century, one, the kingdom of Poland, vanished before the nineteenth
century began. Destitute of a strong central government, the scene of
continual anarchy among the turbulent nobles, possessing no national
frontiers and no national middle class, its population being made up of
nobles, serfs, and foreigners, it lay at the mercy of the ambitious
surrounding kingdoms, by which it was finally absorbed. On three
successive occasions was the territory of the feeble nation divided
between its foes, the first partition being made in 1772, between
Russia, Prussia, and Austria; the second in 1793, between Russia and
Prussia; and the third and final in 1795, in which Russia, Prussia, and
Austria again took part, all that remained of the country being now
distributed and the ancient kingdom of Poland effaced from the map of
Europe.
Only one vigorous attempt was made to save the imperilled realm, that of
the illustrious Kosciusko, who, though he failed in his patriotic
purpose, made his name famous as the noblest of the Poles. When he
appeared at the head of its armies, Poland was in a desperate strait.
Some of its own nobles had been bought by Russian gold, Russian armies
had overrun the land, and a Prussian force was marching to their aid.
At Grodno the Russian general proudly took his seat on that throne which
he was striving to overthrow. The defenders of Poland had been
dispersed, their property confiscated, their families reduced to
poverty. The Russians, swarming through the kingdom, committed the
greatest excesses, while Warsaw, which had fallen into their hands, was
governed with arrogant barbarity. Such was the state of affairs when
some of the most patriotic of the nobles assembled and sent to
Kosciusko, asking him to put himself at their head.
As a young man this valiant Pole had aided in the war for American
independence. In 1792 he took part in the war for the defence of his
native land. But he declared that there could be no hope of success
unless the peasants were given their liberty. Hitherto they had been
treated in Poland like slaves. It was with these despised serfs that
this effort was made.
In 1794 the insurrection broke out. Kosciusko, finding that the country
was ripe for revolt against its oppressors, hastened from Italy, whither
he had retired, and appeared at Cracow, where he was hailed as the
coming deliverer of the land. The only troops in arms were a small force
of about four thousand in all, who were joined by about three hundred
peasants armed with scythes. These were soon met by an army of seven
thousand Russians, whom they put to flight after a sharp engagement.
The news of this battle stirred the Russian general in command at Warsaw
to active measures. All whom he suspected of favoring the insurrection
were arrested. The result was different from what he had expected. The
city blazed into insurrection, two thousand Russians fell before the
onslaught of the incensed patriots, and their general saved himself only
by flight.
The outbreak at Warsaw was followed by one at Vilna, the capital of
Lithuania, the Russians here being all taken prisoners. Three Polish
regiments mustered into the Russian service deserted to the army of
their compatriots, and far and wide over the country the flames of
insurrection spread.
Kosciusko rapidly increased his forces by recruiting the peasantry,
whose dress he wore and whose food he shared in. But these men
distrusted the nobles, who had so long oppressed them, while many of the
latter, eager to retain their valued prerogatives, worked against the
patriot cause, in which they were aided by King Stanislaus, who had been
subsidized by Russian gold.
To put down this effort of despair on the part of the Poles, Catharine
of Russia sent fresh armies to Poland, led by her ablest generals.
Prussians and Austrians also joined in the movement for enslavement,
Frederick William of Prussia fighting at the head of his troops against
the Polish patriot. Kosciusko had established a provisional government,
and faced his foes boldly in the field. Defeated, he fell back on
Warsaw, where he valiantly maintained himself until threatened by two
new Russian armies, whom he marched out to meet, in the hope of
preventing their junction.
The decisive battle took place at Maciejowice, in October, 1794.
Kosciusko, though pressed by superior forces, fought with the greatest
valor and desperation. His men at length, overpowered by numbers, were
in great part cut to pieces or obliged to yield, while their leader,
covered with wounds, fell into the hands of his foes. It is said that he
exclaimed, on seeing all hopes at an end, "Finis Poloniae!" In the words
of the poet Byron, "Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell."
