THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN—THE BURNING OF MOSCOW—A NEW ARMY
If one draws a triangle, its base stretching along the Nieman from
Tilsit to Grodno, its apex on the Elbe, he will have a rough outline of
the “army of twenty nations” as it lay in June, 1812. Napoleon, some two
hundred and twenty-five thousand men around him, was at Kowno,
hesitating to advance, reluctant to believe that Alexander would not
make peace.
When he finally moved, it was not with the precision and swiftness which
had characterized his former campaigns. When he began to fight, it was
against new odds. He found that his enemies had been studying the
Spanish campaigns, and that they had adopted the tactics which had so
nearly ruined his armies in the Peninsula: they refused to give him a
general battle retreating constantly before him; they harassed his
separate corps with indecisive contests; they wasted the country as they
went. The people aided their soldiers as the Spaniards had done. “Tell
us only the moment, and we will set fire to our buildings,” said the
peasants.
[Illustration:
MARSHAL NEY (“LE MARECHAL NEY, DUC D’ELCHINGEN, PRINCE DE LA MOSKOWA,
PAIR DE FRANCE”).
Engraved by Tardieu, after Gérard.]
By the 12th of August, Napoleon was at Smolensk, the key of Moscow. At a
cost of twelve thousand men killed and wounded, he took the town, only
to find, instead of the well-victualled shelter he hoped, a smoking
ruin. The French army had suffered frightfully from sickness, from
scarcity of supplies, and from useless fighting on the march from the
Nieman to Smolensk. They had not had the stimulus of a great victory;
they began to feel that this steady retreat of the enemy was only a
fatal trap into which they were falling. Every consideration forbade
them to march into Russia so late in the year, yet on they went towards
Moscow, over ruined fields and through empty villages. This terrible
pursuit lasted until September 7th, when the Russians, to content their
soldiers, who were complaining loudly because they were not allowed to
engage the French, gave battle at Borodino, the battle of the Moskova,
as the French call it.
At two o’clock in the morning of this engagement, Napoleon issued one of
his stirring bulletins:
“Soldiers! Here is the battle which you have so long desired!
Henceforth the victory depends upon you; it is necessary for us. It
will give you abundance, good winter quarters, and a speedy return
to your country! Behave as you did at Austerlitz, at Friedland, at
Vitebsk, at Smolensk, and the most remote posterity will quote with
pride your conduct on this day; let it say of you: _he was at the
great battle under the walls of Moscow_.”
The French gained the battle at Borodino, at a cost of some thirty
thousand men, but they did not destroy the Russian army. Although the
Russians lost fifty thousand men, they retreated in good order. Under
the circumstances, a victory which allowed the enemy to retire in order
was of little use. It was Napoleon’s fault, the critics said; he was
inactive. But it was not sluggishness which troubled Napoleon at
Borodino. He had a new enemy—a headache. On the day of the battle he
suffered so that he was obliged to retire to a ravine to escape the icy
wind. In this sheltered spot he paced up and down all day, giving his
orders from the reports brought him.
[Illustration:
ATTENTION! THE EMPEROR HAS HIS EYE ON US.
By Raffet.]
Moscow was entered on the 15th of September. Here the French found at
last food and shelter, but only for a few hours. That night Moscow burst
into flames, set on fire by the authorities, by whom it had been
abandoned. It was three days before the fire was arrested. It would cost
Russia two hundred years of time, two hundred millions of money, to
repair the loss which she had sustained, Napoleon wrote to France.
Suffering, disorganization, pillage, followed the disaster. But Napoleon
would not retreat. He hoped to make peace. Moscow was still smoking when
he wrote a long description of the conflagration to Alexander. The
closing paragraph ran:
“I wage war against your Majesty without animosity; a note from you
before or after the last battle would have stopped my march, and I
should even have liked to sacrifice the advantage of entering
Moscow. If your Majesty retains some remains of your former
sentiments, you will take this letter in good part. At all events,
you will thank me for giving you an account of what is passing at
Moscow.”
