The Two Great Retreats of History Part 15

- 14. Dreadful snow-storm on the 6th of November; its effects upon the troops.

The spirits of the troops were nevertheless still supported by the example of their leaders, by the hopes of finding all their wants supplied at Smolensk, and still more by the aspect of a yet brilliant sun, that universal source of hope and life, which seemed to contradict and deny the spectacles of despair and death that already encompa.s.sed us.

But on the 6th of November the heavens changed. Their azure disappeared.

The army marched enveloped in a chilling mist. This mist became thicker, and presently a blinding storm of snow descended upon it. It seemed as if the sky itself were falling, and uniting with the earth and our enemies to complete our destruction. All objects rapidly changed their appearance, becoming utterly confounded, and not to be recognized any more: we proceeded without knowing where we were, without perceiving the point to which we were bound; everything was converted into an obstacle to stop our progress. While we were struggling with the tempest of wind and snow, the latter, driven by the storm, lodged and acc.u.mulated in every hollow, concealing unknown abysses, which perfidiously opened beneath our feet. There the soldiers were ingulfed, and the weakest, resigning themselves to their fate, found their grave in these treacherous pits.

Those who followed turned aside; but the tempest, driving into their faces the snow that was descending from the sky and that which it raised from the earth, seemed resolved to arrest their farther progress. The Russian winter, in this new form, attacked them at every point: it penetrated through their light garments, and their rent and worn-out shoes. Their wet clothes froze to their bodies: an icy envelope encased them, and stiffened all their limbs. A piercing and violent wind almost prevented respiration; and, seizing their breath the moment it was exhaled, converted it into icicles, which hung from their beards all about their mouths.

The miserable creatures still crawled shivering along, till the snow, gathering in b.a.l.l.s on the soles of their shoes, or a fragment of some broken article, a branch of a tree, or the body of one of their comrades, encountered in the way, caused them to stumble and fall. There their groans were unheeded; the snow soon covered them; slight hillocks marked the spots where they lay: there was their only grave. The road, like a cemetery, was thickly studded with these elevations; the most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected; they pa.s.sed quickly on with averted looks. But before them and around them there was nothing but snow; this immense and dismal uniformity extended farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded: it seemed a vast winding-sheet which Nature had thrown over the army. The only objects not enveloped by it were some gloomy pines, trees of the tombs, with their funereal verdure and their gigantic and motionless trunks completing the solemnity of a general mourning, and of an army dying amid nature already dead.

Everything, even to their very arms, still offensive at Malo-jaroslavetz, but since defensive only, now turned against our men.

They seemed to their frozen limbs an insupportable weight. In the falls they experienced, they dropped almost unperceived from their hands, and were broken or buried in the snow. If they rose again it was without them: they had not thrown them away, but hunger and cold had wrested them from their grasp. The fingers of others were frozen to the muskets they still held, depriving them of the motion necessary to keep up some degree of warmth and of life.

We soon met with numbers of men belonging to all the different corps, sometimes singly, sometimes in troops. They had not basely deserted their colors: it was cold and exhaustion which had separated them from them. In this mortal struggle, at once general and individual, they had parted from each other, and there they were, disarmed, vanquished, defenceless, without leaders, obeying nothing but the most urgent instinct of self-preservation.

Most of them, attracted by the sight of by-paths, dispersed themselves over the country in hopes of finding bread and shelter for the coming night; but on their first pa.s.sage all had been laid waste to the extent of seven or eight leagues: they met only with Cossacks and an armed population, which gathered around them, wounded and stripped them naked, and then left them, with bursts of savage laughter, to perish in the snow. These people, who had risen at the call of Alexander and Kutusoff, and who had not then learned, as they since have, to avenge n.o.bly a country which they had been unable to defend, hovered on both flanks of the army under favor of the woods. Those whom they did not despatch with their pikes and hatchets, they drove back to the fatal and all-devouring high road.