Warsaw still held out. Here all who had escaped from the field took
refuge, occupying Praga, the eastern suburb of the city, where
twenty-six thousand Poles, with over one hundred cannon and mortars,
defended the bridges over the Vistula. Suwarrow, the greatest of the
Russian generals, was quickly at the city gates. He was weaker, both in
men and in guns, than the defenders of the city; but with his wonted
impetuosity he resolved to employ the same tactics which he had more
than once used against the Turks, and seek to carry the Polish lines at
the bayonet's point.
After a two days' cannonade, he ordered the assault at daybreak of
November 4. A desperate conflict continued during the five succeeding
hours, ending in the carrying of the trenches and the defeat of the
garrison. The Russians now poured into the suburb, where a scene of
frightful carnage began. Not only men in arms, but old men, women, and
children were ruthlessly slaughtered, the wooden houses set on fire, the
bridges broken down, and the throng of helpless people who sought to
escape into the city driven ruthlessly into the waters of the Vistula.
In this butchery not only ten thousand soldiers, but twelve thousand
citizens of every age and sex were remorselessly slain.
On the following day the city capitulated, and on the 6th the Russian
victors marched into its streets. It was, as Kosciusko had said, "the
end of Poland." The troops were disarmed, the officers were seized as
prisoners, and the feeble king was nominally raised again to the head of
the kingdom, so soon to be swept from existence. For a year Suwarrow
held a military court in Warsaw, far eclipsing the king in the splendor
of his surroundings. By the close of 1795 all was at an end. The small
remnant left of the kingdom was parted between the greedy aspirants, and
on the 1st of January, 1796, Warsaw was handed over to Prussia, to whose
share of the spoils it appertained.
In this arbitrary manner was a kingdom which had an area of nearly three
hundred thousand square miles and a population of twelve millions, and
whose history dated back to the tenth century, removed from the map of
the world, while the heavy hand of oppression fell upon all who dared to
speak or act in its behalf. One bold stroke for freedom was afterwards
made, but it ended as before, and Poland is now but a name.
_SUWARROW THE UNCONQUERABLE._
Of men born for battle, to whose ears the roar of cannon and the clash
of sabres are the only music, the smoke of conflict their native
atmosphere, Suwarrow (Suvarof, to give him his Russian name) stands
among the foremost. A little, wrinkled, stooping man, five feet four
inches in height and sickly in appearance, he was the last to whom one
would have looked for great deeds in war or mighty exploits in the
embattled field. Yet he had the soul of a hero in his diminutive frame,
and even as a boy the passion for military glory fired his heart, Caesar
and Charles XII. of Sweden (from which country his ancestors came) being
the heroes worshipped by his youthful imagination. Born in 1729, he
entered the army as a private at seventeen, but rapidly rose from the
ranks, made himself famous in the Seven Years' War and in the Polish war
of 1768-71, and from that time until death put an end to his career was
almost constantly in the field. Napoleon, against whose armies he fought
in his later days, was not more enraptured with the breath of battle
than was this war-dog of the Russian army.
Diminutive and sickly as he looked, Suwarrow was strong and hardy, and
so inured to hardship that the severity of the Russian climate failed
to affect his vigorous frame. Disdaining luxury, and ignoring comfort,
he lived like the soldiers under his command, preferring to sleep on a
truss of hay, and accepting every privation which his men might be
called on to endure. He was a man of high intelligence, a clever
linguist, and a diligent reader even when on campaign, and religiously
seems to have been very devout, being ready to kneel and pray before
every wayside image, even when the roads were deep with mud.
In his ordinary manners he carried eccentricity to an extravagant
extent, was brusque and curt in speech, often to the verge of insult,
laconic in his despatches, and--a soldier in grain--treated with
stinging sarcasm all whose lack of activity or of courage invited his
contempt. It was by this spirit that he incurred the enmity of the
Emperor Paul, when, in his half-mad thirst for change, the latter
attempted to change the native dress of the Russian soldier for the
ancient attire of Germany. His fair locks, which the Russian was used to
wash every morning, he was now bidden to bedaub with grease and flour,
while he energetically cursed the black spatterdashes which it took him
an hour to button every morning. Orders to establish these novelties
among his men were sent to Suwarrow, then in Italy with the army, the
directions being accompanied with little sticks for models of the tails
and side curls in which the soldiers' hair was to be arranged. The old
warrior's lips curled contemptuously on seeing these absurd devices, and
he growled out in his curt fashion, "Hair-powder is not gunpowder;
curls are not cannon; and tails are not bayonets."
