killed many of our horses and made the rest unfit to ride, my
troopers all went on foot. I would have very much liked to join
them but my injury prevented this, so I took to a sledge to which
was harnessed one of my horses. This new method of transport gave
me the idea that I might by this means save the sick men, of whom
I had a considerable number. There is no dwelling in Russia so
poor that it does not have a sledge, and it was not long before I
had a hundred or so, each one drawn by a troop horse, carrying
two sick men. This method of travel seemed to General Castex to
be so convenient that he authorised me to put all my men on
sledges. The commander of the 24th did the same and so the
remains of the brigade became a sledge-borne unit.
You may think that in doing this we deprived ourselves of any
means of defence, but you would be wrong, for we were much more
mobile with the sleds, which could go anywhere, and whose shafts
held up the horses, than we would have been in the saddle of
animals which fell down all the time.
As the road was covered with abandoned muskets, each of our
Chasseurs took two of them and an ample provision of cartridges,
so that if any Cossacks dared to approach, they were met by a
volume of fire which quickly drove them off. Our troopers could
also fight on foot if need be. In the evening we formed a big
square with our sledges, in the middle of which we lit our fires.
Marshal Ney and General Maison often came to spend the night
here, where they were secure, since the only enemies present were
the Cossacks. This was undoubtedly the first time anyone had seen
a rear-guard mounted on sledges; but it was a success in the
prevailing conditions.
We continued to cover the retreat until, on the 13th of December,
we saw the Nieman once more, and Kowno (Kaunas), the last town in
Russia. It was at this spot that, five months earlier, we had
entered the empire of the Czars. How greatly had our
circumstances changed since then!... What appalling losses had we
suffered!
On entering Kowno with the rear-guard, Marshal Ney found that the
only garrison was a small battalion of Germans some 400 strong,
whom he joined to the troops which he still had in order to
defend the town for as long as possible, to give the sick and
wounded the opportunity to cross into Prussia. When he heard that
Ney had arrived, King Murat left for Gumbinnen.
On the 14th, Platov's Cossacks, followed by two battalions of
Russian infantry, mounted on sledges together with several guns,
appeared at Kovno which they attacked at a number of points. But
Marshal Ney, helped by General Gerard, held them off until
nightfall, when he took us across the frozen Nieman, and was the
last to leave Russian territory.
We were now in Prussia, an allied country!... Marshal Ney, worn
out and ill, and regarding the campaign as finished, left us and
went to Gumbinnen, where there was a gathering of all the
marshals. From that moment the army had no overall commander, and
each regiment made its own way into Prussia. The Russians, who
were at war with this country, would have been entitled to follow
us there, but satisfied with having re-conquered their territory,
and not sure whether they should present themselves to the
Prussians as friends or enemies, they decided to await
instructions from their government, and halted at the Nieman. We
took advantage of their hesitation to head for the towns of old
Prussia.
The Germans are usually humane; many of them had relatives or
friends in the regiments which had gone with us to Moscow. We
were received well enough, and I can promise you that having
slept for five months in the open, I was delighted to find myself
in a warm room and a comfortable bed; but this sudden transition
from a glacial bivouac to long-forgotten repose made me seriously
ill. Nearly all the army were affected in this way: a number of
them died, including Generals Eble and Lariboisiere, the
artillery commanders.
In spite of the adequate reception given to us, the Prussians
remembered their defeat at Jena, and the way in which Napoleon
had treated them in 1807 when he seized part of their kingdom.
Secretly they hated us and would have disarmed and captured us at
the first signal from their King. Already General York, who led
the numerous Prussian units which the Emperor had so unwisely
placed on the left wing of the Grande Armee, and who were
stationed between Tilsit and Riga, had made a pact with the
Russians and had sent back Marshal Macdonald, whom, from some
remnant of conscience, he did not dare to arrest.