“I will never sign a peace as long as a single foe remains on Russian
ground,” the Emperor Alexander had said when he heard that Napoleon had
crossed the Nieman. He kept his word in spite of all Napoleon’s
overtures. The French position grew worse from day to day. No food, no
fresh supplies, the cold increasing, the army disheartened, the number
of Russians around Moscow growing larger. Nothing but a retreat could
save the remnant of the French. It began on October 19th, one hundred
and fifteen thousand men leaving Moscow. They were followed by forty
thousand vehicles loaded with the sick and with what supplies they could
get hold of. The route was over the fields devastated a month before.
The Cossacks harassed them night and day, and the cruel Russian cold
dropped from the skies, cutting them down like a storm of scythes.
Before Smolensk was reached, thousands of the retreating army were dead.
[Illustration:
NAPOLEON AFTER THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN.]
Napoleon had ordered that provisions and clothing should be collected at
Smolensk. When he reached the city he found that his directions had not
been obeyed. The army, exasperated beyond endurance by this
disappointment, fell into complete and frightful disorganization, and
the rest of the retreat was like the falling back of a conquered mob.
There is no space here for the details of this terrible march and of the
frightful passage of the Beresina. The terror of the cold and starvation
wrung cries from Napoleon himself.
“Provisions, provisions, provisions,” he wrote on November 29th from the
right bank of the Beresina. “Without them there is no knowing to what
horrors this undisciplined mass will proceed.”
And again: “The army is at its last extremity. It is impossible for it
to do anything, even if it were a question of defending Paris.”
The army finally reached the Nieman. The last man over was Marshal Ney.
“Who are you?” he was asked. “The rear guard of the Grand Army,” was the
sombre reply of the noble old soldier.
Some forty thousand men crossed the river, but of these there were many
who could do nothing but crawl to the hospitals, asking for “the rooms
where people die.” It was true, as Desprez said, the Grand Army was
dead.
It was on this horrible retreat that Napoleon received word that a
curious thing had happened in Paris. A general and an abbé, both
political prisoners, had escaped, and actually had succeeded in the
preliminaries of a _coup d’état_ overturning the empire, and
substituting a provisional government.
They had carried out their scheme simply by announcing that Napoleon was
dead, and by reading a forged proclamation from the senate to the effect
that the imperial government was at an end and a new one begun. The
authorities to whom these conspirators had gone had with but little
hesitation accepted their orders. They had secured twelve hundred
soldiers, had locked up the prefect of police, and had taken possession
of the Hôtel de Ville.
The foolhardy enterprise went, it is true, only a little way, but far
enough to show Paris that the day of easy revolution had not passed, and
that an announcement of the death of Napoleon did not bring at once a
cry of “Long live the King of Rome!” The news of the Malet conspiracy
was an astonishing revelation to Napoleon himself of the instability of
French public sentiment. He saw that the support on which he had
depended most to insure his institutions, that is, an heir to his
throne, was set aside at the word of a worthless agitator. The
impression made on his generals by the news was one of consternation and
despair. The emperor read in their faces that they believed his good
fortune was waning. He decided to go to Paris as soon as possible.
On December 5th he left the army, and after a perilous journey of twelve
days reached the French capital. It took as great courage to face France
now as it had taken audacity to attempt the invasion of Russia. The
grandest army the nation had ever sent out was lying behind him dead.
His throne had tottered for an instant in sight of all France. Hereafter
he could not believe himself invincible. Already his enemies were
suggesting that since his good genius had failed him once, it might
again.
No one realized the gravity of the position as Napoleon himself, but he
met his household, his ministers, the Council of State, the Senate, with
an imperial self-confidence and a _sang froid_ which are awe-inspiring
under the circumstances. The horror of the situation of the army was not
known in Paris on his arrival, but reports came in daily until the truth
was clear to everybody. But Napoleon never lost countenance. The
explanations necessary for him to give to the Senate, to his allies, and
to his friends, had all the serenity and the plausibility of a victor—a
victor who had suffered, to be sure, but not through his own rashness or
mismanagement. The following quotation from a letter to the King of
Denmark illustrates well his public attitude towards the invasion and
the retreat from Moscow:
“The enemy were always beaten, and captured neither an eagle nor a
gun from my army. On the 7th of November the cold became intense;
all the roads were found impracticable; thirty thousand horses
perished between the 7th and the 16th. A portion of our baggage and
artillery wagons was broken and abandoned; our soldiers, little
accustomed to such weather, could not endure the cold. They wandered
from the ranks in quest of shelter for the night, and, having no
cavalry to protect them, several thousands fell into the hands of
the enemy’s light troops. General Sanson, chief of the topographic
corps, was captured by some Cossacks while he was engaged in
sketching a position. Other isolated officers shared the same fate.