Night then came on: a night of sixteen hours! But on that snow, which covered everything, where were they to halt, where sit, where lie down, where find even a root to satisfy their hunger, or dry wood to kindle a fire? Fatigue, darkness, and repeated orders nevertheless stopped those whom their moral and physical strength and the efforts of their officers had still kept together. They strove to establish themselves; but the tempest, not yet subsided, dispersed the first preparations for bivouacs. The pines, laden with frost, obstinately resisted ignition; while the snow, which still continued to fall from the sky, and that on the ground, which melted with the effect of the first heat, extinguished their kindling fires, and, with them, the strength and spirits of the men.

When at length the flames gained the ascendancy, the officers and soldiers around them commenced preparing their wretched repast: it consisted of lean and ragged pieces of flesh torn from the horses that had given out, and at most a few spoonfuls of rye flour mixed with snow-water. The next morning circular ranges of soldiers extended lifeless marked the sites of the bivouacs, and the ground about them was strewed with the bodies of several thousand horses.

From that day we began to place less reliance on one another. In that vivacious army, susceptible of all impressions, and taught to reason by an advanced civilization, despondency and neglect of discipline rapidly spread, the imagination knowing no bounds in evil any more than in good.

Henceforward, at every bivouac, at every difficult pa.s.sage, nay, every moment, some portion separated from the yet organized lines and fell into disorder. There were some, however, who were proof against this widespread contagion of insubordination and despair. These were officers, non-commissioned officers, and the firmest among the soldiers.

They were extraordinary men; they encouraged one another by repeating the name of Smolensk, which town they knew they were approaching, and where they had been promised that all their wants should be supplied.

It was thus, after this deluge of snow, and the increase of cold which it foreboded, that each one, whether officer or soldier, either preserved or lost his fort.i.tude, according to his disposition, age, or const.i.tution; while he who of all our leaders had hitherto been the most strict in enforcing discipline, now paid but little attention to it.

Thrown out of his established ideas of regularity, order, and method, he was seized with despair at the sight of such universal confusion: and conceiving, before the rest, that all was lost, he felt himself ready to abandon all.

From this point for some distance, nothing remarkable occurred in the imperial column except that it was found necessary to throw the spoils of Moscow into the Lake of Semlewo; cannon, Gothic armor, the ornaments of the Kremlin, and the cross of Ivan the Great, were all buried in its waters. Trophies, glory, those acquisitions to which we had sacrificed everything, all now became a burden to us: our object was no longer to embellish life, but to preserve it. In this vast wreck, the army, which might be compared to a mighty ship tossed by the most tremendous of tempests, threw without hesitation into that sea of ice and snow everything that could burden or impede its progress.

The att.i.tude of Napoleon was the same that he retained throughout the whole of this dismal retreat. It was grave, silent, and resigned: suffering much less in body than others, but far more in mind, and brooding with speechless agony over his misfortunes. At that moment General Charpentier sent him from Smolensk a convoy of provisions.

Bessieres wished to take possession of them; but the emperor instantly ordered them to be forwarded to the Prince of Moskwa, saying that "those who were fighting must eat before the rest." At the same time, he sent word to Ney "to defend himself long enough to allow him some stay at Smolensk, where the army should eat, rest, and be reorganized."

The Russians, however, advanced under favor of a wood and of our forsaken carriages, whence they kept up a fire of musketry on Ney's troops. Half of the latter, whose icy arms froze their stiffened fingers, became discouraged; they gave way, excusing themselves by their want of firmness on the preceding day, and fleeing because they had before fled, which but for this, they would have considered as impossible. But Ney, rushing in among them, seized one of their muskets, and led them back to action, which he was himself the first to renew; exposing his life like a private soldier, with a firelock in his hand, the same as though he had been neither possessed of wealth, nor power, nor consideration; in short, as if he had still everything to gain, when in fact he had everything to lose. But, though he had again turned soldier, he ceased not to be general: he took advantage of the ground, supported himself against a height, and covered his approach by occupying a palisaded house. His generals and colonels, among whom he particularly remarked Fezenzac, strenuously seconded him; and the enemy, who had expected to pursue, was obliged to retreat.

By this action Ney afforded the army a respite of twenty-four hours; and it profited by it to proceed towards Smolensk. The next day, and every succeeding day, he displayed the same heroism. Between Viazma and Smolensk he fought ten whole days.

