History of the Expedition to Russia Part 13

Napoleon was then writing to the Duke of Ba.s.sano to announce daily fresh victories to the Turks. True or false was of no consequence, provided the communications produced the effect of suspending their treaty with Russia. He was still engaged in this task, when deputies from Red Russia arrived at Witepsk, and informed Duroc, that they had heard the report of the Russian cannon announcing the peace of Bucharest. That treaty, signed by Kutusof, had just been ratified.

At this intelligence, which Duroc transmitted to Napoleon, the latter was deeply mortified. He was now no longer astonished at Alexander's silence. At first, it was the tardiness of Maret's negotiations to which he imputed this result; then, to the blind stupidity of the Turks, to whom their treaties of peace were always more fatal than their wars; lastly, the perfidious policy of his allies, all of whom, taking advantage of the distance, and in the obscurity of the seraglio, had, doubtless, dared to unite against their common dictator.

This event rendered a prompt victory still more necessary to him. All hope of peace was now at an end. He had just read the proclamations of Alexander. Being addressed to a rude people, they were necessarily unrefined: the following are some pa.s.sages of them: "The enemy, with unexampled perfidy, has announced the destruction of our country. Our brave soldiers burn to throw themselves on his battalions, and to destroy them; but it is not our intention to allow them to be sacrificed on the altars of this Moloch. A general insurrection is necessary against the universal tyrant. He comes, with treachery in his heart, and loyalty on his lips, to chain us with his legions of slaves. Let us drive away this race of locusts. Let us carry the cross in our hearts, and the sword in our hands. Let us pluck his fangs from this lion's mouth, and overthrow the tyrant, whose object is to overthrow the earth."

The emperor was incensed. These reproaches, these successes, and these reverses, all contributed to stimulate his mind. The forward movement of Barclay, in three columns, towards Rudnia, which the check at Inkowo had disclosed, and the vigorous defensive operations of Wittgenstein, promised the approach of a battle. He had to choose between that, and a long and sanguinary defensive war, to which he was unaccustomed, which was difficult to maintain at such a distance from his reinforcements, and encouraging to his enemies.

Napoleon accordingly decided; but his decision, without being rash, was grand and bold, like the enterprise itself. Having determined to detach himself from Oudinot, he first caused him to be reinforced by Saint-Cyr's corps, and ordered him to connect himself with the Duke of Tarentum; having resolved also to march against the enemy, he did it by changing in front of him, and within his reach, but without his knowledge, the line of his operations at Witepsk for that of Minsk. His manoeuvre was so well combined; he had accustomed his lieutenants to so much punctuality, secrecy, and precision, that in four days, while the surprised hostile army could find no traces of the French army before it, the latter would by this plan find itself in a ma.s.s of 185,000 men on the left flank and rear of that enemy, which but just before had presumed to think of surprising him.

Meantime, the extent and the multiplicity of the operations, which on all sides claimed Napoleon's presence, still detained him at Witepsk. It was only by his letters, that he could make his presence universally felt. His head alone laboured for the whole, and he indulged himself in the thought that his urgent and repeated orders would suffice to make nature herself obedient to him.

The army only subsisted by its exertions, and from day to day; it had not provisions for twenty-four hours: Napoleon ordered that it should provide itself for fifteen days. He was incessantly dictating letters.

On the 10th of August he addressed eight to the prince of Eckmuhl, and almost as many to each of his other lieutenants. In the first, he concentrates every thing round himself, in conformity with his leading principle, "that war is nothing else than the art of a.s.sembling on a given point, a larger number of men than your enemy." It was in this spirit that he wrote to Davoust: "Send for Latour-Maubourg. If the enemy remain at Smolensk, as I have reason to suppose, it will be a decisive affair, and we cannot have too much numerical strength. Orcha will become the pivot of the army. Every thing leads me to believe that there will be a great battle at Smolensk; hospitals will, therefore, be requisite; they will be necessary at Orcha, Dombrowna, Mohilef, Kochanowo, Bobr, Borizof, and Minsk."

