NAPOLEON--(_continued_).
The Emperor, on his return to Paris, found a rupture with Austria
already imminent. That great Power, tenacious but always prudent, had
been forced to accept the Peace of Pressburg; but she never intended
permanently to submit to an arrangement that perilously weakened
the State. Meanwhile, she had been treated by Napoleon as a kind of
reluctant vassal; he had armed against her in 1806–7; she had been shut
out from the settlement of Tilsit, she had been compelled to accede to
the Continental system; and she was alarmed at the announced extension
of Russia along the verge of her Eastern provinces. She had gradually
been increasing her forces for war; a great national militia--a strange
institution in the realms of the Hapsburgs--had been created; her
armies had been remodelled on the French system, and had adopted the
French tactics; she had accepted large subsidies from the British
Government; and Stadion, a patriot, and a deadly enemy of France, had
for some time been her First Minister. The diversion of a large part
of the Grand Army from the Rhine, and the successive disasters in
Spain and Portugal, afforded her the opportunity she sought; and she
had made great preparations for a fresh struggle with France, during
the events of 1808 in Spain. Napoleon, unwilling to have two wars on
his hands, tried to induce the Czar to enforce peace, by intervening
in arms in Galicia; but Alexander eluded the demand; and, though he
pretended to threaten Austria, and even sent an army to her eastern
frontier, intended ultimately, perhaps, to act against the French, he
really maintained a strict neutrality. The French Emperor concealed
his resentment; and instantly made ready “to punish Austria” for what
he called “her perjured and shameless conduct.” His administrative
faculties were again taxed to the utmost to attain his great ends; but,
as in 1807, they proved adequate.
A considerable part of the Grand Army was recalled from Spain, and
moved to the Rhine; the French garrisons which had occupied the
Prussian fortresses were replaced by Poles, and restored to their
colours; and Italy and the Confederation of the Rhine were again
directed to yield their auxiliaries. Meanwhile conscripts were
enrolled in thousands; a levy was made from past conscriptions which
produced numbers of adult men; ingenious devices were tried to obtain
a much needed supply of inferior officers; and though the finances
of France were strained, the _matériel_ for a great war was
rapidly increased, and directed to the Rhine and thence towards the
Danube. By the early spring of 1809, Napoleon had more than 400,000
men on foot; but the Grand Army too much resembled that which had
been drawn together in 1807; though it had a great advantage in two
respects, it was not summoned to fight on the verge of the Continent,
and its inherent defects were not so apparent; and the Bavarians, who
filled a large space in its ranks, had been for centuries foes of the
Austrians. Yet Austria had had the start of Napoleon, notwithstanding
his genius and his vast resources; she was ready to strike with effect
before him; and had she struck at the end of March 1809 she might
have achieved important success. She had learned a lesson from 1800
and 1805; and her forces were now arrayed on the theatre of the war
at hand with a due regard to strategy. Her main army, nearly 200,000
strong, and under the command of the Archduke Charles, was in Bohemia,
approaching the Danube, and obsering Bavaria, known to be hostile; a
considerable force, under the Archduke John, was in the Tyrol--lost
through Austerlitz, but always loyal to the House of Hapsburg--and was
ready to make a descent on Italy; and detachments were on the frontiers
to watch the Poles and the Russians--these last were not really
feared--and to observe Istria and Dalmatia, now Italian provinces.
The Archduke Charles, therefore, was in formidable strength on what
was the principal scene of action; and the forces of Napoleon were
still much weaker, being not more than about 100,000 men, the corps of
Davoust, advanced to Ratisbon, and the Bavarians holding the course of
the Isar. The rest of the Grand Army was as yet on the Rhine, or only
near the extreme heads of the Danube; and the Archduke had an immense
opportunity. For the rest, the Emperor had assembled a large army to
defend Italy, and had given it to Eugene, son of the Empress Josephine;
but this was only a secondary force; the valley of the Danube was the
decisive point in the operations about to begin.
Napoleon was fully aware of the danger; and at this very time he
gave positive orders that, should the Austrians take the offensive,
Davoust and the Bavarians should fall back on Donauwörth, and wait
the arrival of reinforcements. These injunctions, however, were not
complied with; even now the reason is not known--the two exposed corps
retained their positions; and had the Archduke advanced from Bohemia,
he must have taken Ratisbon and overwhelmed Davoust. But he hesitated,
and lost precious days; and at last, listening to feeble counsels--at
heart he was not convinced by them--he broke up from his camps, made a
circuitous march, crossed the Danube at Lintz, and arrived on the Inn,
the ordinary line of Austrian attacks on Bavaria. He was on the Isar by
the 15th of April, at the head of about 140,000 men; he had left 40,000
behind in Bohemia; and he forced the passage in three great masses, the
Bavarians falling back, and drawing towards the Danube, midway between
Ingoldstadt and Ratisbon. Had the Archduke collected his forces and
moved rapidly, he should have still crushed Davoust, as yet, “in the
air,” and in great peril; but he kept them apart on distant lines, and
he actually detached his right wing towards Ratisbon, in the belief,
it would seem, that his Bohemian corps would join him there and cut
off Davoust. By this time, the 18th of April, Napoleon, who had left
the capital five days before, had reached Ingoldstadt upon the Danube;
and the situation of affairs was such that the ablest commander might
have felt alarm. Davoust was still at Ratisbon with 60,000 men; the
Bavarians and other German auxiliaries were around Neustadt, perhaps
50,000 strong; and a part of the corps of Lannes, in the temporary
command of Oudinot, afterwards Duke of Reggio, was with that of Masséna
in march from Augsburg, both numbering perhaps 50,000 soldiers. The
hostile armies were thus nearly equal in force; but that of the
Archduke, although divided at greater distances than it ought to have
been, was far more concentrated than the French army, which had been
almost surprised and was still out-generalled.