- 15. Defeat and entire dissolution of Prince Eugene's corps at the pa.s.sage of the Wop.

On the 13th of November Ney was approaching that city, which he was not to enter till the ensuing day, and had faced about to beat off the enemy, when all at once the hills upon which he intended to support his left were seen covered with a mult.i.tude of fugitives. In their terror, these unfortunate wretches fell, and rolled down to where he was upon the frozen snow, which they stained with their blood. A band of Cossacks, which was soon perceived in the midst of them, sufficiently accounted for this disorder. The astonished marshal, having caused this horde of enemies to be dispersed, discovered behind it the army of Italy, returning completely stripped, without baggage and without cannon.

Platoff had kept it besieged, as it were, all the way from Dorogobouje.[169] Near that town Prince Eugene had quitted the high road, and, in order to proceed towards Witepsk, had taken that which, two months before, had brought him from Smolensk; but the Wop, which, when he had crossed it before, was a mere brook, and had scarcely been noticed, he now found swollen into a river. It ran over a muddy bed, and was bounded by two steep banks. It was found necessary to cut a pa.s.sage in these precipitous and frozen banks, and to give orders for the demolition of the neighboring houses during the night, for the purpose of building a bridge with the materials. But those who had taken shelter in them opposed their being destroyed; and, as the viceroy was more beloved than feared, his instructions were not obeyed. The bridge-builders became disheartened, and when daylight, with the Cossacks, appeared, the bridge, after being twice broken down, was at last abandoned.

Five or six thousand soldiers still in order, twice the number of disbanded men, the sick and wounded, upward of a hundred pieces of cannon, ammunition-wagons, and a mult.i.tude of vehicles of every kind, lined the bank and covered a league of ground. An attempt was made to ford the river through the floating ice which was carried along by its current. The first guns that were attempted to be got over reached the opposite bank; but the water kept rising every moment, while at the same time the bed of the stream at the place of pa.s.sage was continually deepened by the wheels and by the efforts of the horses. One carriage stuck fast, others did the same, and at length the stoppage became general.

Meanwhile the day was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in vain efforts: hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the viceroy finally found himself compelled to order his artillery and all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The owners were allowed scarcely a moment to part from their effects: while they were selecting from them such articles as they most needed, and loading their horses with them, a mult.i.tude of soldiers came rushing up: they fell in preference upon the vehicles of luxury; these they broke in pieces and rummaged every part, avenging their poverty on the wealth, and their privations on the superfluities they here found, and s.n.a.t.c.hing them from the Cossacks, who were in the meantime looking on at a distance.

But it was provisions of which most of them were in quest. They threw aside embroidered clothes, pictures, ornaments of every kind, and gilt bronzes for a few handfuls of flour. In the evening it was a strange sight to behold the mingled riches of Paris and of Moscow, the luxuries of two of the largest cities in the world, lying scattered and despised on the snow of the desert.

At the same time, most of the artillerymen spiked their guns in despair, and scattered their powder about. Others laid a train with it as far as some ammunition-wagons, which had been left at a considerable distance behind our baggage. They waited till the most eager of the Cossacks had come up to them, and when a great number, greedy of plunder, had collected about them, they threw a brand from a bivouac upon the train.

The fire ran, and in a moment reached its destination; the wagons were blown up, the sh.e.l.ls exploded, and such of the Cossacks as were not killed on the spot dispersed in dismay.

The army of Italy, thus completely dismantled, soaked in the waters of the Wop, without food, without shelter, pa.s.sed the night on the snow near a village where its officers expected to find lodgings for themselves. Their soldiers, however, beset its wooden houses. They rushed like madmen, and in swarms, on every habitation, profiting by the darkness, which prevented them from recognizing their officers or being known by them. They tore down everything, doors, windows, and even the woodwork of the roofs, feeling but little compunction in compelling others, be they who they might, to bivouac like themselves.

