The Memoirs of General Baron de Marbot Part 16

It would take too long to detail all the disasters which befell the Prussian army; it is enough to say that of those troops who marched to attack the French, not a battalion escaped; they were all captured before the end of the month. The fortresses of Torgau, Erfurt and Wittemburg opened their gates to the victors who, having crossed the Elbe at several points--Augereau's corps crossing near Dessau--headed for Berlin.

Napoleon stopped at Potsdam, where he visited the tomb of Frederick the Great; then he went to Berlin where, contrary to his usual practice, he wished to make a triumphal entry. Marshal Davout's corps headed the procession; an honour to which it was ent.i.tled as it had done more fighting than the others. Then came Augereau's corps and then the guard.

Chap. 31.

On my return to Berlin which, when I had left it not long ago, had been so brilliant, I could not help having some sad reflections.

The populace, then so self-confident, was now gloomy, downcast, and much afflicted, for the Prussians are very patriotic: they felt humiliated by the defeat of their army and the occupation of their country by the French; besides which almost every family had to mourn a relative or friend killed or captured in battle. I had every sympathy with their feelings; but I must confess that I experienced quite a different sentiment when I saw, entering Berlin as prisoners of war, walking sadly, dismounted and disarmed, the regiment of the so-called n.o.ble Gendarmes; those same arrogant young officers who had so insolently come to sharpen their sabres on the steps of the French emba.s.sy!....Nothing could depict their shame and abas.e.m.e.nt at finding themselves defeated by those same Frenchmen whom they had boasted they would put to flight by their mere presence. They had asked that they might go round Berlin without entering it, to avoid the painful experience of filing as prisoners through the town where they were so well known and where the inhabitants had witnessed their bragging; but this is precisely why the Emperor ordered them to pa.s.s between two lines of French soldiers, who directed them down the road in which stood the French emba.s.sy. The inhabitants of Berlin did not disapprove of this little act of revenge, since they greatly disliked the n.o.ble Gendarmes whom they accused of having pushed the king into the war.

Marshal Augereau was billeted outside the town, in the chateau of Bellevue, which belonged to Prince Ferdinand, the only one of Frederick the Great's brothers who was still living. This venerable old man, the father of Prince Louis who was recently killed at Saalefeld, was afflicted by grief made even more bitter by the fact that, against the opinion of all the court and also that of the son whom he mourned, he had strongly opposed the war, and had predicted the misfortunes which it would bring upon Prussia. Marshal Augereau thought it his duty to visit the prince, who had withdrawn to a dwelling in the town. He was received most politely; the unhappy father told the marshal that he had learned that his young son, Prince Auguste, the only one left to him, was at the town gate in a column of prisoners, and that he longed to embrace him before he was sent off to France. Since Prince Ferdinand's great age prevented him from going to look for his son, the marshal, sure that Napoleon would not object, told me to mount my horse right away, to go and find Prince Auguste, and to bring him back. Which I did.

The arrival of the young prince gave rise to the most moving scene. His elderly parents could not stop embracing this son, who recalled to them the loss of the other. To console them as much as lay within his power, the good marshal went to the Emperor's quarters and came back with authority for the young prince to remain, on parole, in the bosom of his family. A favour for which Prince Ferdinand was infinitely grateful.

The victory at Jena had had the most profound effect.

Complete demoralisation had gripped not only the troops in the field, but the garrisons of the fortresses. Magdeburg surrendered without making any attempt at resistance; Spandau did the same; Stettin opened its gates to a division of cavalry, and the governor of Custrin sent boats across the Oder to fetch the French troops; who without this help would not have been able to take the place without several months of siege. Every day one heard of the surrender of some unit of the army or the capitulation of some fortress. The faulty organisation of the Prussian army became more evident than ever; the foreigners, in particular those who had been enlisted against their will, took the occasion to recover their liberty, and deserted in droves, or stayed behind to give themselves up to the French.