It was then particularly that he manifested extreme anxiety about the provisioning of Orcha. It was on the 10th of August, at the very moment when he was dictating this letter, that he gave his order of march. In four days, all his army would be a.s.sembled on the left bank of the Boristhenes, and in the direction of Liady. He departed from Witepsk on the 13th, after having remained there a fortnight.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

It was the check at Inkowo which decided Napoleon; ten thousand Russian horse, in an affair with the advanced guard, had overthrown Sebastiani and his cavalry. The intrepidity and reputation of the defeated general, his report, the boldness of the attack, the hope, nay the urgent necessity, of a decisive engagement, all led the emperor to believe, that their numbers alone had carried the day, that the Russian army was between the Duna and the Dnieper, and that it was marching against the centre of his cantonments: this was actually the fact.

The grand army being dispersed, it was necessary to collect it together.

Napoleon had resolved to defile with his guard, the army of Italy, and three of Davoust's divisions, before the front of attack of the Russians; to abandon his Witepsk line of operation, and take that of Orcha, and, lastly, to throw himself with 185,000 men on the left of the Dnieper and of the enemy's army. Covered by the river, his plan was to get beyond it, for the purpose of reaching Smolensk before it; if successful, he should have separated the Russian army not only from Moscow, but from the whole centre and south of the empire; it would be confined to the north; and he would have accomplished at Smolensk against Bagration and Barclay united, what he had in vain attempted at Witepsk against the army of Barclay alone.

Thus the line of operation of so large an army was about to be suddenly changed; 200,000 men, spread over a tract of more than fifty leagues, were to be all at once brought together, without the knowledge of the enemy, within reach of him, and on his left flank. This was, undoubtedly, one of those grand determinations which, executed with the unity and rapidity of their conception, change instantaneously the face of war, decide the fate of empires, and display the genius of conquerors.

As we marched from Orcha to Liady, the French army formed a long column on the left bank of the Dnieper. In this ma.s.s, the first corps, that of Davoust, was distinguished by the order and harmony which prevailed in its divisions. The fine appearance of the troops, the care with which they were supplied, and the attention that was paid to make them careful of their provisions, which the improvident soldier is apt to waste; lastly, the strength of these divisions, the happy result of this severe discipline, all caused them to be acknowledged as the model of the whole army.

Gudin's division was the only one wanting; owing to an ill-written order, it had been wandering for twenty-four hours in marshy woods; it arrived, however, but diminished by three hundred combatants; for such errors are not to be repaired but by forced marches, under which the weakest are sure to sink.

The emperor traversed in a day the hilly and woody tract which separates the Duna from the Boristhenes; it was in front of Ra.s.sasna that he crossed the latter river. Its distance from our home, the very antiquity of its name, every thing connected with it, excited our curiosity. For the first time, the waters of this Muscovite river were about to bear a French army, and to reflect our victorious arms. The Romans had known it only by their defeats: it was down this same stream that the savages of the North, the children of Odin and Rurik, descended to plunder Constantinople. Long before we could perceive it, our eyes sought it with ambitious impatience; we came to a narrow river, straitened between woody and uncultivated banks; it was the Boristhenes which presented itself to our view in this humble form. At this sight all our proud thoughts were lowered, and they were soon totally banished by the necessity of providing for our most urgent wants.

The emperor slept in his tent in advance of Ra.s.sasna; next day the army marched together, ready to draw up in order of battle, with the emperor on horseback in the midst of it. The advanced guard drove before it two pulks of cossacks, who resisted only till they had gained time to destroy some bridges and some trusses of forage. The villages deserted by the enemy were plundered as soon as we entered them: we pa.s.sed them in all possible haste and in disorder.

The streams were crossed by fords which were soon spoiled; the regiments which came afterwards pa.s.sed over in other places, wherever they could.

No one gave himself much concern about such details, which were neglected by the general staff: no person was left to point out the danger, where there was any, or the road, if there were several. Each _corps d'armee_ seemed to be there for itself alone, each division, each individual to be unconnected with the rest; as if the fate of one had not depended on that of the other.

The army every where left stragglers behind it, and men who had lost their way, whom the officers pa.s.sed without noticing; there would have been too many to find fault with; and besides, each was too much occupied with himself to attend to others. Many of these men were marauders, who feigned illness or a wound, to separate from the rest, which there was not time to prevent, and which will always be the case in large armies, that are urged forward with such precipitation, as individual order cannot exist in the midst of general disorder.