Their generals attempted in vain to drive them off: they took their blows without a murmur or the least opposition, but without desisting--even the men of the royal and imperial guards; for, throughout the whole army, such were the scenes that occurred every night. The unfortunate fellows kept silently but actively at work on the wooden walls, which they pulled in pieces on every side at once, and which, after vain efforts, their officers were obliged to relinquish to them, for fear they would fall upon their own heads. It was an extraordinary mixture of perseverance in their design and of respect for the anger of their superiors.

Having kindled good fires, they spent the night in drying themselves, amid the shouts, imprecations, and groans of those who were still crossing the torrent, or who, slipping from its banks, were precipitated into it and drowned.

- 16. The Grand Army reaches Smolensk.

At length the army once more came in sight of Smolensk: it had reached the goal so often announced to it of all its sufferings. The soldiers exultingly pointed it out to each other. There was that land of promise where their hunger was to find abundance, their fatigue rest; where bivouacs in a cold of nineteen degrees would be forgotten in houses warmed by good fires. There they would enjoy refreshing sleep; there they might repair their apparel; there they would be furnished with new shoes, and clothing adapted to the climate.

At this sight, the corps of picked men, the veteran regiments, and a few other soldiers alone kept their ranks; the rest ran forward with all possible speed. Thousands of men, chiefly unarmed, covered the two steep banks of the Borysthenes: they crowded in ma.s.ses around the lofty walls and gates of the city; but this disorderly mult.i.tude, with their haggard faces begrimed with dirt and smoke, their tattered uniforms, and the grotesque habiliments which they had subst.i.tuted in place of them: in short, with their strange, hideous looks, and their impetuous ardor, excited alarm. It was believed, that if the irruption of this crowd, maddened with hunger, were not repelled, that a general pillage would be the consequence, and the gates were closed against it.

It was also hoped that by exercising this rigor these men would be forced again to rally about their standards. A horrible struggle between order and disorder now commenced in the remnant of this unfortunate army. In vain did they entreat, weep, threaten, strive to burst open the gates, and even drop down dead at the feet of their comrades placed to repel them; they found the latter inexorable, and were forced to wait the arrival of the first troops that were still officered and in order.

These were the Old and the Young Guard; and it was not till after them that the disbanded men were allowed to enter: the latter, and the other corps which arrived in succession, from the 8th to the 14th, believed that their admission had been delayed merely to give more rest and more provisions to this favored guard. Their sufferings rendered them unjust: they execrated it. "Were they, then, to be forever sacrificed to this privileged cla.s.s; fellows kept for mere parade, who were never foremost but at reviews, festivals, and distributions? Was the army to put up with their leavings, always to wait till they had glutted themselves?"

It was useless to tell them in reply, that to attempt to save all was the way to lose all; that it was necessary to keep at least one corps entire, and to give the preference to that which in the last extremity would be capable of making the most powerful effort.

At length these poor creatures were admitted into that Smolensk for which they had so long ardently wished, while the banks of the Borysthenes were strewed with their expiring companions, the weakest of whom impatience and several hours' waiting had brought to that state.

Others, again, were left on the icy steep, which they had to climb to reach the upper town. The rest ran to the magazines, where many fell exhausted while they beset the doors; for here also they were repulsed.

"Who were they?" it was asked. "To what corps did they belong? What had they to prove it? The persons appointed to distribute the provisions were responsible for them: they had orders to deliver them only to authorized officers bringing receipts, for which alone they could exchange the rations committed to their care." These poor famished creatures had no officers, nor could they tell where their regiments were: two-thirds of the army were in this predicament.

These miserable men then dispersed themselves through the streets, having no longer any hope but in pillage. But horses dissected to the very bones everywhere denoted a famine; the doors and windows of the houses had been all broken and torn away to feed the fires of the bivouacs; they found no shelter in them, no winter quarters prepared, no wood. The sick and wounded were left in the streets, in the carts which had brought them. It was again, it was always the same fatal high road, pa.s.sing through a town which was but an empty name: it was a new bivouac among deceitful ruins, colder even than the forests they had just quitted.

