left hurriedly after depositing some of their wounded in the
monastery of Valensoui. Amongst those whom we lost was M.
Casabianca, Colonel of the 11th light infantry regiment, who had
served with me as aide-de-camp to Massena. He was a very fine
officer whose promotion had been rapid; but his career was ended
by a head injury received when he was visiting some of his men on
the bank of the Svolna. He was dying when I saw him on a
stretcher carried by some sappers. He recognised me and shaking
my hand he observed that he was sorry to see our army corps so
poorly managed. The poor fellow died that evening.
His last words were only too well founded, for our leader seemed
to proceed without method or plan. After a success, he pursued
Wittgenstein regardless of any obstacles and spoke of nothing
less than driving him back as far as St. Petersburg, but at the
least check he retreated swiftly and started seeing enemies
everywhere. It was in this last state that he took his troops
back to Polotsk, although they were displeased being at being
made to fall back before the Russians whom they had recently
defeated in almost every encounter.
On the 15th of August, the Emperor's birthday, 2nd Corps arrived
dejectedly at Polotsk, where we met with 6th Corps, formed of the
two fine Bavarian divisions of General Wrede, which had a French
general, Gouvion Saint-Cyr in overall command. The Emperor had
sent this reinforcement of 8 to 10,000 men to Marshal Oudinot,
who would have received it with more pleasure if he had not been
afraid of the man in command.
Saint-Cyr was one of the most competent soldiers in Europe. A
contemporary and rival of Moreau, Hoche, Kleber and Desaix, he
had successfully commanded one wing of the French army of the
Rhine at a time when Oudinot was scarcely a colonel or a brigade
commander. I do not know anyone who could command troops in the
field better than Saint-Cyr.
The son of a small landowner in Toul, he had studied to be a
civil engineer, but he gave this up to become an actor in Paris,
where he created the well-known role of "Robert,the Brigand
Chief." In the City Theatre, where he was when the revolution of
'89 broke out, Saint-Cyr joined a volunteer battalion, where he
showed great courage and military talent, and soon became a
divisional general and gained a number of victories. He was a
tall man but looked more like a schoolmaster than a soldier, due
in part perhaps to the habit adopted by the generals of the army
of the Rhine of wearing neither uniform nor epaulets, but only a
plain blue greatcoat.
One could not imagine anyone more self-controlled; the greatest
dangers, setbacks, successes, or defeats, failed to rouse him to
any show of emotion. He maintained an icy calm in all situations.
It is obvious how useful such a temperament coupled with a taste
for study and meditation, might be to a general officer, but
Saint-Cyr had also some serious faults. Jealous of his comrades,
he had been known to hold his troops back while, close to him,
other divisions were decimated in a desperate struggle. He would
then advance and profiting from the exhaustion of the enemy he
would overcome them, and thus appear to have won the victory
single-handed. Secondly, if Saint-Cyr was one of the best
officers in the employment of troops in the field, he was without
doubt the one who took the least interest in their welfare. He
never inquired if the men had food, clothing or footwear, or if
their arms were in proper repair. He never held an inspection,
nor visited the hospitals, nor even asked if there were any! In
his opinion it was the duty of the colonels to see to all that.
In short he wanted to be presented on the field of battle with
regiments in fighting order, without troubling himself to see
that they were kept in that condition. This sort of behaviour had
not done Saint-Cyr any good. Wherever he served, the soldiers,
although acknowledging his military talents, regarded him without
affection. His fellow officers dreaded working with him and the
various governments which had taken power in France had employed
him only out of necessity. The Emperor did the same, but he so
much disliked Saint-Cyr that when he created the rank of marshal
he left his name off the list of promotions, even though he had
seen more service and shown more skill than most of those to whom
Napoleon awarded the baton. Such was the man whom the Emperor had
just placed under Oudinet's orders, to the great regret of the
latter, who feared that he would be shown up by comparison with
Saint-Cyr's superior talents.