The Prussians of all classes approved of General York's
treachery, and as the provinces through which the sick and
disarmed French soldiers were then passing were full of Prussian
troops, it is probable that the inhabitants would have sought to
take hold of them had it not been that they feared for their
King, who was in Berlin, in the midst of a French army commanded
by Marshal Augereau. This fear and the repudiation by the King
(the most honest man in his kingdom) of General York, who was
tried for treason and condemned to death, prevented a general
uprising against the French. We profited from this to reach the
Vistula and leave the country.
My regiment crossed the river near the fortress of Graudenz at
the same place at which we had crossed on our way to Russia. But
this time the crossing was much more dangerous because the thaw
had already begun some leagues upstream and the ice was covered
by about a foot of water and one could hear frightening crackings
which heralded a general break-up. Added to which, it was in the
middle of a dark night that I was given the order to cross the
river immediately, for the General had just been informed that
the King of Prussia had left Berlin and taken refuge in Silesia,
in the midst of a considerable armed force, and that the populace
was becoming restless and it was feared that they would rise
against us as soon as the thaw prevented us from crossing the
river. We had to get across at all costs, but this was a very
dangerous operation, for the Vistula is quite wide at Graudenz,
and there were many gaps in the ice which it was difficult to see
by the light of the fires lit on both banks.
As there was no possibility of crossing with our sledges, we
abandoned them. We led the horses and, preceded by some men armed
with poles to indicate the crevasses, we commenced the perilous
journey. We had icy water half-way up our legs, which was not
good for the sick and injured, but the physical discomfort was
nothing compared to the anxiety produced by the cracking of the
ice, which threatened, at any moment, to sink beneath our feet.
The servant of one of my officers fell into a crevasse and did
not reappear. We eventually reached the other side where we spent
the night warming ourselves in some fishermen's huts, and the
next day we witnessed a total thaw of the Vistula, which, had we
delayed our crossing for a few hours, would have made us
prisoners.
From the spot where we had crossed the Vistula, we made our way
to the little town of Sweld, where my regiment had been in
cantonment before the war, and it was there that I greeted the
year 1813. The year which had ended was certainly the hardest of
my life.
Chap. 21.
Let us now cast an eye rapidly over the reasons for the failure
of the Russian campaign.
Undoubtedly the principal one of these was Napoleon's error in
believing that he could make war in the north of Europe, before
ending that which had been going on for a long time in Spain,
where his armies were suffering serious reverses, at a time when
he was preparing to invade Russian territory. The soldiers of
French nationality, being thus spread from north to south, were
in insufficient numbers everywhere. Napoleon thought he could
supplement them by joining to their battalions those of his
allies, but this was to dilute a good wine with muddy water. The
quality of the French divisions was lowered, the allied troops
were never better than mediocre, and it was they, who, during the
retreat, sowed disorder in the Grande Armee.
A no less fatal cause of our defeat was the inadequacy, or indeed
the total lack of organisation in the occupied countries. Instead
of doing as we had done during the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena
and Friedland, and leaving behind the advancing army small bodies
of troops which, stretching back in echelon, could keep in
regular touch with one another to ensure tranquillity in our
rear, to expedite the forwarding of munitions and individual
soldiers and the departure of convoys of wounded, we unwisely
pushed all our available forces towards Moscow, so that between
that city and the Nieman, if one excepts Wilna and Smolensk,
there was not one garrison, nor storage depot, nor hospital. Two
hundred leagues of countryside were left to roving bands of
Cossacks. The result of this was that men who had recovered from
illness were unable to rejoin their units, and as there was no
system of evacuation, we had to keep all the wounded from the
battle for Moscow in the monastery of Kolotskoi for more than two
months. They were still there at the time of the retreat and were
nearly all taken prisoner, while those who felt able to follow
the army died of exhaustion and cold on the roads. Finally, the
retreating troops had no supply of stored food in a country which
produces vast amounts of grain.
