Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume IV

A council of war was held in the headquarters of the Emperor, the hut of a poor weaver, divided by a screen, which served as the only partition.184 Here he received and meditated upon the reports of his generals, together with their opinions, and learned, to his distress, that Bessières, and other good officers, reported that the position occupied by Koutousoff was unassailable.185 He resolved to judge with his own eyes on the next day, and in the meantime turned a negligent ear to the reports which informed him that the Cossacks were stealing through the woods, and insinuating themselves betwixt him and his advanced guard.

At dawning, Napoleon mounted his horse, in order to reconnoitre, and incurred in the attempt a great risk of his life or freedom. It was about daybreak, when, as attended by his staff and orderly soldiers, he crossed the little plain on the northern side of the Louja in order to gain the bridge, the level ground was suddenly filled with fugitives, in the rear of whom appeared some black masses. At first, the cries they made seemed to be those of Vive l'Empereur; but the wild hourra of the Cossacks, and the swiftness of their advance, soon announced the children of the desert. "It is the Cossacks," said Rapp, seizing the reins of the Emperor's bridle. "You must turn back." Napoleon refused to retreat, drew his sword, as did his attendants, and placed themselves on the side of the highway. Rapp's horse was wounded, and borne down by one of these lancers; but the Emperor and suite preserved their liberty by standing their ground, while the cloud of Cossacks, more intent on plunder than prisoners, passed them within lance's length, without observing the inestimable prey which was within their grasp, and threw themselves upon some carriages which were more attractive. The arrival of the cavalry of the guard cleared the plain of this desultory but venturous and pertinacious enemy; and Napoleon proceeded to cross the river and ascend the further bank, for the purpose of reconnoitring. In the meantime, the audacity of the Cossacks in their retreat, was equal to the wild character of their advance. They halted between the intervals of the French cavalry to load their pistols and carabines, perfectly secure that if pressed, their horses, at a touch of the whip which is attached to their bridle, would outstrip the exhausted chargers of the French Imperial Guard.186

When the plain was attained, Napoleon saw on the front, and barring the road to Kalouga, Koutousoff, strongly posted with upwards of 100,000 men, and on the right, Platoff and 600 °Cossacks, with artillery. To this belonged the pulk which he had just encountered, and who were returning from the flanks of his line, loaded with booty, while others seemed to meditate a similar attack. He returned to his miserable headquarters, after having finished his reconnoitring party.

RETREAT ON VEREIA

A second council of war was held, in which Buonaparte, having heard the conflicting opinions of Murat, who gave his advice for attacking Koutousoff, and of Davoust, who considered the position of the Russian general as one which, covering a long succession of defiles, might be defended inch by inch, at length found himself obliged to decide between the angry chiefs, and with a grief which seemed to deprive him of his senses for a little while, gave the unusual orders – to retreat.187 Buonaparte's own personal experience had convinced him how much, in advancing, his flanks would be exposed to the Hettman and his Cossacks, who had mustered in great force in the neighbourhood of Medyn. Other intelligence informed him that his rear had been attacked by another body of Cossacks coming from Twer, and who belonged not to Koutousoff's army, but to another Russian division under the command of Winzengerode, which was advancing from the northward to re-occupy Moscow. This showed that the communications of the French were at the enemy's mercy on the west and the north, on flank and in rear, and seems to have determined the Emperor to give at length, and most reluctantly, the orders to retreat, for the purpose of returning to the frontiers by Vereia and Wiazma, the same road by which they had advanced.