In this difficult position the situation was changed in an incredibly
short time by Napoleon’s skill and, it must be added, by the Archduke’s
blunders. Davoust was drawn in from Ratisbon towards the German corps;
this was a flank march with an enemy at hand, but it led only to slight
combats, and was not seriously checked or molested;[13] and Masséna and
Oudinot were pushed forward with extreme velocity to Pfaffenhoffen,
to threaten the Austrian left which, in its march from the Isar, was
round Mainburg, not far from the Danube. These movements were executed
by the 19th; and thus Napoleon’s army was well drawn together, its
right gathering on the enemy’s flank, while that of the Archduke
remained still scattered. The operations that followed recalled the
exploits of the youthful chief of the army of Italy. On the 20th, the
Emperor attacked the Austrian centre, now separated from the right near
Ratisbon, with part of the corps of Davoust and the German contingents;
he remained with the Germans during the battle--a marked instance
of military tact--and he defeated the enemy with heavy loss near
Abensberg. Meanwhile Oudinot and Masséna had reached the Austrian left,
and had forced it back in retreat towards the Isar; and this, with the
success at Abensberg, led to a complete triumph. Napoleon, leaving a
large detachment to keep back the Archduke, bore down on the retiring
enemy; and, joining Masséna, drove the Austrian left across the Isar,
utterly beaten, and pursued to the Isar by a great mass of cavalry. The
Emperor next turned against his remaining foes; the Archduke drew
in his right on his centre, and endeavoured to stand on the 22nd; but
he was struck down at Eckmühl by superior forces; and with difficulty
effected his escape on Ratisbon. By this time his lieutenant,
Bellegarde, had reached the place with the Bohemian force, but farther
resistance had become impossible; and the Archduke, with the remains
of the principal army, was compelled to cross to the northern bank of
the Danube. The shattered left wing was on the southern bank; and thus
the great army which had crossed the Isar a few days before with every
prospect of success had been cut in two, and was in eccentric retreat,
divided by a broad and impassable river.
[Illustration: Theatre of the
CAMPAIGN
of 1809.]
[Illustration: The Field of
WAGRAM]
This splendid success on the principal scene effaced the results of
French reverses on secondary parts of the theatre of war. Eugene
Beauharnais had been defeated at Sacile, and driven behind the line
of the Adige; the Tyrolese had broken out in revolt, and an Austrian
army had entered Warsaw, and overrun the adjoining region. But Napoleon
held the course of the Danube; the way to Vienna was thrown open; and
victory at the decisive point made him master of the situation for the
time. He was soon joined by the Guard, by fresh German contingents,
by Bernadotte, and a great mass of cavalry; and, having detached
Lefebvre to subdue the Tyrol, he began his second march to the Austrian
capital. The operations were not so easy and rapid as they had been
in 1805. Davoust was sent to the northern bank of the Danube, to
observe the movements of the Archduke Charles; the defeated left wing,
under the Archduke Louis, fought a desperate action against Masséna
in pursuit; it crossed the Danube by the last bridge near Krems; and
though Napoleon mastered the line of the stream, and covered his
communications with large detachments, the two Archdukes effected their
junction, and ere long had reached the great plain of the Marchfield,
which stretches down to the northern front of Vienna. The Emperor
entered the city on the 11th of May, and as he had probably 100,000
men, and the Archdukes had barely 80,000, he resolved to cross to the
northern bank of the Danube, to overwhelm his much weaker enemy, and to
finish the war in one decisive battle. But how was a river hundreds
of yards wide, of great depth, and with a powerful current, to be
traversed by a large army under the guns of an enemy still formidable
and holding the opposite bank? Napoleon’s extraordinary skill in
choosing the ground for every operation of war was not found wanting,
and his selection of the spot for the passage was perfect. Just below
Vienna, a very large island, that will be known in history by its name
of Lobau, breaks for some miles the course of the Danube; the channel
between it and the southern bank, held by the French, is profound and
broad; but it nearly touches the northern bank, and is only divided
from the Marchfeld by a narrow channel. Napoleon, screening the work by
all possible means, threw a strong bridge over the great channel, thus
connecting Lobau with the southern bank; and as the island is of ample
size, he massed into it a large part of his army, and made preparations
to secure the passage across the narrow channel by numerous bridges.
By the 20th of May the corps of Masséna, 30,000 strong, had debouched
from the island across these ways into the edge of the Marchfeld; and
it entrenched itself in the two villages of Aspern and Essling, its
chief assured that the greater part of the army would cross by the
morrow. The main bridge, however, over the great arm of the Danube--and
it will be borne in mind there was only one--was broken in the night by
the force of the current; and on the 21st the Archduke Charles attacked
Masséna with greatly superior forces. The villages were defended with
great skill and courage; but though the French succeeded in maintaining
their ground, thousands were very nearly forced into the river; and had
the Archduke struck home he must have been victorious. Great efforts
were made on both sides to renew the struggle the following day; Lannes
with his corps, and part of the Guard and the cavalry, effected the
passage during the night; and the Archduke called up all the reserves
at hand, to make a stroke for a complete triumph. A murderous battle
was fought on the 22nd; Lannes--he met a soldier’s death on the
field--made a formidable attack on the Austrian centre; and Masséna was
about to debouch from Essling, when the news arrived that the principal
bridge had broken down again, and had become impassable, and that
munitions were short for a prolonged contest. The advance of the French
was at once checked; their lines fell back behind Aspern and Essling,
and though they kept their hold on the bloodstained Marchfeld, they
suffered frightfully from the converging fire of the hostile batteries
arrayed against them. By the 23rd they had taken a position in Lobau;
and the army was so shattered that Napoleon’s marshals pronounced an
immediate retreat necessary.
Napoleon peremptorily set at nought these counsels; and, maintaining
the attitude he had held at Eylau, refused to allow his army to stir
from the island. His position, however, had become critical; the long
line of his communications with the Rhine was largely guarded by mere
auxiliaries; indignant Prussia was struggling in her chains; the
secret societies, which were to rouse Germany to arms, spread from the
North Sea to the Danube; and the French had escaped a disaster by mere
accident. Yet their chief relied on his genius and the terror of his
name, as he had relied when upon the Passarge; and the event justified
his proud self-confidence. He evidently had perceived that it was a
capital mistake to have committed his army to a single bridge across
a river of the first order; and he applied himself, with accustomed
decision and skill, to make the passage of the Danube assured, and
to enable the Grand Army, whatever its size, to issue from Lobau and
command the Marchfeld. I cannot describe the admirable works--marvels
of engineering, never, perhaps, equalled--constructed under his eye,
to carry out his purpose; his _Correspondence_ remains to attest
these monuments of his gifts as a warrior. The neighbourhood of a great
city fortunately supplied the material required for his designs; in
twenty days, three great bridges--one of boats, two on piles--spanned
the main channel, and formed causeways, completely protected, and
strong enough to bear the weight of the largest masses; and the
efforts of the enemy to destroy them, by various devices, proved
quite abortive. At the same time, Lobau was made a vast entrenched
camp, armed with numerous batteries to defy attack; it was occupied
by ever-increasing forces, as the strength of the Grand Army was
raised; and preparations were made so to bridge the small channel that
it could become, so to speak, a series of highways. Meanwhile, the
Emperor strained to the utmost his faculties to bring every available
man and horse to the scene of decisive action. Eugene, who, after the
success at Ratisbon, had followed the Archduke John from Italy, and
was approaching Hungary, was called to the Danube; so was Macdonald,
another marshal, honourably known in history as Duke of Tarentum;
Marmont, Duke of Ragusa--an unhappy name--was summoned with his corps
from the Dalmatian wilds; and while the lines of communications were
firmly held, reinforcements were sent to the Grand Army from the
divisions placed higher up the Danube. By these means the Emperor had
made the passage of the river as certain as that of a plain; and he
calculated on having about 180,000 men concentrated for the grand and
final effort.