To the conquest of the Prussians, Napoleon added the confiscation of the states of the Elector of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, whose duplicity had earned him this punishment. This prince, who had been requested some time before the war to declare himself a supporter of either France or Prussia, lulled both parties with promises, with the intention of coming down on the side of the victor. An avaricious sovereign, the Elector had ama.s.sed a great fortune by selling his own people to the English, who used them to fight against the Americans in the War of Independence, in which many of them perished. Careless of his people's welfare, he had offered to join his troops to the French force on condition that the Emperor would cede to him the French American states. So no one was very sorry for the Elector, whose precipitous departure occasioned an event which is still not generally known.

Compelled to leave Hesse in a hurry, to take refuge in England, the Elector, who was regarded as one of the richest people in Europe, was unable to take with him all his wealth. So he sent for a Jew from Frankfurt by the name of Rothschild, a small-time banker and not well known, but respected for the scrupulous devotion with which he practised his religion: and it was this that decided the Elector to confide to his care some fifteen million in specie. The interest earned on this money was to belong to the banker, who was obliged to return only the capital.

When the palace of Ca.s.sel was occupied by our troops, agents of the French treasury seized a considerable quant.i.ty of valuables, mainly pictures, but did not find any money. It seemed impossible, however, that the Elector, in his hurried flight, had been able to take with him all his immense fortune. Now, as according to what are called the laws of war, the monies found in an enemy country belong to the victor, one wished to find out what had become of the treasure of Ca.s.sel. Information gathered on the subject disclosed that, before his departure, the Elector had spent a whole day with the Jew Rothschild. An imperial commission went to the latter's house, where his account books and his strong-boxes were minutely examined; but in vain, for no trace could be found of a deposit made by the Elector.

Threats and intimidation produced no result, so the commission, convinced that no material interest would persuade a man so religious to perjure himself, wished to put him on oath. This he refused to accept. His arrest was considered but the Emperor was opposed to this act of violence because he thought it would be useless. Resort was then had to less honourable methods; it was proposed to the banker that he might retain half of the treasure if he would deliver the other half to the French administration; they would then give him a receipt for the full amount, accompanied by an order of seizure, proving that he had given way only to force and was thus s.h.i.+elded from any claim for rest.i.tution; but the upright Jew rejected this suggestion, and, tired of the struggle, they left him alone.

So the fifteen million remained in the hands of Rothschild from 1806 to the fall of the empire in 1814. Then, when the Elector had returned to his state, the Frankfurt banker handed over to him the exact sum which he had deposited. You may imagine how much interest might be earned by the sum of fifteen millions left in the hands of a Jewish Frankfurt banker for a period of eight years! It is from this time that dates the opulence of the House of the Brothers Rothschild, who owe to the probity of their founder the high financial standing which they enjoy today.

The Emperor, who was staying in the palace in Berlin, every day pa.s.sed in revue the troops who arrived in succession in the town, to march from there to the Oder in pursuit of the enemy. It was while he was in Berlin that he performed a well known act of magnanimity in pardoning, for the Princess of Hatzfeld, her husband, who had used his position as burgomaster of Berlin to give the Prussian generals information about the movement of French troops; an act of espionage punishable by death. The generosity displayed by the Emperor on this occasion had a very good effect on the feelings of the Prussians.

During our stay in Berlin, I was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of my brother Adolphe, who, on learning of the fresh outbreak of hostilities on the continent of Europe had asked for and obtained from General Decaen, who commanded the French troops in India, permission to return to France, where he joined the Grande Armee. He was offered a position by General Lefebvre, but, mistakenly, in my opinion, he chose to serve as a supernumerary on the staff of Marshal Augereau, of which I was a member, a move which did neither of us any good.

I had also in Berlin another unexpected encounter. I was walking one evening with some friends along the Boulevard de Tilleuls, when I saw coming towards me a group of sous-officiers of the 1st Hussars. One of them broke away and ran to fall on my neck.