It was very seldom that Napoleon resigned the settled purpose of his own mind, either to the advice of those around him, or to any combination of opposing circumstances. He usually received any objection founded on the difficulty of executing his orders, with an evasive answer, "Ah, on ne peut pas!" which, from the sarcastic mode in which he uttered the words, plainly showed that he imputed the alleged impossibility to the imbecility of the officer who used the apology. It might have been better for Napoleon, in many instances, had he somewhat abated this pertinacity of disposition; and yet it happened, that by yielding with unwonted docility to the advice of his generals upon the present occasion, he actually retreated at the very moment when the grand Russian army were withdrawing from the position in which Davoust had pronounced them unassailable. The reason of this retrograde movement, which involved the most serious risk, and which, had Napoleon been aware of it, might have yielded him access to the most fertile and unharassed provinces of Russia, was said to be Koutousoff's fears that the French, moving from their right flank, might have marched round the Russian army by the way of Medyn. The truth seems to be, that Koutousoff, though placed in command of the grand army, in order to indulge the soldiers with a general action, was slow and cautious by nature, and rendered more so by his advanced age. He forgot, that in war, to gain brilliant results, or even to prevent great reverses, some risks must be run; and having received just praise for his practised and cautious movements from the battle of Borodino till that of Malo-Yarowslavetz, he now carried the qualities of prudence and circumspection to the extreme, and shunned a general action, or rather the hazard of a general attack from the French, when he might certainly have trusted, first, in the chance (which turned out the reality) of Buonaparte's retreat; secondly, in the courage of his troops, and the strength of his position. "But Fortune," says Tacitus, "has the chief influence on warlike events;" and she so ordered it, that both the hostile armies retired at once. So that while Buonaparte retreated towards Borowsk and Vereia, the route by which he had advanced, the Russians were leaving open before him the road to Kalouga, to gain which he had fought, and fought in vain, the bloody battle of Malo-Yarowslavetz. Favoured, however, by their immense clouds of light cavalry, the Russians learned the retrograde movement of Napoleon long before he could have any certain knowledge of theirs; and in consequence, manœuvred from their left so as to approach the points of Wiazma and Gjatz, by which the French must needs pass, if they meant to march on Smolensk.

WINZENGERODE MADE PRISONER

At Vereia, where Napoleon had his headquarters on the 27th October, he had the satisfaction to meet with Mortier, and that part of the Young Guard which had garrisoned the Kremlin. They brought with them an important prisoner, whom chance, or rather his own imprudence, had thrown into their hands. We have said incidentally, that upon the French army evacuating Moscow, Winzengerode, with a considerable body of forces, advanced upon the Twer to regain possession of the city. All was vacant and silent except where the French garrison lay, deserted and moody in the Kremlin, with a few detached outposts. Winzengerode, with a single aide-de-camp, rode imprudently forward, and both were seized by the French soldiers. The general waved a white handkerchief, and claimed the privilege of a flag of truce, alleging that he came to summon the French marshal to surrender. But Mortier refused him the privilege he claimed, observing, plausibly, that it was not the custom of general officers to summon garrisons in person.

Before leaving Moscow, the French, by the especial command of Napoleon, prepared to blow up the ancient palace of the Czars. As the Kremlin was totally useless as a fortification, even if Napoleon could have hoped ever to return to Moscow as a victor, this act of wanton mischief can only be imputed to a desire to do something personally displeasing to Alexander, because he had been found to possess a firmer character than his former friend had anticipated.188 The mode of executing this mandate, which, however, should be probably ascribed to the engineers, was a piece of additional barbarity. Aware that some of the Russians who were left behind, men of the lowest rank and habits, would crowd in to plunder the palace when the French retreated, they attached long slow-matches to the gunpowder which was stored in the vaults of the palace, and lighted them when the rear of the French column marched out. The French were but at a short distance, when the explosion took place, which laid a considerable part of the Kremlin in ruins, and destroyed at the same time, in mere wantonness, a number of wretches, whom curiosity or love of plunder had, as was anticipated, induced to crowd within the palace.189 The Russian troops poured in, destroyed the mines which had not yet exploded, and extinguished the fire which had already caught the building. The patriotic foresight of the Russian peasants was now made manifest. We have mentioned the extreme wants of the French in the desolate city. No sooner was the Russian flag hoisted, than these wants vanished, as if by magic. Eighteen hundred cars, loaded with bread, poured in from the neighbourhood, on the very day that saw Moscow re-occupied. The bread, and the mode of conveying it, had been in secret prepared by these rustic patriots.

We return to the movements of the French army.