This sarcastic utterance, which forms a sort of rhyming verse in the
Russian tongue, got abroad, and spread from mouth to mouth through the
army like a choice morsel of wit. The czar, to whose ears it came, heard
it with deep offence. Soon after Suwarrow was recalled from the army, on
another plea, and on his return to St. Petersburg was not permitted to
see the emperor's face. This injustice may have been a cause of his
death, which occurred shortly after his return, on May 18, 1800. No
courtier of the Russian court, and no diplomatist, except the English
ambassador, followed the war-worn veteran to the grave.
Suwarrow was the idol of his men, whose favorite title for him was
"Father Suvarof," and who were ready at command to follow him to the
cannon's mouth. In all his long career he never lost a battle, and only
once in his life of war acted on the defensive. With a superb faith in
his own star, the inspiration of the moment served him for counsel, and
rapidity of movement and boldness and dash in the onset brought him many
a victory where deliberation might have led to defeat.
A striking instance of this, and of his usual brusque eccentricity, took
place in 1799 in Italy, where Suwarrow was placed in command of all the
allied troops. This raising of a Russian to the supreme command excited
the jealousy of the Austrian generals, and they called a council of war
to examine his plans for the campaign. The members of the council, the
youngest first, gave their views as to the conduct of the war. Suwarrow
listened in grim silence until they had all spoken, and had turned to
him for his comment on their views. The wrinkled veteran drew to himself
a slate, and made on it two lines.
"Here, gentlemen," he said, pointing to one line, "are the French, and
here are the Russians. The latter will march against the former and beat
them." This said, he rubbed out the French line. Then, looking up at his
surprised auditors, he curtly remarked, "This is all my plan. The
council is ended."
In war he is said to have been averse to the shedding of blood, and to
have been at heart humane and merciful. Yet this hardly accords with the
story of his exploits, it being said that twenty-six thousand Turks were
killed in the storming of Ismail, while in that of Praga at Warsaw more
than twenty thousand Poles were massacred.
Such was the character of one of the men who aided to make glorious the
reign of Catharine of Russia, and whose merit she--unlike her weak son
Paul--was fully competent to appreciate. With this estimate of the
greatest soldier Russia has ever produced, and one of the ablest
generals of modern times, we may briefly describe some of the most
striking exploits of Suwarrow's career.
In 1789, during one of the interminable wars against Turkey, in which on
this occasion the Austrians took part with the Russians, the Prince of
Coburg was at the head of an Austrian force, which he was strikingly
incapable of commanding. The prince, advancing with sublime
deliberation, found himself suddenly threatened by a considerable
Turkish army. Filled with alarm at the sight of the enemy, he sent a
hasty appeal to Suwarrow to come to his aid.
The Russian general had just rejoined his army after recovering from a
wound. The news of Coburg's peril reached him at Belat, in Moldavia,
between forty and fifty miles away, and these miles of mountains,
ravines, and almost impassable wilds. Suwarrow at once broke camp, and
with his usual impetuosity led his army over its difficult route,
reaching the Austrians in less than thirty-six hours after receiving the
news.
It was five o'clock in the evening when he arrived. At eleven he sent
his plan of attack to the prince. An assault on the enemy was to be made
at two in the morning. Coburg, who had never dreamed of such rapidity of
movement and such impetuosity in action, was utterly astounded. In
complete bewilderment, he sought Suwarrow at his quarters, going there
three times without finding him. The supreme command belonged to him as
the older general, but he had the sense not to claim it, and to act as a
subordinate to his abler ally. In an hour after the advance began the
allied armies were in the Turkish camp, and the Turks, though much
outnumbering their assailants, were in full flight. All their stores, a
hundred standards, and seventy pieces of artillery fell into the hands
of the victors.
