. I knew that
the greater part of Wittgenstein's force had gone up the river,
but I could see that he had left behind, not far from the ford,
two strong regiments of cavalry, a force more than sufficient to
overcome me.
However much I might have wished to carry out the order to set up
my bivouac on the spot used two days previously by Saint-Genies,
this was impossible, for the ground was littered with more than
two hundred bodies in a state of putrefaction, and to this major
reason was linked another not less important. What I had seen and
what I had learned about war had convinced me that the best means
of defending a river against an enemy whose aim is not to
establish himself on the bank which one occupies, is to keep the
main body of one's troops well back from the river edge; firstly
to have timely warning of the enemy's approach, and secondly,
because, as it his intention to make a sudden raid and then
retire smartly, he dare not go too far from the spot where he can
cross back to the other side. So I settled the regiment half a
league from the Dvina, on some slightly undulating ground. I left
only some two-man sentinels on the bank, because, when it is
purely a matter of observation, two men can see as much as a
large picket. Several lines of troopers were placed one after the
other between these sentinels and our bivouac, where, like a
spider at the bottom of its web, I could be rapidly informed by
these threads about what was going on in the area which it was my
duty to guard. I had forbidden all fires and even the lighting of
pipes, and had ordered complete silence.
The nights are extremely short in Russia in the month of July,
but this one seemed very long to me, so afraid was I that I might
be attacked during the hours of darkness by a force superior in
strength to my own. Half of the men were in the saddle, the
remainder were allowing their horses to graze but were ready to
mount if given the signal. All seemed quiet on the opposite bank,
when my Polish servant, who spoke Russian fluently, came to tell
me that he had heard one old Jewish woman who lived in a nearby
house say to another, "The lantern has been lit in the clock
tower at Morki. The attack is going to begin." I had the two
women brought to me, and questioned by Lorentz. They said that,
as they were afraid of their village becoming a battleground for
the two enemies, they had been alarmed to see the lamp lit in the
bell tower of the church at Morki, which, the night before last,
had been the signal for the Russian troops to cross the ford and
attack the French camp.
Although I was prepared for any eventuality, this was a piece of
very useful information. At once the regiment was on horse,
sabres in their hands. The sentinels by the river and the string
of horsemen stretched across the plain passed from man to man, in
low voices, the orders to come back. Two of the boldest
sous-officiers, Prud'homme and Graft, went with Lieutenant Bertin
to see what the enemy was doing. He came back shortly to say that
a large column of Russian cavalry was crossing the ford, and that
already there were some squadrons on our side of the river; but
seemingly taken aback at not finding us camped at the same place
as Saint-Genies, they had halted, fearing, no doubt to go too far
from their only means of retreat; then, having decided to go on,
they were now approaching at a walk, and were not far off.