The dreadful explosion of the Kremlin shook the ground like an earthquake, and announced to Napoleon, then on his march against Koutousoff, that his commands had been obeyed. On the next day, a bulletin announced in a triumphant tone that the Kremlin, coeval with the Russian monarchy, had existed; and that Moscow was now but an impure laystall, while "the 200,000 persons which once formed her population, wandered through the forests, subsisting on wild roots, or perishing for want of them." With yet more audacity, the same official annunciation represents the retreat of the French as an advance on the road to victory. "The army expects to be put in motion on the 24th, to gain the Dwina, and to assume a position which will place it eighty leagues nearer to St. Petersburgh, and to Wilna; a double advantage, since it will bring us nearer the mark we aim at, and the means by which it may be accomplished."190 While such splendid figments were circulated for the satisfaction of the people of Paris, the real question was, not whether the French were to approach St. Petersburgh, but by what means they were to get out of Russia with the semblance of an army remaining together.

Napoleon's spirit was observed to be soured by the result of the affair at Malo-Yarowslavetz. It was indeed an operation of the last consequence, since it compelled a broken and suffering army to retreat through a country already wasted by their own advance, and by the acts of the Russians, where the houses were burnt, the inhabitants fled, and the roads broken up, instead of taking the road by Kalouga, through a region which offered both the means of subsistence and shelter. When the advanced season of the year was considered, it might be said that the retreat upon Vereia sounded the death-knell of the French army. These melancholy considerations did not escape Buonaparte himself, though he endeavoured to disguise them from others, by asserting, in a bulletin dated from Borowsk, that the country around was extremely rich, might be compared to the best parts of France and Germany, and that the weather reminded the troops of the sun and the delicious climate of Fontainbleau.191 His temper was visibly altered. Among other modes of venting his displeasure, he bitterly upbraided his prisoner Winzengerode, who was then brought before him. – "Who are you?" he exclaimed192– "A man without a country! – You have ever been my enemy – You were in the Austrian ranks when I fought against them – I have become Austria's friend, and I find you in those of Russia – You have been a warm instigator of the war; nevertheless, you are a native of the Confederation of the Rhine – you are my subject – you are a rebel – Seize on him, gendarmes! – Let him be brought to trial!"193

WINZENGERODE

To this threat, which showed that Napoleon accounted the states of the Confederacy not as appertaining in sovereignty to the princes whose names they bore, but as the immediate subjects of France, from whom the French Emperor was entitled to expect direct fealty, Napoleon added other terms of abuse; and called Winzengerode an English hireling and incendiary, while he behaved with civility to his aide-de-camp Narishkin, a native Russian. This violence, however, had no other consequence than that of the dismissal of Winzengerode, a close prisoner, to Lithuania, to be from thence forwarded to Paris.194 The presence of a captive of rank and reputation, an aide-de-camp of the Emperor of Russia, was designed of course to give countenance to the favourable accounts, which Napoleon might find it convenient to circulate on the events of the campaign. It was not, however, Winzengerode's fortune to make this disagreeable journey. He was, as will be hereafter mentioned, released in Lithuania, when such an event was least to be hoped for.

Accounts had been received, tending to confirm the opinion that the Russian army were moving on Medyn, with the obvious purpose of intercepting the French army, or at least harassing their passage at Wiazma or at Gjatz. By the orders of Napoleon, therefore, the army pressed forward on the last named town. They marched on in three corps d'armée. Napoleon was with the first of these armies. The second was commanded by the Viceroy of Italy, Prince Eugene. The third, which was destined to act as a rear-guard, was led by Davoust, whose love of order and military discipline might be, it was hoped, some check upon the license and confusion of such a retreat. It was designed that one day's march should intervene between the movements of each of these bodies, to avoid confusion, and to facilitate the collecting subsistence; being a delay of two, or at most three days, betwixt the operations of the advanced guard and that of the rear.

It has been often asked, nor has the question ever been satisfactorily answered, why Napoleon preferred that his columns should thus creep over the same ground in succession, instead of the more combined and rapid mode of marching by three columns in front, by which he would have saved time, and increased, by the breadth of country which the march occupied, the means of collecting subsistence. The impracticability of the roads cannot be alleged, because the French army had come thither arranged in three columns, marching to the front abreast of each other, which was the reverse of their order in the retreat.