My losses are severe, but the enemy cannot attribute to themselves
the honor of having inflicted them. My army has suffered greatly,
and suffers still, but this calamity will cease with the cold.”
To every one he declared that it was the Russians, not he, who had
suffered. It was their great city, not his, which was burnt; their
fields, not his, which were devastated. They did not take an eagle, did
not win a battle. It was the cold, the Cossacks, which had done the
mischief to the Grand Army; and that mischief? Why, it would be soon
repaired. “I shall be back on the Nieman in the spring.”
But the very man who in public and private calmed and reassured the
nation, was sometimes himself so overwhelmed at the thought of the
disaster which he had just witnessed, that he let escape a cry which
showed that it was only his indomitable will which was carrying him
through; that his heart was bleeding. In the midst of a glowing account
to the legislative body of his success during the invasion, he suddenly
stopped. “In a few nights everything changed. I have suffered great
losses. They would have broken my heart if I had been accessible to any
other feelings than the interest, the glory, and the future of my
people.”
[Illustration:
THEY GRUMBLED, BUT THEY FOLLOWED ALWAYS.
Raffet shows us a Napoleon worn out by the disastrous excess even of
his victories, marching under a sad, rainy sky, at the head of his
little army, which, although hopeful, decreased daily in numbers
after repeated fights—all of them victorious. The legend chosen by
the artist sums up the state of mind of these old _grognards_—always
discontented, and yet always ready, in spite of wearing fatigue and
increasing discouragements, to run even to death on a sign from
their emperor. Meissonier meditated long and earnestly before this
beautiful picture, inspired by the campaign of France, previous to
painting his immortal canvas, “1814.”—A. D.]
In the teeth of the terrible news coming daily to Paris, Napoleon began
preparations for another campaign. To every one he talked of victory as
certain. Those who argued against the enterprise he silenced
temporarily. “You should say,” he wrote Eugène, “and yourself believe,
that in the next campaign I shall drive the Russians back across the
Nieman.” With the first news of the passage of the Beresina chilling
them, the Senate voted an army of three hundred and fifty thousand men;
the allies were called upon; even the marine was obliged to turn men
over to the land force.
But something besides men was necessary. An army means muskets and
powder and sabres, clothes and boots and headgear, wagons and cannon and
caisson; and all these it was necessary to manufacture afresh. The task
was gigantic; but before the middle of April it was completed, and the
emperor was ready to join his army.
The force against which Napoleon went in 1813 was the most formidable,
in many respects, he had ever encountered. Its strength was greater. It
included Russia, England, Spain, Prussia, and Sweden, and the allies
believed Austria would soon join them. An element of this force more
powerful than its numbers was its spirit. The allied armies fought
Napoleon in 1813 as they would fight an enemy of freedom. Central Europe
had come to feel that further French interference was intolerable. The
war had become a crusade. The extent of this feeling is illustrated by
an incident in the Prussian army. In the war of 1812 Prussia was an ally
of the French, but at the end of the year General Yorck, who commanded a
Prussian division, went over to the enemy. It was a dishonorable action
from a military point of view, but his explanation that he deserted as
“a patriot acting for the welfare of his country” touched Prussia; and
though the king disavowed the act, the people applauded it.
Throughout the German states the feeling against Napoleon was bitter. A
veritable crusade had been undertaken against him by such men as Stein,
and most of the youth of the country were united in the _Tagendbund_, or
League of Virtue, which had sworn to take arms for German freedom.
When Alexander followed the French across the Nieman, announcing that he
came bringing “deliverance to Europe,” and calling on the people to
unite against the “common enemy,” he found them quick to understand and
respond.
Thus, in 1813 Napoleon did not go against kings and armies, but against
_peoples_. No one understood this better than he did himself, and he
counselled his allies that it was not against the foreign enemy alone
that they had to protect themselves. “There is one more dangerous to be
feared—the spirit of revolt and anarchy.”