The Archduke Charles, on the other hand, had failed to see through
Napoleon’s projects, and had not made nearly such good use of his
time, though placed in the centre of the Austrian monarchy. He seems
to have convinced himself that a great army could not issue from the
camps in Lobau, within two or even three days; and if he fortified
Aspern and Essling, he did not guard the approaches eastward, though
the island extends along these to the Marchfeld. His army, therefore,
was not prepared for an attack from Lobau, sudden and in immense force,
especially to the east of the villages; and it was spread through the
Marchfeld, some miles from the Danube, offering a vantage ground to
his terrible enemy. Nor had the Archduke, though a general-in-chief,
and having it would seem unlimited powers, strengthened his army as
much as ought to have been possible. He left a very large detachment
on the Polish frontier, where its presence could be of no avail;
and he did not insist that the Archduke John--an insubordinate and
conceited theorist--should join him with all his troops on the Danube.
The Austrian army, therefore, was certainly weaker than it might have
been on the principal point; and it had not been largely reinforced by
reserves or levies. It appears probable that it did not exceed 140,000
or 150,000 men, a force comparatively small if we bear in mind that of
the two antagonists one was at home on the Danube, the other, far from
the Rhine. In this, as in everything else, the contrast between the
commanders opposed is most striking.
All was in readiness by the first week of July, for the grand
operation of crossing the Danube. Thousands of troops, with all
the impedimenta of war, guns, trains, field hospitals, and a huge
_matériel_, had defiled over the great bridge; and on the night
of the 4th, 160,000, French, Saxons, Bavarians, Italians, Poles, and
auxiliaries from the petty German States--Napoleon’s concentration had
been made complete--were assembled in the entrenched camp of Lobau.
Demonstrations had been made to deceive the enemy, and to conceal
the real points of the passage; but the movement, though screened in
part by the darkness, was soon heard along the silent shores. In an
incredibly short time, not less than six bridges were thrown over the
small arm of the river; and the army began to cross to the northern
bank, covered by the fire of hundreds of guns in position. The
different divisions--the Emperor himself had arranged their march with
extraordinary care--were directed towards the expanse of the Marchfeld
east of the points of Aspern and Essling; and they scarcely encountered
any resistance, as this vast space had escaped the Archduke’s notice.
By the early morning of the 5th, 70,000 men had taken possession of
the far-spreading plain; the rest of the Grand Army followed in order,
and by the afternoon its extending masses held a long line from the
right at Glinzendorf, to the extreme left on the verge of the Danube,
the fortified posts of Aspern and Essling having been turned by this
movement and rendered useless. The Austrian army, though completely
surprised and out-manœuvred by Napoleon’s strategy--a masterpiece from
every point of view--had, by this time, advanced towards the enemy;
some skirmishes of little importance occurred; but an effort made
by Bernadotte against the Austrian centre, not far from Wagram, was
sharply repulsed.
The hostile armies made their bivouacs in the plain, and prepared
for the great fight of the morrow. The morning of the 6th rose on
the great arrays that extended, on either side, for miles; and it
witnessed the most far-spreading battle which had yet been fought in
the civilized world. I cannot retrace the scenes of the contest; and,
indeed, they have no features of peculiar interest. The Archduke,
certainly much inferior in numbers, had resolved, with little prudence,
to attack; and his general plan was to fall on the French right, so to
force it back as to enable his brother, the Archduke John, to arrive
on the field, and simultaneously to assail the French left in great
strength, and to endeavour to cut it off from the Danube. The effort
against the right failed; for Napoleon, aware that the Archduke John
was approaching, had placed Davoust and Oudinot, with a great body of
troops, on that wing; but the attack on the left proved formidable
in the extreme. Masséna and Bernadotte were almost driven from the
field; and the young levies and auxiliaries fled in thousands. Panic
began to spread through the Grand Army--no longer the army of Jena
and Austerlitz--and had the Archduke made the most of his success, he
might, perhaps, have achieved victory. The extension, however, of both
his wings had left his centre comparatively weak; and Napoleon was not
slow to seize the occasion. He massed the whole Italian army, together
with other contingents and the Imperial Guard, and struck a terrible
blow at the vulnerable point; and the attack was preceded by such a
fire of cannon as had never before been seen in the field. The battle,
however, continued to rage; the Austrians fought with devoted courage;
the ardour of the auxiliaries was not great; and though the pressure
was taken off the Emperor’s left, and Bernadotte and Masséna regained
ground, the Archduke in the main retained his positions. His left, at
last, was forced by a well-directed attack; Davoust and Oudinot carried
the low uplands of Wagram; and the Austrian army slowly left the
field, as the Archduke John showed no signs of appearing. The retreat,
however, was not molested. The result of the day might have been
different had the Archduke had the support of his brother; the carnage
of the battle had, indeed, been terrible; but the victors captured
few guns or prisoners; and Wagram did not approach Austerlitz. Still,
Austria had made her last effort; she submitted to a humiliating
peace; and Napoleon returned in triumph to France, though he had been
made painfully aware that the Grand Army was not the instrument of war
he had at one time wielded.
Napoleon’s genius in war shone grandly out in the memorable campaign
of 1809. The movements around Ratisbon, he has said himself, were the
most perfect of his military career; and it would be impertinence to
dispute his opinion. His army, in a position of extreme difficulty, was
extricated by a series of marches, scientific, rapid, and daring alike;
and the enemy, who had gained a marked advantage, was out-manœuvred
and completely defeated. Decision, energy, consummate skill, and
the boldness that runs risk when there is no help for it, are the
distinctive marks of these wonderful efforts; and the operations
against the Austrians, when once divided, are equal to those against
Beaulieu and Colli. The march on Vienna, though not as rapid and
decisive as in 1805, was in complete accordance with true strategy; it
was bold, and yet made thoroughly safe; and the communications with the
Rhine were made quite secure--as regards the numbers of defenders at
least--for in this respect the Emperor was never careless. After the
failure at Aspern and Essling, too, the resolution of Napoleon to hold
his ground, spite of doubting lieutenants, and a plotting Continent,
reveals the chief of supreme capacity; and the administrative powers,
the untiring energy, and the masterly art with which he drew together
every possible man to the decisive point, deserve the admiration of
all students of war. As for his choice of Lobau as the place to cross
the Danube, in the face of the enemy, it is characteristic of his all
but perfect insight; the means he employed to protect his army, and
to render the passage safe and certain, are models of conspicuous
forethought and skill; and the movement by which he turned the
position of the Archduke, caused his defences to fall, and attained
the Marchfeld, at the head of immense forces, was a most striking
exploit. Yet, in these dazzling displays of genius, one grave error
was indisputably made; the relying on a single bridge to conduct a
great army across the Danube cannot be justified; this nearly led to
a frightful disaster; and here we see, once more, that confident
arrogance and that too passionate energy which show that the faculties
of this marvellous being were not always controlled and balanced by
sound judgment.