This lack of small garrisons in our rear was the reason why of
the more than 100,000 prisoners taken by the French during the
campaign, not a single one left Russia, because there was no way
in which they could be passed back from hand to hand. All these
prisoners escaped with ease and made their way back to the
Russian army, which thus recovered some of its losses, while ours
increased from day to day.
The absence of interpreters also contributed to our disasters,
more than you might think. How, for example can one obtain
information about an unknown country, if one cannot exchange a
single word with the inhabitants? When, on the bank of the
Beresina, General Partouneaux mistook the road, and instead of
taking that leading to Studianka, took the one leading to General
Wittgenstein's position, he had with him a peasant from Borisoff,
who, not knowing a word of French, tried to indicate by signs
that the encampment was Russian, but, as he was not understood,
through lack of an interpreter we lost a fine division of 7 or
8000 men.
In very similar circumstances, during October, the 3rd Lancers,
taken by surprise, in spite of the advice of their guide, whom
they did not understand, lost two hundred men. Now the Emperor
had in his army some bodies of Polish cavalry, nearly all of
whose officers and most of their N.C.O.s. spoke fluent Russian;
but they were left in their regiments whereas some should have
been taken from each unit and attached to generals and colonels,
where they would have been extremely useful. I consider the
provision of interpreters an important but often neglected
element in military operations.
I have already commented on the major mistake that was made in
forming the two wings of the army from the Prussian and Austrian
contingents. The Emperor must have greatly regretted this,
firstly on learning that the Austrians had given passage to the
Russian army of Tchitchakoff, who then cut our line of retreat on
the banks of the Beresina, and secondly when told of the
treachery of General York, the head of the Prussian Corps. His
regret must have increased further during and after the retreat,
for if he had formed the two wings from French troops and had
taken to Moscow the Austrians and Prussians, the two latter,
having suffered their share of the hardships and the casualties
would have been as much enfeebled as all the other corps, while
Napoleon would have kept intact the French troops he had left on
the two wings. I would go even further and say that to weaken
Prussia and Austria Napoleon should have required from them
contingents triple or quadruple the size of those which they
contributed. It has been said, with hindsight, that neither of
the two states would have complied with such a demand, but I
disagree; the King of Prussia who had come to Dresden to beg the
Emperor to accept his son as an aide-de-camp would not have dared
to refuse, while Austria, in the hope of recovering some of the
rich provinces which Napoleon had snatched from her, would have
done everything to satisfy him. The overconfidence which Napoleon
had, in 1812, in the fidelity of those two states was his
undoing.
It is often claimed that the fire of Moscow, for which praise is
given to the courage and resolve of the Russian government and
General Rostopschine, was the principal cause of the failure of
the 1812 campaign. This assertion seems to me to be contestable.
To begin with the destruction of Moscow was not so complete that
there did not remain enough houses, palaces, churches and
barracks to accommodate the entire army, and there is evidence of
this in a report which I have seen in the hands of my friend
General Gourgaud, who was then principal aide-de-camp to the
Emperor. It was not therefore lack of shelter which forced the
French to quit Moscow. Many people think that it was the fear of
food shortage, but this is also erroneous, for reports made to
the Emperor by M. le Comte Daru, the quartermaster-general of the
army, show that even after the fire there was in the city an
immense quantity of provisions, which would have supplied the
army for six months, so it was not the prospect of starvation
which decided the Emperor to retreat. These facts would appear to
indicate that the Russian government had failed to achieve its
aim, if this was indeed the aim it was pursuing; but in reality,
its aim was quite different.
The court wished, in fact, to deliver a mortal blow to the
ancient aristocracy of the Boyars by destroying the city which
was the centre for their continual opposition. The Russian
government, although entirely despotic, has to pay much attention
to the great nobles, whose displeasure has cost several emperors
their lives. The richest and most powerful of these noblemen made
Moscow the backdrop for their intrigues, so the government, more
and more alarmed at the growth of the city, saw in the French
invasion an opportunity for its destruction. General
Rostopschine, who was one of the authors of this plan, was
entrusted with its execution, the blame for which he later laid
on the French. But the aristocracy was not taken in: it accused
the government so loudly and manifested so much discontent at the
useless burning of its palaces that the Emperor Alexander, to
avoid a personal catastrophe, was obliged not only to permit the
rebuilding of the city, but to banish Rostopschine who, in spite
of his protestations of patriotism, died in Paris, hated by the
Russian nobility.