As far as Liady the villages appeared to us to be more Jewish than Polish; the Lithuanians sometimes fled at our approach; the Jews always remained; nothing could have induced them to forsake their wretched habitations; they might be known by their thick p.r.o.nunciation, their voluble and hasty way of speaking, the vivacity of their motions, and their complexion, animated by the base pa.s.sion of lucre. We noticed in particular their eager and piercing looks, their faces and features lengthened out into acute points, which a malicious and perfidious smile cannot widen; their tall, slim, and supple form; the earnestness of their demeanour, and lastly, their beards, usually red, and their long black robes, tightened round their loins by a leather girdle; for every thing but their filthiness distinguishes them from the Lithuanian peasants; every thing about them bespeaks a degraded people.

They seem to have conquered Poland, where they swarm, and the whole substance of which they extract. Formerly their religion, at present the sense of a reprobation too long universal, have made them the enemies of mankind; of old they attacked with arms, at present by cunning. This race is abhorred by the Russians, perhaps on account of its enmity to image-wors.h.i.+p, while the Muscovites carry their adoration of images to idolatry. Finally, whether from superst.i.tion or rivalry of interests, they have forbidden them their country: the Jews were obliged to put up with their contempt, which their impotence repaid with hatred; but they detested our pillage still more. Enemies of all, spies to both armies, they sold one to the other from resentment or fear, according to occasion, and because there is nothing that they would not sell.

At Liady the Jews ended, and Russia proper commenced; our eyes were therefore relieved from their disgusting presence, but other wants made us regret them; we missed their active and officious services, which money could command, and their German jargon, the only language which we understood in these deserts, and which they all speak, because they require it in their traffic.

CHAP. II.

On the 15th of August, at three o'clock, we came in sight of Krasnoe, a town constructed of wood, which a Russian regiment made a show of defending; but it detained Marshal Ney no longer than the time necessary to come up with and overthrow it. The town being taken, there were seen beyond it 6000 Russian infantry in two columns, while several squadrons covered the retreat. This was the corps of Newerowskoi.

The ground was unequal, but bare, and suitable for cavalry. Murat took possession of it; but the bridges of Krasnoe were broken down, and the French cavalry was obliged to move off to the left, and to defile to a great distance in bad fords, in order to come up with the enemy. When our troops were in presence of the latter, the difficulty of the pa.s.sage which they had just left behind them, and the bold countenance of the Russians, made them hesitate; they lost time in waiting for one another and deploying, but still the first effort dispersed the enemy's cavalry.

Newerowskoi finding himself uncovered, drew together his columns, and formed them into a full square so thick, that Murat's cavalry penetrated several times into it, without being able to break through or to disperse it.

It is even true that our first charges stopped short at the distance of 20 paces from the front of the Russians: whenever the latter found themselves too hard pressed, they faced about, steadily waited for us, and drove us back with their small arms; after which, profiting by our disorder, they immediately continued their retreat.

The cossacks were seen striking with the shafts of their pikes such of their foot-soldiers as lengthened the line of march, or stepped out of their ranks; for our squadrons hara.s.sed them incessantly, watched all their movements, threw themselves into the smallest intervals, and instantly carried off all that separated from the main body; they even penetrated into it twice, but a little way, the horses remaining, as it were, stuck fast in that thick and obstinate ma.s.s.

Newerowskoi had one very critical moment: his column was marching on the left of the high-road through rye not yet cut, when all at once it was stopped by a long fence, formed of a stout palisade; his soldiers, pressed by our movements, had not time to make a gap in it, and Murat sent the Wurtembergers against them to make them lay down their arms; but while the head of the Russian column was surmounting the obstacle, their rearmost ranks faced about and stood firm. They fired ill, it is true, most of them into the air, like persons who are frightened; but so near, that the smoke, the flash of the reports of so many shot, frightened the Wurtemberg horses, and threw them into confusion.

The Russians embraced that moment to place between them and us that barrier which was expected to prove fatal to them. Their column profited by it to rally and gain ground. At length some French cannon came up, and they alone were capable of making a breach in this living fortress.