It should be added that these prodigies of war could not have occurred
had Napoleon had an adversary worthy to cope with him. The Archduke
Charles was a learned soldier; he had studied war, and proved more than
equal to confront men like Moreau and Jourdan; but in his operations at
Ratisbon, in his indecision at Essling, in his failure to prevent the
French from crossing the Danube, in his remissness in not collecting
his forces, in the incapacity with which he allowed his enemy to issue
in to the plain of the Marchfeld,[14] we see a commander quite of the
second order; and, in truth, like all the Continental generals,[15]
he was paralyzed by terror when before Napoleon. As for the Emperor
at Wagram, his skill in the great moves of tactics was conspicuous
in his attack on the Austrian centre when weakened by the extension
of the wings; the Archduke, too, did wrong in attacking, though he
all but routed the French left; but these are not the most striking
features of this well-contested battle. What the student of war should
specially observe is that Wagram marks a notable change in the quality
of the armies which met in conflict; a change that was to be yet more
developed. The Austrians fought with heroic courage; they were animated
by a strong national feeling, seen among them, perhaps, for the first
time; they were wholly unlike the mere soldiers who had been routed
under Beaulieu and Würmser. On the other hand, the Grand Army showed
signs of weakness; except the Bavarians, the immense contingents of the
auxiliaries were half-hearted and feeble; and the young French levies
disbanded in thousands. The Austrian tactics and the formations of the
troops, had also been extremely improved, while that of the Grand Army
had changed for the worse. Conscious of the inferiority of the men in
their hands, the French commanders had tried to make up for this by
rendering their columns of attack more large and solid; and Napoleon
had begun to adopt the system of increasing the number of guns to
support his infantry. The density of the masses formed in this way--and
the skirmishers, too, were not what they had been--made them heavy
and inefficient in the shock of battle, and exposed them when engaged
to most destructive fire; and the change in the proportion of foot to
artillery was followed by evil results to both arms.
I cannot allude to the divorce of Josephine, the sacrifice of the
young child of the Cæsars, flung into Napoleon’s arms as a hostage
of war, and the further extension of the immense Empire which, in
its author’s eyes, grew in strength as he enlarged its limits. To
ordinary observers, the power of the Emperor seemed at its highest in
1810–1811; the Continent had succumbed to his omnipotent will; he had
annexed Rome, Holland, and the Hanse Towns without a word of protest
from the great German States; the Pope was a captive in gilded chains;
the material and moral forces of five-sixths of Europe had yielded to
that all controlling dominion. Yet the Empire was distinctly declining;
and the truth had been perceived by more than one statesman, and by
soldiers as different from each other as Blücher and Wellington.
Napoleon at this time had 800,000 men in arms, including all his
reserves for war; but the Grand Army had for some years resembled the
enfeebled army of Imperial Rome, filled with barbarians who hated her
yoke; the dominant race had ceased to be supreme in it; and unwilling
or lukewarm allies, nay, the forces of conquered and reluctant nations,
sustained the ill-cemented structure of conquest, itself an unnatural
and monstrous portent. While central and eastern Europe, too, seemed to
submit to bondage, Spain continued the struggle against her oppressor;
the ubiquitous insurrection had never ceased, and defied the efforts
of the Imperial Marshals; and the arms of Napoleon had received an
affront, and had suffered reverses which had amazed Europe. Masséna had
recoiled from Torres Vedras; a small British army, under an unknown
commander, had baffled the might of the whole French Empire, and
had triumphed upon the Douro and at Talavera; and the jealousies and
discords of Napoleon’s lieutenants had led to all kinds of untoward
events, and had wasted his forces throughout the Peninsula. There
was light at one point amidst the gloom which seemed to enshroud a
vanquished world; and though Germany--then a divided land, and wholly
unsuited to partisan warfare--had returned to quiescence after Wagram,
the growing indignation against the rule of France, which had already
made itself felt, was preparing the way for a universal rising.
Yet the signs that the Empire was in decay were not less apparent in
France herself, the centre of that domination of the sword. The nation,
always prone to change, had begun to get tired of a despotism opposed
to “the principles of 1789”; its appetite for glory had been more than
sated; new ideas and forces growing up within it already indicated
another coming era. The power of these tendencies had been greatly
increased by the sufferings the people were now enduring, by the
severity of the Imperial rule, by the poverty and distress it had for
some time entailed on once flourishing cities and districts. Flattering
bodies of State and satellites of power might boast that France was the
Queen of Europe; but the devouring waste of the Spanish war brought
desolation to thousands of hearths; and peace, under Napoleon, appeared
impossible. The never ceasing demands of the conscription, too,
provoked general and bitter discontent; the laws on this “blood-tax”
had been made barbarous; and the extent of the burdens imposed by
the State had become, year after year, more onerous. The Continental
system, besides, the most extravagant of Napoleon’s projects, while it
led him to aim at universal conquest, enormously lessened the resources
of France; Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Havre became half deserted, and
seethed with indignation at the Imperial rule; and the Continental war
with England destroyed French commerce. In addition, the finances had
begun to decline; the frightful results of 1791–98 became apparent in
a great falling off of youths fitted to enter the army; and, in short,
despotism had done its work of exhaustion, causing general decay.
The feeling of stability and of assured greatness which had pervaded
France at the peace of Amiens had for some time been passing away;
and, a most significant fact, though a son was born to Napoleon--heir
of world-wide grandeur--this made no change in the general sentiment.
Yet the conqueror, from the heights of his splendour, did not see the
shadows of night approaching; and though the war in Spain consumed the
flower of his armies, and he had seen at Wagram what the Grand Army
was, and the condition of France had become ominous, and Europe, he
knew, was hostile to him, he committed himself to the most gigantic
enterprise which ambition has ever, perhaps, suggested. False to
his own genius, which must have shown him that Spain had become the
principal scene of action for him, he resolved to invade and subdue
Russia.