It was my former tutor, the elder Pertelay who, with tears of joy cried "Te voila, mon pet.i.t!" The officers with whom I was, were at first astonished to see a sergeant-major so familiar with an officer; but their surprise vanished when I told them of my former relations with this old soldier, who, putting his arm round me, said to his companions, "It is I who made him what you now see before you!" And the good fellow was really convinced that I owed my present position to his teaching. So at dinner, which I stood him the next day, he overwhelmed me with inconsequential advice, which he believed to be very sensible and just the thing to perfect my military education.

We shall meet this type of old Hussar again in Spain.

Napoleon, who was still in Berlin, was told of the surrender of the Prince Hohenlohe who, with sixteen thousand men, had laid down his arms at Prenzlow before the troops of Marshal Lannes and the cavalry of Murat. There was no other enemy corps in the field except that of General Blucher. This general, hard pressed by the divisions of Marshals Soult and Bernadotte, violated the neutrality of Lubeck, where he sought refuge; but the French pursued him, and Blucher, one of the most ardent supporters of the war against Napoleon, was forced to give himself up as a prisoner together with the sixteen thousand men under his command.

I must here tell you something remarkable, which shows how greatly chance influences the affairs of men and empires. We have seen Marshal Bernadotte failing in his duty and standing aside at Jena when Marshal Davout was fighting, not far from him, against infinitely superior forces. Well! This disgraceful conduct served to place him on the throne of Sweden. This is how it came about.

After the battle of Jena, the Emperor, although furious with Bernadotte, ordered him to pursue the enemy because the corps which he commanded, not having fired a shot, was in better shape for battle than those who had suffered losses. Bernadotte then set out on the track of the Prussians whom he defeated first at Halle and then at Lubeck, with the help of Marshal Soult. Now as chance would have it, at the very hour when the French were attacking Lubeck, some s.h.i.+ps carrying a division of infantry which King Gustave IV of Sweden had sent to the aid of the Prussians entered the harbour. The Swedish troops had scarcely disembarked when, attacked by the French and abandoned by the Prussians, they were obliged to surrender to Bernadotte. Bernadotte, I can a.s.sure you, had, when he wished, the most engaging manner and very much wanted to appear before foreigners as a "Gentleman." To this end, he treated the Swedish officers in the most benevolent manner. After according them an honourable capitulation, he returned to them their horses and their baggage, saw to their needs and invited to his quarters the commander-in-chief, Count Moerner, as well as the generals and senior officers; he loaded them with kindnesses and courtesies to such an extent that, on their return to their country, they spread everywhere praise for the magnanimity of Marshal Bernadotte.

Some years later a revolution broke out in Sweden; King Gustave, whom a mental disorder had rendered unfit to rule, was removed from the throne and replaced by his aged uncle, the Duke of Sudermanie.

As this new monarch had no children, the States a.s.sembly, in order to designate a successor, chose the Prince of Holstein-Augustenburg, who took the t.i.tle of Prince Royal. But he did not long enjoy this dignity, for he died in 1811 after a short illness, which was put down to poison. The states gathered once more to elect a new heir to the throne. They were hesitating between several German princes who put themselves forward as candidates when Count Moerner, one of the most influential members of the states, and the former commander of the Swedish division captured at Lubeck in 1806 by the French, proposed General Bernadotte, whose generous conduct he recalled. He praised also Bernadotte's military talents, and observed that the marshal was allied, through his wife, to Napoleon, whose support could be most useful to Sweden. A crowd of officers who had also been captured at Lubeck, joined their voices to that of General Moerner, and Bernadotte was elected almost unanimously as successor to the King of Sweden, and mounted the throne a few years later.

We shall see, further on, how Bernadotte, carried to the steps of a foreign throne by the fame which he had acquired at the head of French troops, displayed a lack of grat.i.tude towards his native country. But now let us return to Prussia.

In one month the main forces of this kingdom, formerly in such a flouris.h.i.+ng condition, had been destroyed by Napoleon, whose armies occupied the capital and the greater part of the provinces, and had already reached the Vistula, that great barrier between northern and central Europe.