Whatever the motives may have been for the fire of Moscow, I
think that its preservation would have been more harmful than
useful to the French, for in order to control a city inhabited by
some 300,000 citizens always ready to revolt, it would have been
necessary to take from the army, and place as a garrison in
Moscow, 50,000 men, who, when the time came to retreat, would
have been assailed by the inhabitants, whereas the fire having
driven out almost all the populace, a few patrols were enough to
ensure tranquillity.
The only influence which Moscow had on the events of 1812 was due
to the fact that Napoleon was unable to understand that Alexander
could not sue for peace without being assassinated by his
subjects, and believed that to leave the city without a treaty
would be to admit that he was not able to hold on to it. The
French Emperor insisted, therefore, on staying as long as
possible in Moscow, where he wasted more than a month waiting in
vain for a proposal of peace. This delay was fatal for it allowed
the winter to become established before the French army could go
into cantonments in Poland. Even if Moscow had been preserved
intact it would not have made any difference; the disaster arose
because the retreat was not prepared in advance and was carried
out at the wrong time. It was not difficult to forecast that it
would be very cold in Russia during the winter!... But, I repeat,
the hope of a peace misled Napoleon and was the sole cause of his
long stay in Moscow.
The losses suffered by the Grande Armee were enormous, but they
have been exaggerated. I have already said that I have seen a
situation report, covered with notes in Napoleon's hand, which
gives the figure of those who crossed the Nieman as 325,000, of
whom 155,000 were French. Reports issued in February 1813 gave
the number of French who returned across the Nieman as 60,000,
added to this figure can be that of 30,000 prisoners returned by
the Russians after the peace of 1814. Giving a total loss of
French lives of 65,000.
The loss inflicted on my regiment was, in proportion, much
smaller. At the beginning of the campaign we had 1018 men in the
ranks and we received 30 reinforcements at Polotsk, so that I
took into Russia 1048 troopers. Of this number I had 109 killed,
77 taken prisoner, 65 injured and 104 missing. This amounted to a
loss of 355 men, so that after the return of the men whom I had
sent to Warsaw, the regiment, which from the bank of the Vistula
had been sent beyond the Elbe to the principality of Dessau, had
in the saddle 693 men, all of whom had fought in the Russian
campaign.
When he saw this figure, the Emperor, who from Paris was
supervising the reorganising of his army, thought it was a
mistake, and sent the report back to me with an order to produce
a corrected version. When I returned the same figure once more,
he ordered General Sebastiani to go and inspect my regiment and
give him a nominal roll of the men present. This operation having
removed all doubt, and confirmed my report, I received a few days
later a letter from the Major-general couched in the most
flattering terms and addressed to all officers and N.C.O.s and
particularly to me, in which Prince Berthier stated that he had
been directed by the Emperor to express his Majesty's
satisfaction at the care we had taken of our men's lives, and his
praise for the conduct of all our officers and N.C.O.s.
After having had this letter read out before all the squadrons, I
had intended to keep it as a precious memento for my family, but
on further consideration, I decided that it would not be right to
deprive the regiment of a document in which was expressed the
Emperor's satisfaction with all its members, so I sent it to be
included in the regimental archive. I have frequently repented of
this, for scarcely a year had passed before the government of
Louis XVIII was substituted for that of the Emperor, and the 23rd
Chasseurs was combined with the 3rd. The archives of the two
regiments were collected together, badly cared for, and after the
total disbanding of the army in 1815, they disappeared into the
yawning gulf of the war office. I tried in vain, after the
revolution of 1830, to recover this letter, which was so
flattering to my old regiment and to me, but it could not be
found.