Peace, in fact, with the great Power of the North, had, for several
years, been almost hopeless. The League of Tilsit was an impossible
compact, full of seeds of disunion and ultimate strife; and war between
France and Russia had become imminent. The Russian nobles detested the
French alliance; the trade of Russia perished under the Continental
system; the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a kind of
pledge that Poland might again be a nation, was a direct menace to
Russian ambition; and Russia could not regard with indifference the
subjection to France of three-fourths of Germany. Alexander soon
escaped from the spell of Napoleon; he secured, indeed, the spoils
flung to him; but he bitterly resented Napoleon’s conduct in having
extended the Grand Duchy, and in refusing to promise that he would
not restore Poland; and he was indignant at the recent annexations
to France. On the other hand, the Emperor had not forgotten the
lukewarmness and, perhaps, the treachery of the Czar in the contest
of 1809; he charged him with evading the Continental system; he
pretended that he was an ally of England; he treated with scorn his
solemn protests against the addition of Holland and the Hanse Towns to
the Empire. Preparations were made on both sides for war, as early as
the autumn of 1811; Alexander abandoned the Continental system; made
overtures to England, which were received; entered into negotiations
with his Ottoman foes; and began to draw together two large armies
towards the heads of the Dwina and Dnieper--the river frontiers of old
Muscovy--there to be combined with a third army from the South, when
peace had been made with the Turks. The arrangements of Napoleon for
his gigantic enterprise were, necessarily, on a much larger scale; they
were extraordinary in extent and grandeur; and they exhibit in the very
highest degree his characteristic skill in stratagem, and his great
capacity for organizing war. One of his first objects was to gain time
to collect his enormous military means, and to advance his huge arrays,
when ready for the field, by degrees even to the Russian frontier,
without opposition on the part of the enemy; and having attained this
position of vantage, and mastered the resources of Eastern Europe,
his purpose was to pour across the Niemen such forces that to resist
would be useless. To reach these ends, he kept up a show of diplomatic
professions for months, which bewildered the Czar and made him
hesitate; and, meanwhile, he secretly and swiftly combined the forces
of Western Europe for his prodigious venture. His experiences of 1806–7
made him perfectly aware of the difficulties of a task which no other
man would have dreamed of attempting; but he said, “My means are vast,
and I can devour obstacles”; and he addressed himself to the mighty
work with wonted perseverance and administrative power.
His first care was to provide for the huge armies which were to march
into the wastes of Russia; and for this purpose, as in 1806–7 the
resources of Poland, of Prussia, and even of States on the Rhine, were
placed in requisition for immense supplies; bases of operation and
magazines were formed along the tract from the Elbe to the Vistula; a
system of water-carriage, admirably planned, conducted all that was
required for armed multitudes to the Vistula and the mouths of the
Niemen; and the expedition was delayed until the summer of 1812, in
order that myriads of horses should find pasture on the long march
to the Russian frontier. Meanwhile, Napoleon collected the forces he
deemed necessary for this colossal effort. Austria was now his ally,
and Prussia a vassal; and both Powers furnished contingents to the
Imperial host, which were to join as it approached the Niemen. Bavaria,
Italy, the Confederation of the Rhine, and Holland, of course, obeyed
their master and arrayed troops in immense numbers; and unhappy Poland,
deceived yet trusting, sent tens of thousands of her brilliant horsemen
to take part in a crusade which might give her freedom. France, the
dominant Power, once more saw the Grand Army collected in strength;
but Napoleon did not, in 1812, anticipate the conscription as in 1807;
he enrolled masses of levies and reserves; but he dreaded an outburst
of hostile opinion; and he tried to lessen the strain of the war on
Frenchmen. By these various expedients 600,000 men, collected from
every part of old Europe, were arrayed in arms in the spring of 1812;
and these vast masses were slowly moved to their positions between
the Rhine and the Vistula. Napoleon set off from Paris on the 1st of
May; he left France, alarmed and discontented, behind; scarcely a
cheer greeted the departing conqueror; his very Marshals disliked the
enterprise; and even his docile Ministers and mute bodies of State were
anxious and feared some great coming danger. Another sight, however,
rose before his eyes when he entered Dresden after a rapid journey;
a humbled Continent, in the person of the Head of the Hapsburgs, of
kings, princes, dominations, and powers, bowed before the Charlemagne
of a changed world; Napoleon received such homage as was never seen
since Rome hailed her ruler as a god; and the enterprise was deemed so
assured of success that it was talked of as a mere passage of arms. The
Emperor reached the Niemen in the last week of June; and by this time
the first line of the Grand Army, numbering upwards of 420,000 men,
with 70,000 cavalry, and 1,200 guns, was extended along the Russian
frontier, from the verge of the Baltic to the Galician plains. The
sight might have turned the head of a Xerxes; but to the experienced
eye of a great master of war, it ought to have been significant of evil
omens. In that enormous army there were probably not more than 100,000
really good French troops; the rest was an assemblage of young French
levies, of Austrians and Prussians, enemies of France, of auxiliaries
who, except the Poles, had no sympathy with her cause or her chief, and
who had, for the most part, showed what they were at Wagram.
The centre of the host, led by Napoleon, with Oudinot, Ney, Davoust,
and Murat, inferior chiefs, crossed the Niemen on the 24th of June, in
the angle, entering at Kovno, the Russian frontier; the left, composed
of the corps of Macdonald and the Prussian contingent, crossed round
Tilsit; and the right, an enormous array, comprising the army of
Eugene, Poniatowski and the Poles, for the present commanded by Jerome
Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, with his auxiliaries, the two corps
of St. Cyr and Junot, and far away, Schwartzenburg with the Austrian
forces marched along the space between the centre and the heads of
the Bug. This movement, which enabled the Grand Army to issue into
Lithuania as from a salient, brought it almost within reach of the
hostile armies, which, under Barclay de Tolly, by descent a Scotchman,
and Bagration, a chief of the Muscovite nobles, had advanced from
the Dwina and Dnieper, where their sources meet, and had approached
the Niemen with no fixed purpose. The generals of the Czar, all but
surprised and out-manœuvred, fell back at all points; and Napoleon
was at Vilna, within four days having gained an immense strategic
advantage. He made a long halt of about a fortnight; this has been
condemned as a capital error, even by the cautious and far-seeing[16]
Wellington, and, as events happened, it would have been better
perhaps had he pressed, at all hazards, his offensive movement. But
his _Correspondence_ shows that, from a military point of view,
this delay may be very well justified; the Grand Army, burdened with
impedimenta of all kinds--a necessity in districts with few resources,
and filled with weak elements, was in a bad condition; the auxiliaries
and conscripts had fallen away in thousands; and time was required to
reorganize huge arrays already beginning to dissolve and break up.
[Illustration: Theatre, of the
CAMPAIGN
of 1812.]