Marshal Augereau's corps remained for a fortnight in Berlin to reinforce the Guard during the long stay which the Emperor made in the town, and left about the middle of November, heading first for the Oder, which we crossed at Kostrzyn, and then on to the Vistula whose bank we reached at Bromburg (?Bydgoszcz). We were now in Poland, the poorest and nastiest country in Europe...! After the Oder, no more made roads: we marched on loose gravel or appalling mud. Most of the land was uncultivated and the few inhabitants we came across were dirty to a degree which defies the imagination. The weather which had been magnificent during October and the first part of November became frightful. We no longer saw the sun, it rained or snowed continually; food became short; no more wine, almost never any beer, and what there was atrociously bad; muddy water, no bread, and billets we had to share with cattle and pigs. The soldiers used to say, "How dare the Poles call this a country?"

The Emperor himself was disillusioned, for having come intending to rebuild Poland, he had hoped that the whole population of this vast country would rise as one man at the approach of the French army. But n.o.body budged...! In a vain attempt to rouse some Polish enthusiasm, the Emperor had invited the famous General Kosciusko, the leader of the last insurrection, to come and join him, but Kosciusko stayed peacefully in Switzerland, to where he had retired, and to the reproaches which were addressed to him, he replied that he knew the heedless and unstable character of his compatriots too well to hope that they would ever free themselves, even with French help. Unable to attract Kosciusko, the Emperor tried to make use of his renown by addressing to the Poles a proclamation in the name of this old warrior. Not one of them took up arms, although our troops occupied several provinces and even the capital. The Poles were not willing to rebel until Napoleon had declared the re-establishment of Poland, and he was not willing to do this until they had risen against their oppressors, which they did not do.

While 7th Corps was in Bromburg, Duroc, the grand marshal of the palace, arrived in the middle of the night at Marshal Augereau's headquarters. I was sent for and told to prepare myself to accompany Marshal Duroc, who was going as an envoy to the King of Prussia at Graudentz, and who needed an officer to replace his aide-de-camp, whom he had just sent to Posnan with despatches for the Emperor. I had been chosen because it was remembered that the previous August I had been on a mission to the Prussian court and that I knew almost all the officers and the court usages.

I was soon ready. The marshal of the palace took me in his carriage and we went down the left bank of the Vistula, occupied by French troops, to cross the river by ferry opposite Graudentz. We took lodgings in the town and then presented ourselves at the citadel, where all the royal family of Prussia had taken refuge after loosing four fifths of their state. The Vistula separated the two armies. The king seemed calm and resigned; the queen, whom I had seen not long ago looking so lovely, was greatly changed and seemed overcome by grief. She could not conceal from herself the fact that having urged the king to declare war, she was the princ.i.p.al cause of the misfortunes of her country, whose citizens raised their voices against her. The Emperor could not have sent a more acceptable envoy to the king than Marshal Duroc, who had held the post of amba.s.sador in Berlin, and was well known to both the king and queen who appreciated his pleasant personality. I was too small a personage to be of any account; however the king and queen recognised me and greeted me with a few polite words.

I found the Prussian officers attached to the court had greatly modified the arrogant att.i.tude they had displayed in August. Their recent defeat had changed their opinion of the French army; nevertheless I did not wish to take advantage of this and I carefully avoided mentioning Jena and our other victories. The affairs which Marshal Duroc had to discuss with the King of Prussia related to a letter which this monarch had sent to Napoleon, requesting a peace.

The meeting lasted for two days which I occupied in reading, and walking on the gloomy parade ground of the fortress. I did not wish to go up onto the ramparts, although one enjoys from there an admirable view of the Vistula, for fear that I might be suspected of examining the defence works and armaments.