Then only did these disorganized troops seek their colors: they rejoined them for a moment in order to obtain food; but all the bread that could be baked had been distributed; and there was no biscuit, no butcher's meat. Rye flour, dry vegetables, and spirits were dealt out to them. It required the most strenuous efforts to prevent the detachments of the different corps from murdering each other at the doors of the magazines; and when, after long formalities, their wretched fare was at last delivered to them, the soldiers refused to carry it to their regiments; they fell upon their sacks, s.n.a.t.c.hed out of them a few pounds of flour, and ran to secrete themselves till they had devoured it. The same was the case with the spirits; and the next day the houses were found full of the bodies of these miserable creatures.

In short, that Smolensk, which the army had looked forward to, as the term of their sufferings, marked, as it were, only their commencement.

Inexpressible hardships still awaited us: we had yet to march forty days under that yoke of iron. Some, already borne down by present miseries, sank under the frightful prospect of those which were before them.

Others sternly resolved to battle with their destiny; and, finding they had nothing to rely on but themselves, they determined to live at all hazards.

Thenceforward, according as they found themselves the stronger or the weaker, by violence or stealth they plundered their companions of their subsistence, of their garments, and of the gold with which they had filled their knapsacks instead of provisions. These wretches, whom despair had thus made robbers, then threw away their arms to save their infamous booty, profiting by the general confusion, an obscure name, a uniform no longer distinguishable, and night: in short, by every kind of concealment favorable to cowardice and guilt. If works already published had not exaggerated these horrors, I should have pa.s.sed over in silence such terrible details; for atrocities so extreme were, after all, comparatively rare, and justice was dealt to the most criminal.

On the 9th of November the emperor arrived amid this scene of desolation. He shut himself up in one of the houses in the new square, and never quitted it till the 14th to resume his retreat. He had calculated upon fifteen days' provisions and forage for an army of one hundred thousand men; but there was not more than half this quant.i.ty of flour, rice, and spirits, and no meat at all. Cries of rage were now directed against the princ.i.p.al individual appointed to provide these supplies; and the commissary saved his life only by prostrating himself on his knees at the feet of Napoleon, and remaining in that posture for a long time. But the reasons which he a.s.signed for his failure did more for him than his supplications.

Many of these reasons were well founded. A chain of other magazines had been formed from Smolensk to Minsk and Wilna. These two towns were, in a still greater degree than Smolensk, centres of provisioning, of which the fortresses of the Vistula formed the first line. The total quant.i.ty of provisions, indeed, distributed over this s.p.a.ce was incalculable; the efforts for transporting them thither had been gigantic; while the result was little better than nothing. Scattered over such a vast extent, immense as they were, they were found wholly insufficient.

Thus great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had been surpa.s.sed: the genius of Napoleon, in attempting to soar above time, climate, and distance, had, as it were, lost itself in s.p.a.ce; great as was its measure, it had gone beyond it.

Napoleon had been at Smolensk for five days. It was known that Ney had received orders to arrive there as late as possible, and Eugene to halt for two days at a point near Smolensk. Then it was not the necessity of waiting for the army of Italy which detained him! To what, then, must we attribute this delay, in the midst of famine, disease, and when the winter and three hostile armies were gradually surrounding us?

The emperor no doubt fancied that by dating his despatches for five days from that city, he would give to his disorderly flight the appearance of a slow and glorious retreat. In the same spirit, no doubt, he had ordered the destruction of the towers which surrounded Smolensk, from the wish, as he expressed it, of not being again stopped short by its walls! as if there were any idea of our returning to a place which we were not even sure that we should ever get out of.

The emperor, however, made an effort that was not altogether fruitless.

This was to rally under one commander all that remained of the cavalry; when it was found that of this force, thirty-seven thousand strong at the pa.s.sage of the Niemen, there now remained only eight hundred men on horseback. He gave the command of these to Latour-Maubourg; and, whether from the esteem felt for him, or from the general indifference, no one objected to it.

This army, which left Moscow one hundred thousand strong, in five-and-twenty days had been reduced to thirty-six thousand men, while the artillery had lost three hundred and fifty of their cannon; and yet these feeble remains continued as before to be divided into eight armies, which were enc.u.mbered with sixty thousand unarmed stragglers, and a long train of cannon and baggage.