The situation, in short, had brought the Emperor to a stand; and yet an
opportunity was given him to strike the Czar a blow more decisive than
his sword could inflict. He was in one of the capitals of ancient
Poland; he was greeted with enthusiasm once more by the conquered
race; and had he spoken the words “Poland is to be free,” the Russian
Empire would have been thrown back at once to the distant limits of old
Muscovy. But Napoleon adhered to the policy of 1806; he caressed the
Poles and enrolled their levies; but he paltered with their demands to
be made a nation; and he even intimated that he would not annul the
Partition. Meanwhile, after a few days of delay, he despatched Davoust
and part of his right wing to pursue Bagration, trying now to join his
colleague by a circuitous march; but partly owing to the difficulties
of a way through immense woodlands scarcely traversed by roads, and
to the slow movements of heavily-laden troops, and partly to disputes
between Davoust and King Jerome, the effort failed; Bagration escaped;
and he ultimately attained the Dnieper. By this time the Emperor had
formed a great plan to cut off and annihilate Barclay de Tolly, who
had dangerously exposed himself to his foe; and the project was worthy
of a great master of war. A German theorist, possibly struck by the
results of Wellington’s defence of Portugal, had persuaded the Czar to
construct a huge camp at Drissa upon the Lower Dwina, to concentrate
within it his two armies, and to offer battle behind its fortified
lines; and Barclay had reluctantly obeyed the command; Bagration,
too, drawing near him from the distant Dnieper. This strategy, it is
needless to say, had nothing in common with that of Torres Vedras; it
was really the old routine of an obsolete school; and Napoleon broke
up from Vilna on the 16th of July, hoping to surround Barclay, to
destroy him in his camp, and then to turn and overwhelm Bagration.
In all human probability he would have succeeded, had the Russian
commander stood in his lines; but Barclay saw his peril, and left them
in time; and he made a very able movement to Vitepsk, across the front
of the approaching enemy, in order to reach and join his colleague.
The Emperor pursued with his wonted energy; but nature and the defects
of the army interposed; and he attained Vitepsk too late to catch and
destroy an enemy still eluding his grasp. He was again forced to make
a long halt at Vitepsk, from the reasons which had made him halt
at Vilna; the state of the Grand Army had become alarming, and the
appalling fact was brought before the eyes of its chief, that, though
no real battle had yet been fought, 150,000 men were missing out of
the 420,000 who had begun the invasion. Such waste of war had never
been seen before; yet Napoleon still had faith in his genius; he made
a daring flank march, behind a screen of forests, in order to effect
a junction with his right; and this, he hoped, would enable him to
reach the enemy between the Dwina and Dnieper, and compel him to fight.
The movement had only partial success; a fierce encounter took place
at Smolensk; but the French army only gained ruins, and Barclay and
Bagration, having joined hands at last, disappeared into the remote
interior.
Napoleon’s manœuvres up to this time were worthy of his strategic
genius; in theory they had been almost faultless; but they had been
baffled by obstacles not to be overcome, and by the conditions of the
war and the state of the army. The middle of August had now arrived;
the Emperor was at the portals of old Russia, hundreds of miles
from his nearest base in Germany; was he to advance further into
the recesses of the East, and to brave the fate of Crassus in the
Parthian deserts? His lieutenants, to a man, entreated him to halt;
to establish himself between the Dwina and Dnieper; to call up all
available reserves; and, extending his wings on either side, to overrun
Volhynia and subdue Courland. This probably would have been done by
Turenne or Wellington; but there were military reasons against a delay,
which must have led to a winter campaign; and after long reflection,
the spoiled child of Fortune resolved to advance to Moscow, and to
find peace, after victory, in the old capital of the Czars. Yet he
did not take this momentous step inconsiderately, or without ample
precautions; he exclaimed: “I will find no Pultowa on my way”; and he
left nothing undone to render his communications secure, and to avert
every peril from the invading army. His situation, at this moment,
appeared safe; for to the left Macdonald occupied Courland, and was
besieging the important place of Riga; Oudinot had defeated the corps
of Wittgenstein, left behind by Barclay in the retreat from Drissa;
and Schwartzenberg had repulsed the army of the South, moving, under
Tormazoff, from the Pruth and the Dniester. Yet the Emperor would
“make assurance doubly sure;” he summoned Victor, with his corps,
to Smolensk; he ordered Augereau to advance towards the Niemen; he
moved up his second line to the tracts round the Oder; he organized
Lithuania under a local government, and directed the formation of
immense magazines at Smolensk, Vilna, and all the way to the Niemen.
He broke up from Smolensk, in the last week of August, at the head of
about 160,000 men, the best and most solid part of the Grand Army. The
troops had been provided with large supplies, for the Russians had
wasted the line of the retreat, even in Lithuania, without the aid of
the people, and it had been foreseen that in old Russia the peasantry
would assist in the work; and for some days the invaders moved without
distress along the vast uplands, which divide the streams that reach
the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Caspian. As soon, however, as
provisions fell short, the army began to suffer terribly in what had
been made a harried wilderness; 30,000 stragglers became missing; and
Napoleon declared, that if nothing new occurred, he would return to
Smolensk and find winter quarters. At this critical time, intelligence
arrived which caused him again to pursue his march. The Russian army,
furious at a retreat of hundreds of miles before the invaders, had
insisted on fighting a great battle; the Czar had dreaded to refuse the
demand; and Barclay had been replaced by Kutusoff, the chief who had
made his mark in 1805, and who, though approving Barclay’s conduct, had
promised to encounter the approaching enemy. On the 5th of September
1812, the horsemen of Murat came in sight of the Russians, in position
along a line extending from Borodino on their right to the wood and
village of Outitza on their left, their front covered by redoubts and
field works. Both armies spent the following day in preparation for the
conflict at hand, and as light rose on the morning of the 7th, Napoleon
exclaimed to his staff of Marshals: “It was time; but there is the
Sun of Austerlitz!” The armies opposed were about equal in numbers,
130,000 to 140,000 men; and for some time the course of the battle went
rapidly and decidedly on the side of the French. Napoleon, with the eye
of a master, had seized the weak point of his adversary, and assailed
his left; the redoubts and other defences were stormed and captured,
and Kutusoff, who had unskilfully crowded his right with masses of
troops that could hardly move, was in extreme peril. Had the Emperor
at this crisis sent part of his reserve to complete the defeat of his
foe, he must have won the battle, but he refused to believe in such
rapid success; he was not as active as was his wont on the field, and
a change soon came in the tide of Fortune. The Russians, after a great
effort, retook the redoubts; Kutusoff detached troops by degrees from
his right, and the battle raged furiously for several hours in which
each side fought with heroic courage. At last the Russian left was
again broken; once more the French stormed the fortified works, and,
though a fine charge was made by the Russian cavalry, the defeated army
began to fall back. Napoleon was implored to launch the Guard, at this
decisive moment, against the enemy; but he remained inactive, and would
not employ it; and the battle closed with a frightful duel of guns, in
which the Russians were literally slain in thousands. The struggle was
the bloodiest ever seen in war; the Russians lost nearly 50,000 men,
the French probably 80,000; and though the beaten army drew off from
the field, Borodino was only a greater Eylau.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON WATCHING THE BURNING OF MOSCOW FROM THE
PETROVSKI PALACE.]