In the road, the army passed Borodino, the scene of the grand battle which exhibited so many vestiges of the French prowess, and of the loss they had sustained.195 This, the most sanguinary conflict of modern times, had been entirely without adequate advantages to the victors. The momentary possession of Moscow had annihilated every chance of an essential result by the catastrophe which followed; and the army which had been victorious at Borodino was now escaping from their conquests, surrounded by danger on every hand, and already disorganised on many points, by danger, pain, and privation. At the convent of Kolotskoi, which had been the grand hospital of the French after the battle, many of the wounded were found still alive, though thousands more had perished for want of materials necessary for surgical treatment, food of suitable quality, bandages, and the like. The survivors crawled to the door, and extended their supplicating hands to their countrymen as they passed onwards on their weary march. By Napoleon's orders, such of the patients as were able to bear being moved were placed on the suttlers' carts, while the rest were left in the convent, together with some wounded Russian prisoners, whose presence, it was hoped, might be a protection to the French.196

Several of those who had been placed in the carriages did not travel very far. The sordid wretches to whom the carts and wains, loaded with the plunder of Moscow, belonged, got rid in many cases of the additional burden imposed on them, by lagging behind the column of march in desolate places, and murdering the men intrusted to their charge. In other parts of the column, the Russian prisoners were seen lying on the road, their brains shot out by the soldiers appointed to guard them, but who took this mode of freeing themselves of the trouble. It is thus that a continued course of calamity renders men's minds selfish, ravenous, and fiendish, indifferent to what evil they inflict, because it can scarcely equal that which they endure; as divines say of the condemned spirits, that they are urged to malevolent actions against men, by a consciousness of their own state of reprobation.

GJATZ – WIAZMA

Napoleon, with his first division of the grand army, reached Gjatz197 without any other inconvenience than arose from the state of the roads, and the distresses of the soldiery. From Gjatz he advanced in two marches to Wiazma, and halted there to allow Prince Eugene and Marshal Davoust to come up, who had fallen five days' march to the rear, instead of three days only, as had been directed. On the 1st November, the Emperor again resumed his painful retreat, leaving, however, the corps of Ney at Wiazma to reinforce and relieve the rear-guard under Davoust, who, he concluded, must be worn out with the duty. He resumed with his Old Guard the road to Dorogobouje, on which town he thought it probable the Russians might be moving to cut him off, and it was most important to prevent them.

Another order of Napoleon's confirms his sense of the danger which had now begun to oppress him. He commanded the spoils of Moscow, ancient armour, cannon, and the great cross of Ivan, to be thrown into the lake of Semelin, as trophies which he was unwilling to restore, and unable to carry off.198 Some of the artillery, which the unfed horses where unable to drag forward, were also now necessarily left behind, though the circumstance was not communicated in every instance to Napoleon, who, bred in the artillery department, cherished, like many officers of that branch of service, a sort of superstitious reverence for his guns.

The Emperor, and the vanguard of his army, had hitherto passed unopposed. It was not so with the centre and rear. They were attacked, during the whole course of that march, by clouds of Cossacks, bringing with them a species of light artillery mounted on sledges, which, keeping pace with their motions, threw showers of balls among the columns of the French; while the menaced charge of these irregular cavalry frequently obliged the march to halt, that the men might form lines or squares to protect themselves. The passage of streams where the bridges were broken down, and the horses and waggons were overturned on the precipitous banks, or in the miry fords, and where drivers and horses dropped down exhausted, added to this confusion when such obstacles occurred. The two divisions, however, having as yet seen no regular forces, passed the night of the 2d November in deceitful tranquillity, within two leagues of Wiazma, where Ney was lying ready to join them.

In that fatal night, Miloradowitch, one of the boldest, most enterprising, and active of the Russian generals, and whom the French were wont to call the Russian Murat, arrived with the vanguard of the Russian regulars, supported by Platoff and many thousand Cossacks, and being the harbinger of Koutousoff, and the whole grand army of Russia.