On the 16th of August, the day on which my eldest son Alfred was
born, the Russian army of some sixty thousand men attacked
Oudinot, who, including the Bavarian unit led by Saint-Cyr, had
fifty two thousand men under his command. In any other
circumstances an engagement between one hundred and twelve
thousand men would have been called a battle; but in 1812 the
when the total number of combatants amounted to some six or seven
hundred thousand, a fight involving one hundred thousand men was
no more than an action, and it is this description which is given
to the struggle at Polotsk between the Russian troops and those
of Marshal Oudinot.
The town of Polotsk, built on the right bank of the Dvina, is
surrounded by old earthen ramparts. Before the main frontage of
the town the fields are divided by a large number of little
ditches between which vegetables are grown. Although these
obstacles are not impassable for artillery and cavalry, they
hinder their movement. These gardens extend for less than half a
league in front of the town, but on their left, on the bank of
the Divna, there is a large area of level ground. It is here that
the Russian general should have attacked Polotsk, for it would
have given him command of the frail and only pontoon bridge,
which was our communication with the left bank from which we drew
our ammunition and food supply. But Wittgenstein chose to make a
frontal attack and directed his main force towards the gardens
from where he hoped to scale the ramparts which, to tell the
truth, were no more than easily climbed embankments, whose
height, however, allowed them to dominate the ground in front of
them. The attack was pressed home vigourously, but our infantry
put up a stout defence among the gardens, while from the height
of the ramparts the guns, among which were the fourteen captured
by the 23rd at Sivotschina, ravaged the enemy ranks. The Russians
fell back in disorder to reform themselves on the plain.
Oudinot, instead of staying sensibly where he was, went after
them and was in turn driven off with casualties. The greater part
of the day was spent in this way, the Russians returning
repeatedly to the attack, only to be driven back beyond the
gardens by the French.
During these blood-stained comings and goings, what was General
Saint-Cyr doing? He was following Oudinot about in silence, and
when asked for his opinion he merely bowed and said "Monseigneur
le Marachal...!" as if meaning since you have been made marshal,
you must know more than me, a simple general. So you can sort
this out for yourself.
Wittgenstein, having lost a great many men and despairing of
gaining victory by continued attacks in the area of the gardens,
ended up where he should have begun, by marching his troops
towards the meadows which bordered the Dvina. Up until this time
Oudinot had kept his twelve pounders and all his cavalry at this
spot, as if they had nothing to do with the fighting; but the
artillery general, Dulauloy, anxious about his guns, suggested to
the Marshal that he should send not only the large calibre guns
but also all the cavalry over to the left bank, on the pretext
that they got in the way of the infantry. When Oudinot asked
Saint-Cyr what he thought, instead of offering the sound advice
that the artillery and the cavalry should stay where they were,
on ground which allowed them to manoeuvre with ease and support
the infantry, he only repeated his endless "Monseigneur le
Marachal...". In the end, Oudinot, in spite of the opinion of
General Lorencez, his chief-of-staff, ordered the artillery and
the cavalry to withdraw to the other side of the river. This
ill-advised movement, which looked like the prelude to a retreat
and the total abandonment of Polotsk and the right bank, greatly
displeased the troops who were involved, and lowered the morale
of the infantry whose job it was to defend that part of the town
which faced the open ground. The spirits of the Russians were, on
the contrary, raised when they saw ten regiments of cavalry and
several batteries of guns leaving the field of battle. In an
effort to create confusion in this huge mass as it departed they
brought forward and fired their licornes, the hollow ammunition
of which acts first as a cannon-ball and then explodes like a
mortar bomb. The regiments next to mine had several men killed or
wounded. I was lucky enough to have none of my men hit though I
lost some horses. My own horse was hit in the head and as it
fell I went down with it and my injured shoulder struck hard on
the ground, which was very painful. If the Russian gun had been
elevated a bit more, it would have been I who was hit, fair and
square, and my son would have been an orphan a few hours after
first seeing the light of day.