Napoleon was ill on this terrible day; and it has been supposed that
his powerful frame showed on this occasion, for the first time, the
symptoms of a disease that was to prove mortal. His hesitation,
however, to use his reserves and the Guard has been explained by
himself: “I will not,” he said, “throw away my best protection” at
an “immense distance from its nearest supports”; but this fact alone
condemns the whole enterprise. On the 14th of September 1812, the Grand
Army beheld the temples and domes of Moscow rising from the surrounding
plains; it had soon filled an almost deserted city; and the Conqueror,
at the summit, as he dreamed, of his unequalled fortunes--his eagles
were on the Niemen, the Elbe, and the Tagus--imagined that Alexander
would sue for peace, as he had sued for it after the rout of Friedland.
Before many hours the capital, self-destroyed, was a hurricane of
devouring flame--a sinister monument of internecine war--and the
victorious army had to establish itself in a desolate expanse of
charred ruins, spreading far into a wasted country. Yet Napoleon
clung to the wreck of Moscow; he believed that the enemy would be
forced to treat; he slaked the pride of his still exulting soldiers by
grand reviews and exhibitions of their power; and, as supplies were
found in abundance in underground recesses, the army retained its
order and discipline. Weeks, nevertheless, ebbed away and the Czar
made no sign. Meantime Kutusoff had rallied his defeated army, had
distributed it in a series of camps, some distance from Moscow, on the
flank of his foe; and while the French cavalry and artillery became
rapidly feeble--there was no suitable food for the horses--thousands
of recruits, and especially a host of Cossacks, the Bedouins of the
deserts of the North, assembled to defend “Holy Russia” to the death.
At this crisis--always in this consistent--the Emperor refused to adopt
a course which must have compelled Alexander to yield. He would not
listen to the idea of proclaiming the freedom of the enormous masses
of serfs in the Muscovite Empire; and, rejecting even now the notion
of retreat, he formed vast designs for a march on St. Petersburg, or a
descent into Southern Russia to find winter quarters. His lieutenants,
however, condemned schemes strategically grand, but perhaps impossible.
He did not silence them with his wonted authority in the critical
position in which they all stood, and at last, in the middle of
October, he consented to retreat, the delays which had already
occurred having no doubt been largely due to the guile of Kutusoff,
who, anticipating the future with sagacious forethought, feigned
negotiations to deceive and detain his enemy. The retrograde movement
began on the 19th of October; and the Grand Army, as it defiled out
of Moscow, presented a strange and ominous aspect. It was still about
100,000 strong; the infantry were in a tolerable state, but the cavalry
and horse artillery were few and enfeebled; the proportion of guns
was far too great, and the divisions, bearing with them an enormous
booty, and dragging a huge _matériel_ and _impedimenta_,
were incapable of making an energetic movement. Napoleon endeavoured
to steal a march on Kutusoff, still on his flank, but at a wide
distance, and to retreat towards Kalouga, to the south-west of Moscow,
through a fertile region not yet destroyed; and probably he would have
attained his object had he had an efficient and active army. But his
enemy forestalled him at Malo-Yaroslavetz; a murderous and indecisive
battle followed; and Napoleon--it was the first council of war he ever
summoned--yielded to his Marshals, and abandoned the attempt to break
through and reach Kalouga, a decision fraught with momentous results.
The French army was now forced back on the line by which it had
advanced to Moscow, but it had sufficient provisions for some days; the
climate as yet was not threatening; the Russians cautiously kept aloof,
and the still hopeful soldiery believed they would reach Smolensk and
good quarters in ten or twelve forced marches. Ere long, however, the
supplies fell short; the army, passing through a ruined country, was
scarcely able to procure the means of life, however widely it spread
to pillage; men began to disband and straggle in thousands, and want
hastened the destruction of all that gives power to armed men. Early
in November, the icy hand of winter fell suddenly on the host already
breaking up; horses died in multitudes in a single night; guns, trains,
carriages were lost and abandoned; and the army became a shattered
horde without resources, military strength, or discipline. Kutusoff,
who had steadily followed the retreat, saw that the expected time had
come; swarms of his light horsemen hung on the rear of the French,
cutting off the wounded, and making numerous prisoners; and attacks,
hesitating at first, but growing formidable, were made on the exposed
flanks of the retreating masses, now almost wholly without the help of
cavalry. The perishing army reached Smolensk by the middle of November;
it had dwindled from 100,000 soldiers to 40,000 worn out fugitives,
deprived of the greater part of their guns and _matériel_; and it
was soon discovered that the the long-expected haven could not afford
refuge even for some days. The magazines, which Napoleon had commanded
to be made, were not furnished with nearly sufficient supplies; they
were not properly secured or guarded, and the famishing soldiery
recklessly wasted and plundered the scanty resources they had, for
subordination and military obedience had been almost lost.
