The first empire of France was buried between the Niemen and Moscow.
The funeral was attended by vultures and Cossacks.
It was on the twenty-fourth of June, 1812, that Napoleon began the
invasion of Russia. The dividing line was the River Niemen. The
inhabitants fell back before him. He had not advanced far when he
encountered a new commander, with whom he was unfamiliar. It was
Field-Marshal Nature. Marshal Nature had an army that the Old Guard
had never confronted. His herald was Frost, and his aid-de-camp was
Zero. One of his army corps was Snow. His bellowing artillery was
charged with Lithuanian tempests. Hail was his grape and shrapnel. The
Emperor of the French had never studied Marshal Nature's tactics--not
even in the Alps.
The Russian summer was as midwinter to the soldiers of France and
Spain and Italy. Some of the invading divisions could hardly advance
at all. The howling storms made impassable the ungraded roads; the
1200 guns of the Grand Army sank into the mire. Horse-life and
man-life fell and perished in the sleet of the mock-summer that raged
along the watershed between the Dwina and the Dnieper.
The Russians under Kutusoff fell back to Smolensko. There on the
sixteenth of August they fought and were defeated with a loss of
nearly twelve thousand men. The way was thus opened as far as the
Moskwa. At that place on the seventh of September Kutusoff a second
time gave battle, at the village of Borodino. This was one of the most
murderous conflicts of modern times. A thousand cannon vomited death
all day. Under the smoke a quarter of a million of men struggled like
tigers. At nightfall the French had the field. The defeated Russians
hung sullenly around the arena where they had left more than 40,000 of
their dead and wounded. The Frence losses were almost equally
appalling. "Sire," said Marshal Ney, "we would better withdraw and
reform." "_Thou_ advise a retreat, Michel?" said the marble head, as
it turned to the Bulldog of Battles.
Kutusoff abandoned Moscow. The inhabitants receded with him to the
great plains eastward. On the fifteenth of September, Napoleon entered
the ancient capital. The streets were as a necropolis. All was
silence. The conqueror took up his residence in the old palace of the
Czars. Here he would spend the winter in luxurious quarters. Here he
would extemporize theatres, and here he would issue edicts as from
Berlin and Milan. Lo, out of the Bazaar, near the Kremlin, bursts a
volume of flame! The surrounding region is lighted with the glare.
Moscow is on fire in a thousand places. The equinoctial gales fan the
flame. For five days there is the roar of universal combustion. Then
it subsides. But Moscow is a blackened ruin. Napoleon tries in vain to
open negotiations with the Czar; but Alexander and Kutusoff will not
hear. The French are left to enjoy the ashes of a burnt-up Russian
city.
Already winter was at hand. The snow was falling. The soldier of
fortune had at last found his destiny. On the nineteenth of October,
he left Moscow, and the retreat of the Grand Army began toward the
Niemen. Had the retreat been unimpeded, that army might have made its
way back to France with comparatively trifling losses. Indeed the fame
of having burnt the old capital of the Czars might have satisfied the
conqueror with his expedition. But no sooner did he recede than the
Cossacks arose on every hand, and assailed the fugitives. The soldiers
of the West and South dropped and perished by thousands along the
frozen roads. The ice-darts in their sides were sharper than Russian
bayonets. A hundred and twenty thousand men rolled back horridly
across the hostile world. The bridges of the Beresina break down under
the retreating army, and in the following spring, when the ice-gorges
go down the river, 12,000 dead Frenchmen shall be washed up from the
floods!
There is constant battle on flank and rear. All stragglers perish. The
army dwindles away. It is almost destroyed. Ney brings up the rear
guard, wasted to a handful. At the passage of the Niemen, soiled with
dirt, blackened with smoke, without insignia, with only drawn sword,
and facing backward toward the hated region, the "Bravest of the
Brave" crosses the bridge. He is the last man to save himself from the
indescribable horrors of the Campaign of Russia.
The remnants of the Grand Army dragged themselves along until they
found refuge in Königsberg. Napoleon had gone ahead toward France.
After Moscow he took a sledge, and sped away across the snow-covered
wastes of Poland, on his solitary journey to Paris. There is a
painting of this scene by the Slavic artist Kowalski, which
represents the three black horses abreast, galloping with all speed
with the Emperor's sledge across the cheerless world which he
traversed. He came to his own capital unannounced. None knew of his
arrival until the next day. At four o'clock in the morning of that
day, some one entered his office at the Tuileries, and found him with
his war-map of Europe spread out on the floor before him. He was
planning another campaign! In doing so, he could hardly forget that
the Grand Army of his glory was under the Russian snows!