The enemy now resumed their attack, and when, after crossing the
bridge, we looked back to see what was happening on the bank
which we had just left, we saw a disturbing spectacle. The
French, Bavarian and Croatian infantry were fighting bravely and
holding their own, but the Portuguese legion and the two Swiss
regiments fled before the Russians, and did not stop until,
having been driven into the river, they were in the water up to
their knees. Then, forced to face the enemy or drown, they at
last struck back, and by a constant barrage of fire they
compelled the Russians to draw back a little. The commander of
the French artillery, who had just crossed the Dvina with the
cavalry, skillfully made use of the opportunity to be useful, by
bringing his guns to the river bank and directing a heavy fire
across the stream at the enemy battalions drawn up on the
opposite bank.
This powerful intervention having stopped Wittgenstein's men at
this point, while the French, Bavarians and Croats drove them
back elsewhere, the fighting eased up and an hour before the end
of the day had degenerated into random firing. The Marshal,
however could not escape the fact that he would have to continue
fighting the next day; and so, preoccupied by a situation the
outcome of which he could not predict, and ruffled by the
obstinate silence of Saint-Cyr, he was walking his horse slowly,
followed by only one aide-de-camp, among musketeers of his
infantry, when enemy marksmen, seeing a rider with a plumed hat,
took aim and put a ball through his arm.
The Marshal at once informed Saint-Cyr of the injury and handing
to him the command of the army left him to sort matters out. He
himself left the field, crossed the bridge, stopped for a few
moments at the cavalry bivouac and quitting the army went to
Lithuania in our rear, to have his wound cared for. We did not
see him again for two months.
Chap. 11.
Saint-Cyr took up with a firm and skillful hand the reins of
command, and in a few hours completely changed the look of
things. Such is the influence of a man who is competent and who
inspires confidence. Marshal Oudinot had left the army in a
perilous state: part of his force driven back to the edge of the
river, and the rest scattered amongst the gardens where they were
firing at random; an inadequate lay-out of guns on the ramparts;
the streets of the town cluttered with wagons, baggage, sutlers
and wounded, all in complete confusion, while the troops had no
means of retreat, should they be overcome, other than the pontoon
bridge across the Dvina, a bridge which was very narrow and in
such a bad state that the water was six inches over the planking
of its platform. Finally, night was approaching and it was feared
that the shooting would lead to a general action which might be
disastrous in view of the disorder which ruled amongst the
regiments of different nationalities.
General Saint-Cyr's first act was to order the withdrawal of
those infantrymen who were in action, in the certainty that the
tired enemy would do the same, as soon as they were no longer
under attack.
The result was that soon the firing ceased on both sides. The
troops were able to re-form and to have some rest, and further
fighting was postponed until the next day. In order to put
himself in a more favourable position, Saint-Cyr used the night
to make preparations for the repulse of the enemy and to ensure a
line of retreat, should it be necessary. With this aim, he
gathered together all the corps commanders and after making clear
to them the dangers of the situation, one of the more serious of
which was the obstruction of the streets of the town and the
approaches to the bridge, he ordered that the colonels,
accompanied by several officers and with patrols, should go
through the streets, sending those men of their regiments who
were fit to their bivouac area, and all the wounded, sick, led
horses, sutlers and carts to the other side of the bridge.
General Saint-Cyr added that he would visit the town at daybreak
and would suspend from duty any corps commander who had not
carried out his instructions promptly! No excuse would be
accepted! There was a rush to obey. The sick and wounded were
carried to the left bank as well as everything which was not
actually required for combat. That is to say all the impedimenta
of the army. In this way the streets and the bridge were soon
completely clear. The bridge was strengthened and the cavalry and
guns brought back to the right bank and located in a suburb
furthest from the enemy; and then, to improve his means of
retreat, the prudent general had a second bridge made out of
empty barrels and planks, which was for the sole use of the
infantry. All these preparations having been completed before
daylight, the army awaited its enemies with confidence. The
latter, however, did not stir from their encampment, set up on
the open ground at the edge of the vast forest which surrounds
Polotsk on the side opposite to the river.