At Smolensk, Napoleon received intelligence more appalling than ever
had reached a commander. Victor and his corps had come up to Smolensk,
and had thrown reinforcements into the town, but he had left under the
stress of the gravest peril. Wittgenstein, whose army had been largely
increased, had eluded Macdonald far away in Courland, and had defeated
Oudinot, very inferior in force; and Victor had marched to assist his
colleague. The two Marshals, however, could not shake off their foe;
Wittgenstein was advancing on the Upper Dwina, at the head of about
45,000 men; and the left wing, therefore, of the Grand Army, once
apparently secure, was in daily growing danger. Meantime, Tormazoff
had been joined by Tchitchakoff, an admiral, with a fresh army from
the south. The Saxon auxiliaries had been defeated; Schwartzenberg,
at a hint given from Vienna, had fallen back before the approaching
enemy; and Napoleon’s right wing was left uncovered and threatened by
nearly 50,000 men. Kutusoff was already close to Smolensk; what if he
continued his ceaseless attacks, while the hostile forces, converging
from the rear, should drive in the already broken wings, and should
close on the rear of the army from Moscow? Mack and Mélas were never
in such a woeful plight, and Napoleon at once broke up from Smolensk,
to make a great effort to avert destruction. He had not been equal to
himself since he had left Moscow; whether illness had impaired his
great faculties, or, more probably, because he had no experience of
defeat; and, underrating the real force and the skill of Kutusoff, he
sent off his army, strengthened in some degree, in separate masses,
that scarcely supported each other. The Russian chief seized the
occasion, and became more bold. He endeavoured to cut off a large part
of the retreating forces, and though the effort failed, the French had
to run the gauntlet of enemies ever gathering on their flanks and their
rear, and slaying, capturing, and destroying thousands. The horrors of
the retreat to Smolensk were surpassed; the dissolving masses, which
had been 60,000 strong when they left the place, were but 20,000; and
the heroism of Ney, who covered the rear, was the one gleam of light
in a long night of darkness. Victor and Oudinot had now drawn close
to Napoleon, but Kutusoff, Tchitchakoff, and Wittgenstein were at
hand; and the three French armies, 70,000 fugitives in the last days
of November, found themselves arrested by the broad and half-frozen
Beresina, while the enemy, fully 120,000 strong, was gathering on
all sides to prevent the retreat. The situation seemed utterly
hopeless, but Napoleon’s genius suddenly revived; and he extricated
himself from the jaws of destruction by one of the finest efforts he
ever made in his career. Deceiving his adversaries by feints of all
kinds--he actually drove a huge body of stragglers to the wrong place
to conceal his purpose--he threw two bridges over the wintry stream;
the soldiers who could move and keep together succeeded in crossing
under the Russian batteries; thousands perished, indeed, but the army
was saved; though Wellington has observed, with strict truth, that had
the Russian commanders struck home, it must have been destroyed as a
military force. I shall not dwell on the closing scenes of the retreat:
the wrecks of Moscow, and the corps of Victor and Oudinot, were about
50,000 men when the Beresina was passed; the enemy had abandoned the
pursuit; and yet these bodies shrunk to about 30,000 in not more than
five or six marches. At Smorgoni Napoleon left his army, in order,
he told the Marshals, to awaken France; political considerations
plead for the act, but it would not have been done by Turenne or
Frederick; and, with other instances, it shows, I think, that this
supreme military genius, matchless in success, was not equally great
in extreme adversity. After the Emperor’s departure, the diminishing
arrays toiled hopelessly through the Lithuanian wastes; each day very
many hundreds dropped off; Murat, placed in command, all but lost his
head; reinforcements caught the contagion of despair, and the armed
multitude completely broke up. The frightful scenes of demoralization
and terror witnessed at Smolensk recurred at Vilna. Great magazines had
been collected there, but they were sacked and destroyed by the mobs
which attacked them; and the French fled to the Niemen in petty knots
and bands, and at last sought refuge behind the Vistula. Such a tragedy
of war had never been seen since the immense host of the Assyrian
tyrant perished through the inscrutable will of Omnipotence. More than
half a million of soldiers, including reserves, had crossed the Niemen
a few months before; 50,000 did not recross the stream, and the cavalry
and artillery were almost destroyed. The losses of the Russians were
also terrible; but bearing in mind that they were at home, and that
numbers of the disbanded and wounded rejoined their colours, they were
ultimately, perhaps, not more than 120,000 men.
The causes of this immense disaster, the prelude to the fall of the
French Empire, have been examined by many writers. We may dismiss
the pretence that “it was all the cold.” This equally affected both
armies, and it weakened the Russians quite as much as the French. The
conflagration of Moscow no doubt contributed largely to the events that
followed. The Grand Army but for the fire, might have found winter
quarters in a rich capital; but we can hardly agree with Napoleon’s
phrase: “I would have emerged like a ship from the ice in spring”; his
cavalry and artillery would have been ruined, for the horses had no
hay, and would have had insufficient provender. The chief causes of the
catastrophe are, I think, two: the Grand Army was the worst instrument
of war, which Napoleon had hitherto had in his hands; it was feeble
despite its enormous size; more than half the soldiers were bad or
unwilling; and it was incapable of great and rapid efforts, especially
in a theatre of war like Russia. The paramount cause, however, beyond
dispute, was that the grand offensive strategy of the French Emperor
was all but impossible in such a campaign. The army, unable to find
resources on the line of march, was obliged either to carry large
supplies with it or to scatter over the country to obtain subsistence;
in either case, daring and decisive movements were frustrated or had
few results; and, curiously enough, the very expedients Napoleon
adopted to support his troops, great magazines at a variety of
points, so encumbered them that they baffled his efforts. As for the
Emperor, his conduct in the campaign has never yet, perhaps, had an
impartial critic. His operations at the beginning of the war bear
the ineffaceable stamp of his powers: they were masterly, perfectly
conceived, and brilliant; and had he commanded the army of Austerlitz,
he might have separated Bagration and Barclay, and perhaps won a Jena,
before he reached Smolensk. It is wholly untrue besides, that he
plunged into the depths of old Muscovy without forethought; he spared
no pains to make his bases secure, and to protect his communications
in every way; and his great faculties were seen in perfection in his
escape on the Beresina from a host of enemies. Undoubtedly, however,
he may have been too cautious in husbanding his reserves at Borodino;
he certainly delayed too long at Moscow; he ought not to have recoiled
at Malo-Yaroslavetz; he should not have divided his columns when he
left Smolensk; he ought never to have given Murat the command of his
army. All these, however, were mere mistakes, and every commander must
sometimes go wrong; but what really was most to blame in him was his
inactivity during a great part of the retreat, and his abandonment of
his troops at Smorgoni. This indicates a defect in this great master;
there were vulnerable points in the Achilles of war, and Napoleon
never was in the hour of misfortune the perfect chief he was in the
hour of triumph. Still, his capital error in the campaign was that
the enterprise, as he conducted it, was beyond his powers: he defied
space and Nature when he advanced to Moscow, and he paid the penalty in
terrific ruin. The result might have been different had his operations
been more methodical and more prudent; and here we see, again, how
imagination and pride occasionally mastered his better judgment. As
regards the Russian commanders, their first movements were timid,
aimless, and yet presumptuous; they ought not to have approached the
frontier; they should have kept away from the camp of Drissa; they
ought not to have fought at Borodino at all, a battle, besides, which
they directly badly; and if they imitated Wellington in the retreat
from the Dwina, the imitation was poor and unskilful. Barclay, however,
showed resource in the march to Smolensk; and though Kutusoff probably
could have done more than he did, his choice of a position on the
Emperor’s flank, and his unceasing attacks on the retreating enemy, are
good illustrations of the military art. Nevertheless, the fame of the
Russian chiefs, due to the results of the war of 1812, has diminished
with the progress of time; and none of them can rank as truly great
captains. The most conspicuous fact on the victorious side is the
stern endurance of the Russian soldiery, and the resolution shown
by the Czar and the nation; thus patriotism in Spain and in Muscovy
baffled Napoleon. Two of the most striking incidents of the war, as
a whole, are Napoleon’s refusal to set the Poles free, and even at
Moscow to emancipate the serfs; in his hatred of all that is national,
liberal, popular--of what he called the “ideology of the Rights of
Man”--he would not adopt measures that would have disabled his foe, and
certainly would have saved the Grand Army.