Chap. 22.
The year 1813 began very badly for France. The remains of our
army, returning from Russia, had scarcely crossed the Vistula and
started to reorganise,when the treachery of General York and the
troops under his command forced us to retire beyond the Elbe, and
shortly to abandon Berlin and all of Prussia, which rose against
us, helped by the units which Napoleon had imprudently left
there. The Russians speeded up their march as much as possible,
and came to join the Prussians, whose King now declared war on
the French Emperor.
Napoleon had in northern Germany no more than two divisions,
commanded, it is true, by Augereau, but consisting mainly of
conscripts. As for those French troops who had fought in Russia,
once they were well fed and no longer slept on the snow, they
recovered their strength, and could have been used oppose the
enemy; but our cavalry were almost all without horses, very few
infantrymen had kept their weapons, we had no artillery, the
majority of the soldiers had no footwear, and their uniform was
in rags. The government had employed part of the year 1812 in
making equipment of all sorts, but owing to the negligence of the
war department, then in the hands of M. Lacuee, Comte de Cessac,
no regiment received the clothing allotted to it. The conduct of
the administration in these circumstances deserves some comment.
When a regimental depot had got together, at great expense, the
numerous items required by its active battalions or squadrons,
the administration arranged with forwarding agents the transport
of the supplies as far as Mainz, which was then part of the
Empire. These goods were in no danger while crossing France to
the bank of the Rhine; however, M. de Cessac ordered a detachment
of troops to escort them as far as Mainz. There they were handed
over to foreign agents, who were supposed to forward them to
Magdeberg, Berlin, and the Vistula, without any French
supervision. This undertaking was carried out with so much bad
faith and delay that the packages containing the supplies of
clothing and footwear took six to eight months to go from Mainz
to the Vistula, a distance they should have covered in forty
days.
This had been no more than a serious inconvenience when the
French armies were in peaceful occupation of Germany and Poland,
but it became a calamity after the Russian campaign. More than
two hundred barges laden with supplies for our regiments were
ice-bound in the Bromberg canal, near Nackel, when we passed this
point in January 1813, but as there was, in this immense convoy,
no French agent, and as the Prussian bargees already considered
us as enemies, no one told us that these vessels were loaded with
goods. The next day the Prussians took possession of this huge
quantity of clothing and footwear and used it to equip several of
the regiments they sent against us. Although the result of this
was that the increasing cold killed a large number of French
soldiers, there are those who boast of our efficient
administration!
The lack of order in the French army's line of march as it went
through Prussia was due principally to the ineptitude of Murat,
who had assumed command after the departure of the Emperor, and
later to the feebleness of Prince Eugene de Beauharnais, the
Vice-Roi of Italy.
When the time came for us to re-cross the Elbe and enter the
territory of the Confederation of the Rhine, the Emperor, before
removing his troops from Poland and Prussia, wanted to facilitate
a return to the offensive by leaving strong garrisons in the
fortresses which could assure the crossing of the Vistula, the
Oder and the Elbe, such as Thorn, Stettin, Magdeberg, Danzig,
Dresden, etc.
This major decision on the part of the Emperor may be looked at
in two ways. So it has been praised by some knowledgeable
military observers and condemned by others.
The first party say that the need to provide a place of rest and
safety for the numerous sick and wounded, which the army brought
back from Russia, compelled the Emperor to occupy these
fortresses, which, in addition, could store a massive amount of
military equipment and foodstuffs. They add that these fortresses
hindered enemy movements and by investing them, the enemy reduced
the number of troops which could be actively employed against us;
and finally that if the reinforcements which Napoleon was
bringing from France and Germany enabled him to win a battle, the
possession of the forts would help to ensure a new conquest of
Prussia, which would bring us to the banks of the Vistula and
force the Russians to return to their country.