In the battles which had taken place from Jena to the Vistula, the Prussians had taken about a hundred of our men prisoner, whom they employed on the earthworks of the fortress in which they were confined. Marshal Duroc had charged me with the task of distributing some aid to these poor devils, who were doubly unhappy in that they could see from the height of the fortress the French troops from whom they were separated only by the Vistula. This proximity, and the comparison of their position with that of their comrades, free and happy on the left bank, led a French prisoner, one of the elite cavalrymen of the 3rd Dragoons by the name of Harpin, to attempt to escape. This was no easy matter, for one had first to get out of the fortress and then to cross the Vistula; but what cannot be achieved by a determined man? Harpin, who was employed by the master carpenter to pile timber, had made, secretly, a little raft; he had taken a long rope and, at night, had lowered the raft to the foot of the rampart, and had then descended himself by the same means. He had already put his raft in the water and was preparing to embark when he was surprised by a patrol, taken back to the fort and confined to a dungeon. The next day the Prussian commandant, in accordance with the common custom of the Prussian army, condemned Harpin to fifty strokes of the cane. It was useless for Harpin to claim that as a Frenchman he should not be subject to Prussian regulations, his status as a prisoner made this complaint void. He had already been taken to the wooden frame to which he was to be attached, and two soldiers were preparing to administer the flogging when, having gone to fetch a book from Marshal Duroc's coach, which was standing in the parade ground, I saw Harpin struggling with some Prussians who were trying to tie him up.

Indignant at the sight of a French soldier about to be subjected to a flogging, I ran towards him, my sabre in my hand, and threatened to kill the first man to strike a blow! ... Marshal Duroc's coach was guarded by one of Napoleon's couriers, known in every post house in Europe as "Moustache." This man, of herculean strength and the courage to face anything, had accompanied the Emperor on twenty fields of battle. When he saw me in the middle of the Prussians he hurried to me, and on my instructions, he fetched four loaded pistols which were in the coach. We untied Harpin; I armed him with two of the pistols and put him in the coach, where I placed "Moustache" next to him. I then told the commandant that as this coach belonged to the Emperor, whose arms it bore, it was a sacred place of safety for the French Dragoon, entry to which was forbidden to all Prussians under penalty of a bullet in the head, and I told Harpin and "Moustache" to fire on anyone who attempted to get into the coach. The commandant, seeing me so determined, abandoned his prisoner for the moment to go and get orders from his superiors. Then, leaving Harpin and "Moustache" in the coach with pistols in their hands, I went to the king's quarters and begged one of the aides-de-camp to go and tell Marshal Duroc that I needed to speak to him about a matter which could not wait. Duroc came out and I told him what had happened.

When he heard that they wanted to flog a French soldier, he shared my indignation. He returned to the king to whom he protested warmly, adding that if the sentence were to be carried out, the Emperor by way of reprisal would flog not only the soldiers but also the Prussian officers who were his prisoners. The king was a humane man; he ordered that the dragoon Harpin should be released, and to please Napoleon, from whom he was at that moment asking peace, he offered to Marshal Duroc to release to him all the prisoners if he would undertake to send back a similar number of Prussians. Duroc having accepted this offer, I went with one of the aides-de-camp to announce the news to the prisoners, who were overjoyed. We embarked them straight away and an hour later they were across the Vistula and amongst their brothers in arms.

Marshal Duroc and I left Graudentz the next night; he approved of my conduct and told me later that he had given an account of it to the Emperor, who also approved, and who warned the Prussians that if they flogged French soldiers he would have all Prussian officers who fell into his hands, shot!

I rejoined 7th Corps at Bromburg, and we went up the left bank of the Vistula towards Warsaw. Marshal Augereau's headquarters were established at Mallochiche. The Emperor arrived at Warsaw on the 19th December, and prepared to cross the Vistula. 7th Corps then went down the left bank once more to Utrata, where for the first time on this campaign we saw the Russian outposts on the opposite bank.

Chap. 32

The River Vistula is fast-flowing and very wide; one expected, because of this that the Emperor would halt his winter operations there and, protected by the river, would put his troops into winter quarters until the spring. This however was not to be. Marshal Davout's and Marshal Lannes' corps crossed the river at Warsaw, Marshal Augereau and his men crossed at Utrate, from where we went on to the banks of the Ukra, a tributary of the Bug and the Vistula.

The entire French army having crossed this last river, found itself face to face with the Russians, against whom the Emperor ordered an attack on the 24th December. A thaw and rain made movement extremely difficult on the clay soil, for there are no metalled roads in this country.