The old Russian general, when he learned the French Emperor's plan of retiring by Gjatz and Wiazma, instantly turning his own retreat into a movement to the left, arrived by cross-roads from Malo-Yarowslavetz. The Russians now reached the point of action at daybreak, pushed through Prince Eugene's line of march, and insulated his vanguard, while the Cossacks rode like a whirlwind among the host of stragglers and followers of the army, and drove them along the plain at the lance's point. The viceroy was succoured by a regiment which Ney, though himself hardly pressed, despatched to his aid from Wiazma, and his rear-guard was disengaged by the exertions of Davoust, who marched hastily forward to extricate them. The Russian artillery, which is superior in calibre, and carries farther than the French, manœuvred with rapidity, and kept up a tremendous cannonade, to which the French had no adequate means of replying. Eugene and Davoust made a most gallant defence; yet they would not have been able to maintain their ground, had Koutousoff, as was to have been expected, either come up in person, or sent a strong detachment to support his vanguard.

The battle lasted from seven in the morning till towards evening, when Eugene and Davoust pushed through Wiazma with the remains of their divisions, pursued by and almost mingled with the Russians, whose army marched into the town at the charging step, with drums beating, and all the indications of victory. The French divisions, under cover of the night, and having passed the river (which, like the town, is called Wiazma,) established themselves in obscurity and comparative safety upon the left bank. The day had been disastrous to the French arms, though their honour remained unsullied. They had lost about 4000 men, their regiments were mouldered down to battalions, their battalions to companies, their companies to weak picquets.199

All tacticians agree, that, if Koutousoff had reinforced Miloradowitch as warmly urged by Sir Robert Wilson, or if he had forced the town of Wiazma, which his numbers might have enabled him to do, both the centre and rear divisions of Napoleon's force, and probably the troops under Ney also, must have been inevitably cut off. But the aged general confided in the approach of the Russian winter, and declined to purchase, by the blood of his countrymen, a victory of which he held himself secured by the climate. The French were so far from any place where they could procure either food or shelter; they were so hemmed in, and confined to the desolated high-roads, which every column as it passed rendered more impracticable to the rest, that he refused to gain, at the sword's point, advantages which he deemed himself sure of possessing without effort. Determined, therefore, to avoid a general battle, yet to maintain his advantages over the French by manœuvring, Koutousoff, turning a deaf ear to the remonstrances, and even threats, of those who differed in opinion from him, removed his headquarters to Krasnoi, leaving to Miloradowitch the duty of beating up the rear of the French on their retreat, by following the course of the high-road, while the Hettman Platoff, flanking the French march with his Cossacks, took advantage of every opportunity to distress them.

In the meanwhile, the viceroy received orders from Napoleon to abandon the straight road to Smolensk, which was the route of the corps of Davoust and Ney, and to move northward on Dowkhowtchina and Poreczie, to afford countenance and support to Maréchal Oudinot, now understood to be hard pressed by Witgenstein, who, as we shall presently see, had regained the superiority in the north of Russia. The viceroy, in obedience to this order, began his march on the new route which was enjoined him, by marching himself upon Zasselie, closely pursued, watched, and harassed by his usual Scythian attendants. He was compelled to leave behind him sixty-four pieces of cannon; and these, with three thousand stragglers, fell into the prompt grasp of the pursuers.

OPERATIONS OF PRINCE EUGENE

A large cloud of Cossacks, with Platoff at their head, accompanied the movements of the viceroy and his Italian army. Whoever strayed from the column was inevitably their prey. Eugene passed a night at Zasselie, without having as yet encountered any great misfortune. But in advancing from thence to Dowkhowtchina, the French had to cross the Wop, a river swelled by rains, while the passage to the ford was steep and frozen. Here the viceroy passed over his infantry with great difficulty, but was obliged to abandon twenty-three pieces of cannon and all his baggage to the Cossacks. The unhappy Italians, wetted from head to foot, were compelled to pass a miserable night in bivouac upon the other side; and many expired there, whose thoughts, when perishing so miserably, must have been on their own mild climate and delicious country. Next day, the shivering, half-naked, and persecuted column reached Dowkhowtchina, where they expected some relief; but their first welcome was from a fresh swarm of Cossacks, which rushed out from the gates with cannon. These were the advanced corps of the troops which had occupied Moscow, and were now pressing westward where their services were more necessary.