Newerowskoi hastened to reach a defile, where Grouchy was ordered to antic.i.p.ate him; but Murat, deceived by a false report, had diverted the greatest part of that general's cavalry in the direction of Elnia; Grouchy had only 600 horse remaining. He made the 8th cha.s.seurs dash forward to the defile, but it found itself too weak to stand against so strong a column. The vigorous and repeated charges made by that regiment, by the 6th hussars, and the 6th lancers, on the left flank of that dense ma.s.s, which was protected by the double row of birch-trees that lined the road on each side, were wholly insufficient, and Grouchy's applications for a.s.sistance were not attended to; either because the general who followed him was kept back by the difficulties of the ground, or that he was not sufficiently sensible of the importance of the combat. It was nevertheless great, since there was between Smolensk and Murat but this one Russian corps, and had that been defeated, Smolensk might have been surprised without defenders, taken without a battle, and the enemy's army cut off from his capital. But this Russian division at length gained a woody ground where its flanks were covered.

Newerowskoi retreated like a lion; still he left on the field of battle 1200 killed, 1000 prisoners, and eight pieces of cannon. The French cavalry had the honour of that day. The attack was as furious as the defence was obstinate; it had the more merit, having only the sword to employ against both sword and fire: the enlightened courage of the French soldier being besides of a more exalted nature than that of the Russian troops, mere docile slaves, who expose a less happy life, and bodies in which cold has extinguished sensibility.

As chance would have it, the day of this success was the emperor's birth-day. The army had no idea of celebrating it. In the disposition of the men and of the place, there was nothing that harmonized with such a celebration; empty acclamations would have been lost amid those vast deserts. In our situation, there was no other festival than the day of a complete victory.

Murat and Ney, however, in reporting their success to the emperor, paid homage to that anniversary. They caused a salute of 100 guns to be fired. The emperor remarked, with displeasure, that in Russia it was necessary to be more sparing of French powder; the answer was, that it was Russian powder which had been taken the preceding day. The idea of having his birth-day celebrated at the expense of the enemy drew a smile from Napoleon. It was admitted that this very rare species of flattery became such men.

Prince Eugene also considered it his duty to carry him his good wishes.

The emperor said to him, "Every thing is preparing for a battle; I shall gain it, and we shall see Moscow." The prince kept silence, but as he retired, he returned for answer to the questions of Marshal Mortier, "Moscow will be our ruin!" Thus did disapprobation begin to be expressed. Duroc, the most reserved of all, the friend and confidant of the emperor, loudly declared, that he could not foresee the period of our return. Still it was only among themselves that the great officers indulged in such remarks, for they were aware that the decision being once taken, all would have to concur in its execution; that the more dangerous their situation became, the more need there was of courage; and that a word, calculated to abate zeal, would be treasonable; hence we saw those who by silence, nay even by words, opposed the emperor in his tent, appear out of it full of confidence and hope. This att.i.tude was dictated by honour; the mult.i.tude has imputed it to flattery.

Newerowskoi, almost crushed, hastened to shut himself up in Smolensk. He left behind him some cossacks to burn the forage; the houses were spared.

CHAP. III.

While the grand army was thus ascending the Dnieper, along its left bank, Barclay and Bagration, placed between that river and the lake of Kasplia, towards Inkowo, believed themselves to be still in presence of the French army. They hesitated; twice hurried on by the counsel of quarter-master-general Toll, they resolved to force the line of our cantonments, and twice dismayed at so bold a determination, they stopped short in the midst of the movement they had commenced for that purpose.

At length, too timid to take any other counsel than their own, they appeared to have left their decision to circ.u.mstances, and to await our attack, in order to regulate their defence by it.

It might also be perceived, from the unsteadiness of their movements, that there was not a good understanding between these two chiefs. In fact, their situation, their disposition, their very origin, every thing about them was at variance. On the one hand the cool valour, the scientific, methodical, and tenacious genius of Barclay, whose mind, German like his birth, was for calculating every thing, even the chances of the hazard, bent on owing all to his tactics, and nothing to fortune; on the other the martial, bold, and vehement instinct of Bagration, an old Russian of the school of Suwarrow, dissatisfied at being under a general who was his junior in the service--terrible in battle, but acquainted with no other book than nature, no other instructor than memory, no other counsels than his own inspirations.

This old Russian, on the frontiers of Russia proper, trembled with shame at the idea of retreating without fighting. In the army all shared his ardour; it was supported on the one hand by the patriotic pride of the n.o.bles, by the success at Inkowo, by the inactivity of Napoleon at Witepsk, and by the severe remarks of those who were not responsible; on the other hand, by a nation of peasants, merchants, and soldiers, who saw us on the point of treading their sacred soil, with all the horror that such profanation could excite. All, in short, demanded a battle.