I shall not describe all the actions which were fought that day to force a pa.s.sage across the Bug; I shall restrict myself to saying that Marshal Augereau, given the task of securing the crossing of the Ukra, ordered General Desjardins to attack with his division, Kolozomb, and General Heudelet to attack Sochocyzn. The marshal directed the attack on Kolozomb in person. The Russians, after burning the bridge which had existed at this spot, had raised earthworks on the opposite bank which they defended with cannons and numerous infantry; but they had neglected to destroy a store of planks and beams which was on the right bank, at which we had arrived. Our sappers made use of this material to construct a temporary bridge in spite of a lively fire which killed several men of the 14th Line regiment, which was at the head of our columns.

The planks of the bridge were not yet fastened and were wobbling under the feet of our infantrymen, when the colonel of the 14th, M. Savary, brother of the Emperor's aide-de-camp, risked crossing on horseback, in order to put himself at the head of his men; but he had scarcely reached the bank when a Cossack, arriving at the gallop, plunged a lance into his heart and disappeared into the woods! This was the fifth colonel of the 14th who had been killed by the enemy!

You will see later the fatal destiny which always accompanied this unfortunate regiment. The pa.s.sage of the Ukra was secured, the guns captured and the Russians put to flight. Desjardins' division occupied Sochoczyn, where the enemy had repulsed the attack by Heudelet's division, a repulse which was of no consequence, as it was necessary only to secure one crossing. General Heudelet however, out of misplaced pride, had ordered the attack to be renewed and was once more driven off with the loss of some thirty men killed or wounded, among them a highly thought of engineer officer. I have always disapproved of the contempt for men's lives which sometimes leads generals to sacrifice them to their desire to see their names in the bulletins.

On the 25th of December, the day following the crossing of the Ukra, the Emperor, pus.h.i.+ng the Russians before him, headed for Golymin, having with him the Guard, Murat's cavalry and the corps of Davout and Augereau, the last of whom led the column. Marshal Lannes went off in the direction of Pultusk. There were on this day some minor encounters with the enemy who were retreating with all speed.

We slept in bivouac amongst the trees.

On the 26th, 7th Corps set out once more in pursuit of the Russians. We were at a time of year when the days are at their shortest, and in this part of Poland at the end of December, it starts to get dark about two-thirty in the afternoon. It was made more gloomy as we approached Golymin by a fall of snow mixed with rain. We had not seen the enemy since morning when, on our arrival at the village of Kuskowo, very close to Golymin, our scouts, who had seen in the obscurity a large body of troops which a marsh prevented them from approaching, came to warn Marshal Augereau, who ordered Colonel Albert to go and reconnoitre, escorted by twenty-five mounted Cha.s.seurs, whom he placed under my command.

The mission was difficult for we were in the middle of a huge, bare plain where one could easily become lost. The ground, already muddy, was intersected by areas of bog which the poor light prevented us from seeing clearly; so we advanced with caution, and found ourselves within twenty-five paces of a line of troops. We thought at first that this must be Davout's corps, which we knew was in the neighbourhood, but as no one answered our challenge, we had no doubt that these were enemy troops. However, to make quite sure, Colonel Albert ordered me to send one of my best-mounted troopers up to the line which we could distinguish in the murk: for this task I picked a bemedalled corporal named Schmit, a man of proven courage. He, having gone alone to within ten paces of a regiment whose headgear he recognised as Russian, fired a shot from his carbine into the middle of it and came back smartly.

To account for the silence which the Russians had maintained up till then, I must tell you that this unit had become separated from the main body of the army, which it was trying to rejoin, and had lost its way in the vast plains, which it knew to be occupied by French troops who were heading for Golymin. The Russian generals, in the hope that they might pa.s.s close to us in the obscurity without being recognised, had forbidden their men to speak, and in the event of an attack, even the wounded were to make no outcry. This was an order which only Russian troops would have obeyed so punctiliously that when Colonel Albert, to warn Marshal Augereau that we were in the presence of the enemy, ordered the twenty-five troopers to fire, not a cry nor a word was heard, and no one fired back!