General Saint-Cyr, who had expected to be attacked in the early
morning, attributed the tranquillity which reigned in the Russian
camp to the tremendous losses they had suffered the previous day.
This may have been part of the reason, but the main cause of
Wittgenstein's inactivity was that he expected the arrival,
during the coming night, of a strong division of infantry and
several squadrons of cavalry from St. Petersburg, and he had
delayed his attack until he had received this powerful
reinforcement so that he might the more easily defeat us on the
day following.
Although the Polish nobles, the great landowners of the property
round Polotsk, did not dare to support us openly, they did so in
secret, and had no difficulty in providing us with spies. General
Saint-Cyr, uneasy at what was going on in the Russian camp,
arranged with one of these noblemen to have him send there one of
his more enlightened vassals. The landowner sent to the Russian
camp several cartloads of forage, and put amongst his carters his
bailiff, dressed as a peasant. This man, who was highly
intelligent, learned by chatting to Wittgenstein's soldiers that
they were expecting a large body of troops, and even witnessed
the arrival of some Cossacks and some cavalry, and was told that
several battalions would arrive at the camp around midnight.
Having gathered this information, the bailiff passed it to his
master, who hurried to warn the commander of the French forces.
When he heard this news, Saint-Cyr determined to strike at
Wittgenstein before the arrival of the expected reinforcements.
But as he did not want to be involved in a long drawn-out affair,
he warned his generals and corps commanders that he would not
attack until six in the evening, so that, as night would put an
end to the fighting, the Russians would be unable to exploit
their success if things went their way. It is true that if we
were victorious we would be unable to pursue the enemy in the
dark, but Saint-Cyr had no intention of doing this, and for the
moment wanted only to teach the Russians a lesson which would
drive them away from Polotsk. As the French general aimed at
taking the Russians by surprise, he ordered absolute calm to be
maintained in the town and above all in the lines of outposts.
The day seemed very long. Everyone, even the General, in spite of
his sang-froid, constantly looked at his watch. Having observed
that, on the previous day, the absence of the French cavalry had
allowed the Russians to drive our left wing almost into the
Dvina, General Saint-Cyr, shortly before the attack, moved all
his squadrons, in silence, into a position behind some big shops,
on the other side of which lay the meadowland. It was on this
level ground that the cavalry could manoeuvre to fall on the
enemy right and give cover to the left wing of our infantry, of
which the first two divisions were to attack the Russian camp
while the third supported the cavalry and the remaining two
formed the reserve and protected the town. All was ready when, at
last, it was six o'clock, and the signal for the attack was given
by the firing of a cannon, followed by a volley from all the
French artillery, which landed numerous projectiles on the enemy
outposts and on the camp itself. At once our two first infantry
divisions, led by the 23rd Light, fell on the Russian regiments
positioned in the gardens, killing or capturing all whom they
encountered and chasing the rest back to the camp, where they
took many prisoners and captured several guns. This surprise
attack, although carried out in broad daylight, was so successful
that General Wittgenstein was dining peacefully in a little
country house near his camp when he was warned that French
skirmishers were in the court-yard. He jumped out of a window
and, mounting a Cossack horse which happened to be there, he
galloped away to join his troops. Our skirmishers took some fine
horses, documents, baggage wagons and wines belonging to the
General, also the silverware and some of the dinner laid on the
table. An immense quantity of booty was seized in the camp by
other units.
At the sound of this wholly unforeseen attack by the French,
panic spread amongst our enemies, the majority of whom took to
their heels without even picking up their weapons. The disorder
was complete; no one was giving orders, even though the approach
of our infantry was heralded by a fusillade of shots and the
sound of the drums beating the charge. The scene seemed set for a
resounding victory by the French troops, at whose head marched
Saint-Cyr with his customary calm. However, in war an unexpected,
and often unimportant, event can change a situation.