Suwarrow returned to Moldavia, and Coburg looked quietly on while the
Turks collected a new army. In less than two months he found himself
confronted by a hundred thousand men. In new alarm, he hastily sent
again to Suwarrow for aid.
In two days the Russian army had reached the Austrian camp, which the
enemy was just about to attack. The Turks had neglected to fortify their
camp before offering battle. Of this oversight the keen-eyed Russian
took instant advantage, attacked them in their unfinished trenches, and,
as before, took their camp by storm,--though after a more stubborn
defence than in the previous instance. The Turkish army was again
dispersed, immense booty was taken, and Suwarrow received for his valor
the title of a count of the Austrian empire, while the empress Catharine
gave him in reward the honorable surname of Rimniksky, from the name of
the river on which the battle had been fought.
The next great exploit of Suwarrow was performed at Ismail, a Turkish
town which Potemkin had been besieging for seven months. The prime
minister at length grew impatient at the delay, and determined on more
effective measures. Living in a luxury in his camp that contrasted
strangely with the sparse conditions of Suwarrow, Potemkin was
surrounded by courtiers and ladies, who made strenuous efforts to
furnish the great man with amusement. One of the ladies, handling a pack
of cards, from which she laughingly pretended to be able to read the
secrets of destiny, proclaimed that he would be in possession of the
town at the end of three weeks.
"You are not bad at prediction," said Potemkin, with a smile, "but I
have a method of divination far more infallible. My prediction is that I
will have the town in three days."
He at once sent orders to Suwarrow, who was at Galatz, to come and take
the town.
The obedient warrior, who seemed to be always at somebody's beck and
call, quickly appeared and surveyed the situation. His first steps
seemed to indicate that he proposed to continue the siege, the troops
being formed into a besieging army of about forty thousand men, while
the Russian fleet was ordered up to the town. But the deliberation of a
siege never accorded with Suwarrow's ardent humor. His real purpose was
to take the place by storm. He had taken Otchakof in this way the
previous year with heavy loss, and with the slaughter of twenty thousand
Turks. He now, on the 21st of September, twice summoned the city to
surrender, threatening the people with the fate of Otchakof. They
refused to yield, and the assault began at four o'clock of the following
morning.
Battalion after battalion was hurled against the walls: the slaughter
from the Turkish fire was frightful, but the stern commander hurled ever
new hosts into the pit of death, and about eight o'clock the summit of
the walls was reached. But the work was yet only begun. The city was
defended street by street, house by house. It was noon before the
Russians, fighting their way through a desperate resistance, reached the
market-place, where were gathered a body of the Tartars of the Crimea.
For two hours these fought fiercely for their lives, and after they had
all fallen the Turks kept up the conflict with equal desperation in the
streets. At length the gates were thrown open and Suwarrow sent his
cavalry into the city, who charged through the streets, cutting down all
whom they met. It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the butchery
ended, after which the city was given up for three days to the mercy of
the troops. According to the official report, the Turks lost forty-three
thousand in killed and prisoners, the Russians forty-five hundred in
all; the one estimate probably as much too large as the other was too
small.
We may conclude with the story of Suwarrow's career in Italy and
Switzerland against the armies of the French republic. The plan which
the Russian conqueror had marked out on the slate for the Austrian
generals was literally fulfilled. In less than three months he had
cleared Lombardy and Piedmont of the troops of France. He forced the
passage of the Adda against Moreau and his army, compelling the French
to abandon Milan, which he entered in triumph. His next success was at
Turin, a depot of French supplies, towards which Moreau was hastily
advancing. The Russians took the city by surprise, driving the French
garrison into the citadel, and capturing three hundred cannons and
enormous quantities of muskets, ammunition, and military stores. The
French army was saved from ruin only by the great ability of its
commander, who led it to Genoa in four days over a mountain path.
The czar Paul rewarded his victorious general with the honorable
designation of Italienski, or the Italian, and, in his grandiloquent
fashion, issued a ukase commanding all people to regard Suwarrow as the
greatest commander the world had ever known.