We then saw, in spite of the poor light, a body of about a hundred hors.e.m.e.n who were advancing silently to cut off our retreat. We should have made off at the gallop to rejoin our columns, but some of our troopers having become stuck in the mud, we were forced to proceed less rapidly, although pursued by the Russians, who fortunately had the same trouble as we did. A fire which had broken out in a nearby farm lit up the ground and the Russians began to gallop, which compelled us to do likewise. A new danger arose in that we had left from General Desjardins' division and were returning to General Heudelet's, who had not seen us leave and opened fire on us; so that we were being driven from behind by the Russians, while a hail of bullets in front wounded several of our men and some horses.

It was no use shouting "We are French. Don't shoot!" The firing continued, and one cannot blame the officers who took us for the advance guard of a Russian column who were using French, which is widely understood among foreigners, in order to deceive them in the darkness which had now fallen. We were having a bad time, when it occurred to me to call out by name to the generals, colonels and battalion commanders of Heudelet's division, names which they would know could not be known to the enemy. This was a success and we were at last received into the French line.

The Russian generals, seeing that they were discovered and wis.h.i.+ng to continue their retreat, took a measure of which I heartily approve, and one which in similar circ.u.mstances the French have never attempted to imitate. The Russians pointed all their guns at us, and having led away all the horses, they opened a violent fire to keep us at a distance. During this time they marched off their columns, and when the ammunition was finished, the gunners withdrew and left the guns to us. Was not this better than losing many men in an effort to save the guns, which would have been continually bogged down and slowed the retreat?

The fierce Russian cannonade became increasingly harmful when it started several fires in the villages, the spreading light of which enabled the Russian gunners to pick out the ma.s.ses of our troops; in particular the dragoons and Cuira.s.siers led by Prince Murat, whose white cloaks made them a target. These units suffered more losses than the others, and one of our generals of the Dragoons was cut in two by a cannon-ball. Marshal Augereau, after taking Kuskowa, entered Golymin, which Marshal Davout was attacking from the other side. This town was being traversed at the time by the Russian columns, who, knowing that Marshal Lannes was marching to cut off their retreat by taking Pultusk, three leagues from there, were trying to reach that spot before he did at no matter what cost. So although our soldiers were firing on them at close range, they did not reply. To do so they would have had to stop, and minutes were too precious.

Each division and each regiment marched through our fusillade without a word and without slowing their pace for a moment...! The streets of Golymin were full of wounded and dying men, yet one did not hear a sound. It was forbidden! We might have been shooting at shadows, and it was only when our soldiers attacked with the bayonet that they convinced themselves that they were dealing with men. We took thousands of prisoners, while the remainder marched into the distance.

The marshals deliberated as to whether they should pursue the enemy, but the weather was so horrible and the night so dark once one left the neighbourhood of the fires, the men so soaked and exhausted, that it was decided that they should rest until the next day.

Golymin being crowded with dead, wounded, and discarded baggage, Marshals Murat and Augereau, together with some generals and their staffs, looking for somewhere to shelter from the glacial rain, established themselves in a huge stable which was near the town.

There, those who could, lay on the dung heap in an attempt to get warm and to sleep, for we had been on horseback in the most frightful weather for twenty four hours or more. The marshals and all the colonels and bra.s.s-hats were naturally in the depths of the stable where it was warmer; as for me, a humble lieutenant, who came in last, I had to bed down near the doorway, where I was more or less sheltered from the rain, but exposed to the freezing wind, since the doorway had no door. The position was most uncomfortable and added to this I was dying of hunger, not having eaten since the previous evening. But my lucky star came once more to my aid. While the well sheltered senior officers were sleeping in the warm part of the stable, and the cold was preventing us lieutenants near the doorway from doing the same, one of Prince Murat's servants arrived. I told him, in a low voice that his master was asleep; upon this he gave me a basket containing a roast goose, some bread and some wine, to give to the prince when he woke, and asked me to tell him that the mules with the provisions were expected to arrive in an hour's time.

Having said which, he went off to await them.