A large number of the enemy soldiers had reached in their flight
the rear area of the camp, where was encamped the squadron of
horse-guards which had arrived a few hours previously. This elite
unit was made up of young men selected from the best of the
nobility, and was led by a major of proven courage, whose elan,
it was said, was increased by generous draughts of liquor. When
he saw what was happening, this officer leapt on his horse and,
followed by some hundred and twenty cuirassed riders, he rushed
towards the French, whom he soon encountered. The first of our
battalions which he attacked belonged to the 26th Light. They put
up a vigourous resistance. The cavalry were repelled with
casualties, and were rallying to prepare for a second charge when
their Major, impatient at the time taken for the scattered
horsemen to regain their ranks, abandoned the unsuccessful attack
on the French battalion, and ordering his men to follow he led
them at the gallop in open order through the camp, which was full
of infantry, Portuguese, Swiss and even Bavarians, our allies,
some of whom, dispersed by the victory itself, were trying to
regroup while others were collecting the booty left by the
Russians.
The cavalrymen killed or wounded many of these soldiers and threw
the crowd into disarray. A disorderly withdrawal began which
degenerated into a mass panic. Now in a situation like this,
soldiers can mistake for the enemy their own troops who are
running to join them, so that, in a cloud of dust, it seems that
they are being attacked by a large force, when in most cases it
is only a handful of men. This is what happened here; the
horse-guards, scattered widely over the plain and pressing on
without a backward look, seemed to the fugitives to be a massive
force of cavalry, and so the confusion grew until it enveloped
the Swiss battalion in the middle of which General Saint-Cyr had
taken refuge. He was so much jostled by the mob that his horse
fell into a ditch.
The General, who was clad in a simple blue greatcoat, without any
badges of rank, lay motionless on the ground as the cavalry drew
near, and they thinking he was either dead or only a humble
civilian employee, passed by and continued their pursuit of the
fugitives. One does not know how matters would have ended had not
the gallant and quick-witted General Berckheim, at the head of
the 4th Cuirassiers, charged down upon the Russian cavalry, who
in spite of bravely defending themselves, were almost all killed
or made prisoner. Their valiant Major was among the dead. The
charge carried out by this handful of men could have had a
dramatic result if it had been followed up, and this fine feat of
arms goes to show once more that it is unexpected attacks by
cavalry that have the best chance of success.
General Saint-Cyr, having been picked up by our Cuirassiers,
ordered all the infantry divisions to advance immediately and
attack the Russians before they could recover from their
confusion. In this they were successful and the enemy were
decisively beaten, losing many men and a number of guns.
While this infantry battle was taking place before Polotsk,
another action was under way on their left, in the open plain
which bordered the Dvina. As soon as the cannon shot gave the
signal to engage, our cavalry regiments, led by Castex's brigade,
advanced rapidly towards the enemy who, for their part, advanced
towards us.
A major encounter seemed imminent, and the good General Castex
said that although in spite of my recent injury, I had been able
to command the regiment during the fighting round Sivotschina and
Svolna, where it had been solely a matter of facing the fire of
the infantry and the guns, it would not be the same today when in
action against cavalry. During a charge I would be unable to
defend myself since, with my one arm, I could not hold my horse's
bridle and at the same time use my sabre. He therefore urged me
to remain behind on this occasion, with the reserve division of
infantry. I did not think that I should accept this well-meaning
advice, and I expressed so vehemently my wish not to be removed
from the regiment that the General gave way, but he arranged for
me to have behind me six of the best cavalrymen, led by Sergeant
Prud'homme, while at my side were four warrant officers, a
trumpeter and my orderly Fousse, one of the finest soldiers in
the regiment. Surrounded in this way, and placed in front of the
centre of a squadron, I was sufficiently protected; besides, in
an emergency, I would have dropped the reins to wield my sabre,
which hung by its sword-knot from my right wrist.