We cannot describe the whole course of events. Other victories were won
in Italy, but finally Suwarrow was weakened by the jealousy of the
Austrians, who withdrew their troops, and subsequently was obliged to go
to the relief of his fellow-commander, Korsakof, who, with twenty
thousand men, had imprudently allowed himself to be hemmed in by a
French army at Zurich. He finally forced his way through the enemy,
losing all his artillery and half his host.
Of this Suwarrow knew nothing, as he made his way across the Alps to the
aid of the beleaguered general. He attempted to force his way over the
St. Gothard pass, meeting with fierce opposition at every point. There
was a sharp fight at the Devil's Bridge, which the French blew up, but
failed to keep back Suwarrow and his men, who crossed the rocky gorge of
the Unerloch, dashed through the foaming Reuss, and drove the French
from their post of vantage.
At length, with his men barefoot, his provisions almost exhausted, the
Russian general reached Muotta, to find to his chagrin that Korsakof had
been defeated and put to flight. He at once began his retreat, followed
in force by Massena, who was driven off by the rear-guard. On October 1
Suwarrow reached Glarus. Here he rested till the 4th, then crossed the
Panixer Mountains through snow two feet deep to the valley of the Rhine,
which he reached on the 10th, having lost two hundred of his men and
all his beasts of burden over the precipices. Thus ended this
extraordinary march, which had cost Suwarrow all his artillery, nearly
all his horses, and a third of his men.
These losses in the Russian armies stirred the czar to immeasurable
rage. All the missing officers--who were prisoners in France--were
branded as deserters, and Suwarrow was deprived of his command,
ostensibly for his failure, but largely for the sarcasm already
mentioned. He returned home to die, having experienced what a misfortune
it is for a great man to be at the mercy of a fool in authority.
_THE RETREAT OF NAPOLEON'S GRAND ARMY._
In the spring of 1812 Napoleon reached the frontiers of Russia at the
head of the greatest army that had ever been under his command, it
embracing half a million of men. It was not an army of Frenchmen,
however, since much more than half the total force was made up of
Germans and soldiers of other nationalities. In addition to the soldiery
was a multitude of non-combatants and other incumbrances, which
Napoleon, deviating from his usual custom, allowed to follow the troops.
These were made up of useless aids to the pomp and luxury of the emperor
and his officers, and an incredible number of private vehicles, women,
servants, and others, who served but to create confusion, and to consume
the army stores, of which provision had been made for only a short
campaign.
Thus, dragging its slow length along, the army, on June 24, 1812,
crossed the Niemen River and entered upon Russian soil. From emperor to
private, all were inspired with exaggerated hopes of victory, and looked
soon to see the mighty empire of the north prostrate before the genius
of all-conquering France. Had the vision of that army, as it was to
recross the Niemen within six months, risen upon their minds, it would
have been dismissed as a nightmare of false and monstrous mien.
Onward into Russia wound the vast and hopeful mass, without a battle and
without sight of a foe. The Russians were retreating and drawing their
foes deeper and deeper into the heart of their desolate land. Battles
were not necessary; the country itself fought for Russia. Food was not
to be had from the land, which was devastated in their track. Burning
cities and villages lit up their path. The carriages and wagons, even
many of the cannon, had to be left behind. The forced marches which
Napoleon made in the hope of overtaking the Russians forced him to
abandon much of his supplies, while men and horses sank from fatigue and
hunger. The decaying carcasses of ten thousand horses already poisoned
the air.
At length Moscow was approached. Here the Russian leaders were forced by
the sentiment of the army and the people to strike one blow in defence
of their ancient capital. A desperate encounter took place at Borodino,
two days' march from the city, in which Napoleon triumphed, but at a
fearful price. Forty thousand men had fallen, of whom the wounded nearly
all died through want and neglect. When Moscow was reached, it proved to
be deserted. Napoleon had won the empty shell of a city, and was as far
as ever from the conquest of Russia.
It is not our purpose here to give the startling story of the burning of
Moscow, the sacrifice of a city to the god of war. Though this is one of
the most thrilling events in the history of Russia, it has already been
told in this series.[1] We are concerned at present solely with the
retreat of the grand army from the ashes of the Muscovite capital, the
most dreadful retreat in the annals of war.